Keap

A world beyond social media

This email was sent on May 10, 2023 12:25 pm

Leaving social media behind can be a scary concept.

Whether you’re contemplating it for your personal account, for your company, or a community group, the little troll inside your head might be asking: “Will people think I’m a snob? Will they think I stopped caring? Is anyone coming with me?”

As a company that relies on its customers to run a sustainable business, the most pressing question is: “Well, if we no longer have social media to attract and keep in touch with customers, what takes its place?”

This question is just brimming with opportunity.

For Keap, we thought about our purpose of facilitating connection and debated which avenues furthered that purpose and which didn’t.

Next, we considered resilience and which channels would make us stronger when times get tough. (Hint: social media outlets owned by a single, advertising-driven private corporate owner with opaque algorithms do not build resilience.)

We also took into consideration our own unique context as a company. Who are our customers? Where do they get their information? What are their needs? What do they care about? What other companies do they enjoy dealing with?

And finally, we thought about what nourished us personally. We knew we didn’t enjoy the slog of pumping out social media feeds that were fated to be instantly forgotten. So we had to develop an affirmative vision of how working to get the word out might also help us grow as people.

Ultimately, we found two broad avenues we wanted to go down.

The first was storytelling. We wanted to create connection by sharing the stories about what we’ve been learning on this journey, and to do so in a manner that allowed us more space and depth than is typically found on social media platforms. This newsletter is exactly the kind of thing we had in mind!

The second was community. We wanted to grow through long-term relationships. This principle cuts across everything we do. If you’ve been watching us closely, you might have noticed this idea driving some of the recent structural changes to our newsletter. It has also meant rethinking our partnerships and assessing who our natural symbiotic partners really are. (Partnerships is a whole other topic for another time!)

We have by no means figured it all out, but we now have the time to really invest in our storytelling and community. How we grow our business now feels fully integrated into our company's operating system—instead of a separate chore that we tolerate in order to sustain the work that matters.

Of course, every person and company is different and the lessons we’ve learned may not apply to every journey.

In any case, decoupling can feel too scary if you’re going at it alone. So, get in touch if that resonates with you. I’d love to hear your thoughts and offer my support.

Until next time,

– Harry from Keap, Steward-Owner

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In other news:

Our seasonal scent this month is Cotton Magnolia. I like to think of it as a ray of sunshine while you’re laying in bed late morning on your day off 🌤️.
If you are looking for Mother’s Day (5/14) gifts, we do offer pre-paid subscriptions. If you live in the tri-state area and order today, your first candle will arrive in time. We can add a short handwritten note from you.
Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts in our survey about the preview tealights! There’s so much interesting information to digest that I plan to devote a full newsletter to it. In the meantime, the 30-second survey is still open if you missed it.
And thank you for the wonderful messages of support for Steve (one pearl of wisdom included below), following his announcement. It means so much to us.
Happy 5-year Keapiversary to Michael C., Monica O., Eva J., Rachel R. Philippe B., Heather H., Lara E., Scott S., Anthony L. and Marcus S.! Thank you for joining us on the ride, and sticking with us through a pandemic and some major changes to our company. And a big thank you to all of our Keapers, new and old, for your support. You are the engine of this work.

Have a great rest of the week!

– Harry from Keap, Steward-Owner

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Thoughts from the Keapersphere

Re: Stephen’s Transition

“Thank you so much for sharing the news of Stephen's transition to a new personal and professional journey! I must admit, while I knew Harry & Stephen were two separate people, I certainly began to think of you both as one person or at least, as versions of the same person in photos :-D I'm an identical twin, so I say this with utmost empathy!

While I am finding it hard to imagine your day-to-day operations without Stephen completely immersed in everything all the time, I'm also grateful that you all invited me on this path with you. The beautiful truth about families is that they change. And in the best of them, we accept, nurture, and support that change in all the ways that we can.

Thank you, Stephen, for 8 truly meaningful and heartfelt years of your emails, your leadership, your vision, the most grounding & beautiful scents ever--and your humor! I wish you so much joy and abundance in the steps that you take from here onwards.”

—Geeta, in Los Angeles

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Cotton Magnolia scent details // Currently available for Keap subscribers // Subscribe here // Gift Subscriptions here

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A Hopeful Quote on Social Media and the Ascendancy of Purposeful Work

Note: this quote was transcribed from a podcast episode and edited for brevity and clarity.

“[The New York Times is] saying that young people don't want to work at Facebook and Twitter and TikTok. And it's because—even though they're the most powerful companies in the world— they know that it's starting to carry a little bit of a social stigma. I think things like The Social Dilemma have increased that inversion of the idea that “it's cool to work in tech, it's cool to start your next billion dollar social media company”. And now it's like, "Oh, you're another one of those guys that's ruining the world." And so, that is shifting the cultural currency of what we look up to and what we value.

And I think that more and more people, especially as they see the Meta crisis, the mess of problems that we face—from economic crises to culture wars, ecological crisis, social media, emergency trust crisis—that people want to focus on and work at the places where they can actually feel purposeful. And I think the price tag of not feeling purposeful is going up and up and up and up. More and more people are going to opt for meaningful, purposeful work. I can only say that from the messages that we hear from people: that increasingly seems to be the case and that's where some hope lies for us.”

—Tristan Harris (Executive Director of the Center for Humane Technology) on Your Undivided Attention

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MORE ABOUT KEAP

Keap is a Benefit Corporation started in 2015, inspired by a philosophical question: In an always-on world, how can we reconnect with ourselves and restore our balance with nature? Our candles are made locally in Kingston, NY with regenerative materials and a vision of zero-waste. We prioritize long-term connection in the way we treat our customers, our team and other stakeholders.

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A world beyond social media

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