Category: Blog

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My wife-to-be had to step out for an errand while dinner was cooking.

She already did all the hard work.

Everything was cleaned, cut up, assembled, and put in the oven.

She said, “All you have to do is take it out of the oven in 40 minutes.”

I immediately set the timer on my watch.

And then I forgot about the cooking food altogether.

Because that’s how my brain works.

I can remember getting a Mr. Potato Head for my 3rd birthday.

I can remember the party was at a pavilion in the beach parking lot.

My cousin was upset because he wanted to play with it and he had to leave.

But the dinner I just put in the oven is completely gone from my mind.

So there I was, trying to be a good fiancé and do the dishes.

I took off my Apple Watch, put it on its charger in my office, and turned on a podcast on my iPhone.

Then returned to the kitchen.

My Apple Watch requires the iPhone for pretty much everything (I don’t have the Apple Watch w/ the phone service built in).

In my mind, if I put a timer on my Apple Watch, my iPhone should know.

And if I take off my Apple Watch, my iPhone should know.

So when I take off my Apple Watch, and there’s a timer on it, the iPhone should let me know when the timer goes off.

The Apple Watch requires the iPhone.

If I set a timer, it’s obviously something important.

The User eXperience should always be:

Err in the favor of the user.

It should always be:

Protect the user’s interests.

Meaning:

The timer going off on a very smart device in one room that is connected to another very smart device in another room much closer to the user (I know they can measure this) should prioritize making sure the user knows the timer is going off.

Is this a UX issue? 

Is it some setting I turned off somewhere along the line?

Or is the real issue my reliance on technology?

I’ll order a big red tomato timer for the kitchen counter.

And instead of being a cook, I’ll stick to making music.

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There has been a mighty departure from Twitter, and you may have seen some people and even major news sites like CNN talking about Mastodon.

But you looked at it and have no idea what’s going on.

It’s kind of tough to explain, so to get some inspiration, I went on Mastodon and asked:

“If you had one elevator ride to explain to my mom (non-techie; uses an iPad and doesn’t own a computer) what Mastodon is and how it works, how would you do it? Assume she knows what Twitter is and has used it once or twice, but is mostly a Facebook user.”

Then, I used their replies to inspire this far more in-depth post:

Table Of Contents
  1. So, what is Mastodon?
  2. What makes decentralized social media better than centralized (or siloed) social media?
  3. You don't have to run a server.
  4. How to find a server.
  5. What to do when you find a server you like more than the one you first chose.
  6. Why have a "backup" account?
  7. BONUS TIP #1: Many artists are making more money on Mastodon/Fediverse/ActivityPub than elsewhere.
  8. BONUS TIP #2: Suggested use for corporations:

So, what is Mastodon?

The technical answer is:

Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter alternative built on a communications protocol called ActivityPub.

I know that’s a lot, so I’ll break it down:

By decentralized, we mean that the servers are distributed and self-hosted by volunteers rather than “siloed” and owned by one entity.

Twitter has servers all over the world, but Twitter owns them all. They are used to run the Twitter platform. If a server goes down, another picks up the slack until it’s sorted out.

But when a single Twitter server goes down, most people won’t notice anything because so many servers are running the Twitter platform.

If the Twitter platform itself goes down, no servers are working. Everyone notices because they can’t access it at all.

So, if a Twitter server goes down, you can still use Twitter, but if Twitter itself goes down, you can not.

With decentralization, it’s the opposite.

Mastodon as a platform can not go down, ever, as long as one server is still running somewhere.

While Twitter can choose to shut itself down, Mastodon will never go away as long as one person uses it.

But individual servers can go down and may affect your use (more on that later).

It’s more like email than anything else you’ve probably used.

With Twitter, you can only communicate with other users via the same platform.

But with email, you can have Gmail, and I can have Hotmail. They are different companies, each running its servers, but we can still communicate.

Gmail doesn’t force me to sign up for a Gmail account to talk to you. Likewise, Hotmail doesn’t make you sign up for a Hotmail account to speak to me.

For the sake of simplicity, we can say Mastodon servers operate essentially the same way as email servers. The only difference is the communication protocol — Mastodon uses ActivityPub, and email uses SMTP (and you don’t need to know any of that to use them).

Another way to think of Mastodon servers is that each server is a town.

Many servers call themselves towns.

You can choose what town (server) you live in.

But you can still use the (information) highway (the Internet) to communicate with people in different towns.

And you can move to another town if you don’t like the one you’re in.

What makes decentralized social media better than centralized (or siloed) social media?

