From a recent Email Guidance exchange, helping someone clarify what their paid offering actually is. What’s the thing they want to put into the world and invite people to support?

The big thing I feel with a lot of us creative people is we think we have this OFFER than people will want, and if we just word it the right way, or promote it enough, people will flock to it and pay us for it. Even if we’re good at it! We can do this stuff, hire me!

What I’ve found is instead leaning into the thing that’s ridiculously easy for us that could be the beacon that shines for the right sort of people that need what we offer.

Rather than turn ourselves into round pegs to fit into square holes, what if we doubled down on what comes natural?

I believe when we work from a space of almost supernatural flow we’re bound to attract the right sort of clients, co-conspirators, and allies.

From my talk with copywriter & strategist Jen Baxter, where we definitely talked about going deeper with our existing audience instead of seeking more.

Instead of 10 posts, what if you just talked to 10 people? Have 10 Zoom calls with people. It’s scary—you don’t know who you might be talking to. But you can select who those 10 people are. If someone’s always commenting on your stuff, that’s probably a good person to DM and say, “Hey, can we hop on a Zoom call?”

Build that group of people to figure out and think about and knock ideas around with, instead of constantly publish, publish, publish and hope something sticks.

Watch the full interview here.

Just like making music, writing an essay, or taking a photo, your newsletter can be a masterpiece.

The facts of your work are important, sure. But facts aren’t art, you’re the art. You’re the painting, you’re the photograph, you’re the seven minute ballad with a curse word in the chorus.

Put some of that into your newsletter.

During a recent live stream I got this question in the chat:

You talk about not needing to be everywhere. But what about people who do want to be everywhere—those with big, rockstar-level ambitions? How should they think about that?

Firstly, especially in the vertical video world: TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels – if that’s the game you want to play, fine. Make one video and post it in three places. Go be on every platform. Go post everywhere.

But the odds aren’t in your favor, especially since everyone else is playing the same game.

But what if you took one day a week and instead of posting everywhere, you emailed people who are already rock stars? What if you reached out to the people who are already doing the work you want to be doing? Who are the people that might help you ascend to the next level?

What happens when you become friends with people in those places?

So much of this game is about who you know.

Been thinking a lot about Priya Parker’s idea of group help vs self help concept, and Mel Mitchell-Jackson nails it in in a recent post, ‘on healing our attention and what’s at stake,’

We are all in the midst of unlearning the patterns of screen time from the early pandemic, but putting we’re the blame on ourselves and saying this is just a personal issue to solve.

This ignores the cultural conditions. It ignores that the intention we built with these spaces was to connect with our people. That is the thing that keeps me going back each time I try to stop. Quitting must happen with others.

Deleting an app while sitting alone on the couch with a laptop and big screen TV in front of us might not be the best way to regain our attention, but maybe finding other people in a similar pursuit could help.

If you leave social media, how will you keep up with your favorite artists and musicians? From “10 Ways To Support Independent Music And Culture in 2026,” written by Stephan Kunze.

“Write down your top 20 bands and musicians (no need to overthink this), search for their homepages and add your email address to their newsletter mailing lists. That way you’ll be hearing directly from them about ways and opportunities to support them.”

I’d say less than half of you favorite artists actually have an email list (sigh), so search out their record label and join their email list.

You could even search for your favorite artist and sort by news, and then by most recent.

ORBIT: “Some of them join me in zoom rooms and some over in Discord, but if digital is not their thing, we’re doing snail mail, long phone calls, and methods of platform-independent connection,” says Mel Mitchell-Jackson.

IGNITION: “Can I say your suggestion to start hosting zoom calls was a gamechanger over here? I now have a tiny group of people who are on a journey together and are making things happen. I know them and they know me and so much more can happen at that level. it’s like we’ve done intros already, lets get to work now,” from a former Email Guidance client (members get two free rounds with me). 

TRAJECTORY: “When I hear (my talk from The Moth), I wish I’d gotten it a minute or two tighter. But what is also there is me, the human being, doing something I was not fully prepared for (because there was no way to prepare except to do it),” Kato McNickle

SIGNALS: “I like how everyone talked without raising their virtual zoom hand and how nice and goofy and smart everyone was,” said our Escape Pod guest Erin Shetron.

You probably don’t need more subscribers, you need to revamp your website. I talked about this on artist Rob Cannon’s podcast almost a year ago.

“Your website should be the sexiest thing you’ve got… use the videos you already made for Instagram. Ninety to ninety-five percent of your fans never saw those anyway.

If you made a video talking about the thing you’re selling, and it lives on Instagram, and you expect someone to be curious enough to click the link in your bio and end up on your site—take that video and put it on the sales page.

Make the sales page the sexiest, most compelling version of the work.”

Listen to full interview with Rob here.