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00:00:01
S3E1 Jessica DeFino
503 Plays10 months ago
Meredith chats with Jessica DeFino.
🌟 Follow Meredith on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
🌟 Follow Content People on insta: https://www.instagram.com/contentpeoplepod/
🌟 Subscribe to the Content People newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
🌟 Email Meredith: [email protected]
🌟 We loved talking to Jessica. Follow her here:
🌟 Subscribe to The Unpublishable newsletter: https://jessicadefino.substack.com/
🌟 Or, follow Jessica’s column “Ask Ugly” at the Guardian here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/nov/01/should-i-get-botox-advice-ask-ugly
🌟 This was the Substack article that referenced Jessica’s stats back in 2021: https://on.substack.com/p/grow-series-8
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Transcript
Meredith's Podcast Announcement
00:00:04
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome to content people. I am your host Meredith Farley. I think this is actually going to be my like second to last one. I've decided I'm over the podcast because I always end up saying some things stupid and then people come for me on the internet and I'm like, I don't know.
00:00:30
Speaker
I don't know. I'm honored to be one of your penultimate podcasts and I'm super glad to meet you and chat with you. Thank you. Yeah, of course.
Introduction to Jessica DiFino
00:00:41
Speaker
No, this one's exciting.
00:00:43
Speaker
All right, so for anyone listening who doesn't know you, could you say a little bit about who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name is Jessica DiFino. I'm a reporter and a critic focusing on the beauty industry. I freelance, so I write for everywhere from the New York Times to Vogue to Allure. I have a monthly column.
00:01:02
Speaker
at The Guardian and I write the beauty newsletter, The Unpublishable. For this conversation, I'm really going to hone in on your sub stack in particular, because it is so successful. It's so widely read. People love it. And for content people, listeners, I think the behind the scenes of the how and the nuance of
00:01:24
Speaker
how you achieve that growth will be super interesting. But I will also say I'm just a big fan of yours generally. And so if someone is through some miracle coming to you for the first time through this, go check out all of Jess's stuff.
00:01:36
Speaker
And thank you so much for doing this, Jess. Thank you for having me. I'm, I'm flattered to be asked about business. Yeah, I hope so. I hope I asked my goal is for folks listening that if they want to grow a sub stack and they're really committed to it, that they can come away from this conversation feeling, okay, these are like the five or six things I need to do that are really going to help me. So I guess my first question would be when and why did you start your sub stack?
00:02:05
Speaker
I started my newsletter in probably May of 2020. It wasn't on Substack at that time. And this, starting early, this is one of my tips is to maybe not brand so hard into having a Substack and just widen it into having a newsletter. Like it really helps me to think of it as an email newsletter rather than a Substack beholden to the branding and connotations of a Substack.
00:02:32
Speaker
So, since I came into the picture later, I ran my beauty newsletter independently through my Squarespace site for about eight or nine months.
00:02:44
Speaker
starting in May 2020. And then I moved over to Substack in February of 2021 just for the functionality of it. And it was a huge help. But I started the newsletter because the pandemic had just begun. It had an effect on the media. Freelancer budgets were freezing up.
00:03:07
Speaker
I had three stories that I'd written for a major beauty publication that were in the process of being edited at this time when the freelance budgets were frozen and they were returned to me. And I was like, what am I going to do? I really believe in these three stories. Nobody is taking pitches right now. I pitched them everywhere. They got rejected for about two months.
00:03:30
Speaker
And at that point, I was like, these stories aren't really going to be relevant if I don't post them soon. Maybe I'll just start my own thing. And so I started the newsletter with these three really fleshed out, reported stories about the beauty industry. And I called the newsletter The Unpublishable because I couldn't get them published anywhere. And it really resonated with people, I think, right off the bat.
00:03:56
Speaker
That's so interesting. I didn't know that origin story. And I think that's such great advice about not branding yourself as a sub stack and brand yourself as a newsletter. So when you were running it from your Squarespace site, I am presuming that moving over to sub stack, there was the ease of, it's so easy to like, they handle the subscriptions for
Substack vs. Patreon Monetization
00:04:19
Speaker
you. They handle so many of the formatting aspects they handle. Also, if you want to move into a subscription model, was there anything else that
00:04:26
Speaker
made you want to move over to sub-stack and sub-question, sub-stack question, were you monetized in any way before you moved to sub-stack or was that your sub-stack? Yeah, I would say the main draw to sub-stack for me was the integrated monetization. I wanted to see how that would work. I did try to monetize the newsletter before that. I was sending out these articles through my Squarespace site and I was offering a Patreon subscription through that.
