Seth Werkheiser, Social Media Escape Club

💭 Thoughts on saying goodbye to socials, Noah Kalina, and surrounding yourself with creative energy and fun work.

Seth Werkheiser helps businesses and creative individuals make money and get the word out by sending emails that don’t suck. They hate social media so much that they write a newsletter called Social Media Escape Club, where he helps people ditch the algorithms and get back to connecting directly with their customers and fans with an email list.

🎯 Current focus

I’ve been dabbling in email marketing for around a decade, on the side, but at the start of 2020, right when the pandemic hit, I got to help run email marketing campaigns with a client, who was just launching their D2C efforts. We started with Mailchimp, then upgraded to Klaviyo, and I loved it. I’ve worked in the underground / mid-level music space since 2001, on the editorial side for a long time, and then in the PR world, but sending emails to people who then buy vinyl records and tshirts? Making actual money?! Yeah, I was hooked.

I’ve been ranting about how awful social media was for years on Twitter, yet I never had my own newsletter, which is ironic I know. So I launched that in 2021, as a sort of way to announce to the universe like, “hello! I want to do more email marketing work, and help you make money!” On October 7, 2023 I changed the name of the newsletter to Social Media Escape Club, and it struck a nerve, and now I’m talking to creative people and businesses all the time, and doing 1:1 work, and doing group Zoom calls with subscribers, and I am absolutely in my element now. To have scraped together something from nothing via a newsletter, without having to convince 1000 people to subscribe via social media? Heck, I deleted all my social media accounts in the last year, and now I’m moving more into the work I want to be doing. That’s what I’m super excited about, this past year has been a whirlwind.

👋 Saying goodbye to socials

I love reading posts from people about leaving social media, and the common themes that run throughout. The compare and despair, the fact that most people aren’t seeing our posts, or that we’re not seeing the posts that we signed up to see in the first place. I love seeing the mask pulled off from this big corporate con-game, where these platforms made it seem like a good idea to outsource our audience and community building on their spaces rather than our own. They got us hooked on the click traffic, then turned the screws and made us pay to reach our own audience, and then oops, now we’re all sort of waking up and seeing that we built our brands and systems in a house of cards, and the shit is falling down real quick. I don’t have hard facts or stats to prove that Facebook won’t exist in a year, but seeing a handful of creative people jump ship everyday warms my heart (see: here, here or here.). It’ll be a difficult road to untangle from all the habits and lies that social media led us to believe, but we’ll make it.

🕉️ Mantra of the moment

We’re not saving lives. A photo editor at my very first web job at AOL Music said that under his breath after I got reprimanded for a typo on our music main page, which was probably seen by a million people in like 10 minutes. Sure, don’t do that too often, but sheesh, we’re not saving lives here!

Nobody cares: It’s so easy to think that everyone is waiting for our next update, our next newsletter, our next thing, and we have to get it right, perfect, on time, and really.. Nobody cares. They’ll see it, hit like, buy it or not… I don’t mean it to be cynical, but I think it more in terms of freedom, like, hey, nobody cares, just do the thing you want to do, put it out in the world.

🔇 How you don’t have to be loud to be impactful

I look up to Seth Godin, mostly because he shows that you don’t have to yell and scream, and pound your fist, and make loud videos to have an impact. He writes a blog post every day, doesn’t post to social media, makes some books, and does his videos, and I love that. I know his stuff isn’t for everyone, but what I love most is his delivery. It’s like permission that like, you can do good stuff and not have to cosplay as a loud mouth marketer to make a difference.

🔋 Surrounding yourself with creative energy and fun work

I haven’t had a real 9-5 job since 2006, and my heart sinks for my friends who show me their calendars and it’s like back to back to back video calls for their day job. So for me, I do my best to guard my energy, and get on calls with people that are doing fun work, creative energy, and maybe blowing off some steam in a safe space. I’m in like 2-3 of those calls a week, and I’m doing my own weekly calls for Social Media Escape Club. Just being in a room with people who are tired of the social media rat race, of being glued to their phones, or feeling like they have to make 12 Reels a day because someone on YouTube said that’s what you have to do, and we all get together, and we get to exhale, and talk about old school word of mouth marketing, and getting back to things that have worked in the past, and hearing what has worked for other people, in other industries. That’s the stuff I look forward to every week. 

🍃 Getting out in nature 

I have to get out in nature a few times a week. I crave movement. I go on several walks around town daily, usually with my camera. Most evenings I’ll go for a run, usually a trail run, and try to get muddy and gross. I don’t get upset when I run slow either, because hey, I’m out in nature, what’s my rush? I need to be next to a creek or climbing a big hill to keep things in balance.

📸 Noah Kalina

Photographer Noah Kalina re-booted his YouTube channel earlier this year. He’s the “Everyday Photo guy,” dating back to 2000. He just started making these amazing, chill vibe daily-ish videos of what he’s working on, answering fan questions, and showing you a bit of his daily life. I got to help him get his newsletter going again, and I just really love the way he crafts those, and these videos, and they just feel so genuine and pure, and for me, that feels so great because it just shows, hey… you don’t need to be loud and jump around and do stunts to connect and share your work. Like, you can just be who you are, and that’s enough, and even though the algorithm might not “reward” that, oh well. Being yourself makes it easy to sustain your work because you’re not wasting energy being someone else.

Follow Seth on Substack and check out his website here.

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