Don't get stabbed, make your website the center of your universe, and more
Four simple things for this weekend
“I should stab you!”
That’s what an old man on the trail said to me today, after I defended myself from his three unleashed dogs with my hiking poles.
I don’t care how “friendly” your dogs are, but loud barking and encircling me doesn’t feel friendly. Keep those pups on a leash.
See, it only takes one person to ruin your afternoon, right?
But, the opposite must be true.
It only takes one person to make your day.
That’s how we’re jumping into today’s FOUR THE WEEKEND (and don’t worry, nobody got arrested).
1. Imagine your website as the center of your online world
What if your website was the first thing you checked in the morning?
Maybe some new email subscribers came in? A few sales? A post from three weeks ago got a spike in traffic?
What if you uploaded your latest photo, with a 30 word caption?
What if you shared a snippet from your new track?
What if you posted a video of your studio space?
This is the sort of “content” we post on various platforms to pull people into our world, and then when people finally visit our website it’s just a static page with some links to other platforms, and maybe a year-old About page.
Are we building a world on platforms we don’t control without solid ground under our feet? All our art might be on a singular platform, but what happens if your account get suspended, or the site goes down for two days?
Where do people find us when the outposts we’ve been working on for years go away?
Q. What if your website was the first thing your fans checked in the morning? What would that look like? What’s a website you check everyday?
2. Sign up for my About page workshop
Yeah, I’m talking about this again! Lots of you downloaded my ABOUT PAGE PDF in a previous email, so I’m going to do a mini-workshop this month or next. Click here to add your name to the wait list and you’ll be the first to know when it launches.
3. Reach out to people
I spoke with
about escaping social media, and one of the ways a friend of mine keeps meeting new people without being on any platforms. Watch the 1+ hours video here.We spoke about this in yesterday’s Escape Pod Zoom call - one person can change your life, get you that gig, teach you that skill, open your eyes, and more.
Cassidy at
said this, too:If we want to have professional careers as musicians, we do not focus on platforms.
We focus on people.
Platforms are tools.
People are the goal.
Read more here at ‘What Platform Should Musicians Focus On In 2025?’
Q. Do you have a few people who support your work no matter what? Are you that person for someone else?
◼️ JOIN MY WEEKLY ZOOM CALLS IN 2025 FOR $8/MONTH
Whether you’ve run a small business, or you’re in a band, or you just want to look at your phone less, you’ll probably walk away from our Zoom calls with 2 to 3 good ideas, concepts, and/or strategies that you can apply to your work.
Next call is Thursday, January 9, 2025 at 2pm EST- click here for more info.
4. Craft your own KPIs
This from
:“Get clear on why you’re building what you’re building and what success looks like to you. If (like me) you love experimenting and tracking, create a KPI dashboard with your own success metrics beyond CAC and conversion rates.”
I made a dashboard for my running in 2024. Most of the run tracking apps are big into speed and pace, but I wanted to keep track of ELEVATION.
How many feet can I climb in one year?
Well, in 2024 I climbed 83,193 feet.
I would head to the hills a few times a week. The most in one day was 1,728 feet, and one week I climbed about 4,500 feet.
Jim is a trail running legend around here. You know how many feet he climbed in 2024?
1,205,015.
Yeah, over a million feet!
For both of us, that amount of running takes time, but we adjust our work schedules around this wild pursuit. More climbing meant we were setting some good boundaries and doing our best to not spend too many hours on the laptop (or staring at our phones).
Q. What’s a KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR that you can set up for this year? Is there anything you could do a million of?
Have a great weekend, everyone. Stay safe. See you all on Monday.
//SETH
◼️ P.S.Ditch Gmail and switch to Fastmail: get a free 30-day trial and 10% off your first year here (affiliate link).
I loathe people who have dogs off leash who do not listen. “But they are friendly” - great, tell that to my reactive dogs….
This is great. I'm going to add a tab on my site and starting adding mini updates and posts there. I don't want to call it a blog though so if anyone has any fun names i would love it
Hmmm because you like to run i think i should
Measure me doing squats and situps just because that's fun and easy