00:04:56
Speaker
The idea was the articles would be free to everyone to read and if you wanted to support the work you could sign up for $5 a month or $10 a month and then I also included a link to my PayPal and Venmo
00:05:09
Speaker
for anyone who wanted to support the work. And I got, I made some money through it, but obviously just wasn't consistent. And because it, I think felt so DIY, where it's just, here are some ways you can pay me. I think there's something about consumer trust there. I feel like Substack, because the payment,
00:05:33
Speaker
structure was so well integrated and so easy to set up and seamless. It seems like something that readers want to invest in or feel safe investing in more than just like a random PayPal link, perhaps. Because I was getting a few payments here and there before I switched over to Substack, but once I was using that like really integrated payment structure in the Substack system, subscriptions like took off pretty quickly.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's really interesting. That makes sense. I hadn't thought of it in that way before. So you did collaborate on a Substack article. I don't exactly know what to call them, but it's like anyone who has a Substack will get these emails from Substack where they're
00:06:20
Speaker
collaborating with really successful creators who are sharing tips and talking about their creative process. And I thought yours was really helpful. I will link to it in the show notes. It was back in February of 2021. And at that time you talked about what your subscribers, your subscriber numbers looked like. I'm going to read those stats. And if you're comfortable, I'd love for you to share what they're at now or approximately whatever you can get. So you started on Substack February 2021 and you had
00:06:51
Speaker
21,730 free subscribers by the time that this article was published. Well, I think maybe, I think the article was maybe published in like a year later. Yeah. March 23, 2022. So these were like almost this year, roughly a year of growth from when I started Subzac to when these numbers were put up.
00:07:15
Speaker
All right, so then one year you had almost 22,000 free subscribers and about 1200 paid subscribers, which is incredible. And since March 2022, what do things look like for you now? Right now, I just checked before we hopped on this call and right now I have 90,022 free subscribers and 4,441 paid subscribers.
00:07:39
Speaker
Oh my God. Congratulations. That's amazing. It's exciting to look back at these numbers like over time and be like, okay, this is, this is a nice, good growth rate. Generally something that I super pay attention to or have goals around. So it's nice to have these check-ins and be.
00:07:57
Speaker
Good job. Yeah, very good job. Let's talk about how you did that. So I know you didn't have a viral tweet, which it's kind of my understanding that garnered you like your first kind of like big chunk of subscribers. I could be wrong about that, but I was wondering if you'd talk about that tweet a little bit and how it may or may not have changed things for you.
Viral Tweet and Subscriber Growth
00:08:18
Speaker
Sure. The tweet did get me a big chunk of subscribers. I don't know that I would call it my first big chunk prior to this and prior to launching the newsletter. I think it's important to note that I had been
00:08:28
Speaker
really working hard on building an Instagram following for years. I had been chipping around a book to literary agents and they had all told me, if you don't have a certain number of followers on Instagram, no publishers are going to look at this book. So I was really focused on Instagram growth for years before launching the newsletter. And I was able to bring a lot of those subscribers over. I think I had 40 or 50,000 subscribers on Instagram.
00:08:54
Speaker
Wow. When I started the newsletter, part of the branding was like, I'm not going to be on social media anymore. If you want my work, it's only going to be here. So that was a big help. And then a while after the newsletter, maybe a year into having the newsletter I did, I had this viral tweet and it was about the Kardashians. One of my jobs previously was
00:09:17
Speaker
writing content for the official Kardashian Jenner apps. So I had worked closely with the sisters. I had created beauty content for them and with them. And I'm trying to remember. Oh, it was when Kim Kardashian gave that interview to
00:09:34
Speaker
variety, I think it was, where she was like, nobody wants to work anymore. And I retweeted that and I added some details about what the working conditions were like at Whale Rock Industries, which was the company that ran their apps that I worked for. And yeah, it really
00:09:50
Speaker
picked up because I talked about how I was working 24-7. I was on call all the time. I was barely scraping by. I had to call out of work sometimes because I couldn't put gas in my car to get to work. It was a time of struggle and I really had believed in this sort of bootstrapping, if you work hard enough,
00:10:11
Speaker
now you're gonna succeed later. And it was just, yeah, it was a frustrating situation. So I tweeted about it. It really resonated with people. I think it got something like 600,000 likes. And then I was like, how can I leverage this for the newsletter? So I created a thread underneath the viral tweet.
00:10:34
Speaker
that basically talked about what I had learned about the beauty industry and beauty standards from working on the Kardashian Jenner apps, how that inspired me to pivot away from the beauty industry and start critiquing it, and where you could find my Kardashian critical work, which was the newsletter. And yeah, it was really successful. I think I got close to 10,000
00:10:57
Speaker
free subscribers just off of that tweet alone when you were writing the tweet Did you have any idea were you that it was going to take off the way that it did? Yeah, I had an idea I think I had previously maybe a year or two before Retweeted something similar
00:11:13
Speaker
because the Kardashians are always having these big cultural moments where everyone's, look how toned up they are. So I had tweeted something similar before that got some traction, but nowhere near the level of traction that this tweet did. Yes, I was, on one hand, I was surprised. On one hand, I was not surprised. The internet turns regular people into celebrities for a moment every day. So it was exciting, but I tried to be like, this is just normal internet stuff.
