◼️ Today’s newsletter is sponsored by dumb wireless, the best place to get a great phone without all the noisy distractions. Use code minimalnewyear for a special discount.

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Hi. The photo above is from a recent trip to NYC, where I lived from 2004-2010. It’s where I left my last full time job in 2006, and I’ve been figuring it out ever since. I guess I could say I’ve been “building my business,” but really it’s more like I’m crossing a busy stream by jumping from rock to rock, and I made it another year. One step at a time, friends.

Today’s “FOUR THE WEEKEND” is pretty lightweight, perfect for the hazy time between Christmas and New Years.

Remember – you don’t need to reinvent yourself, or fix anything over the next few days. You’re great just the way you are.

1. VALENTINE’S DAY IS 50 DAYS AWAY

Maybe plan something fun for Feb 14, 2025? I dare you!

Release a new single, a photo zine devoted to love and heartbreak, maybe a new shirt design, or a funny video serious you could roll out that entire week. Maybe it’s a collaborative post about breakups with some of your readers, or a collection of poetry from several other writers in your circle.

Okay, if not Valentine’s Day, what’s another holiday you could release something around that might be a little more “on brand” for you?

2. SIGN UP FOR MY ABOUT PAGE WORKSHOP

Lots of you downloaded my ABOUT PAGE PDF in a previous email, so I’m going to do a mini-workshop in early 2025. Click here to add your name to the wait list and you’ll be the first to know when it launches.

‘Write Your Artist Bio in 6 Sentences’ over at Dedicate Your Life To Music is a good place to start even if you’re not a musician.

3. GET AWARENESS OFF YOUR PLATE

This is what I tell anyone who can’t fathom being without social media; seek out opportunities to work with other people, do interviews, show up on podcasts, collaborate on projects.

Check out these two post below (loaded with examples and ideas) and envision you world with less social media.

https://socialmediaescapeclub.substack.com/p/lets-rethink-how-we-do-awareness

https://socialmediaescapeclub.substack.com/p/getting-awareness-off-my-plate-is

Which podcast would be a perfect fit for you to guest on? If you could get an interview with any media outlet to talk about you work, who would it be?

4. MAKE A LIST OF PEOPLE YOU COULD PARTNER WITH IN 2025

This one is from 

Ana Calin (see her post here), and is closely related to the idea of getting awareness off your plate.

Make a list of 20-30 people you could partner with in 2025.

These partners should be influential figures with a complementary service to yours and a similar target audience.

By partnering with them you can send referrals, co-market and even launch joint ventures.

It’s a fantastic way to grow.

Get out a piece of paper or make a new note on your phone and think about getting away from doing everything yourself, and figure out the people in your orbit that might be open to creative expansion.

For me that looks like people I could interview for this newsletter, guests I could invite to our Escape Pod Zoom calls, and smart people who could co-lead a workshop.

Who are some people you could work with that’d help you get deeper into your work? Who are the people you could grow with?

Have a great weekend, everyone. See you all again on Monday.

//SETH

◼️ Happy Monday, friends. Today’s newsletter is sponsored by dumb wireless. Use code minimalnewyear for a special discount on flip phones, minimal phones, and even the Camp Snap Camera (a screen free digital camera).

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This is my first Christmas without my dad, but I’ve got the camera he used to take family photos here with me (along with like 10 rolls of film I need to develop).

We didn’t have much of a relationship in the last few years, so I’m not really “sad,” but like all family stuff it’s complicated.

I lost my mom in 2017, too. I think about her a lot, and how much she enjoyed this time of year. She loved the Christmas lights, and Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas and baking cookies.

Dad, well, he was along for the ride. He just wanted to play his guitar. To his bull-headed credit, that’s what he did until he died alone in trailer that smelled of cigarettes and booze.

This is a reminder that when the lights go out, all in all is all we are.

Your entire life summed up by the people who might be by your side when you pass into the void.

That’s what will make you cry with something like joy or contentment on your deathbed: that you’ve helped people, been good to them, even strangers. That’s it.