To be a part of the ActivityPub ecosystem, you don’t have to be on Mastodon. Instead, you can be on any platform that connects to ActivityPub. This is what we call “Fedi,” which is short for “The Fediverse,” which is short for “The Federated Universe.”

Federated apps are like this: imagine you love Twitter, but your friend loves Facebook. Right now, if you want to follow someone on Facebook, you have to be on Facebook, or if your friend wants to follow you on Twitter, they have to be on Twitter.

ActivityPub doesn’t operate this way.

You can use many options of apps to access the ActivityPub ecosystem. There’s a great list here: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/.

Let’s say you and your friend decide to move to the Fediverse but want apps similar to your current preferences.

One of the more popular ActivityPub/Fediverse apps close to Facebook is Friendica. One of the more popular apps close to Twitter is Mastodon.

So, your friend joins Friendica, and you join Mastodon, and you can still follow each other and talk.

Even though they’re wildly different apps.

Let’s throw three more friends into the mix: a musician, a videographer, and a photographer.

Your musician friend can join Funkwhale (instead of SoundCloud), and you can follow them from Mastodon and hear their new music.

Your videographer friend can join PeerTube (instead of YouTube), and you can follow them from Mastodon and watch their new videos.

Your photographer friend can join Pixelfed (instead of Instagram), and you can follow them from Mastodon and still view their new photos.

So, if you want to know why decentralized social media like ActivityPub is better than the big siloed giants:

It’s because you could use Twitter and still follow your favorite Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, Instagram, and even Twitch (OwnCast) accounts, all from your one Fediverse account.

And they wouldn’t have to manage many accounts everywhere, either.

You don’t have to run a server.

Most people don’t run their servers.

There are tons of servers you can join for free.

Those servers are run entirely by volunteers.

Most of them operate on a per-donation basis.

They might ask for you to send them via Paypal or something.

Or some of them run Patreons and Ko-Fi’s.

I have a single-user server that I self host at Masto.Garrett.Life.

I keep an Alt (alternative account; more on that below) on a server Hackers.Town, which does limited-run merchandise, and the profits go towards running and upgrading server hardware.

Some smaller servers don’t ask for anything and pay out of pocket.

How to find a server.

My advice for finding a server is to go here: https://fediverse.party/en/portal/servers/ and pick one from a category or theme you like. Categories include stuff like Academia and Journalism to Anime and Furries.

It’s not super important where you start because:

  1. You might find a server within the next couple of months that suits you better, and
  2. It’s effortless to export your data and import it onto a new server, so you can move and don’t lose your friends.

Whatever you choose, make sure you read their About and TOS (usually found at [name.domain]/about, for example, https://mastodon.online/about).

What to do when you find a server you like more than the one you first chose.

The good news is, it’s relatively painless to move servers.

How to migrate from one Mastodon server to another without losing followers (via Eugen himself ):

  1. Sign up on new server
  2. On NEW server: Go to Account -> Moving FROM another account
  3. Enter old account’s handle
  4. On OLD server: Go to Account -> Moving TO another account
  5. Enter new account’s handle and submit

Assuming your not leaving for your first server for a negative reason, I do recommend leaving your account there as a backup.

Why have a “backup” account?

A downside to decentralized social media is that sometimes a server goes down and doesn’t have a backup to replace it immediately (like in big silo social media).

Usually, servers don’t just mysteriously disappear. They’re only down for a short while, sometimes a day.

Mastodon servers that close up usually give their users plenty of time to move.

If a server is down temporarily, you can hop on your backup account and still communicate with folks during that time.

This is still a bigger benefit than Twitter if you remember back to the first couple of YEARS of Twitter, where it would go down for hours, and you had no alternative because ALL accounts were down for hours at a time.

This went on for the first few YEARS (not months) of Twitter.

Three years in, we were still experiencing Twitter being down for days sometimes.

Everything was fine for several years until Elon Musk bought Twitter, rebranded it as X, and fired a lot of the workforce.

Now it’s back to going down randomly.

Anyway:

With decentralized social media, that’s not a problem. Just hop on to another server for a little bit until your main comes back on.

BONUS TIP #1: Many artists are making more money on Mastodon/Fediverse/ActivityPub than elsewhere.

I am one of them.

I used to put my music online for the suggested price of $7 per album and $1 per song (on Bandcamp and never got any sales.

I have a decade and a half of experience in internet marketing. I’ve used the internet to make A LOT of money for my clients.

I know what I’m doing, but selling music online is difficult, with so many musicians putting their music online now.

When I switched to Mastodon, I also set my music to Pay-What-You-Want, and Creative Commons, and posted links on my account.

I’ve had people voluntarily pay as much as $50 for an LP (single album) I used to (unsuccessfully) sell for $7.