00:11:42
Speaker
people won't stick around if there's not a reason to stick around. I wasn't like coasting on it. It sounds like really strategic on your part, the way you tied it back to the newsletter. It's really interesting about you had this Instagram platform, you had a big social following that you were building up
00:12:03
Speaker
for a book. There's a few other, I don't know, Clara color me loverly. She has a pretty big TikTok and Instagram following that she's also converted into a newsletter. I really like her newsletter a lot. She was on the show and also Lisa Belmonti who did the same thing. She has a newsletter called Everybody Gets Dressed and it's about
00:12:27
Speaker
I love that. Sustainable style. And why I think we're just going with this is it's like the Instagram and or TikTok or Twitter presence seems so imperative for so many. It's like a really hard thing to build up that is almost like the necessary price of entry to other things like a newsletter or a book. Do you yourself, do you think you're good at social? Do you like social or for you where you just, I need to do this to achieve my goals?
00:12:56
Speaker
Um, I think I'm good at social. I don't like social and I'm not on it anymore.
Leaving Social Media for Newsletters
00:13:01
Speaker
I don't post to Instagram anymore. I don't post to Twitter anymore. I am like completely off. I've never even downloaded TikTok, which I'm like very proud of. Yeah. The convenient thing about the way that social media has pervaded the entire world and especially the media is that anything like relevant happening on social media is going to end up in an article on.
00:13:23
Speaker
the New York Times or Vice or whatever. So I still feel plugged in, but I don't have to be on them anymore. The one thing I will say is, yeah, of course, like spending all of that time building up my Instagram is a huge part of my success on Substack.
00:13:41
Speaker
But the years of, I don't think you can discount the years of work that went into building up that following. So it's not necessarily that I think you need to build up a platform on Instagram or Twitter on TikTok and then convert those people to sub stack.
00:13:56
Speaker
Substack can be your starting platform. The years of work will still be necessary. I put two, three years of my entire life into building up this Instagram following like in a very unhealthy way. I will say like it was bad for me. It was bad for my brain. It was bad for my writing to focus on social media that much.
00:14:14
Speaker
But again, it took a lot of work and a lot of time. You can start on sub-stack and put that same amount of work and time into it and grow on this platform instead, I think. It's not how I did it, so it's hard to say like, you definitely can do that. But I don't know, just looking at the history of the internet, the history of social platforms, the history of just writers in general, it takes time and effort to build a platform no matter what platform you start on.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I don't know. I might just be rambling. No, you're not at all. I think what you're saying is like, wherever you start, it's going to take a lot of time to really build any type of platform for yourself. So for Substack, if someone doesn't have a big platform elsewhere, but they're really committed and they're like, I want to grow my newsletter. What advice might you have for them if they're at like six months in and they're willing to put in the work?
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah.
Growing a Newsletter Audience
00:15:15
Speaker
I think the first thing is pretty basic, but obviously it's just have a niche, have something different to say that's not being said elsewhere or not being said in the way that you can say it. It's not enough to copy somebody successful or look to somebody successful and say, Oh, they're doing X, Y, and Z. I'm going to do that too. I do think in order to experience, and that's something that you can hone over time. I think I started out with a much broader.
00:15:43
Speaker
subject matter and then over the years like niche down into what I consider like my My like Yeah, my topics today So that's first and foremost like I see a lot of people on the sub stack platform or sub stack notes like complaining that they're not getting a big readership or not enough reach yet and sometimes I'll click through because I'm just curious of what are they writing about and I just don't see anything like super compelling like
00:16:11
Speaker
The work has to be compelling and the writing has to be good. And then I would say the next thing is look for ways to position yourself as an expert outside of your own newsletter. You can use social media to do this, but you don't have to use social media to do this. I think there are so many spaces where you can pitch yourself and position yourself as an expert in a way that eventually highlights your work.
00:16:36
Speaker
So for instance, be a guest on podcasts. There are millions of podcasts out there and they all need guests. They need guests. So find ones that are relevant to your industry, to your subject and reach out to them. Like many times they will be thrilled to have a guest who is, I would also get familiar with the journalists in your field, the journalists and reporters who are reporting on your subject. You can be direct about this. Like you can reach out and offer to be a source.