It’s not the number of trips you take, not your bank account, not the number of friends or followers or subscribers or fans, not even your family, not your weight or the color of your hair. It’s that you’ve been good to the people all around you.

That’s from ‘What Will Really Matter on Your Deathbed’ by Sarah Fay, who lost her mother in the last few days.

You’ve got magic, your art, something to share, so make sure you share it with a world in need.

Oh, and make sure to be a good person to the people all around you at the same time.

The less rigid we make things, the more magic we can experience. I wrote about my dad’s rigid thinking of what it meant to be a musician.

Dad’s idea of “success” was having a group so he could get booked at local venues. Without that, life seemed not… worth living.

And yet, his neighbors loved hearing the music he played.

Our gifts are not transactions, but they need to exist in the world in whatever form they can take.

Instead we let algorithms and worldly definitions of success hinder our work, draining our creative energies and robbing the world of our magic.

Just because you can’t play to a sold out Madison Square Garden doesn’t mean you should stop making music.

The “likes” can’t determine our value, and the subscriber count goals change the minute we hit them.

I think about the musician who believes their work doesn’t matter because a recent post got five likes.

I think about talented artists that are waiting for permission to show their work in the “proper” spaces when there are thousands of people right outside their door who are looking for a bit of magic during their commute.

The writers waiting to be picked, deemed worthy to have their words printed and bound and placed next to a million other books, when words can live on park benches and poetry on the sides of non-working telephones booths.

Stability is not owed for these artistic efforts, but the world is a better place because of their existence. Though not everyone gets to earn a living from their art, everyone lives in a world that needs more of it.

It’s a cruel reality, that such talent and gifts can be ignored by so many, but we live with this and make our work anyways.

Because even in the grand scheme of things, most people have never heard of our heroes. There are so many people who’ve never heard of Austin Kleon or Kim Deal, and they’re huge.

Find freedom in that. Explore everything you can in your supposed obscurity. It’s time to do whatever we want.

Let’s stop waiting for the next publication or platform to save us. The fix isn’t waiting for tech bros to share a tenth of a penny more in streaming payouts – the power is with people reading newsletters and creating websites.

Let’s be the media outlets, the tastemakers, the movers of culture.

• Start that in-person book club.
• Go on photo walks with friends.
• Visit your friend’s studio and make a zine.
• Work with friends and put out a recipes zine.
• Make a music video with your friend on Christmas.

We don’t need to wait for permission, to get booked, to get signed – we release our work today with the people already in our lives.

My dad moved to Florida, so I didn’t see him much (I’m in Pennsylvania).

My sister flew down from Delaware with her kids to go to Disney. She told dad about this trip, and offered to pay for his ticket. You know, to see her and the grandkids.

Dad needed to drive just 45 minutes, but he didn’t meet up with them because he “didn’t want to pay the $20 for parking.”

This happened two years in a row.

So my sister is starting a new tradition in honor of a parent who couldn’t show up for his kids: tip $20 to someone on my dad’s birthday, December 24th. Cash preferred.

Happy Holidays. Stay safe, tip well.

◼️ P.S.Ditch Gmail and switch to Fastmail: get a free 30-day trial and 10% off your first year here (affiliate link).

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Shradical, makers of high-performance helmets with built-in front and rear LED lights. Look good, be seen, and stay safe – check ‘em out here.

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I believe that finding work and interesting opportunities can come from your existing contact list and network. The creative people in your orbit.

Since I started playing music in the late 90s, and made a music blog back in 2001, I’ve met a lot of people so, sure, it’s easy for me to offer this advice.

Q: What if you don’t have decades of contacts to pull from?

A: Start being around the people you need to be around. Today. Right now.

Social media has led us to believe we can find success as “lonely content machines, but the adventure becomes easier with other people by your side.

THE MUSIC BLOG

In 2005 I was four years into the “I’m a music blogger” thing, and that’s when I met someone that I didn’t know would change my life (and it would take half my life to realize it).

