Founder of the Social Media Escape Club
Love this from Jen Mayer of Makeist.
I’m not looking for a job. I’m not waiting to be hired. I’m not leaving it to luck.
I’m making the connections. I’m connecting the dots.
I am actively and intentionally creating my calling: a career I never want to retire from, and a life I don’t need a vacation from.
This is the work: building Makeist into something that’s not just a business, but a life.
Here’s to not looking for a job in 2026.
Back when I ran Noisecreep for AOL Music (2008-2011), the incoming email never stopped. I’d tend to emails till midnight, then wake up to my inbox.
I remember the first day after I left, and I went for a hike and felt such a relief from the inbox.
It’s now 2025, and my freelance work email is very tolerable. I am blessed to have a handful of clients who pay well and don’t email me throughout the day, so that’s great.
Back in 2021 I stared Social Media Escape Club, because I just wanted to talk to more about leaving social media. In 2023 I decided I’d start hosting Zoom calls to talk to even more folks, (virtually) face to face!
Now I’ve got a good problem – an inbox filled with messages from people revolving around the work I want to do.
As I just quoted American theatre and opera director Anne Bogart, “a good omen is ‘a moment when the world seems to answer you back. It is not a guarantee of success, but a charged sign that your attention, your desire, and the circumstances have aligned in a way that invites you to proceed – more awake, more responsible, and more brave.'”
I’ve acknowledged the all of the good energy around this, “is not a guarantee of success,” but now I am “more awake, more responsible, and more brave,” and that’s all I want.
I love this from Kel Rakowski, in their announcement of Popular Co.
“Stop trying to reach the mainstream. Let the mainstream come to you. When you’re building something real for a real community, the mainstream eventually has to pay attention.”
A fun question posed to Kareem Rahma, about deciding on a “generally unprofitable path,” to which Kareem replied:
“I waited until I was 33 and had worked a couple of corporate jobs. I knew if I failed I could always go back to corporate life. I also didn’t stop working when I decided to pursue the comedy career. I did both at the same time!”
This came up in two different conversations today, regarding the whole “doing the thing love” versus doing something safer, or which makes better money.
Most people I know who are doing “the cool thing” for a living have are doing it after decades of hard work. I don’t know anyone who started making music or art or whatever and like, two months later they could quit their full time job.
“Consistency is key. You can’t be in the right place at the right time without showing up consistently. You have to fail—and keep failing—until you succeed. People see Keep The Meter Running and SubwayTakes, but they don’t see the ten other failures that helped me get here.”
Kareem Rahma over at Feed Me.
From Mario Fraioli of the The Morning Shakeout newsletter:
I’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about and experimenting with how I want to use social media (Notes, IG, and Bluesky). And where I’ve landed after trying to maintain a consistent presence on these platforms and “meet people where they are” is that I just don’t think I want to use social media at all anymore.
I’ve seen this concept for years – “meet people where they are!”
What I’ve found is that I’m expected to become a regular on multiple platforms and engage with them every day. Every post, every like, every comment leads to more things to keep up with – the shares, the comments, the DMs. This is every day, spread across time zones, morning noon and into the night.
Always another post to reply to or share. Another commenter to reply to. Another DM to answer.
I think a lot of us are getting tired of meeting people where they are and stepping off the engagement rat race, as the benefits of playing the game just aren’t worth it anymore.
A lot of those those people we engage with on social media are content to just be on social media, without subscribing, without meeting us where we are.
There’s a time when the quirky eatery leaves the food court at the mall and sets up shop downtown, and I think that’s a lot of us right now.
From my new post ‘YOUR EVIDENCE IS YOUR MARKETING‘ over at Social Media Escape Club:
“I saw someone marketing their music production services in text, outlining the discount, the expiration of the offer, and who might be interested.
No evidence, just details.
Their website showed the albums they worked, a display of musicians who trusted them with their art, their vision.
That’s evidence.”
From my time in the music industry, this was the foundation for so many bands in the metal and hardcore world. I didn’t find out about bands like Dillinger Escape Plan or Meshuggah from social media posts, I found out about them from friends who saw them and told me I need to hear them.
There was evidence; good sounding albums, word of mouth from their live shows. That was the marketing.
I know we’re in this always on / short form video world right now, but there are people out there making a living without being online 24/7 and without making short form videos.
I know a writer working on TV shows and they aren’t on social media. I know a musician with “just” 225 Patreon supporters and an email list and they’re making a living doing what they love.
Instead of trying to impress strangers, present your evidence to the right people in your own creative orbit.
“We work to impress algorithms in hopes they’ll share our stuff, when we should be working to impress our readers so they’ll share it with other humans.”
I could talk about this all day (oh wait, I already do), but for real.
A performer on stage doesn’t seek out new listeners during the show, they must focus on the people right there in front of them. If they do a good job, perhaps they’ll talk to a few people afterwards, and get them to join their email list.
Hopefully the next time you play in the area, they bring a friend.
If you impress the people right there in front of you, the dream outcome is them telling a friend. Posting about you. Sharing your work with others. Telling their friend who writes for a publication, or runs a radio show.
Everything starts from within. Make sure you’re making the work you wanna make. Then, share it with friends. Play in front of 12 people on a Tuesday night. Write that blog post that will only get 5 “views.”
Then do it again tomorrow.
Started a music blog in 2001.
Launched a metal blog for AOL Music in 2008 (7 years later).
Starting posting metal trivia on Twitter in 2011.
Sorta co-founded Metal Bandcamp Gift Club in 2016 (and so broke I didn’t have a checking account).
Got back to blogging again in 2018.
Started doing D2C email marketing for a record label in 2020.
Started writing on Substack in 2021 with 19 subscribers.
Changed the name to Social Media Escape Club in 2023.
Stuff takes a minute, friends!
This theme came up in a recent Zoom meeting I was in:
“I took a sabbatical from my work as a photographer last year but I have a feeling my time as a commercial photographer might be coming to an end. I’ll always love photography and I’ll always be a photographer, but I feel my life force pushing me in different directions. When I tell my friends I might stop being a commercial photographer, they ask, but what will you do! And I realise how interesting that question is, and how we can limit ourselves and others when we think change is hard and things always have to be a certain way. In fact change is core to a vibrant, meaningful life, and we should expect change at any moment, without notice.”
From “reprogramming” by Rebecca Toh.
This is so spot on, from Joan Westenberg, from their piece “There is Only One Hack: Do it for a Decade.”
Social media rewards visible bursts of activity. You can post about your new productivity system, your ambitious goals, your monk mode month, locktober etc. You get likes and followers for performing optimization. But you don’t get progress.
When I think of how I started a music blog in 2001, I sometimes get confused, like… wait, was it really that long ago?
All the different people I worked with, the oppurtintues that came up, the things I fucked up, made up, and made right… I can’t believe that next year it’ll be 25 years of somehow still being in the game.
It’s absolutely not about arriving, or outrunning a bear – you just have to run faster than you friends, and never stop, I guess.
(link via Bradley Spitzer)