00:17:03
Speaker
Or you can just start interacting with their content that they're posting online or on their socials, befriend them, be interested in their work, and show through this online relationship that you can collaborate. A lot of my growth in the past
00:17:20
Speaker
year I would say since I'm not really using social anymore is being quoted in articles written by other reporters and journalists and going on podcasts. Which brings me to my next point, which is maximize your content. When I do a podcast, for instance, or when I'm in an article, that's not just a way for me to market my newsletter or to get my name out there.
00:17:42
Speaker
That's creating content for me, like valuable content for me to then give to my audience who is interested in that content. I got this advice maybe a year into writing my newsletter and it's been invaluable where I had been trying to create very unique content for newsletter subscribers. And someone eventually told me like these people are signed up because they want
00:18:05
Speaker
everything from you in one place. If you're writing a freelance article for Vogue, you should be sending it out through the newsletter. If you're on a podcast, you should be sending it out through the newsletter. And previously, I hadn't done that because it felt like cheating. But it's not. People are really interested in the external work that you're doing. So as you're coming up with ways to position yourself as an expert, create content outside of your newsletter and get your name out there. You're also seeding your audience.
00:18:35
Speaker
by getting involved in these other things that aren't your newsletter. And you can just send that out in an email. People will be thrilled to get it. Even if it's one line that says, hey, I was on a podcast. Here's five bullet points of what we talked about. Hope you enjoy. Those posts do really well for me.
00:18:53
Speaker
That's super interesting. And it reminds me, so I spent a long time in the agency world, more B2B content. And so repurposing was always something we were looking for opportunities to do. And I do think what you said, it feels like cheating sometimes, even when you look at the numbers and you're like, damn, this did great. Like why would we, if we did an original content that performed this well, we'd be feeling great. Why is there guilt around the fact that
00:19:19
Speaker
This one didn't have as much blood, sweat and tears in it. And I also love what you're saying too, about people subscribed to you because they want all access or not all access, but they want everything just in one spot delivered to them so they don't miss anything.
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it almost comes down to like, instead of centering yourself, center the reader. Like for yourself, it might be like, Oh, I just did this podcast. It was for the podcast. I don't want to send it out to my newsletter, but you center the reader.
00:19:54
Speaker
They want to hear you talk. They want to hear you speak on the same subject that you're writing newsletters about. That's why they signed up for it. So I think maybe just taking the ego out of it a little bit and just thinking of the service angle makes it clear how repurposing content isn't a bad thing. It's of service to the people who want to know what you have to say.
00:20:16
Speaker
Definitely. Although I think even within that is something hard to accept in that for some people, it could feel egotistical to think people care that much about them. You're like, oh, they like my content about Blink or they're here to bring back your point. They're signing up because they like you.
00:20:38
Speaker
you know, the people as they walk. It's like what you just said is a great point and I think maybe my point of view is like a little skewed because I write about beauty which is pretty much writing about bodies which is pretty much writing about mental health and mental being like beauty standards are so embedded in our brains and they have a real measurable impact on like anxiety, depression, identity,
00:21:04
Speaker
who we are, how we feel in the world. And so a lot of the things that I write, I'm getting content, I'm getting feedback about how like helpful it is. So it's easier for me to think, I think of the service positioning of it, which might not apply across subjects. But yeah, no, I think that's great because I think even advice that I've gotten about the podcast as I've talked to some people and been doing more of it is I think so often I have
00:21:34
Speaker
guests on like yourself who I'm just like such a fan of and just want to give them totally the platform to say whatever they want to say. But I have had some good advice, which is you have thoughts on this too. You can add it like people listen and it's not because they don't want to hear from you at all either Meredith. So where am I even going with this? Maybe I'm babbling, but I think that it can be easy to underestimate the amount of interest that someone who
00:22:02
Speaker
is engaging with your content might have in your own perspective on things. When I started the newsletter, part of the branding was like, I'm not going to be on social media anymore if you want my work. Because that is the one consistent thing across everything you put out is you. It's not the guest.
00:22:25
Speaker
Hey guys, interrupting this interview for 10 seconds to talk about Medbury. Medbury is a social media agency that I founded in 2023 and we produced this podcast. Our promise is pretty simple. We create social media strategies that really, really work. You can check out our website, sign up for our newsletter, or shoot us an email. Everything's in the show notes. I think we're fun to work with and we'd love to help you. Okay, thanks for listening. Back to the interview.
00:23:02
Speaker
So I want to pick your brain about send times, subject lines, topic selections, graphics and art work, and then that sub-stack notes feature. Do you have any quick tips on those things? Send times?
Newsletter Writing Tips
00:23:18
Speaker
I'm still figuring out. I'm still experimenting. And I think what I've learned is it actually doesn't really matter, especially with an email newsletter. It lands in people's inbox and then they read it when they read it. Yeah.
