1. From the comment section: “write an ‘Anti-Art World Resume’ that includes all the stuff that usually gets cut from a resume.” Thanks Jacqueline C. What does this secret resume look like when it’s filled with the stuff you leave out?
2. Envision offline, at a coffee shop or a Discord. Don’t just say “open for business” and hope the right people show up, invite the people that match your energy. Be selfish with your project, your art, and who you allow to enter your creative orbit. You can’t build what you haven’t dreamed up, so get dreaming.
3. Get to the point with your story. Write three paragraphs and hit delete. Wipe it out and start over. Blank page every time. Do this three times and you’ll learn real quick what gets left out.
4. Digital clutter is still clutter. Your work is all over the place, and it’s probably dinging your bank account every month, too. Let’s stop giving our money to the corporations for the “convenience.” It ain’t convenience, it’s lock in. How many photos are on your iPhone? Do you have a plan to manage those assets, or will you just upgrade to the next cloud storage tier? It’s $3 a month now. Then it’s $5, then $10. What’s the plan?

This is a hill I will die on – if you’re going to tell your newsletter subscribers or social media followers about your new video, put the video on your own website, and then link to your own website.

Leading people to YouTube just keeps people on YouTube’s platform. Their site is built and optimized to keep people on YouTube, and to make it as difficult as possible for your fans to stay in your universe, whether to pre-order your new album, or sign up for your new course offering.

Sure, keep posting your videos to YouTube. But don’t send your already established fans to places where you can’t reach them. Why build up your audience on YouTube if you can’t even reach 5% of them when you post a new video?

Your audience is your email list – something you control, something you can export, something that the algorithms can’t mess with.

At Social Media Escape Club, we believe in escaping the idea that “the new way of doing things is the only way of doing things.”

It’s a lie. We’ve all heard that lie in various forms:

• Nobody visits websites anymore, so just be on all the social media platforms.
• Email marketing is too crowded, so keep paying for social ads.
• No one buys music these days, so just point everyone to Spotify.

None of us picked up paint brushes, cameras, and electric guitars to fall in line with what everyone else was doing.

We took a risk, didn’t we?

This is why so many of you have been building websites recently, to take ownership of your work, your brand, your message.

This is why so many of you have built your own Twitter-like feeds on your websites, to own the small bits of magic and wonder, to have an archive of the tiny things you post about week after week.

I took a risk this week, cancelling my Google Workspace account which hosted my freelance work email.

I cancelled my Google cloud storage plan, and downgraded my Apple iCloud storage by getting the photos off my iPhone to an external hard drive I already owned, all backed up via Backblaze.

These are small risks, and not really big public marketing wins. But they’re a signal to how I want to run my business, which is giving as little money as possible to corporations for services I already own or already use.

We’re all sending signals, remember? Even to ourselves.

I’ve seen some of you refusing to put your music on Spotify, or play bars. Some of you stopped making videos for vertical video feeds, or deleted entire social media accounts, entirely. Some of you have resisted the urge to sign up for other newer social media platforms.

Those are signals to ourselves, and the people in our creative orbit.

There are risks in all this, yes, but social media has done a great job telling us to take less risks.

Social media says, “just keep posting to further your career!” That’s like saying buy another scratch-off lottery ticket. After all, you see other people win, so maybe the next winner could be you!

That’s safe. Low risk. Everyone is doing it.

What about emailing someone directly? Like Katie O’Connell, who wrote an email to the folks at People & Company back in 2019:

“It’s an email that wrote me into the job at People & Company and the one to follow at Substack — jobs that didn’t exist and the email conjured into being.”

Sending an email can be scary, but there’s a 50/50 chance you get a reply. I like those odds more than playing the social media slot machines for five hours per day.

And think of the ways you could take more calculated risks with an extra five hours per day.

What about turning your portfolio into a zine “mailing it to a bunch of agencies and creative studios?”

Learning how to write better newsletters? Write a better bio, or freshen up your About page?

Pitching yourself to be interviewed on podcasts and YouTube channels? Getting “awareness” off your plate?

Busking downtown?

Making a poetry zine and leaving them random places?

Making stickers from your photos?!

Making a limited run of your podcast on cassette?!! What?!

I think it’s time we start our Risky Resumé in 2025.

Hire yourself to make bold, audacious products. Interview yourself on taking up more space in your creative endeavors. Give yourself that raise by offering the sort of workshops and courses and offerings that the world needs right now.

What does our Risky Resume’ look like by the end of the year?

How many risks did we take?

How often did we just “go with the flow?”

Did we just keep posting? Did we keep upgrading our iCloud accounts because we just have sooo many photos? Did we keep opening new social media accounts, thinking this next one will be THE ONE?! Did we neglect our website again?

Or did we boldly launch ourselves into things that maybe didn’t “work out?”

Because honestly it’s not even that they don’t “work out!” We just learn new angles, fresh perspectives on how to work and exist in this crazy world we live in.

Maybe we all just step back and look at what everyone else is doing and ask ourselves if there’s another way to do our work.

How are you going with the flow?

What’s one risky thing you can do today?

What’s the big thing you want on your risky resumé at the end of the year?

Stop pleading with the Substack algorithm to find you cool people to follow.

Go to the profile page (like mine, below) of someone you subscribe to, and check out all the posts they LIKE and the publications they subscribe to.

Look at what Austin Kleon likes.

Patti Smith subscribes to five newsletters.

I guarantee you’ll find some interesting characters by doing this, and it’s way more fun than waiting on a computer algorithm

From Joshua Heath Scott:

“As artists and creatives, we face the challenge of standing out against the digital tide. Han explores the importance of making real, physical art that holds emotions, memories, and true community value, unlike the fleeting nature of digital information.”

This really makes me want to start putting together a print version of Social Media Escape Club. Printing photos every month. Making newspaper projects with Newspaper Club.

Via Zach

It’s Friday, so another Four the Weekend – four things I hope you’ll do by Monday.

1. If you’re still on social media, ask one person to subscribe to your email newsletter. Yes, one. Avoid saying “sign up for updates.”
2. Watch ‘Real Art Matters In a Digital World’ by Joshua Heath Scott, then think about how you can bring your digital work into the real world (thanks Zach Sprowls).
3. Did you make a video to promote something you’re selling? Try embedding it on your sales page, instead of sending your fans to YouTube. I explain why here.
4. Practice leaving social media and experience being unavailable. Be bored and do nothing for a few minutes. Leave your phone in the car.

I loved this point from Michael Gilbride of MAD Records so much I made an audio clip from the What Am I Making Podcast, hosted by Matty C.

I’ve been saying this for a minute – use the same magic and creativity that you put into your music and your art and your videos, and use that same spirit in how you market your work. How you grow. How you shape the business, and how you want to operate in the world.

Hear the full episode here.

Fom ‘Covert Clicks: The ‘Psyopification’ of the Internet,’ by Social Medium:

“The most important realization is that the internet is no longer neutral terrain. It is not just a communication tool; it is an environment designed to shape behavior. The question is not whether you are being influenced—it is whether you recognize how and by whom.”

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, “the internet is a tool, not a destination.”

A tool to order books, then read them in my living room.

A tool to connect with others, then go cook dinner.

A tool for my banking and business admin, but then for logging out and going for a walk.

Every second spent online is data tracked, monitored, and stored. And probably sold to random bidders.

Time offline, away from the internet, provides less surface area for being influenced by the powers that be.