Business advice I’ve purposely ignored
and what I did instead
Dear reader,
The other day, I caught myself listening to a podcast and feeling totally let down that the exact advice being offered was in complete opposition to something I was doing. I thought I had to change the way I am working—it’s no longer relevant. Just something else I have to spend energy rebuilding instead of spending the energy actually doing.
Then, I caught myself. Or Forest quickly brought me back to the presence of our walk. Not all advice is good advice for me.
I’ve heard and paid for a lot of advice in my years of being in business. Some advice I painstakingly followed to only be utterly let down and burnt out by. Other advice worked for me for some time, but then life priorities made the advice no longer relevant.
While walking, I tallied up some of the business advice I was purposely ignoring, and sharing a couple of them with you.
Disclaimer, none of the advice below is bad advice. It’s simply advice that doesn’t suit me in this season of life.
You have to be on social media.
I know many people on social media and doing the most beautiful things. There are a lot of companies seeking partnerships on social media and a lot of galleries seeking artists to represent on social media. And I can attest that an incredible community can be built on social media.
However, being on social media doesn’t suit me in this season of life. I don’t have the energy I once had to dedicate to content creation and messaging. It’s lost a lot of its luster, fun, and creativity. It started to feel like something I needed to upkeep instead of coming from a place of abundance. This became an important indication so that I could avoid feelings of resentment and burnout. I miss the community, but so many people who followed me there joined me on my email list and I continue to share conversations with them weekly.
A lot of people asked me if I would ever return to social media, and the truth is, I really don’t know. I am not one to make permanent decisions, and I don’t know what I don’t know. One day, it might work for me again, and I will only be able to say when that day comes.
Move all your subscribers to Substack.
When I first came to Substack, I did so as a subscriber to another person’s publication, and it immediately piqued my interest as someone who highly values writing in my practice. When I decided to start my publication, I went into it without much planning. I sort of just did. Then, I went back and forth for a long time on whether I should import my existing subscribers. Though a lot of well-established people highly advised it, I ultimately decided against it.
My decision was rooted mostly in data. I gave myself nearly a year to observe and collect data from Substack and compare it against my process that was already working for me. I have always done my best to keep a Pinterest account and regularly create highly valuable lead magnets that speak directly to the work I do. On average, this method brings me ~110 email subscribers per month, and I retain about 56% of those new subscribers. Comparing that data against Substack, I gain about 10-25 subscribers per month, and I retain about 77% of subscribers (though, my open rate is ~10% lower on Substack).
Now, I am not saying in any way that Substack does not work. I think there are a lot of people out there who are proving that wrong. And from my data, it would be easy to say since Substack has a higher retention rate, perhaps I should just spend more time here. However, at this time, Substack doesn’t have all the tools I would need to replicate the systems I have built for my lead magnets, and I don’t want to go into the trouble of manually importing my subscribers regularly. This was enough difference to inform my decision to approach Substack as a discoverability platform and keep my other email service provider. I post all my letters to Substack that I send through my email service provider - and let people know on my email list that I have a Substack in case they want to join me here instead. My current methods are, for the most part, entirely hands-off.
I am also not on Substack full time, I am not solely a writer, and I don’t have the energy to invest in massive community building here (read: being on notes and commenting on other people's posts daily). And that’s ok. The point is, I have found what has worked for me in this season of life and it is enough for me.
Write short emails.
More and more I hear that attention spans are shorter than they used to be. People need quick and easy content to digest. This is probably true. There are days even when I feel I don’t have the time to read some of the beautiful, long-form emails I receive. Let alone, reply or comment.
And I have also learned that short content doesn’t naturally match how I work. Writing my letters is a tool I use to work through ideas and remain in process. As a result, my approach has become a blend of this advice and what works for me. My essays aren’t long. I keep them to about 800-1200 words, which translates to about 3-5 minutes of someone’s time. I try to blend my email content to be both personal essay and also educational. This approach might bore some people, and bother others. And that’s ok. I might not be for them. To make this sustainable for me, to keep this creative, fun, and interesting, I need to keep my approach to writing accessible. And I thoroughly enjoy reading and engaging with other long-formed content in the right pockets of time.
SEO is dead.
This may be the truth moving forward. I admit, that I catch myself searching for things on various platforms these days, including Google, TikTok, Pinterest, and Youtube. I hear from other people, especially those younger, that they are, too.
However, I have yet to see a decline in search engine traffic to my website. In fact, it seems more and more of my pages rank on Google, driving significant traffic to my website. I also have a field on my contact form that asks people how they find me, and the majority of the time it’s through Google. From observing search terms and seeing what type of blog content does well for me, my goal this year is to build a collection of blog posts that hit specific search terms and speak directly to the values and offers I have.
Send an email every week.
When I started my email list in 2017, the sentiment was the same as it is now, send a weekly email. This is good advice. Sending a weekly email will keep you top of mind, relevant, and consistent.
And writing weekly doesn’t work for me. I don’t process reflections and ideas that quickly. Time moves fast, and my weeks feel like they move even faster. I get anxious when needing to hit a weekly deadline, and more anxious when I miss a deadline (even if it’s self-imposed). I like being in process just a bit longer, and enjoy the space every other week provides.
Now, I can certainly see two sides to this. I can hear sentiments that doing is better than perfect or push through and flow will come, or the best, you can’t grow your email list. Yet, this isn’t always about perfectionism, flow, or subscriber count. It’s about process, persistence, fulfillment. Working with myself rather than against myself. And if I refer back to number one, nothing has to be permanent. Writing every other week can work for me now, and can change again in later seasons.
If anything, I hope this email gives you the agency to decide what advice is for you, and what simply isn’t. What advice might be half applicable, what you might learn from, and mold into your own approach. Trust yourself, and use your foundation and knowing to guide you.
If you enjoyed this hearing what I am intentionally ignoring, leave a comment and let me know. I picked these five pieces of advice from a long brainstormed list and could easily share more!
Talk soon,
Lauren
xx
P.S. I have just 1 spot left to work 1:1 in artist mentorship before I take a break from mentoring this summer. Read more here →
Currently reading: Solito by Javier Zamora
Listen to: the latest Viewfinder episode
If we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting—I’m Lauren Sauder, an artist, writer, and mentor. If you enjoyed this post, here are a few ways you can connect with me:
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This was so helpful and insightful to read and matches with many observations I have made so far. I was also debating if to import my list or not but for now I keep them separate. My substack for people who want to read more on being an artist and the story behind my art. And my flodesk for shorter blog updates, and news from the shop. So far it works better for me this way.