Doing the work is hard, so why do it alone? We had some great discussions this week on our Escape Pod Zoom calls:

• Building in-person communities in new towns through volunteer work.
• My talk with artist David Speed about small scale IRL events, starting a podcast (and more).
• The weaver’s handshake?!
• Unstructured time at conferences can be more valuable than the speakers.
• Inviting authors onto a podcast despite being nervousness about it!
• Do podcasts really need to have a video element?
• “How to make your website your hub with AI taking traffic away from us little people?”
• Someone said out of 50 podcasts they subscribed to, four were active a year later

Can’t make the calls, but wanna be involved? Join our tiny email circles, made up of Social Media Escape Club members! Easy reply-all email conversations with great people. Reply to this email if you wanna join.

THIS WEEKEND!

◾ BREAK UP 💔 WITH SOCIAL MEDIA DAY – SPECIAL EVENT!
Delete an app or two (I’ll be deleting the Substack app) with others. Already deleted all the apps? Great – come support those who are just starting their journey!
ALSO: special treat for everyone who attends live
Saturday, February 14
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST
REGISTER: https://luma.com/sime7eyi

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​This Focus Escape Pod is a 90-minute group conversation for people who are ready to get away from Gmail and Google, but want a calm, chill, honest place to talk through what comes next. No pitches or demos or upsells. Just shared experiences, calm conversation, and practical paths forward.

Wednesday, February 25 from 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST

​Things we’ll explore during this 90 minute call:

• ​Understanding the basics of forwarding messages, exporting your emails, and more.
• ​Real stories from people who left Gmail and discovered their work, relationships, and inboxes were fine!
• ​How others chose a new provider based on values like privacy or simplicity

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This week musician Nolan Green joined our Thursday Escape Pod Zoom call, where he talked about:

• Learning about “recoupables” in the music industry.
• Sending his demo to 30 labels and getting signed by Network Records
• Moving to the Netherlands from the United States
• Embracing happy accidents
• Finding joy in the creation process over live performance pressure
• Trusting that authentic creations will find its audience organically
• His current Netherlands Soundscapes project
• Working as a photographer at CMJ in the early 2000s

Audio replay is available in your Memberful Account. And from our Mini Escape Pod session we got into:

• Website redesign focusing on single message versus multiple interests dilemma (we’ll figure this one out, someday! haha)
• Migration from Substack to WordPress definitely isn’t seamless
• Spam prevention strategies: CAPTCHA, double opt-in, country blocking via Cloudflare
• How personal websites allow authentic expression vs platform uniformity constraints
• Patreon versus Gumroad for paid offerings

Social Media Escape Club isn’t just about ditching Instagram, but the continued discussion and support after we’ve left behind those platforms behind. Hope to see you on an upcoming call!

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Here are some things we talked about on our calls this past week:

• You’re probably not doing email wrong
• The growth vs. quality trade-off with recommendations or going viral (8,000 new subs but zero paid conversions)
• Domain validation and email deliverability (DMARC/SPF, testing tools)
• Platform sovereignty: owning your website vs. relying on platforms
• The dangers of platform dependency (Lucy Werner’s entire Substack getting wiped)
• Content restrictions and AI detection tools flagging original work as fake
• Using email marketing automations (or not)
• Physical networking still works (think business cards at conferences, zines)
• Multi-platform content strategy, the Austin Kleon model (blog + Substack)

Come join a call this week!

UPCOMING ESCAPE PODS:

◾ CO-WORK ESCAPE POD
Clean up your online store, refresh your bio, write a newsletter – come work with the Social Media Escape Club and get things done!
Tuesday, February 3
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST
REGISTER: https://luma.com/nadilhbk

◾ MINI ESCAPE POD Q&A #29
Limited to just three guests so you we can focus on your challenges and answer questions together.
Wednesday, February 4
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM EST
REGISTER: Members only, start a 30 trial here!

◾ ESCAPE POD VIDEO CALL #105 W/ NOLAN GREEN
​Musician Nolan Green is the force behind The Grassy Knoll, an experimental, jazz-influenced electronic and alternative rock project with a cult following dating back to the 1990s. His cinematic, genre-blurring work has appeared across film, TV, and games, including the theme for Netflix’s Bobby Kennedy for President and placements in Legion and Roswell.
Thursday, February 5
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
REGISTER: https://luma.com/gn6hr7ig

Five actionable items from this week’s calls:

1. Test your emails before sending – Use mail-tester.com to check deliverability, send previews to multiple email providers, and check how your emails render in dark/light mode
2. Set up domain validation (DMARC/SPF/DKIM) – For email deliverability and helping prevent your newsletters from landing in spam
3. Buy your domain name now – Even if you’re not ready for a full website, secure your domain as a long-term investment towards owning your work.
4. Implement a 24-hour review period – Wait a day before sending emails and get a second pair of eyes to catch errors 
5. Start a tiny email circle – Replace sprawling Discord servers with a 4-person email thread for ongoing connection and direct collaboration (reply to this email to join one of ours)

◾ BREAK UP 💔 WITH SOCIAL MEDIA DAY
We’ll gather on Zoom to delete at least one social media app from our phone. ​This is a group break up, together, in good company.
Saturday, February 14
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST
REGISTER: https://luma.com/sime7eyi

◾ ESCAPE POD #108 W/ CARLY VALANCY
​I’ll kick things off with a 15-minute conversation with Carly Valancy about the art of reaching out and building real connections. There will definitely be a 5 minute exercise in reaching out on this call!
Thursday, March 5
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
REGISTER: https://luma.com/w0oh4x06

Some takeaways from today’s ALL EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDERS SUCK Focus Pod, where ten of us got together on a Zoom call and talked about our experiences with multiple email tools like Mailchimp, MailerLite, Squarespace, and more.

1. No one is really “doing email wrong.” A lot of people talking about their setups made it clear that the communal frustration is real. So many platforms, so many quirks, all with the usual pain points.
2. Platform vibes, not feature lists. The back and forth gave us more insight than a comparison chart or watching 12 more YouTube videos. Adult content restrictions, WordPress file upload weirdness, support loops that go nowhere, analytic blind spots… all these things come to light when get together and compare notes in real time.
3. Growth stories sound very different when told out loud. Viral posts, recommendation engines, and big numbers looked way less awesome once folks shared what actually happened afterwards, which was usually low engagement, zero paid conversions, and high churn. This felt good as it helped recalibrate what “big growth” really means.
4. Simplicity wins (for lots of different reasons). Some folks valued simple tools because they reduce tinkering and messing around with designs. Others because they reduce anxiety. Hearing those reasons side by side helped people name what they actually need from a platform, not what they think they should want.

This was a group of smart people thinking out loud together, testing assumptions, talking trash, and helping each other feel less alone in all the messy decisions we’re trying to make.

This sort of collective sense-making doesn’t translate in a recap post like this – you sort of had to be there, so consider becoming a member today!