All Most of my sales have come from Mastodon (or elsewhere on the Fediverse, following me on Mastodon), if not from someone I know in meatspace (thanks, Mom).

Update: I have received some sales from Meta/Facebook/Instagram Threads lately.

BONUS TIP #2: Suggested use for corporations:

Free marketing advice for companies:

Every corporation should self-host a Mastodon (or other Fediverse app) server for employees to work from when representing the organization.

Especially journalists.

I recommend setting them up as a subdomain and having your employees use their accounts there whenever representing your establishment publicly on the internet.

Example: Installed at https://masto.YourPublication.com, and the employees would be @JournalistName@masto.YourPublication.com.

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Woman covering her face. Text says No More Icky Marketing. More text says This Chick Does Not Like Your Brand.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I don’t feel good about marketing anymore.

I’m starting to find out that I’m not the only one.

Nat Eliason wrote about killing all of his lead magnets.

There is not a single newsletter I was coerced into joining that I enjoy or have stayed subscribed to.

I’m starting to feel the same.

I also discovered a book I had bought in a Humble Bundle, “Rehumanize Your Business,” which is about sending personal emails as a part of your marketing.

It focuses more on building relationships with clients and potential clients, rather than throwing everything out to see what sticks.

Which is where marketing currently is.

Right now, most internet marketing teaching goes like this:

  1. Make content
  2. Add a lead magnet/content upgrade to collect emails
  3. Send weekly emails to newsletter
  4. Sell to those people.

It’s mostly automated and entirely a numbers game.

It’s inhuman.

I am guilty of teaching this stuff, too.

It does work…but it’s entirely a numbers game.

It’s built on a concept of throwing everything you’ve got out into the internet and seeing what sticks.

And then there’s paid advertising.

We all use Adblockers now, right?

…anywhere from 18% to 79% of your monthly data bucket can go toward delivering advertising…

With social media, we know that it’s killing us emotionally.

How many people are you finding and hiring on social media?

How many are finding and hiring you?

One study reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that liking more posts was tied to worse mental and physical health and “decreased life satisfaction,” while another study by the University of Copenhagen found that many people suffer from “Facebook envy,” the concept of being jealous of friends’ activities on social media.

So here’s what my new plan is:

It starts with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

You do keyword and competitor analysis, and then build content out based on that.

Then you direct people to the email newsletter. But without a lead magnet.

This requires decent copywriting skills to work well.

It’s also going to significantly decrease the amount of signups you get.

This is intentional.

We want less sign ups who only want the free stuff. We want quality sign ups.

We want people who sign up because they care about you and what you’re working on.

It’s going to be significantly less. Be prepared for this.

Now we’re going to reach out to each one.

Not an automated welcome sequence. We’re going to look and see every day who signed up.

Since we’re saving time in the content treadmill, we’re going to spend the newly freed time doing this.

And we’re going to send them a video.

It’s a personal video. Eye contact. Say their name. Wave in the beginning. Smile.

Don’t try to sell. Just introduce yourself. Thank them for joining the list.

Ask them what they’re struggling with (in regards to your industry).

After that, you add them to your follow up sequence and newsletter.

That sequence needs to provide value.

No sales. Just straight value.

Don’t make it last longer than a week.

If your welcome sequence is 3 emails, have one go out every couple days.

If it’s 5, space them in a way that makes sense.

For example, maybe emails 1, 2, and 4 have small actions to take. Stuff they can do immediately.

Email 3 has a medium sized action, something that takes 2 days.

Email 5 is going to take them a few days.

So we space out the emails like this: Email1, 1 day later Email2, 1 day later Email3, 2 days later Email4, 1 day later Email5. Then a week before they receive any more emails.

Any time they reach out to you, a reply to your video or any other email with substance, respond with another video.

Keep building this personal relationship.

This will lead high quality sales to you without you having to do anything “icky” or impersonal.

How does this scale? We’ll talk about that next.

How to scale it on up

Just starting out, this shouldn’t take you more than 10 minutes per video.

If you’re spending more than 10 minutes on the process of recording, uploading, and sending a video…you’re overthinking the whole thing.

Your video itself shouldn’t be more than 2 minutes.

Personally, I don’t get so many sign ups every week that I can’t block out enough time to send them all.

That’s by design.

But if you do, that’s great too!

Eventually, you’ll get it down under 10 minutes just from repeating the process.

But probably not less than 5 minutes. I just don’t think the technology will move that fast for you.

Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you never get faster than 10 minutes. Worst case scenario.

If you get 1 signup per day, you can pretty much just knock this out as they come in.

I recommend you block out a point at the end of your day to do this.

Just look in your software (I use ConvertKit) and see who signed up.

