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00:00:01
Amelia Wilson
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Thanks for listening to our episode with Amelia Wilson.
To keep up with or connect with Amelia:
✨Amelia’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amelia-wilson-0420439/
✨Subscribe to her newsletter, Happy on Purpose: https://ameliawilson.substack.com/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Amelia Wilson and Her Work
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, Amelia. Hey, Meredith. I'm so excited to get to chat to you today. Thank you so much for making time to do this. I am so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. You are such a content person. i don't think we could think of a better content person to have on the show insofar as the work you do. I think the audience is going to love hearing from you.
Defining Midlife Today
00:00:26
Speaker
So before we jump in, have a ton of questions for you about your work and about Substack. But for anyone listening who doesn't know you, can you say a little bit about who you are and what you do?
00:00:36
Speaker
Sure. I'm Amelia Wilson. I write a Substack newsletter called Happy Time Purpose. It's about habits, happiness, as the title suggests, and it's primarily for midlife women. So I spend a lot of time writing about what midlife is like and how to thrive in midlife.
00:00:59
Speaker
i have I love the work you're doing, and I have so many questions for you about the start and evolution of the part of but not the podcast, of the sub-stack. But have, okay, as you're talking, I just had a spontaneous question, which is there an age range that you use to define midlife? And I say that because I'm 39 and i I think I am. I don't know. Like, well, how do you define midlife? Yeah, I think it's so interesting. i think in my early 30s, I would have been super offended if somebody had said,
00:01:29
Speaker
you're middle-aged you're and also I think midlife sounds so much nicer than middle-aged um and I think everybody's using the term midlife now but I do think I know my readers are mid-30s to well into their 70s and I do think there's been a huge blurring of what is midlife because of longevity and because we're healthier, because I think that we've redefined it. I have long hair. My mother had, she cut her hair short, i think at 40 or something. And that was a really normal thing to do. I think we dress like our daughters.
00:02:05
Speaker
We want to live our best lives for longer. And so I think midlife is starting a little earlier and continuing on a little later.
Amelia's Career Journey
00:02:14
Speaker
That's interesting. I want to spend a lot of time on your Substack, but before we jump into that, can you talk about your career journey up until then? What was your life like until the Substack started?
00:02:24
Speaker
Sure. As it has been a checkered journey. How much time do you have? It is lot. I have a lot of time for you. right So I started, I'm from Australia. I started out in Australia as many people who secretly want to be writers do. I, and as a huge reader, as a child and a good writer, I was directed towards law school. This is a very common thing. I think that we should probably form a help group, self-help group of former lawyers who secretly wanted to be writers. And so I went to law school, immediately knew I didn't like it, but it felt like I had to complete it. Never practiced as a lawyer. I actually went into human resources right out of law school in Australia just for a couple of years, mainly because I was really interested in psychology. And that has remained that has always been something that I've been very interested in. And of course, it's something that I write about.
00:03:20
Speaker
And I just did that for a couple of years. And then many Australians, we as a right get a working visa to go work in another Commonwealth country. And because the UK is the center of or has been the center of finance and many other industries, many Australians go there. So I had my degree. I had a couple of years work experience. Me and my friends pretty much all moved to London at the same time in our early twenty s Um, and, and I happened into a job at Goldman Sachs, the big investment bank. So I then spent over a decade there first in London. They moved me to New York in early 2001. So i was in New York when nine 11 happened. Um, and I remained there working in the executive office with the most senior, the CEO and leadership team of the company for over a decade, worked closely with the board of directors, did a lot of great international travel while I was there. But the whole time i was it not super happy. i was
00:04:22
Speaker
really challenged by the work. I loved the smart people and the incredibly accomplished people that I worked with. I worked with a lot of people out of the White House, but I was not fulfilled in my work. And so the whole
Midlife Crisis and Transformation
00:04:36
Speaker
time I kept a secret document on my computer called the scribble pad and in it, I typed all day long when I had breaks in between meetings and when I had time, which was limited, just about my hopes and dreams and feelings and lessons learned and goals and all sorts of things. And honestly, these are the things that I write about today in my newsletter. But that I continued doing it until after I had my second child, left finance, partly because two of us, my husband and I were both working in finance and the demands on our time of having two children, two big careers with a lot of travel became untenable.
00:05:12
Speaker
I then pivoted to profit, to nonprofit fundraising. And I did that for nearly a decade. In New York, I found that was a job that you could do full-time in-house, you could do as a consultant.
00:05:26
Speaker
And everybody, every charity in New York wanted, big and small, wanted help with raising money. yeah And I found I had a talent for it. Again, not super fulfilled by it, but I had a talent for it. And I did feel, especially compared to finance, that I was doing something to um help the greater good. I was giving back to society, especially when I was working for super worthy organizations.