00:23:31
Speaker
I've never sent something out at a funky time and have it bomb in performance. I haven't noticed anything like major in that. For subject lines, one thing I've noticed is that quotes work really well. So if I like a source and I put it in quotation marks in the subject line, those get consistently like
00:23:51
Speaker
five, 6% more opens than other subject lines. So I've been trying to do that more. But also just like on the most basic level, I think a big mistake I see a lot of newsletter writers do is like, they write a subject line that is maybe like very emotional or personal to them, but just like, who's going to click on that? You have to think, is this compelling enough to make somebody click if they're getting 100 emails an hour?
00:24:19
Speaker
which many of us are. Just think about it for five minutes. What's going to make somebody click? It's pretty simple. As far as topic selection, I think the benefit of a newsletter is that it doesn't have to operate the same way traditional media does, and so you don't have to be super timely.
00:24:38
Speaker
One thing that I've learned is that it's okay to take my time with a trending topic or a big news story. Whereas when I was writing for a traditional media, it would be like write something up as quickly as possible and get it published while it's still trending. That makes for, I think, sloppy work a lot of the times. So something I've been challenging myself to do with the newsletter is to take advantage of the format and take advantage of the fact that I'm in charge of it and just
00:25:03
Speaker
slow down, send something out two weeks after the story breaks. It might be a little bit less relevant, but your writing will probably be stronger in your perspective, a little bit more considered and readers really respond to that is what I've noticed. As far as graphics, I just pulled mine out of the air when I started without really considering anything.
00:25:24
Speaker
So I don't have much to add there. I would like to do a rebrand soon. And I'm curious what I will come up with when I actually think about it because I really did not give much thought to my graphics or colors or fonts or anything.
00:25:37
Speaker
And then sub-stack notes, I don't know, I was excited about it at first. I think it is a useful tool in many ways, but I think ultimately it is a distraction if you're spending a lot of time on notes rather than a lot of time writing your newsletter. And then one thing I've seen is that like,
00:26:03
Speaker
Substack Notes is primarily a small audience made up of other writers. It's writers talking back and forth to writers and it's really easy to get wrapped up in that and forget that most of your audience is not a writer and most of your audience is not on the Substack app.
00:26:24
Speaker
If I go into my open rates of my 90,000 subscribers, 97% of them open my stories from email, 3% open from the app. So it's 3% of my readers are on the app. Why am I going to let myself get sucked into this like notes drama or notes marketing or having to make a note to promote everything or respond to other writers in a note to beat the algorithm?
00:26:52
Speaker
The pool is so small. I don't think it's worth getting distracted and spending a ton of time there. Like I think it's much more worth your time to focus on some of those other pathways that I mentioned before, finding your readers, your non-writer readers, where they are. And you could be lots of places. They could be like in Reddit threads. They could be in like community groups that exist, you know, outside of social media.
00:27:18
Speaker
So yeah, I think notes is fine. I wouldn't trust it as a tool for growth.
00:27:25
Speaker
And then, okay, one more thing about the Substack app specifically, I see so much like hand wringing about how much to promote yourself on notes, how much to engage in notes in order to just like gain the algorithm, get more exposure. What I think is that like Substack has done an amazing job of building in these tools of surfacing content, allowing for referrals, allowing for recommendations in the app. They exist already.
00:27:52
Speaker
Let those tools do the work and focus on your work and focus on finding a readership outside of the app because the tools are embedded in the app. You will get a certain level of exposure just through the things that are built in already if you give like the bare minimum to note. I'm happy you said that. I feel like I slightly suspected that though that 3%
00:28:16
Speaker
open rate is so interesting. And I think in spirit, I love anything where like the reality of the situation is you don't have to worry about that tiny echo chamber and you can just focus on the work and relax a little bit and think more broadly outside of whatever app you're in, whether it's like
00:28:37
Speaker
Substack, LinkedIn, Instagram. So I'm happy. That's how you feel. If you were like, oh gosh, everyone needs to really get into this and devote to that to make substack work, I think it would have been heartbreaking. No. And that's part of the reason why I really wrestle at saying I have a substack. Whenever I talk about it myself, I say, I have a newsletter. I have an email newsletter. Because I don't, just for my own mental health in my mind, I don't want to get
00:29:06
Speaker
caught up in the branding and the politics of this, what is essentially a corporation providing a service that I love and I use and I think is really valuable, but I don't want to like brand alongside of them. I'm an independent reporter. I'm not like a shill for sub-stack. I don't know.