Sean Cannon started helping with my music blog, and we worked together up until 2008, when I handed him the site because I started another music blog for AOL Music called Noisecreep.

(more…)

I posted this over the weekend on Substack Notes, but you probably didn’t see it.

Five people called me, and we had some nice chats.

Most of my email subscribers don’t spend time on Substack Notes, and probably don’t even know it exists.

I’m certain of this, as over 80% of you read my newsletter in your email inbox.

It might be the same for your newsletter, too.

Hard truth: Substack Notes is social media, where algorithms control what you see and where most of your audience doesn’t see what you post anyway.

The best remedy to all this is delivering a message to their inbox.

This is why when you post a new song on Spotify, you should send an email to your fans to let them know. You can’t trust that Spotify will surface this new song to all your subscribers on their platform.

If you post a new video on YouTube, you should still send an email to your subscribers and let them know. You can’t trust YouTube to distribute your new video to everyone who subscribed to your channel.

Leaving the distribution of your work to algorithmic platforms is a dead-end street. Posting isn’t enough; you have to reach out to your audience directly if you want to survive.

Now, maybe you’ve got some objections…

🚫 Sending too many emails is spammy

✅ If people don’t want to hear from you, let ‘em leave. An unsubscribe is just making room for someone else to come and enjoy your work.

✅ Funny how we don’t want to send too many emails, yet most of us posted multiple times per hour on social media, right?

🚫 Sending a newsletter is too much work

✅ You don’t have to make vertical videos, and you don’t need to make new static images. If you’ve already posted about your new thing on Instagram, just copy and paste the caption you wrote – 95% of your audience didn’t see it anyway, so re-use it!

🚫 I don’t have enough email subscribers

✅ If you have 1,000 social media followers, you might reach 10% of them (that’s 100 people).

✅ If you have 100 email subscribers, 99.9% of them will get your next newsletter (so make sure you write a good subject line).

The best email to send to your fans is one that they expect.

If someone bought your last album, signed up for your class, or bought your latest print, chances are they’ll be receptive to getting an email about your brand-new offering.

This is the work I do with a record label client.

When High On Fire has a new record coming out, guess what? We email the folks who bought the last High On Fire album.

We did this for Death Row Records, too. If we had a new shirt drop, we’d send to people who bought shirts in the past.

A higher percentage of people will open a segmented email than if we sent it to everyone on our list.

And better-targeted emails can make you more money.

It’s called segmenting.

Substack let’s you build segments from a user’s Activity rating, which they define as, “a high-level rating of how actively the subscriber has used your newsletter in the last month, including email opens and webviews.”

You can also build segments by post views, comments, email opens and more.

All that said, I recommend using another email service like Flodesk or Kit to build a segment based on sales.

You take all the email addresses of people who bought from you before (from your online store, Bandcamp, etc.) and send them a separate email at some point.

For example, this is how Cody Cook-Parrott incorporates Flodesk into their workflow:

“A few days ago I decided to use my Flodesk email list which is made up of people who have downloaded one of my free guides or taken my classes…”

Continue sending to your regular newsletter audience, of course. Announce your new offerings as usual, but send to this “people who’ve bought from us before” segment occasionally, too.

Building new segments.

Let’s say you’re about to launch something new, like an album, a book pre-order or a new course.

When you first announce your new offering on social media, Substack Notes, or even your main newsletter, you get your fans to click and sign up to be the first to know about your offering via a landing page.

For example, maybe I want to offer a workshop next month all about segmenting. I could mention it in this newsletter, and link to a landing page where you could sign up to be the first to know about this new offering.

When I’m ready to launch, I’d email these people first because they’re the most engaged, and I’m not leaving it up to the chance that they’ll see the announcement in the next few newsletters I send. They’re getting a directly targeted email announcing the new workshop because they signed up for it!

So yeah – if you want to be alerted if I set up a Segmenting Workshop, click here!

More info:
Free landing pages for your next idea from Kit
Free forms that make people want to sign up from Flodesk