Had another chat with Angela Hollowell (Please Hustle Responsibly) all about the benefits of spending our time away from social media, content ownership, and lots more.

Angela talking about spending your time wisely:

“I could be on social media, making a big deal that I’m going to be here and doing all these things. Or I could just let the people who want to be on social media stay there, and focus instead on the relationships that matter — the ones that aren’t dependent on social media.”

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It’s “Not My Business” season again.

A year ago Olivia Rafferty declared that some things were not her business:

Things That, As A Substacker, Are Not My Business

1. How many subscribers I have? NOT MY BUSINESS
2. The current state of my header/footer? NOT MY BUSINESS
3. Whatever is happening on my welcome page? NOT MY BUSINESS
4. The growing pile of unread newsletters in my inbox? NOT MY BUSINESS
5. How many emojis I use? NOT MY BUSINESS
6. The leaderboard for Culture? NOT MY BUSINESS
7. Substack Chat? NOT MY BUSINESS
8. My Notion database for future post ideas? NOT MY BUSINESS
9. My open rate? NOT MY BUSINESS

Social media, and lately the newsletter busy-ness industrial complex, has us spinning our wheels on so many things that are not our business.

Things like open rates, deliverability, A/B testing headlines, churn, soft bounces and hard bounces, email lists spread across multiple CSV files – really, it never fucking ends, and most of us ain’t making enough to sweat all the finer details.

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Photographer Wesley Verhoeve suggests suggest we “Leave Grace Notes,” in his post ‘What a Burger Restaurant Taught Me About Creative Work.’

“Guidara’s team believed in ‘grace notes’: small gestures that surprise and delight. A remembered wine. An extra dish.”

This from the book “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara.

“In our (photography) world: a behind-the-scenes Polaroid. A thank-you zine. A note weeks later saying thank you for the opportunity and trust.

These don’t scale. But they stick.”

I’ve say this in slightly more profane way in “Maybe you don’t need more subscribers,” but the core idea remains: things that don’t scale can resonate.

Marketing our work isn’t just about logos or brand colors, it’s about how we make people feel.

Rachel Karten speaks with the little joy coffee shop, focusing on their social media strategy, but I think the main point applies to how all of us talk about our work, despite which medium we use.

RK: What advice would you give to a local business that is trying to find success on social media?

CL: Social media is replacing television. And just like in television, there’s the shows you tune-in to watch and there’s the commercials you suffer through. Stop making commercials. Be the show.

Did you see it? “Stop making commercials. Be the show.”

One of the longest running TV shows isn’t about the contents of storage containers, it’s about the stories that weave around them.

Telling people that we have a show coming up is a commercial.

Planning, booking, the travels, the build up, talking to fans, borrowing gear, making the flyer for the show – that’s the story.

We don’t need to start making videos, we need to tell better stories.

Start DM’ing with five like-minded folks about the work you do and you won’t need to go viral.

“Here’s the thing about small, quality audiences: you never know which conversation will start the chain reaction. Which episode will reach the one person who changes everything… in the age of infinite content, finite and intentional might be the most radical choice,” Yancey Strickler

A great example of this is the story Joi Katskee told in one of our Escape Pod Zoom calls:

“I texted probably 15 people about the show rather than posting on Instagram, and maybe over half of them showed up. They were like, Yeah, I’ll be there. Thank you for the invite.”

Get seven people to a show on a Tuesday night and watch the magic unfold.

Some good thoughts on working in collaboration with other people.

“Community is such a source of nourishment. Sometimes we may believe that we are creatively blocked, but really we’re just cut off from the nourishment of community,” Giselle Buchanan

“Our laptop wants you to work on your music alone. And the (usually exaggerated) hype around a lot of records is that they were done all alone by somebody in their bedroom. That’s fine for some people. But most musicians seem to do their best work in collaboration with other musicians, each one bringing their own strengths to the game. Embrace collaboration if you can,” Dan Wilson

“The creative status quo has made us lonely content machines. Pressured to post with unnatural quantity and frequency. To pursue our livelihoods and express our work. We play someone else’s game,” New Creative Era

This can be sending an email and asking for feedback, calling a friend to think through a problem, or getting on a Zoom call with some like-minded folks to talk through a challenge.

I did this recently with an email I was trying to write. I sent it off to two people, and their feedback got me unstuck.

Expand your work and possibilities by pulling people into your creative orbit.

“Direct access to your audience is so important, and very much worth the time and energy,” Seth Werkheiser

It takes time to build an email list because there is friction. Social media gives you the illusion of speed in this matter, as it’s very easy to for someone to just hit the follow button.

It’s hard work getting people to do anything on the internet, especially hand over their email address! But it’s worth it.

Read more in ‘How I grew my Substack by 7,000% in less than 3 years without burning out‘ by Alex Lewis over at HubSpot!

I was on Cody Cook-Parrott’s WITNESSING PRACTICE, “a three-hour workshop on writing as a contemplative practice—and turning that writing into newsletters, zines, and books.”

The core idea was that so many of us are already doing the work – writing, producing, doodling, dreaming, collecting – and it only takes a few steps to bring it to life. Whether that’s a newsletter, a website, an offering – it’s right there.

On a recent MINI ESCAPE POD Q&A video call, one of our members was looking to start teaching online. They’re a musician with knowledge and skill and talent and a warm heart.

At the moment, though, they’re wrestling with the logistics: finding the right people and communicating with them. Building an offering. Getting paid.

So much of that is just machinery: payment systems, email segments, sales pages, pricing. It can be daunting, and there’s so many different ways to make it all work.

But, as I tell almost a lot of my Email Guidance clients, they’ve already done the hard part.

The folks I meet sometimes have decades of experience in their field. Degrees, awards, careers. The technical stuff is easy in comparison – I can show you how to set up an email segment over coffee!

But you can’t just set up a sales page and a funnel without the hard work of really knowing your shit, and being known as someone who knows what the heck they’re talking about.

I’m so grateful for the work that Cody is doing. Making space for the immense creativity and knowledge and passion of so many people, and helping guide them towards clarity and calm. So much of this technical stuff is just noise, I promise.

Cody has sold out classes with sales pages made out of a Google Doc.

I know someone else who launched their career with a Word Doc and PayPal link.

Build trust and reputation, gain knowledge. The rest is just technical bits that we can figure out together.