Category: NewslettersCategory: Newsletters

One person on your email list can make a big difference.

I found out that Pearl Jam posted about the local nonprofit community art center Alice and I started, Art House Grandview, on their Instagram.

Three point eight million followers. A photo of a kid at Art House learning guitar, small hands on the neck of an instrument almost too big for them. Their foundation, the Vitalogy Foundation, picked Art House as the April recipient of their Future Days Fund grant. The money goes directly into the programs where we teach kids music for free.

Joshua Heath Scott wrote a newsletter, ‘HOW GUITAR CHANGED MY LIFE,’ and someone on the email list forwarded it to Pearl Jam’s foundation, which led to them highlighting Art House Grandview.

Joshua wrote that piece as only he could, talking about how Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ album was a huge influence, and “I’ve spent a lot of time on this Substack trying to articulate why art and creativity matter — why guitar matters — why it’s more than an instrument, why it carries the weight of where music has been, why holding one connects you to something larger than yourself.”

This is the core of talking about what we do.

We don’t just play music, we change lives.

We don’t just write essays, we shape culture.

We don’t just take photos, we document the world around us.

When we reduce ourselves to commodity offerings (check out my song, buy my print, read my article), we can’t be surprised when it’s treated as “content.”

So talk about your work in the same creative manner in which you make it. Dare to say you’re a writer even if you’re not “published.” Call yourself a photographer, a musician, a poet.

If the ding-dongs running the United States right now can claim they know what they’re doing, you have my permission to be anything you wanna be.

Let’s not define ourselves by our primary source of income, as we were put on earth for reasons beyond comprehension, beyond punching someone else’s time clock to pay the rent.

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Join me and the Social Media Escape Club TOMORROW, April 23 at 2pm EST, as we talk about this (and more), and you’ll leave with some new ways to talk about your work – sign up here.

Emma Gannon, an absolute super star on Substack recently posted, “we all know 1k Substack subscribers is worth 100k in IG followers.”

Emma is right.

You can follow 2,000 people on Instagram, but it’s near impossible to subscribe to 2,000 newsletters – your inbox would explode! The people who subscribe trust you with their email address, and that’s a big deal in 2026.

But don’t get it twisted – they’re not your Substack subscribers, they’re your email subscribers.

Platforms come and go, but your email list lasts (almost) forever.

From strategist and facilitator Caitlin Mayance,

Hey brands, why you still sending out storyless emails in 2026? You have direct access to a personal inbox – no algorithmic nonsense – and you’re leading with a promo or tiny lil ad?! Come on

When the bare minimum is copy and pasting your pre-existing marketing materials and hitting send to ALL is your strategy, expect bare minimum results.

Some of the most fascinating stories are being told on rented platforms, while email newsletters are filled with recycled social media images and [$NAME] placeholders.

Roddy Bottum (of Faith No More fame) recently wrote “These Rooms,” which goes against all pragmatic guidance on what an email subject line or headline should be.

But this is art.

He’s promoting his current book tour (more art), and if anyone could get away with uploading the tour poster and writing, “hey, book tour is going great. Hope to see you out there,” well, it’d be Roddy. Instead he wrote about 1,800 before getting to the “point.”

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Substack began as a place to send newsletters to email subscribers.

Substack has since become its own bustling social media space, complete with the communal unease and tension of trying to “win” on the platform. This gets people complaining about a lack of likes or comments on their posts.

We have to remember, though, that not everybody reads newsletters in the Substack app, or on the Substack website, which is the only place to “like” a post or leave a comment.

To do either, readers must visit the Substack website or open the Substack app, a platform optimized to increase paid memberships, whether yours or someone else’s publication.

Substack needs eyeballs, and every writer sending a newsletter is how they get ’em.