  1. Record video,
  2. upload video,
  3. send video.

10 minutes per day…maybe 30 minutes on Monday if you take weekends off but still get subscribers.

Let’s jump up to 10 per day.

This is pushing it to almost 2 hours per day.

If you’re doing the sales part right, you should be getting a pretty good conversion rate from sign ups to clients (or product sales).

At that point you need to figure out, is it worth it to keep doing this yourself?

Only you can answer this question based on how much income each signup is worth to your business (I’ll show the equation later on).

Personally, if I were at that point, I would be hiring help.

Here’s what I would hire them to do:

  • Send me info of the signups for the day.
  • I would record the videos and them to the assistant.
  • Assistant uploads.
  • Assistant sends.

That removes me from the aspects that don’t require me.

Because my brand is ME, I need to be the one in the videos.

At 100 or more per day, we’re in the big league.

This is where it might become unscalable for a lot of people.

There are two reasons here why it might be unscalable:

  1. Whatever you’re selling has too low of a margin to make this worth it.
  2. Your sales sucks and you’re not getting enough.

Here’s how you figure out if it’s still scalable:

You take how many subscribers you get and see how many turn into sales.

If you get 100 subs per day and 60 result in sales, you’re at 60% conversion rate (that’s good).

Multiply that by the lifetime value of a customer.

Lifetime value is how much value you expect to get out of one customer.

If you sell one ebook at $9.99 then that’s the lifetime value…9.99.
If you sell a $1000 service w/ an optional $100/month package, and you have 60 customers but only 30 of them pick up the optional package, with 15 doing 6 months and 15 doing only 3 months, you gotta do some math.

I’m gonna be a little harsh…this is pretty basic algebra. If you can’t do the math, get an accountant or maybe you shouldn’t be in business.
I almost didn’t graduate high school because I failed Algebra 2 and then I almost failed out of college for failing the same dang class. If I can do this math, you either can or know someone who can help you.

I mean heck email me the info and I’ll do the math for you. I don’t mind.

Anyway the answer to the above equation is that we have 15 customers worth $1600, 15 customers worth $1300, and 30 customers worth $1000. Average them out and we get ((1600 * 15) + (1300 * 15) + (1000 * 30) / 60 )= ((24,000 + 19,500 + 30,000) / 60) = 73,500 / 60 = $1225.

$1225 is the lifetime value of a customer.

Once you figure out the lifetime value of a customer, you can then compare with how long it takes you to make the video, how long it takes your assistant to get it out there and how much you’re paying them.

You figured out it is still scalable. Now what?

If you’re getting over 100 subscribers per day with a decent conversion to sales, you should consider removing yourself as the face that sends videos.

Instead, hire community managers (for products) or account managers (for services) to handle it.

At that point you should have people who’s entire job is to work with your customers/clients directly.

Now, you’re not a solo-preneur with an assistant…you’re an agency.

Put some experienced people in charge of the accounts and train them to send the videos.

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Yellow text on blue backbground. Text says: I Only Need One Method to Making the big bucks.

My dad goes to a lot of trade shows. One year he saw one booth that was a guy with a fold-out table. Nothing special.

There was a sign that said “Consulting: $100,000”.

My dad walked up and asked him, “Does this actually work?”

And the guy replied, “I only need one.”

2021 Update: my dad informed me it’s actually a TV commercial.

In Overlap, Sean teaches us that we need to get to a new normal of 6 months of expenses in the bank.

At that point, you can quit the day job and change the Overlap to the Career.

According to The Street, the average income in the USA is just under $50,000 a year.

I don’t like to do a minimum of 6 months’ expenses. I like to do a minimum of 6 months of lifestyle.

So, let’s say that’s $25,000.

Now, you need a service. Something that’s going to make your client money.

Maybe you sell it for $1000. You need 25 clients to get there.

What if you sell it for $25,000? Then you “only need one”.

Going by Overlap, you should expect to work at your day job for 2 years before you reach that point to quit.

Obviously, your single big-ticket item needs to provide well over $25,000 worth of value to a client.

Is there something you can do that is worth that much to the right client?

Don’t think about “well I mostly market to Etsy sellers and most of them don’t make that much money.”

Instead, think “well I mostly market to Etsy sellers but there are other industries where I could provide $25,000 worth of value. And they can pay it.”

Then you only need one. In 2 years.

In 2 years of Overlapping, can you find ONE company that would pay $25,000 for your service?

Year 3: $50,000
Year 4: $100,000
Year 5: $1,000,000

10x your ex’s 10x (and make them wish you hadn’t split up).

For $25,000, I can help you become a brand people are proud to buy from.