00:05:49
Speaker
Um, but then du don I had a bit of a midlife crisis, realized I also didn't really want to be doing that, decided to stop working completely. There's a whole story around the midlife crisis. We can come back to it if you want to, but decided to stop working completely, get serious about therapy and figure out what it was I really wanted to do to find this sense of purpose that I felt like I was lacking in my life.
00:06:16
Speaker
That eventually led to writing the newsletter.
From Therapy to Writing
00:06:21
Speaker
I love it. I'm scribbling some notes down. I just said scribbling because you said scribble doc, which is I feel like there's a key to those documents is they have to be named something throw away and low pressure. Yes. If you're like my manifesto, would have been like, oh, I'm too overwhelmed to write it. But scribble doc, anybody can write in the scribble doc.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. The scribble pad. And actually, that was what I called the substack when I first started it. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, for a hot minute. Nobody was reading it. I messed around with it for a while. I love that you shared. Actually, I feel like offline, I'm going to send you a note because we've been doing a lot of fundraising work for nonprofits on LinkedIn. Interesting. That's cool. But when you say that you weren't fulfilled by that work, I love that you said that because I think there is something where One can think this corporate job isn't meaningful, but if I was really helping people, I'd be fulfilled. And I've, I do think it's true that actually, even when you aren't helping people, it was not really pursuant of something in you feeling like filled up by the work, just because it's on paper, good doesn't mean it's going to be the ticket to happiness. And I think that's a really interesting little spot in your journey. Yeah, and I love that you say it that way. Actually, i have a 19 year old daughter and a 15 year old son, and I think a lot about the kind of career advice I'd like to give them. of course, you cannot prevent somebody from, and we all have to learn from our mistakes, and you can't prevent somebody from making mistakes and learning from them along the way. And if I look back over my own career, I wouldn't honestly wouldn't do anything differently. But that is one of the things I think about, the distinction you make. If something doesn't come from yourself and doesn't feel like it is you, it doesn't matter how worthy the cause is or how good it sounds on paper. You know, it's not going to fulfill you.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah. All right. So you started the Substack, you're deep in therapy. And I will say, I can't remember the name of the post, but in reading some of your back issues, there are a couple where you really tell this journey in a beautiful way. We'll find them and put the links in the show notes if anyone listening wants to read. So I know I'm asking you stuff that you've also written about, but who can you talk about the...
00:08:30
Speaker
from starting it as the scribble pad, like why did therapy lead you to the idea that you should start a Substack? And what was the first like chapter of that newsletter like for you as a writer?
00:08:43
Speaker
It's funny. Therapy did not lead me to starting a Substack ah specifically. Although I feel like that's the a great newsletter headline or a great blog post. Yeah.
00:08:57
Speaker
You made me start this sub stack. My therapist said I should start at the sub stack. But what actually happened was the experience. So I quit a job. this I did a despicable thing. I did a thing that I was super ashamed of and embarrassed ah of. And it was the thing that sent me into therapy. And the thing that I did was I had signed up for a big consulting project. i was going to raise a lot of money for a very worthy charity. It
Lessons From Publishing a Memoir
00:09:21
Speaker
was day one. I was due to appear at their board meeting that night and start talking about our strategy and plans and how we were going do it. It might have been their 200th anniversary or something as well. It was like all of the, there were so many reasons that it was a bad idea to do what I did.
00:09:35
Speaker
But I woke up the morning that I was meant to go to my first day and I physically felt ill at the idea of going. There was nothing wrong with It was emotional and psychological, but I couldn't do it. So I called my boss who I had not yet started working for and said that I quit this job on the first day. So as a person who had gone to law school and checked every box and done everything right, I was horrified at myself, just completely ashamed and embarrassed. And honestly, didn't want to tell anybody what I'd done. I didn't understand my own behavior. And that was what sent me to therapy. And then the newsletter i came out of
00:10:16
Speaker
therapy and the experience I had, which much of it for anybody that's done therapy in a serious way and really gotten a lot out of it. Of course, you spent a lot of time talking about your childhood and family of origin. And I did. And there was totally trauma in my background, which I knew about, but had never really addressed. So I spent time addressing it with my therapist, worked my way through it.
00:10:39
Speaker
And at the end of that period, which coincided also with the beginning of COVID lockdowns, I wrote an entire memoir about that experience in therapy and what I learned. and Because it was such a transformational experience for me.
00:10:57
Speaker
I partly didn't want to forget, but I also wanted to share it with other people. i was, oh, this is how you end up not knowing what your purpose in life is. You keep checking boxes. You do what you're told. It's particularly poignant for women, I think. If you've had any trauma in your childhood and you've wanted to be a good girl, and not rock the boat and not get yourself or anybody else in trouble. You'll just keep doing what other people tell you to, or what sounds good on paper instead of what really comes from inside you.