00:29:26
Speaker
No, I really appreciate that. And I actually think you saying that is I'm going to be more cognizant of it in the future, moving forward, because I think you're totally right. Like I do a newsletter on sub stack and think of it as a newsletter. There are ways in which it could suck one in to me. You feel like it's actually a platform that has norms and expectations and time requirements.
00:29:49
Speaker
And new general, like that's not what a newsletter is about for anybody. So I think you're right. And I'm going to change. I'm going to be really careful about that in the future, I think. Yeah, I love that. All right. I wanted to talk a little bit about your content creation and distribution process. How do you decide what to write about first?
00:30:11
Speaker
Let's start there. How do you decide what you're going to cover?
Intuitive Writing Process
00:30:15
Speaker
I think this is another one of the benefits of working outside traditional media and having a newsletter is that it's very feelings based. It's very like intuition based. And it's very just what am I inspired to write about in the moment? I start a new draft in the newsletter CMS every time an idea pops into my head.
00:30:35
Speaker
Okay. And then as I noticed things, I also read a lot. I'm reading a ton about the beauty industry, about beauty culture from all these different sources. So anytime I like read something that like relates to an idea that's popped into my head, pop that link in the draft.
00:30:49
Speaker
And for me, naturally, one idea will rise to the surface per week. And I'll be very inspired to write that thing. And that's what goes out. And then if I'm ever stuck, I just scroll through the drafts. I think I checked this morning. I have 202 drafts of just ideas that I've been accumulating over the past three years working in the CMS. And like any of them could be a newsletter at any time if I decide that's what I want to write about. So I just think like,
00:31:19
Speaker
For me, content creation is just like constantly reading, constantly being inspired, constantly taking notes and just following my instincts about what's the right thing to write about now.
00:31:33
Speaker
So are you doing about one piece a week and you're writing that week on the piece that will go out as the sun? I think generally, yeah, that is how it works. There are of course pieces that I will spend a lot more time on. This summer I wrote a big critique of the Barbie movie and I was working on that for probably months in small ways and then sent it out right after the movie premiered.
00:31:58
Speaker
There are things that will pop into my head that day and I write it up in a couple of hours and I send it out. And then I, for my paid subscribers, this is like the only promised offering on my newsletter is I have two.
00:32:10
Speaker
paid posts that go out per month. And those are just like link roundups with my commentary of beauty trends, industry, news, things like that with my commentary. And that I'll keep a running list of every day. If I see something, I'll throw it in the draft. So those are written and accumulated over the course of two weeks.
00:32:30
Speaker
Got it. I read your Barbie piece and I really liked it a lot. I think I actually quoted it in my own newsletter. So folks should go and check that one out. But as you're talking, I'm thinking even of my own process, I feel like I'm often inspired by things, taking notes. I've got messy notes apps on my phones. I send crazy emails to myself. And sometimes I find it almost exhausting because it's like any new thing, like a podcast I listen to an article I read, I'm like, ooh, there's an angle on this. Do you ever find that? And if so, how do you deal with it?
00:33:00
Speaker
Yes, 100%. I have all the drafts that I mentioned and then I have email drafts, I have my notes app, I have notebooks, tons of notes. I think my process is just write everything down somewhere and then just let go. I love that. I find that when it's relevant, the memory of what I've written down at some point bubbles to the surface and I find it and I use it.
00:33:28
Speaker
And then I was organizing some notes for the book I'm writing the other day and I was going through old iPhone notes.
00:33:35
Speaker
And I was just so inspired by my own notes from two years ago that I had completely forgotten about, but then it's, I'm looking at them. And now after two more years of doing this work, I have so much more context to add to this like old seedling of an idea. So, I mean, it's a little bit out there, but I just don't worry about it too much. I just trust that the ideas that I need to write about will find me at the right time or come back to me at the right time.
00:34:06
Speaker
I'm happy to hear that. I think maybe similar to if you'd said one really needs to get into sub-stack notes. If you were like, look, you need a really organized system and a ton of discipline. I'd be like, I don't, I can't do any more. It works for a lot of people. And I like read a ton of writing because I have no process. I am fascinated by other people's process. So I know that there's a ton of content out there about how to best organize your notes and how to create a content schedule. That's another thing I don't have for my newsletter. There is no content schedule.
00:34:28
Speaker
So far it's been fine for me.
00:34:36
Speaker
If I don't send something out to people for two weeks, I don't care because I've never promised them anything in terms of what to expect from me or what to expect from me at this certain day or at this certain time. It all evens out in the end, I think. But yeah, it is nice to know that as much as I've read about potential processes to put in place or schedules to put in place, none of them really have worked for me. And that hasn't been a hindrance for me personally.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah. I think it can work. I think you can still be very successful and just not organized at all. It seems like you do value like an intuitive approach and process to things, which is, I did want to ask you.
