001: Seattleites You Should Know: Conner Cayson

Find Me in Seattle Newsletter

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001: Welcome to your first ever, Find Me in Seattle Newsletter. Iā€™m Conner, your host here in the inbox.

If you havenā€™t done so already, please make sure you mark my email address as ā€œnot spam,ā€ so this doesnā€™t end up somewhere it shouldnā€™t be (like 3rd and Pine St after 10pm, or anytime lately).

This newsletter will be the center point of Find Me in Seattle moving forward. It will arrive in your inbox every week, and will include much more than I post on social media.

I have a bunch of goals for this email project, but the most important one is to stay true to my own style and continue what I have created on IG, Tiktok and Youtube. This newsletter will be a demo of how I plan to organize my weekly blast. So lets jump into it!!

Conner Cayson
Founder & Writer, Find Me in Seattle

Conner Cayson, Writer of Find Me in Seattle

ā€œJust because you love to bake cupcakes, does not mean you should start a cupcake business.ā€

- Conner Cayson

FMiS started as an instagram account in 2016, something that I wanted to use for my door to door sales job. I turned Find Me in Seattle into my full time job in 2018, and have been self employed ever since. I have an odd business and lifestyle, but Iā€™ve created something that Iā€™m very proud of because it truly represents me, and provides me unique opportunities to meet some of Seattleā€™s most unique businesses.

Would You Like to Buy a Map Ad?

From 2013, to the end of 2017, I spent Monday thru Friday walking around Seattleā€™s neighborhoods, selling ads on a physical map to local businesses. In that 4.5 years, there were few streets that I didnā€™t walk down, doors I didnā€™t open at least once, or coffee shops I hadnā€™t worked from. It was a weird job for a millennial to have, but the company had aspirations of being a tech business and app, and the physical maps were a good way to make relationships with businesses.

I met a TON of great people including business owners, baristas, bartenders, marketing managers, concierge, artists, craftspeople and more. Everyday I had coffee meetings with people starting their own businesses and my curiosity drove me ask questions about how they started, what their struggles were and how I could be helpful (but I always intended to sell them an ad on the map šŸ˜†).

Starting an Instagram Account

I had all of these positive business relationships around town, but we didnā€™t have an audience. Seattleites didnā€™t know about our maps or what we did, I knew I had to find a way to get the word out, and Instagram became the solution. At the time, I figured the worst case scenario was that my girlfriend (now wife) could see where I went every day.

Instagram Stories Became My Entire Life

I started posting on IG stories religiously. I would be in Fremont at 10am to get coffee, and start the day with a selfie video that said ā€œI am on 34th in Fremont, and here are the 5 businesses Iā€™m going to visit today.ā€ I would proceed to walk into every business on that block, meet whoever was working, learn a tip about their business and who the person with the money was (becauseā€¦ sales). Iā€™d take a photo, and post what I learned on stories. I slowly started to get random strangers following my account, curious where Iā€™d end up next.

Learning Where Businesses Needed Help

I learned a few helpful skills at that startup. I was working with engineers, so I dabbled in Wordpress and Squarespace. I was taking photos for our advertisements, and I was experimenting with all the social platforms of the time. This is when we thought Snapchat was going to be bigger than Instagram.

I needed to have an arsenal of tools, so when I asked business owners what they needed help with, I had an answer. Youā€™d be surprised how many people donā€™t think to Google it first.

Starting My Own Business

There were some ups and downs of that sales job, and financially I was never secure. When it came time to leave, I knew I wanted to start my own business. So the easiest thing to start, was selling myself as a marketing consultant. I set up meetings with my 5 best business relationships, and 4 of them turned into part-time work.

Now, in 2024, Iā€™m entering my 6th year of business and itā€™s morphed a lot since the beginning. I make most of my living shooting and editing short form videos for other Seattle businesses like Windermere Real Estate and Metropolitan Market.

But whatā€™s connected my transition of business has always been my social media accounts.

Telling Stories of Seattleites and their Businesses

Posting everyday became a practice of storytelling, and it taught me skills I didnā€™t have before. Iā€™ve made over 1400 posts about Seattle restaurants, artists, stores, events, and hotels. If you scroll back through my IG timeline, youā€™ll see a progression of style, especially in the past two years.

Seattleites You Should Know 

In 2023, I stopped posting photos. I focused on only making narrative-driven, 60-second videos. And in that process, the headline of ā€œSeattleites You Should Knowā€ was created. The feedback from this series has been different from the hundreds of other videos Iā€™ve published. It has been a venture outside of the foodie realm that Iā€™m usually associated with. So now that we are here, deep inside my first newsletter, I am committing to the next step of my business.

The Newsletter Begins

I want the newsletter to become the center point of Find Me in Seattle. I anticipate that my content will show up here first, before IG or Tiktok. And I hope are you ready to join me on this new creative endeavor.

Thank you for reading this deep into episode 001. I am deeply grateful for the time you spent here.

The best way to help FMiS is to share the newsletter with your friends, family and coworkers. It would mean a great deal to me if you did šŸ™‚