Category: Work

GROWING YOUR BUSINESS WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

I’ve been on a tear against social media for like, a decade or so, so it was refreshing to hear Amelia Hruby frame my distaste in such a new way.

(Also available on Apple Podcasts)

She really breaks down this whole thing about running a service business (coaching, editing, copywriting, etc) without using social media, and using actual, for-real selling techniques like emailing people, and talking to people!

Going that route instead of just throwing things up on the social media, and when the algorithms throttle your reach you can say, “well, I tried,” and blame the social media platforms for your lack of new clients.

And also – if you’re offering a service, you don’t want to scale. There’s only so many clients you can take on. Only so many hours in the day!

Like I posted on socials a few days ago:

Buy a domain name.
Set up a website.
All the stuff you shovel onto social media every day?
Put that on your website.

And here I am, a few days later putting that social media post on my website.

ARTISTS ARE ALWAYS WORKING

From ‘The life and the work are equally important‘

“Let’s face it—artists are always working, though they may not seem as if they are. They are like plants growing in winter. You can’t see the fruit, but it is taking root below the earth.”

André Gregory

My goodness, I believe this to be true.

I feel like my creative life has had so many stops and starts, as if it must be one continuous flow to be valid, but this quote above reassures me I’m wrong.

(via Austin Kleon)

PEOPLE ARE THE PROBLEM

I couldn’t imagine being a laid off Microsoft worker then waking up to this news.

Everything is cruel and cold. Be a robot. No emotions. Don’t rock the boat. Eh, you’ll probably still get laid off because paying for extra server capacity for AI bots is cheaper than rising health care costs.

People are the problem, it seems.

NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING

From ‘Forty Years In, Yo La Tengo Are Still Making It Up as They Go‘ over at Pitchfork.

When Yo La Tengo invited Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley to sit in with them for the entirety of their second-night set, the drummer pleaded, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” “You don’t have to,” Kaplan told him, adding, “We don’t know what we’re doing.” He only hopes that Yo La Tengo’s faith in their collaborators will spark “something interesting.” 

GO GETTERS GONE

The Wall Street Journal says “Bosses all over the U.S. are asking the same question: Where have all the go-getters gone?”

Are you kidding me?

I can’t say it any better than Georgia Garvey here:

That whole thread is a god damned treasure.

PULLING FOCUS

This quote rattles my bones:

‘I was working in film production and was responsible for what’s called “pulling focus” – as the character moves across the scene, the focus puller keeps them in focus. That’s what I did for 10 years, mostly for commercials. But commercials are the most transient things you can possibly make. It’s so much energy, but they last for 30 seconds and are gone from the world. I wanted to make something more permanent.

Adam McDermott of Linus Bikes