Category: EventsCategory: Events

In our “WHY HAVEN’T YOU STARTED THE THING YET?” Escape Pod video call last week, a common thread is the question of “do I want to do this, or is it just thing I SHOULD do?”

“Should I start a newsletter?”
“Should I update my website?”

We need to ask better questions.

Who is this for? Who does it serve?

Asking “would the people who enjoy my work like to know about my art show next month?”
“Would the people who might hire me like to have current online portfolio to look at and a clear way to contact me?”

Start with clarity, then start.

---

Join our next “WHY HAVEN’T YOU STARTED THE THING YET?” call, on Monday, July 13 from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT. Register here, pay what you want starting at $3.

If appearing on camera freaks you out, take inspiration from this video “how we shoot brand photography for AG1” from FLOWERS.

Now, yes of course, making a video like this takes some work. The editing! The text! Not to mention the super amazing footage featured throughout. But, friends – that wasn’t their first time making a video.

We all start somewhere.

A friend wanted to know how I made coffee, so I shot some footage, edited it together (I use ScreenFlow), added some of my own background music and narration, and that’s it. I’m not uploading it to YouTube, or featuring it on my website, but I made a video. It did the job.

This wasn’t my first video. I’ve been making videos for many years, with various projects, but nothing consistent in recent years.

So try making a video for one person, as the stakes are much lower. You’ve got ideas, concepts, lessons to teach, and putting them out into the world as video will probably make the world a better place, or at least help a friend make a good cup of coffee.

Join our upcoming Zoom calls talking about this, titled “WHY HAVEN’T YOU STARTED THE THING YET?” We’ll talk about what’s holding us back, face the fears, and maybe come away with a new found determination to finally start the thing you’ve been talking about starting.

Thursday, July 9 from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT – REGISTER → https://luma.com/eyar9u7n
Monday, July 13 from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT- REGISTER → https://luma.com/c1166375

​If the thought of “promoting” your work makes your skin crawl, or if you think the only option is yelling into the void on social media, you should join this call.

​Join me (Seth Werkheiser of Social Media Escape Club) and other creative people who are in the same boat, wanting to make good work without hiring ourselves to be full-time marketing directors.

​If you read my Social Media Escape Club newsletter, you should have an idea about the different ways we can promote our work that don’t include making short form video “content.”

​This is not a webinar.
No break out rooms.
This is a group discussion with people from different fields and skill levels – photographers, musicians, artists, poets, teachers!

Monday, June 29 at 9:00 AM EDT – REGISTER → https://luma.com/a5lmsvqn
Thursday, July 2 at 2:00 PM EDT – REGISTER → https://luma.com/igk63i3r
Friday, Jul 3 at 12:00 PM EDT – REGISTER → https://luma.com/na9nfjli

If you lose access to your Gmail account, then what? That’s why I say your email is important enough to pay for, because if things go sideways, good luck reaching any for help!

I’ve been using Fastmail since 2014. I ditched Google Workspace in early 2025.

If you’d like to have less Google in your life, get on one of these calls. They’re not webinars. They’re not step by step walk throughs. These are for people scared, uneasy, afraid to tackle this sort of things alone!

• Monday, June 15th at 9:00AM EDT → https://luma.com/qebt5cj9
  
• Friday, June 19th at 11:00AM EDT → https://luma.com/1k3gnx6a

From Lucy Werner of Hype Yourself, talking about how to get closer to the sorts of people you want to be working with (from one our recent Escape Pod Zoom calls).

“One of my mantras is: put yourself where you don’t belong. Yes, it’s good to have your squad of people doing similar things to empathize with, but I always like to be the only PR (person) in a room full of artists and creatives. That’s my happy space — they’re the people I want to hang out with.”

Lucy did this at a market hall, where people were “selling jeans, or candles, or perfumes, or whatever. And I just sat there with a sign, being like, 15 minutes of free PR or branding advice.”

She said she was busy all day “because we were the only service-based people sat in a market store around product sellers.”

Joi Katskee does a radio show, and on one of our calls she told us how she talked about her program at an open mic night.

I made flyers for Social Media Escape Club, and set them out at a punk rock flea market while selling some old music gear. This led to about a dozen face to face conversations with all sorts of people about wanting to get off social media.

The common theme here is none of us hoped for an algorithm to bring the right people to us, we just showed up.

So if you’ve been thinking that social media is the only way to find your people, I just gave you three examples of meeting people in the real world, one conversation at a time. Instead of chasing follower counts or engagement, find new ways to get around the people you want to work with.

And start figuring that out with other creative folks by joining one of our upcoming calls!