Author: Seth Werkheiser

MAKE IT AWESOME

I’m not trying to knock writing on the web, I’m really not. But holy damn, when you can watch a video like the one above, when Cory Henry launches into this solo? Watch out!

I’ve said it before; the writing of a seasoned pro appears exactly the same as an unpaid intern when presented on a website. The pixels, the fonts, the layout – serioualy, after 10+ years of meandering on the web, side-by-side, at first glance, it’s the same.

Sure, after reading a few lines you’ll tell which is which, but those are precious seconds that add up over the course of your day, a month, a year. Add in the fire-hose of shovel blogging, “me-too” editorials, and you see where I’m going with this.

Watch Henry’s solo (around the 4:00 mark, linked here) and you’ll see it – you won’t need to guess if it’s worth your time.

A podcast host either has it or they don’t, like a room full of musicians either bring it or they don’t. 

Because, dammit, you see it. The click-bait headlines. The social media tricks to get people to follow a link. You can just taste the tactics these days, can’t you?

Make the gates of joy and awe spring open when you release your thing. Every day. All the time.

TURN YOUR IDEAS INTO THINGS

Often I’m asked about people’s ideas, and this is what I usually say:

Don’t ask, just start. 

Do it often, make your mistakes, and keep learning. You need to be child-like in your zeal for the idea that you have.

Make 10 instances of your “thing,” then get some feedback.  Send it to people who might enjoy it, and see if they share it. If they don’t, DON’T ASK THEM WHY. Make another thing. And then another. Make them until they’re so good your friends are finally asking, “WHEN IS THE NEXT ONE?!”

But don’t seek approval before you even start. Just start it. Make it, stay busy with it, and refine it. Solicit opinions from people you trust, but don’t spend a lot of time monitoring comments sections or writing emails or having mega long conversations. That’s time you could be spending working on your thing.

Remember, you’re just starting something. You need a thing before you can really have conversations about your project!

So get busy working on your thing. 

Wait, how? 

Guess what – that’s for you to decide! Do you buy a domain name, then secure the 14 social media networks with that name first? Publish weekly? Release something every month? That’s up to you!

Make 10 of your things. From there you’ll be nailing down your process. The busy work, the technical parts, the images that you’ll use, tone, maybe working with other people – there are so many moving parts! Figure all of that out behind the scenes, quietly, before you’re bumbling and stumbling around in front of 1,000 people a day. Oops.

But work on it everyday, and get something out there as often as you can. It’ll force you to trim the fat from your process, and you’ll learn that quicker by a putting out a lot of stuff, rather than sitting on something until it’s “perfect.” You don’t want your production to be so arduous that it takes you weeks or months or years. That much time between releases, at least to start, and you’ll miss out on learning valuable lessons. 

At this stage in the game you need those lessons. Those lessons add up. And while this thing you’re working on now might not work out, you’ve learned a bunch, so it was never a waste of time. Just take those lessons now and apply them to your next idea. Go!

This piece originally posted on Patreon on April 3, 2016.

GETTING BACK TO BASICS

In 2013 I was in Nashville, TN and hanging out with a photographer friend. He was helping a friend who needed photos so I tagged along, just to see how these sorts of things worked.

Not being a photographer, and only loosely understanding megapixels and such, I was shocked to see some of his cameras. I would think it’d just be super expensive digital cameras, but then I saw cheap 35mm point-and-click cameras. 

Wait, what?

Turns out that you don’t always need fancy gear to make great things.

It reminds me of a time visiting a guitar shop, and this kid was sitting there riffing quite loudly (and annoyingly), all the while talking about GEAR. The “best” pickups, and the “worst guitars.”

Sure.

There’s this progression: as a beginner you covet the new gear. If you have the new, the fancy, the shiny, and high-end, well then you’ll sound better, or make better photographs.

But after many years, with enough skill, you find you don’t need expensive gear. There’s more to making beautiful things than how much you’re able to pay for the tools to make them.

This piece originally posted on Patreon on March 28, 2016.

KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR BIGGEST FANS

The most engaged audience you have is the one right in front of you. At a show, a gallery, a book reading – that’s it. People gave up a night of Netflix, of takeout, of a million other things, and instead chose to be there with you.

Make the most of those opportunities. Make it easy to follow up after the event by getting email addresses. Put out a notebook and ask for emails, or just make a simple postcard explaining why people should join your email list, with a link to sign up.

Two things:

1. Don’t say “join our email list for updates!” That’s boring and ain’t cutting it in 2016. Say that you’ll be sharing behind the scenes photos of your process, and doing give-aways just for people on your email list, with special discounts, and pre-sale announcements of upcoming shows. Say THAT instead of “updates.”

2. Why haven’t I mentioned social media at this point? Well, because not every fan is on every social media network, and chances are you aren’t either. And you’ve heard bands and artists complaining about “reach,” and having to pay for their posts to be seen, right? Twitter is becoming the same (have you even looked at how many people actually see your Tweets?). This is why I stress good ole fashioned email – it ain’t going away (ask some bands about their old MySpace “Likes”).

You can sit on a social media 24/7, but your greater impact is face to face. When you get to shake hands, and hug people you’re making connections that can last decades, so do your best to keep in touch with those biggest fans and get their email address. 

YOU CAN WORK WITHOUT SHOUTING

A book about MySpace today is laughable. But will a book about Facebook or Twitter (available now at your local book shop) ten years from now be any different?

