Category: InterviewCategory: Interview

I spoke with Cody Cook-Parrott ahead of the release of their new book, The Practice of Attention. We also talked about the messy and imperfect journey we’re all trying to figure out, too. Buckle up.

Cody deleted Instagram, and they also left Substack for Buttondown, returned briefly, then left again and lost their paid subscribers in the process.

“I felt a little flippant, almost. Like, oh, I can just build it back. And it’s like, it took me four years to build that many paid subscribers. It wasn’t like it just happened one day. And so I’ve been really thinking about how precious it is to have — I would like to think I would never delete my email list as a whole. I see people making quick decisions without really realizing how it might affect their self-employment landscape.”

We talked about social media, of course, but arrived in a new place.

Had a great conversation with photographer Noah Kalina today, about a variety of creative subjects.

We talked about his recent love for building websites to host his creative work.

“I use Claude code, but it has just been like this giant unlock for my creativity — and mostly in service of it. It’s like all of these pictures that just do not feel like they have a home anymore on the internet.

Of all of the sites we’ve been through — for me, it’s 25 years on the internet — I’m no stranger to seeing sites come and go and moving on or whatever. But now it really just feels like it’s all scattered and blown up.

There is no real one place anymore. But what does feel good is your place, your website. For me, it’s noahkalina.com, and then I’m making subdomains off of that.”

On the withering away of social media, and the return to personal sites:

“With the destruction of like social media as we know it, or at least the change in it, I think there’s nothing better now than feeling like, oh, let’s full circle back to our personal websites and like make them interesting

On today’s Substack Live Mel Mitchell-Jackson and I talked about internet platform burnout, leaving stable jobs to pursue creative work, social media’s failure to convert to actual sales, the importance of building trust, and why it’s so hard to make art when also trying to please the algorithms.

Mel on dashboards, and playing the numbers game:

“These stats dashboards just want you to be working harder, faster, all the time and they don’t think about your well being. And that is horrible for a creative person because then you lose your own sacred space to make your work.”

On getting views on platforms, but not much sales:

“I was promoting the program on both YouTube and TikTok. And in the promotion on TikTok, I was posting every day. Sometimes three times a day… I was spending a full time job, like 36 hours a week on TikTok in order to promote this thing. And then when I looked at my like backend website stats, I learned that none of my traffic or sales for this were brought by TikTok. I was just spinning my wheels.”

Oh, and Mel talks about a video they made about one of their paintings, and it got 500,000 views on TikTok, but didn’t lead to one sale.

Artist David Speed from today’s Substack Live:

“From all of these brilliant minds that I’ve had on (the podcast), the overwhelming thing that comes through is just keep making stuff. Because through the things that you will make, you will process the world around you. You will learn what resonates with people and what doesn’t. You’ll find your niche. You’ll find your groove. You’ll find your people. And you’ll get better at what you do. So just keep making stuff. I think make is the most important word that we have. And it is my mission on this planet to encourage people to make stuff. Make as many things as you can. Leave behind a legacy of beautiful things that you’ve made. Make, make, make.”

Listen to the full interview to hear us talk about:

• How 3K email subscribers is mightier than 160,000 Instagram followers
• Small in-person events build trust
• David’s monthly free studio paint sessions in London
• Start a podcast (and listen to David’s Creative Rebels Podcast)
• Plant flags everywhere
• AI slop makes people want to get back to real human-created work

I joined Russell Nohelty as a guest on his Substack Live as part of his January Joy(ful) Growth Club.

“If you gain a thousand new followers on social media, you might reach ten percent of them. Might as well get a hundred people on your email list.”

One of my favorite lines to throw around, ‘cuz it’s true!

Russell and I talked about building creative careers without relying on social media, using music, writing, comedy, and live events as examples of how audiences actually grow: slowly, locally, and through lots of repetition – because no one sees everything we post!

“I don’t do (Substack) Lives where there’s no energetic exchange beyond that hour,” said Russell, “I want something I can give back to my audience.”

The conversation covered message repetition, storytelling around your work, why most people don’t see everything you publish, and how having an audience gives you the freedom to make work that isn’t optimized for going viral but still matters.