A lot can change in a year

1 year, 52 newsletters, 3367 subscribers, ~48k words…and 1 viral Tiktok.

Where I write, work and spend the vast majority of my time.

A lot can change in a year.

And in the last 12 months, a lot has changed for me. It’s been 52 weeks of publishing long form newsletters here on Substack. That’s 52 weeks of coming up with ideas and staring at the screen as I write, re-write, then re-write some more. 52 weeks of momentarily panicking before pressing ‘schedule post’. 52 weeks of sharing and commenting and DMing and trusting that if I continue doing the work then the results will come.

When I first decided to start this newsletter after years of procrastination, I had big dreams but little expectations. My ego fantasised about fame and my name up in lights, and I dreamed of becoming an instant Substack-star. My brain was slightly less delusional though. Given I’d just come off the back of 7 years growing a podcast to hundreds of thousands of listeners, I knew that building an online community through content was a long game. And I was right. The reality of publishing into the void quickly set in, and for the first few months the only people pressing ‘like’ were my supportive boyfriend and my Mum.

But over time things picked up, and somehow I’ve blinked and arrived here. One year later. A little wiser. A lot clearer. With momentum and a plan to go all the way. With that, I thought it’d be nice to do a retrospective on all that has been, before I share all that’s to come.

My Back Catalogue Deep Dive

I’ve published 52 pieces on Substack thus far and because I’m me and love a good analysis, I ran the entire back catalogue through ChatGPT. Here’s what she said.

% Breakdown by Topic & Writing Type

According to Chat, here’s how my posts have taken shape so far. To be honest I’m not sure how accurate this is; I don’t think ‘work-life integration’ warrants its own category callout but hey, Chat knows best.

These pie charts took way too long to create. Were they worth it? Undecided.

I’m surprised that only 35% of my posts are classified as ‘educational’. Interestingly, practical posts like this one and this one tend to perform the best. A sign to write more step-by-steps, perhaps?

Most Powerful Metaphors

This one’s for the writers among us:

• “Life’s chaotic. Shit falls apart and so do we, but the magic lies in piecing it back together one broken shard at a time” (from this post)

• “If life is a novel, big bets are the chapter titles and tiny choices are the words on the page” (from this post)

• “You have to be a Mad Hatter to join this party” (from this post)

• “Failure is never as bad as you think. And even if it is, your growth is in your suffering, the beauty is in the breakdown and potential is built in the darkest shadow of your pain” (from this post)

• “In a downpour of to-dos it [creativity] acts as an umbrella shielding me from the deluge of mental clutter” (from this post)

Reflections

I stumbled upon what would become my niche - portfolio careers - in my 32nd post. 32!! That’s almost 8 months of writing about random business and life stuff before finding a topic that sat at the intersection of what I enjoy writing about and what others enjoy reading. My takeaway? You don’t choose a niche and then start. You uncover a niche through the very act of starting. And continuing. For ages. As long as it takes.

My Growth Trajectory

I spend about 80-90% of my time coming up with ideas, bashing out a first draft, refining each sentence, playing with metaphors, finessing my opening and closing lines and recording my audio chats. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m obsessed with craft, largely because I love the process but also because I know that the best growth strategy is to have a great product. When you do, others will do the marketing for you. That being said, here’s how I’ve grown my Substack over the last year.

The First 100

In the week leading up to launch day, I teased my Substack across social media. At the time I had about 1800 followers on Instagram and 3500 on LinkedIn. By spamming my friends and family, I hit 100 subscribers before my first post dropped.

Time to reach 100: 0 days.

How I felt: hopeful.

The First 1000

Sadly the first 1000 was not as easy as the first 100, but here’s what drove the slow growth:

• In the early days I directly emailed people I knew telling them about my Substack and sharing a post or two that I thought might be relevant to them. My goal was to reach out to one new person per day. This approach doesn’t scale but it was a great way of encouraging (read: gently forcing) more of my network to sign up

• A few weeks into my publishing journey I took a five week writing course called Write of Passage. There were around 600 people in the cohort and about 50 new writer friends signed up

• I started consistently sharing my newsletter twice a week on LinkedIn: once on Fridays when I published and once on Mondays as a follow up promo. After a few months of posting twice a week, I upped the ante and I now post there every weekday

• I wrote a newsletter building on the ideas of one of my favourite founders,

  Michelle Battersby
  . I’d interviewed her for my podcast years before so we had an existing connection, albeit a loose one. A few weeks later she recommended me to her sizeable IG audience and it drove about 150 subscribers overnight. It was my first real signal that I was onto something

• For a few months I guest-wrote columns for a stationary brand called MiGoals whose whole ethos is centred around personal growth. Each month this shook out about 30 or so new subs

• I got into a serious relationship with Substack Notes. Connecting with writers and readers there has not only helped direct new eyeballs my way, it’s become one of my favourite parts of this whole online writing thing. The people you meet!

• I started adding voiceovers and mini podcasts into each week’s post to provide a deeper and richer experience for readers. I’m not sure if this has resulted in newsletter growth (hey Substack, please build better analytics!) but I feel like it’s made my writing more accessible, which can only lead to good things

Time to reach 1000: 8 months and 7 days.