The tools change, but the concepts are timeless; make something remarkable, and people will talk. If no one is talking about your thing, are you sure it’s work remarking about?

In this super connected world, everyone has the same soapbox (like Twitter), the same video broadcast platform (like YouTube), the same everything. Getting noticed is hard work because everyone is working so hard on getting noticed.

Then I see this advice: Be loud! Get out there! Shout! Tweet every hour! Talk at every event! Brand you! NETWORK.

Trust me — you don’t have to do this. There are shy, reserved, quiet folks doing great work without all the fanfare. They’re not speaking at conferences, or doing fancy videos, or spending all day on social media, but they’re making a living.

Your art is worth more than a play count on YouTube, much the same that your fans are worth more than their credit card number.

This post originally posted on Medium on Jul 25, 2015, and then posted on my Patreon on March 17, 2016. That means this piece is 10 years old, holy crap.

HOW TO DO COOL STUFF (AND EVENTUALLY GET PAID FOR IT)

I had a phone call recently with someone about dipping their toes into the freelance waters, and that led me to writing this. As someone who’s been without a full-time job since 2006, this is something I’ve dealt with over the years. 

This is not a step by step guide. If it were like that, then there’s a map (nod to Seth Godin for that), and if there’s a map, it can be done by monkeys, and you’re smarter than that.

DUMB IT DOWN
Say you make websites. Cool. Now, figure out a way to explain that to people who don’t need websites, because there are a lot of people who don’t need websites. Why? Well, those people probably know someone who needs a website, and after meeting you and having a lovely conversation they’re more likely to recommend you over someone who just throws jargon and fancy job titles around.

Remember – this is for starting your freelance journey! You’re a small fish in the big pond, so you need to start off working with other small fish.

REFERRALS
Stay awesome friends with awesome people that you used to work with. No, not in a sneaky way so you can ask them for work, but because you like working with rad people, and they probably know rad people. Rad people do rad things, so you’ll want to always be around them. And that leads to rad things.

On the other side of the coin, don’t be friends with jerks. They probably know other jerks, and you don’t want to work with jerks.

SHARING IS CARING
Share what you know; the principles behind it, how you made it work for you. Show your work. Freely give this knowledge that took you thousands of hours to gain, because someday someone will see it, and say, “hey, I want that.” And then you can bill them for those skills.

Remember, not everyone who needs a website knows they need a “front end developer.” Convey what you do in language that is kind and relatable, as you’re new at this and chances are the people you’ll be working with are new at all this, too!

START TODAY
The sooner you start helping people, and establishing yourself as someone knows a thing or two, the better. Don’t wait to take a class, don’t wait to finish your degree, don’t want to get some brand new piece of equipment – start helping someone today. Go through your social media feeds and find a friend who has a problem and help them fix it. No, don’t work for free, but do something to help. Illustrate your knowledge in helpful, no-pressure ways and you’ll be amazed where it’ll get you.

This post originally posted on Patreon on March 14, 2016.

YOU NEVER KNOW WHO’S WATCHING

I love Billy Eichner. HE’S FANTASTIC.

On a visit to Seth Meyer’s show a year ago (the video clip is no longer available for some reason), Meyer’s explains that he and his fellow SNL friends watched Billy’s videos back in the day. Billy had no idea, but found out many years later.

Creating and publishing something for years without knowing if anyone is really paying attention is difficult. It’s easy to look at the standard metrics like pageviews, plays, or RTs, and base your success on that. For validation. But please, you are so much more than that!

Never lose sight of the real people behind those metrics, and then never refer to them as metrics, or eyeballs, or traffic. Ever. They are lovely people, and some of them have just never emailed you yet telling you how amazing you are.

Hard work isn’t a guaranteed ticket to stardom and appearing on late night TV shows, but you spend the time and do it the right way. Treat every video, every song, every appearance as if Amy Pohler might watching.

This post appeared on my Patreon on March 12, 2016, but I’m posting it here because I’m deleting those old posts. It also had this note saying “This post originally posted on Jul 21, 2015, but had been modified for Patreon.”

PROVE IT

While working at a cramped Starbucks near a busy university, I couldn’t help overhear a conversation between two people catching up. From what I heard, the one person was a personal nutritionist on the side.

She spoke of a hobby she picked up; Olympic power lifting. She got really good at it. Good enough to place well at some regional competition, apparently.

I’m paraphrasing here, but her reason was thus:

“I wanted to do something that could demonstrate my nutritionist work.”

Anyone can pick up a book and recite its contents with enough study. But it’s another thing entirely to take what you know, add your magic, and hard work, and produce a tangible result.

After leaving AOL Music in 2011 I knew I had the skill-set to help people share stories online. That’s how Skull Toaster was born! I have my resume’ sure, and that says plenty, but Skull Toaster is me showing, “I built a brand from scratch, with an engaged social media following, and a nightly email list with a 40+% open rate since 2012.” Ahem, hiring managers.

The folks at Coudal have been doing this for years. They’ve created plenty of campaigns for clients over the years, but then started making their own products. Why not? They already know how to make websites and ads and Twitter accounts. One of their projects was the Field Notes brand of notebooks, which they did with Aaron Draplin.

“There wasn’t any big corporate plan, or venture capital or a full page ad in the New York Times or anything; we printed up a batch, bought a domain name and let it grow from there.”

Just start. Find people to work with (not ask, “what do you think of this idea?”), and get it going.