Category: Work

WORKING WITH HOLD TIGHT

I’ve been working with the fine folk at HOLD TIGHT since late last year, but now it’s official:

Over the last couple of years we’ve developed a variety of flexible offerings, including approaching newer media (YouTube reactionaries, Twitch streamers) and building our digital marketing wing – headed up by our legendary Darren Gosling.

The next natural step was to build email marketing into our marketing operation, so allow me to introduce the lovely Seth Werkheiser, who’s joined us as a freelance email marketing executive.

Seth might already be a known face to some of you. He’s been writing about music since 2001 and co-founded Noisecreep in 2008. He’s behind the commendable Metal Bandcamp Gift Club and – along with Hold Tight – works with MNRK Heavy (formerly eOne Heavy), and leading US PR agencies.

Read the full announcement here.

QUIET BUT STILL BUSY

While I haven’t been blogging, I’ve been doing a handful of stuff.

I set up an official site for Goodnight, Metal Friend, my “sleepy time metal music” project. I used Notion and Super, plus a theme that I bought from somewhere I can’t remember, but I love it.

https://goodnightmetalfriend.com

Since I’ve been somewhat better with my doom scrolling, I’ve had the time to source all the music for hour long mixes on a weekly basis. So it’s not that I found the time, I just used it differently.

Speaking of using time differently, I’ve started live-streaming on the Blast Radio app, which has been a lot of fun. Twice a week I get on there and make up some dark-ambient chill music in real time.

Then, since I’ve been making these hour long tracks, I trimmed them a bit and made some edits and now they’re also a release on Bandcamp.

With all that, I started a Goodnight, Metal Friend newsletter, here.

I interviewed Joan Pope for the HEAVY METAL EMAIL newsletter.

CLOSE MONDAYS sent out lots of email campaigns for MNRK Heavy, Death Row Records, and Hold Tight.

I’ve Been shifting a lot of that work from “helping busy independent music publicists” towards the DTC email marketing world by way of automation (Airtable and Zapier and Front) and delegation (moving things to Time Etc.).

Definitely shifting gears towards “I do ecommerce email marketing for heavy metal labels.” Hire me and let’s make tens of thousands of dollars a month, cool? seth@closemondays.com

PLEASE MAKE YOUR THING

Success or making it isn’t black and white, yes or no. For every success we see on a magazine cover there’s years of back story. Of “failure.”

For every video with 3 million views there’s a legion more with 174.

Those 174 are no less valid. They’re just as important, and we need to keep making them.

The world needs videos and songs with “low play counts” in the same way we need street art – it is PERMISSION.

It is a sign from the universe that says anyone can do this, so you should try it.

BECOME WHO YOU ARE

Saw this randomly on LinkedIn, and felt this in my bones.

Thinking back, 15 years prior, while working a desk as an Executive Assistant at Interscope Records, I’d regularly email a Music Industry curated jobs list to a small group of colleagues and friends of friends. The “Riggins Recruiting: Job of the day” sent (1) job daily that was passed along to me from other assistants and hiring managers at Universal Music Group and around the industry.. This wasn’t a business, it wasn’t even a hobby. It was just what I did and loved doing. “Riggins Recruiting” became me.

My advice, in 2022 just become who you are… forever evolve, take calculated risks, improve processes, deliver results, help your friends and friends of friends BECOME. Don’t be afraid to be your true-self and switch up your career every now and then.

Tony Riggins from LinkedIn

I love the rouge nature of sending a regular email out to connect. To serve. To just help.

“Become who you are,” which is something I’ve been very intentional about in the last few months. Being self-employed, you’re on your own with trying to shift your focus. Started Heavy Metal Email in October, and just two months later change is in the air, and I love it.

The focus in 2022 is more email marketing work. Serving growing bands and artists, helping them reach their audience directly, and lessen their reliance on the house of cards that we call social media.

GET COMFORTABLE

I don’t care what you do, or what style of music you play, ever performance can destroy a venue.

You’re on stage, you’re an artist commanding a room, I don’t care – you own that moment in time.

We still have our words, and 4K video cameras in our pockets.

Music videos move people to tears. Simple words, expressions. Honesty can bring a person to their knees.

Not everyone. But some. Our magic isn’t for everyone, but it’s meant for the realm we’ve conjured without even knowing.

We’re royalty of a kingdom we can’t even acknowledge because the world wants us to sit in rows and check off the right boxes.

Some of us are meant to command rowdy biker bars, while others own a stuffy work meeting.

A lion is less fierce in the arctic, so stop wondering why you don’t fit places.

DO YOUR BEST WHERE IT COUNTS

Remember, all the “growth marketing” stuff you see on socials about companies who struck gold – they had EMPLOYEES working on that stuff non stop. It’s okay if you’re small biz or project doesn’t compare. You’re doing the best you can.

There are teams of people, with DEGREES, in marketing and stuff, getting paid six figures. That’s what they’re supposed to do.

You make hand bags, or sell donuts… a few tips and tricks and hacks can’t hurt, but it’s not magic. If everyone could do it (they can’t), they would (they don’t).

Like, think you need to hop on Tik Tok but still can’t manage to email your best customers twice a month? Maybe work on that first. Yes, fancy named digital currency is cool. So are dollars, and CRM tools.