00:35:20
Speaker
Do you have a, how do I want to word this? I guess as a writer, are there any creative principles, practices, or ideas that you subscribe to? Do you do morning pages? Do you believe in the muse? What are your thoughts on those ideas?
00:35:36
Speaker
I have done morning pages. I've tried to finish the artist's way probably like three or four different times at this point in my life and I have found morning pages helpful but I'll go through phases with it. It's not something that I have done every day for years but I do think they're helpful and if I'm going through a particularly creatively stuck time I'll go back to them. Whenever I'm stuck I just read. I have a couple of books that I find really inspiring that kind of
00:36:03
Speaker
jog that part of my brain. So I think it's good to have a stack of books that you love to just comfort read when you're studying. At least that's been nice for me. Something that's been really helpful for me is taking writing classes. I went to college for songwriting so I didn't get like a traditional education in literature or writing at all and
00:36:29
Speaker
I have found it really helpful to every once in a while, like maybe once or twice a year, I'll enroll myself in an online class.
00:36:36
Speaker
about creative writing, a lot of them are like prompt based. So it'll be like a live class in the beginning, you get a prompt and you write for 30 minutes and then you share your work with the class. And just like getting out of my comfort zone in that way and having that sort of the structure of a class with just like the freedom of free writing within that timeframe has produced a lot of work that I'm really excited about. And that's me inspired to write my regular work.
00:37:04
Speaker
So I would say try class. Yeah, those are my go-tos. I really like all of those. When you say comfort reads for you or books that you find inspire you creatively, what are a couple of those books? Okay, so my big two, and I really don't know why I'm
00:37:25
Speaker
particularly drawn to these, but I have reread Little Weards by Jenny Slate a bunch of times. Jenny Slate, the actress, she's not a real nerd. Actually, both of my books are by actors. And I don't even know that I love the book.
00:37:42
Speaker
But she has such a weird way of writing and just a strange point of view, a very different way of seeing the world. And I feel like it unblocks me. I feel like it opens something in my brain where I can say, there are so many more ways of seeing this. And you're allowed to be weird about it.
00:37:59
Speaker
So I like the encouragement that's inherent in her writing style. And then I find Steve Martin to be one of the funniest writers alive. I love his novels. So I'll reread Steve Martin's The Pleasure of My Company over and over again. I just think it's so funny. I love to read funny writing to remind me it doesn't have to be so serious. You can inject humor and do even the most serious of topics.
00:38:25
Speaker
Do you know Julia Cameron? Of course you do. She wrote the artist. I was listening to a podcast interview with her and she's got these artist walks, things that she recommends taking a quiet walk by yourself, no music.
00:38:38
Speaker
no listening to anything. She said it's because if you're listening to music, for example, she believes that you are transported to that artist's consciousness, which I thought was so interesting, but it's funny when you talk about reading little weirds, it's almost like maybe by reading it inhabit Jenny's sleep, like super
00:38:59
Speaker
different perspective or something. It's like inhabiting somebody else's brain. I will say now that you're saying that the other thing that I do is I get into these obsessive podcast phases where I fixate on an author and I type their name into the Spotify search and then I just listen to every podcast they've ever done. I think I started this with Glennon Doyle because I was just fascinated by
00:39:24
Speaker
her and her following. It wasn't even that love Glennon's work. I was just like, this is like a fascinating empire that she's built. And so I listened to 10 podcasts of her talking about writing. And then Sheila Hetty was a big fixation. I've listened to everything Sheila Hetty has said on a podcast. And my latest one is Caroline Callaway.
00:39:46
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. No. She's an influencer. She's like a messy, chaotic literary influencer who just wrote her fourth book. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole like lore around, around her and her writing.
00:40:02
Speaker
a lot of drama. Okay, I'm gonna research this after the show. Yeah, and she's just really fun to listen to. So again, it's not even writers that I particularly love or admire their work. I just find them as figures and the way their brain works fascinating. And it helps to like unlock something that I wouldn't necessarily think of myself because these people are obviously just very different from me.
00:40:27
Speaker
but I think it's helpful. I love these tips because they're so specific and actionable. And so I know we don't have a ton of time left, but a couple more questions. So I think of you as a critic or a dissenting voice of the beauty industry. I'm not sure if that's how you describe yourself.
00:40:42
Speaker
But I was curious about what it feels like for you to be consistently keeping up with an industry that you obviously have a lot of bones to pick with.
Emotional Toll of Beauty Industry Critique
00:40:53
Speaker
Does it ever feel heavy or do you ever wish you could just totally unplug from beauty for a month or so? Yeah, it definitely feels heavy.