How I felt: hopeless at times, cautiously excited at others, but always committed.

1000 - 2000

• On the 24th of May I wrote the infamous 32nd piece titled “Saying goodbye to traditional work and why I’m building a portfolio career instead” and I think it got put in a Weekly Stack round-up because it totally popped off

• I decided to heed my own advice and double down on the positive signal by turning it into a six part series on portfolio careers. This was a strategic move; months earlier I’d heard Lenny from Lenny’s Newsletter (the OG Substack-star) talk about how he grew early on through topic-based series. The strategy worked and my growth graph started going up and to the right

• I went semi-viral on Threads by accident. I say semi-viral because the post only had 1.5k views and 40 likes but it drove about 150 new subscribers. I say accident because I did not post this to Threads, Instagram automatically reposted it there without me knowing

The viral-by-accident Thread whose life began on Instagram

• I went viral on Threads by design. I say viral, because I had about 300 followers and the post had over 70k views in under 24 hours. I say by design because once I realised that Threads had legs, I started posting all of my top performing LinkedIn posts and Substack Notes over there from the past 12 months *strategically chuckles*

The viral-by-design Thread whose life began on Substack Notes

• I went viral on Tiktok. This was not by design. At all. I’d posted a few random videos over the last year but at the end of July I decided to commit with the explicit goal of having fun and learning wtf Tiktok is all about. My very first video on portfolio careers - which was unscripted, off the cuff, had no mic and no lighting - got picked up by the Tiktok Gods and flung into another universe

Time to reach 2000: 2 months and 1 day.

How I felt: energised.

2000 - 3000

• At this point I was starting to feel the momentum so I continued doubling down on what was proven:

  • Talking about portfolio careers and positioning myself as an expert in this space

  • Writing on LinkedIn Monday-Friday

  • Posting Notes, commenting and re-stacking on Substack most days

  • Reposting my highest performing Substack Notes and LinkedIn posts to Threads

  • Posting on Tiktok 3-4 times per week and holding on for dear life

• I conducted a Portfolio Career Research Study, where I interviewed 30 people and surveyed over 200. The purpose of this survey wasn’t to drive new subs but I asked all participants if they’d like to sign up. Of the 200+ who I surveyed, about half were new readers and almost all of them wanted to get involved

• My Substack was shared in Sophia Amoruso’s Business Class newsletter which still blows my mind. The post she profiled is my second most viewed one of all time

Time to reach 3000: 31 days.

How I felt: pumped.

3000 +

• Business Insider stumbled across my TikTok (just one of the many insane opportunities that have spiralled off that viral video) and asked to interview me for this piece

Mum! I’m on the front page!

• I continue to double down on what’s working and obsess over producing the most valuable ideas and the best quality writing each week

Time to 4000: who knows.

How I’m feeling: in alignment, on the path, inspired, like I’m right where I’m meant to be.

Reflections

Medium, then message

I thought I needed a clearly defined message before I started to write, because without one I was scared I wouldn’t cut through the noise. I was wrong. You see, the medium comes first; whether it’s posting long form videos on Youtube or writing on Substack or sharing your insights on LinkedIn, all that matters in the beginning is testing the waters and forming a habit. Get good at the medium first and the message will come.

Messy, then strategic

You have to fuck around before you can find out. Another way of putting it: you simply will never find out unless you give yourself permission to fuck around. Don’t try to be strategic before you’ve put one foot in the arena otherwise you will outsmart yourself all the way to nowhere.

Inputs > Output

You cannot control anything but the effort you put in, and if you try controlling the output you’ll go crazy. Focus on doing the work consistently and the results will follow. You can’t work as hard as you do without eventually being rewarded. It’s a law of the Universe. Look it up.

Consistency > Virality

Consistency is a tortoise and virality is the hare. Slow and steady truly does win the race.

Persistence through resistance

Without fail, there are moments every week where I feel totally unmotivated to put pen to paper. I procrastinate, I dread, I simply cannot make the sentences work. But I’ve learned that resistance should not be resisted, it is simply part of the creative process. It too shall pass. It always does.

Here’s to another 52 🥂

I’m very proud of the work I’ve put into the world over the last year, and I’m so grateful for the 3367 of you who have supported and subscribed. Even though many writers have grown way faster than me, I’m cool with being on my own timeline because I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter if someone is growing faster or slower than me, if a post drives 100 new subscribers or 1, if my Tiktok goes viral or flops, or if I become a Substack-star or not.

What matters is that I show up each week and put my ideas into the world. That I share everything I know so others can learn from what I’ve done. That I listen to signals and double down on what works. That I put in sustained effort. Because I know that if I focus on inputs then realising my dreams is inevitable. That goes for you too, especially if you’re a writer or creator or builder or maker.

We don’t need to fantasise about fame or our name up in lights.

The words are our stage. We’re already stars.

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🎙️ A little life update and how my portfolio of work has changed over the last 12 months:

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