BURN AWAY THE BURN OUT

I’ve been reading a lot about burn out, probably because everyone is fucking burnt out. The thing that makes me the most sad is burning out from things that we control.

Like, I talk weekly with a friend that I made from the Akimbo Freelancer Workshop. We bounce stuff off each other constantly, and one of the big focuses is outsourcing. Getting things off our plate. Giving ourselves the permission to be the boss who takes two hour lunches.

Obviously the various stresses and demands of freelance work can make it hard to take that two hour lunch, but… if you don’t design your ideal work situation, others will. It will be ideal for them.

Emails at all hours. Phone calls. Ridiculous deadlines.

The best busy work is no busy work at all.

Sure, that sounds hippy dippy dream talk, but fuuuuuck it – a person has to dream, right?

It’s the whole “saying no,” thing, which I’m sure you’ve seen all over the internet. The act of saying no is basically saying yes to other things – yes to free time, yes to other work, yes to not working at all!

A while back I said “no more transcribing.” I had done 100s of hours of audio transcribing for writers. It was okay money, but the work required absolute focus. If you lose focus, it’s hard to get back on track. Toss in bad audio, and other work on your plate, and it just got to be too much.

So I said no. Could I have used the money? Of course! I could still use that money!

But saying no to that work gives room for the work I want to be doing (and it’s working).

Saying no to clients with ridiculous deadlines, unreasonable availability, low pay, high stress – that’s the shit you say no to.

Stripping away of the stuff that depletes you that makes space for the time to go outside for a walk, or take a two hour lunch.

So don’t manage your thing – your business, your blog, your music – with what everyone else is doing – make it fit how you want to live.

Keep Taking Shots

From @fortelabs:

My advice to almost every creator: you’re being way, WAY too strategic

Until you’re making a million dollars on the internet you’re in beta

Take all the time & energy you’re spending strategizing and iterate as fast as you possibly can

Every piece of content is a shot on goal

You can practice your jump shot everyday, but until you get into some pick up games every day, you’re missing out on valuable lessons.

That’s something I’m going to stress in my HEAVY METAL EMAIL community – make a plan, and send an email every week to your fans.

Ship something every month. Send that newsletter. If you want to write music, you don’t pick up your guitar once a month. You spend time with it everyday. You don’t get better at taking photographs by spending all your time on camera sites and forums – you’ve got to get out there and make some photos!

There’s a time for book learning, but there’s also a time for rolling up the sleeves and getting your hands dirty.

WEEKLY LOOP for SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

Everything is a loop, it seems. We keep making the same mistakes, the same choices, the same levels of misery. Happy Sunday!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTlLe7iDHbv/

LIKES

  • “I just cannot accept that my dad’s life or anyone else’s is a fair price to pay for our “back to normal,” @Amber_Coffman
  • “9/11 hits different riding up on 700k deaths no one cares about,” @Mollyissilly
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTplApgIznu/

WORK LIKES

  • “Now when I feel overwhelmed by work I take 2 deep breaths and say, “this is what you dreamed of. That’s what this work is for. And if this specific job isn’t it, we won’t say yes to this again,” @aundrelarrow
  • “The next big recruiting platform in tech is the 32 hour work week,” @gabe_g2i
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSt-iGELsCY

MUSIC LIKES

  • “*wakes up, puts on old school metal tee* man I love this band. wonder if their singer thinks the Moderna vaccine is a plot to inject microcomputers into the bloodstream,” @mountain_goats
  • “The label I work at had ITS BUSIEST YEAR EVER in 2020 and that momentum has carried,” @turnbullet666
  • “If you’re an artist, you will be an artist no matter what. I don’t think you have a choice,” Jasamine White-Gluz via @HandDrawnDrac
  • “When you focus on building your own shit, all the doors that were once closed start opening organically,” @Breezyb215
  • “You’d be surprised how many people are willing to pay $10 for an album when given the opportunity,” @BigSto

I moved Metal Bandcamp Gift Club back to it’s old school, Yahoo style layout. If you have a birthday and love giving gifts (and sometimes getting gifts), you should check it out.

I stopped using Whoop after just five months. There was nothing wrong with it, but my head needs less numbers and things to feel guilty about these days.

May your week be filled with good food, and cool evenings on porches.

Before Giving Yourself Over to Your Job

From an interview with Harper’s Bazaar Digital Director Nikki Ogunnaike:

“My friend Joe Holder is very much of the school where he believes there are all sorts of products that people are buying and reaching and searching for to do their wellness practices, but there are things like stillness, meditation, religion, fresh air, and vitamin D. And I don’t knock anyone — do whatever you need to do to center yourself. But in my own life, making sure that I do something for myself in the morning before I have to give myself over to my job.”

‘Nikki Ogunnaike Wants You to Unfollow Anyone Who Doesn’t Bring You Joy, at The Cut

Even with my years of talking about productivity and using all the cool tools, my morning routine doesn’t exist. Some mornings I just stumble through, other mornings I rush to complete a task that I put off from the previous workday.

The idea though, of “making sure I do something for myself in the morning before I have to give myself over to my job.” The idea that we really do give ourselves over to our jobs, even when working remotely. That’s a real thing. A different headspace.