00:41:03
Speaker
I don't know that I would ever blame that heaviness on my work. I think I do the work because of the heaviness. I was indoctrinated by beauty culture at a really young age. My parents were discussing plastic surgery for me before preschool because my ears stick out. Some of my earliest memories were like, are we going to have her surgically fixed before she can be ridiculed by her peers?
00:41:29
Speaker
I was in beauty pageants when I was really young. I was performing a lot when I was young. I was in community theater. I was trying to be a singer-songwriter. So much of my life has been focused on aesthetics and performance and beauty and
00:41:45
Speaker
even if I wasn't doing this work right now, the heaviness of that of trying to disentangle myself from my appearance would still be there. So a lot of time I think the work helps me work through that. I think that's what brought me to this work really.
00:42:02
Speaker
I think my ultimate goal is to not write about beauty someday, but that's my goal because I would love to get to a place where I'm not obsessed with it myself. Well, see, I hope I get there. I hope there's another subject that fascinates me someday because I'm free from the pressures of beauty culture.
00:42:19
Speaker
when that will be, I don't know. That's interesting. It's funny. I really like your work so much, but I hope. Yeah, the other thing about what I'm doing is, because I've gotten questions before of just like, it's so important what you're doing. And yes, of course I find my work important, but I'm also just like far from the only one who is
00:42:40
Speaker
critiquing the beauty industry or writing about it in a critical way. There are a lot of amazing people doing this work too. And so if and when I feel like I can step back from it, if and when I feel like I'm done with it, I don't think I will feel any pressure for not doing this anymore. People can find critical beauty work all over if you look for it. Do you have long-term plans for this sub stack? I was wondering,
00:43:02
Speaker
If you have a sense of what you want your professional life to look like in 18 months or two years, or if that just feels like too far to. I would love to have more of an idea. I feel like I've just gone with the flow for a long time and I'm ready for a little bit more of a plan, a loose plan. So I just actually decided to take January off from the newsletter company. I'm going to pause subscriptions. I'm not going to write anything. I'm not going to take anybody's money.
00:43:26
Speaker
And I'm just going to think about what I want for myself, what I want out of my career, what I'm willing to give up in terms of like time and effort and money in order to do that through the newsletter. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But I'm looking forward to having a month to think about it. I feel lucky that I have built up the newsletter and people resonate with the work enough that I can take a month.
00:43:52
Speaker
often pause subscriptions. I know that's not a reality for a lot of people. So I don't want to seem like out of touch. I'm not going to say that's a hot tip from me, but it is like where I am in my life and my career right now. And I feel very fortunate and thankful to everybody who reads my work for allowing me to take that time.
00:44:12
Speaker
No, I understand exactly what you're saying. Do you have plans for a book? Yeah, but I'm finding the process of writing a book to be, um, torturous.
From Internet to Book Writing Challenges
00:44:21
Speaker
It is not what I expected. And it is so different from writing for the internet in a way that has really just slapped me across the face. And so I'm still working on it. We'll see. Eventually it will be here, but yeah, I am, I'm taking my sweet time with it. You're putting out a lot of content.
00:44:41
Speaker
Thanks folks. Listening now who want to follow you, which is plenty I bet, we will put your sub stack in the show notes. Is there anywhere else that you'd want to direct them toward? The sub stack is the best place to get everything, but I do also have a monthly column at the Guardian. It's a beauty advice column called Ask Ugly, which I think is really fun. If you want a small dose of my work just once a month instead of every week, you can check out the Guardian site for my beauty advice column.
00:45:09
Speaker
All right, awesome. So newsletter and Guardian will both be in there. Jess, this was so fun to talk to you. I'm so grateful. Is there anything I didn't ask that you feel like is relevant that you'd want to say? No, I think you asked great questions. These are things that I don't really think about very often. This was really fun for me and I really appreciate you thinking of me and reaching out. Oh no, I'm so glad you said yes. Thank you.
00:45:36
Speaker
Hey content people, do you mind if I call you that? Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, there are a few ways you can stay in touch and support us. The first is you could subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. The second is you could leave a five star rating and a review. Those make a really big impact. I know they're kind of a pain and they take a little bit of time, but if you're feeling generous and you've been listening to the show,
00:46:03
Speaker
I'd appreciate it so much. And the third is you could sign up for the Content People newsletter. The link is in the show notes. We share news about the show and episodes. And I also write a lot about the intersection between work and creativity, which is kind of at the heart of so many of these Content People conversations. We also love feedback if you want to.
00:46:23
Speaker
request a guest or a topic, pitch yourself to be on the show, advertise with us, learn more about Medberry social media, or otherwise just be in touch, shoot me an email. I would love to hear from you. It's Meredith at medberryagency.com. That's M-E-D-B-U-R-Y agency.com. I will throw that in the show notes too. All right, thanks for listening. Till next time.