Thank you Mary Thoma, GeorgeAnn, Richard Schulz, Michael Maupin, Ken Seals, and many others for tuning into my “live office hour video” on Substack Live.

I don’t know what to call these. Do they need a name? I just know I like going “live” and helping people out. Shooting the breeze, talking about our lived experiences. It’s a joy, really.

Eventually Mary Thoma dropped a great question in the chat: she’s got a Substack newsletter, and has 4,000 followers on Facebook, and she’s worried about losing that audience she’s built over there on Meta.

I riffed on how only a small fraction (maybe 100–300) are actually seeing her posts, and so you need to do what you can to move your biggest fans off it.

“The vault is still open,” I said, meaning she can still reach those folks (I wrote about this here).

So today you can ask (reply to, DM) your biggest fans to join her email list, which is something she can actually own for years and years. You can build a sustainable career with an email list!

I talked about how I had around 2,300 Twitter followers but only 20 or send ended up subscribing to Social Media Escape Club.

Some people just wanna be on social media!

Mary mentioned that her Facebook audience, “wants to know what I’m doing but doesn’t want to read,” and I said, “Later. Bye.”

I’m not trying to be harsh, but maybe I am! If you’re writing a memoir, then people that wanna scroll on FB for three hours a day might be your target audience!

That’s when Mary mentioned she has 600 newsletter subscribers.

Oh, well then.

So then I mentioned that maybe her energy is better spent “watering the garden” of her 600 current subscribers than chasing strangers. And I think that’s true for a lot of us.

Write the best newsletter you can for the people who signed up for it, and then some of them will the marketing for you.

You don’t need everyone. You need the right people, and you’ll find them (and they’ll find you) by committing to the work you’re meant to be doing.

Full replay below:

I’m part of Alex Dobrenko’s BAT CAVE. He writes Both Are True on Substack… BAT, get it?

Anyways, I started following Alex a year or two or three ago, and always looked forward to his newsletter showing up in my inbox.

Quick note: I don’t know that it shows up on a regular schedule (I have other things to worry about), like so many email marketing gurus say you have to do. When Alex’s email shows up, I read it. That’s it.

Okay, back to what I was saying; Alex now does group Zoom calls with his paid subscribers, which he totally stole from me. Just kidding, but no really… group Zoom calls with your paid subscribers is so good. Not everything needs to be a paywalled posts, or extra “content.” Hang out for an hour with the people who love you work once a week and see what happens.

Back to Alex: he starts off these group calls like a damn performer. Oh, that’s right, that’s because he is. It’s hilarious, and funny, and wonderfully over the top. There are SLIDES.

Lots of jokes and silliness throughout, because that’s the world that Alex creates. But then… shit gets real. People get deep.

Not in a, “okay, let’s be adults now and talk about REAL stuff.”

No, it just sort of eases into the room, because space was made for it to come into. The room was filling with fears and doubts and fart jokes, so then there’s room for all sorts of emotions and feelings.

So that’s just a thought on creating a Zoom room hangout with your members, through the lens of how Alex is doing it, and I think it’s great. Find out more about the BAT CAVE here.

Given Ryan J. Downey’s experience in doing interviews with everyone, I had to ask what an artist could learn from his interactions with so many big names in the entertainment world.

It’s absolutely essential for an artist—and by “artist,” I mean that broad umbrella of musicians, filmmakers, painters, authors, comic creators—they’re all storytellers. They’re communicating something through whichever medium they’ve chosen. And it’s so important to have something to say.

Sure, you can make something that doesn’t really say much. Maybe it catches fire for a little while. But that kind of work doesn’t last.

When I say “something to say,” I don’t necessarily mean a political stance or a religious message. It doesn’t have to be Rage Against the Machine or Skillet. I mean having an idea, an emotion, or a feeling that needs to come out.

CJ Chilvers in response to Matt McGarry’s ‘Why “newsletter ad-only” businesses are dead and how to adapt.’

“I feel like newsletter creators need to be reminded pretty regularly that ordinary businesses have been publishing email newsletters for decades — sometimes for tens of millions of customers — without any ads or expectations of short-term ROI.

It’s more likely those companies have the dominant newsletter model.

Call it Newsletter 0.0, or the “hey, just keepin’ in touch” model. It sounds boring, but boring is usually where the money is.”

If it takes talking about these “traditional ads-in-newsletters” to get to that last point, that’s fine.

As I’ve written recently, your newsletter isn’t your permanent address. For most of us we’re releasing music, making photos and videos, creating art.

The newsletter is the delivery truck to your actual work.

I see this line come up quite often: “I came to Substack to find readers.”

Setting up shop on Substack to “find readers” can be a trap. I joined Substack in 2021 simply to start an email list, and inadvertently found an audience. I was going to write and send newsletters regardless, but I’m grateful for the audiance I was able to build (just over 6.300 subscribers as I write this).

But… there’s a whole world of readers out there!

There are people doing podcasts, running YouTube channels, hosting live events – all these people are their own “platforms,” and doing work with them (interviews, workshops, collaborative projects) can bring in not just new readers, but engaged readers.

Something you said in an interview resonated. Maybe an off the cuff remark offered a new perspective for someone, or the story behind your work struck a nerve.

We need to stop trying to find readers, like they’re hiding in a dark forest or under a table. We need to be doing work so good that people notice and want to come along with the ride.

​What this is: Casual Zoom hang out where we work on our own websites, talk about why having a website is important, riffing on “your blog eats first,” and why not to put all our work on platforms we don’t control

​What this isn’t: a tutorial on building sites, an SEO seminar, a deep dive into HTML and CSS, and other super technical things

Tuesday, May 13
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM EDT

Register here: https://lu.ma/6pc8c308

From Bree Stilwell, talking about crying upon the experience of human nature and college radio, and how getting there came from a piece I helped with called “Ghosting Spotify: A How-To Guide.”

And here Kid is, with his own radio show, queuing up Amy Winehouse because he and his crew ‘blast her stuff all the time back home’ and telling his dad on-air that hosting his show would never have happened without him.

I cried into my breakfast not only because I’m a mom and often daydream about such flagrant and public gratitude from my own kids

Read the rest of “How a student DJ made me cry into my breakfast.” Then close your music streaming app and find a nearby radio station to listen to.