Cometh the hour, cometh the mailing list
What's happening, who are you, and how did you get this number?
Hi. If I’m landing all of a sudden in your inbox and you don’t know why, here’s the deal:
I used to write a newsletter for my company, Podiant. Thing is, you’re pretty wonderful, and I want to stay more connected to you… not so I can sell you something, just because together, with conversation, with community, with challenges presented or overcome, we can do better, make better things, and forge better friendships.
The Podiant newsletter didn’t afford me that chance, so I thought this would be a better way to stay in touch, while keeping in sight the reason I started the company in the first place (we’re nearly four now, by the way).
Anyway, I hope that’s fine. If you don’t like it, please unsubscribe and we’ll say no more about it, but know that your details were moved, not copied to this mailing list. You’ve given me your attention, and I don’t want to abuse it.
Oh good, you’re still here. I really hope this isn’t going to be a one-way conversation, by the way. I’d love to hear what you’re up to. I’m new to Substack so once I’ve found my feet, I’ll get a good sense of how we can make that happen.
I’m going to try and do this on a Monday evening. I don’t think it’ll be all that long, and it might be a bit rambling and verbose (a style you’ll be familiar with if you’ve heard one of my podcasts). A lot is changing outside of my little Midlands flat — don’t know if you’d heard — but there’s a lot changing within it, too, and with that change comes a lot of things to think about.
I tried putting these kinds of thoughts into a podcast. I ran it for about 12 weeks but it felt… a bit off. Right from the start, it didn’t quite feel like the right medium for the message, which is something I’ve started talking about in the podcasting course I wrote.
I’m hoping to be able to bring along some of those thoughts, sand them down, give them a polish and make them a bit more presentable. Things like fear of censorship and how it’s being co-opted, taking one’s work seriously without taking yourself too seriously, why many of us need to think about marketing as more than just adding a post to a Hootsuite schedule, what it means to be a performer in a United Kingdom that is apparently the first half of Flashdance now. That sort of thing.
But also there will probably be stuff about my cats or learning the guitar (currently I’m doing the intro to Johnny B Goode), and if it doesn’t feel too shoehorned in, I’ll drop a note about what I’ve been up to this week. (Case in point: if you’re interested in the goings-on of Podiant, I talk about that on a weekly basis in the rebooted Platform podcast.)
If all of this sounds good, I’ll look forward to jumping into your inbox again next Monday. And in the meantime, if you’ve got any thoughts on stuff you’d like me to write about, you know where to find me.
Oh, one last thing, on the name. I’m doing a course on building a business that makes happiness a core tenet, and one of the things we’ve been encouraged to do was to come up with a mantra, preferably of two words in length. I went for “play louder” because I wanted to remind myself to stay creative and playful, make an impact, but also to be bold, something that the me of a year ago would’ve thought was banana-pants.
Alrighty, let’s meet back here in a week. Stay safe. x