00:11:26
Speaker
So it was the book that I wrote. And then when I tried to get the book published, I finished the book. I had an editor help me with it. I was super proud of it. And I'm like, I've worked at the top of Goldman Sachs. Like this, of course I'm going to publish my book. Like, how could that be? Yeah,
Newsletter vs Book Writing
00:11:41
Speaker
it's really hard. especially when you don't have a following of any kind. I'd never worked in media. I didn't even know anybody. I really didn't. I tried to exploit whatever contacts I had, which were none.
00:11:53
Speaker
um I did manage to get the book in front of some agents and editors and they all said to a person, you have got to build an audience, whether it's on social media, a blog, a newsletter, whatever it is. So I licked my wounds for a little bit and then I started to explore how could I start a newsletter.
00:12:10
Speaker
Substack was the easiest platform to start on. yeah Four years ago, I started it four years ago and that was where i started. So that's how therapy led to starting a Substack.
00:12:21
Speaker
Wow. I do feel, i do you know Jessica Dufino? She has a pretty big Substack in the- Is it beauty focused? Yes. I interviewed her, I think it was more than maybe two years ago. And I think But she similarly, she was a, she wanted to be a writer and she needed to build up a following.
00:12:40
Speaker
And then her she had someone who was like, you really have to be on Instagram. So she's put a lot of time building up Instagram and then, Maybe it was an Instagram. And then she started a newsletter and then she had a tweet or something go viral and got 10,000 subscribers in one day. And it like shifted everything. She's like okay. now Now I write and publish this newsletter. And I'm sorry if I'm butchering her story, people will tell me. But I think it's funny that the it has become so important.
00:13:08
Speaker
I don't know. It seems and we'll get into your sub stack right after this, which is amazing. And it seems like you're developing this community, you're getting out messages that people seem hungry for and no one else is talking about in this exact way. So there's a space for it.
00:13:19
Speaker
But sometimes I feel like it's a bummer. It's you can't just write a great book these days. Like you have to then go. Learn like social media is hard and it's exhausting and it's time consuming. And what I'm going to substack is a little bit different, but it is such a, I suppose, just a truth of modern life and publishing is that if you want to get something published, you really have to build an audience elsewhere first, which is like ah a whole other endeavor. So it's a lot.
00:13:45
Speaker
It absolutely is. The funny thing that I found, i just wrote a post. it was the four-year anniversary of my Substack just a few days ago. So I just wrote a post with my lessons learned in the past four years about growing it, content, a little bit about monetizing. I wouldn't say I'm the best at that yet. But building an audience on anything is a lot of work, right? And I think that the surprising thing to me has been I thought I wanted to get a book published and I thought I wanted to write more books.
00:14:19
Speaker
After about 18 months writing the newsletter, I realized, actually, this is so much more fun. you get to interact with readers and other writers in real time from the comfort of your own home, of course, most the time.
00:14:34
Speaker
But when you write a book, you know, you are alone, cloisted, maybe sending pages to an editor and or an agent occasionally and getting feedback, but it is such lonely, slow, hard, solitary work. yeah And i hand on top of that, these days,
00:14:56
Speaker
Because it is so competitive, the book market is so competitive that so many books are published every single year. It's really hard to get a foothold um and any traction with book sales. I think with 13,000 newsletter subscribers, that's probably more people than would have bought my book. And then would have if I'd sold 13,000 copies of a memoir by an unknown debut writer.
00:15:18
Speaker
That actually would have been considered to be fantastic. But this way i get to interact with that many readers every single weekend it's growing. So that to me is maybe more rewarding.
00:15:30
Speaker
then writing a book, spending two years on it, and then seeing how people feel about it. This way I write something and get feedback immediately. Was it good? Was it bad? I can tell right away. i love it. I find it to be extremely rewarding.
00:15:43
Speaker
Interesting. All right. So four years, congratulations. And you've had so much success and built up in such a huge audience.
Growing the Substack Newsletter
00:15:50
Speaker
what What have those four years been like? Take us through year one, year two, year three, year four.
00:15:56
Speaker
It's funny, I think writing this post that I just wrote about all of these lessons learned, I actually sat down to just write it as a note and post it to notes on Substack. Like five things I've learned about writing a newsletter. And then I'm like, 40 things later, I was like, oh my God, this is like 8,000 words. This is not a casual note. I'm just going to turn this into a post. um It's interesting. It was two distinct things.
00:16:22
Speaker
parts of my of the four years and I'd split it in two. The first two years, I still thought I was trying to get my book published. I was honestly not really taking the newsletter that seriously. i was still rewriting the memoir because I was, okay, if I just rewrite it, what if I try it as a novel? What if I try this? What if I stop that and try writing a novel altogether? I continued for about two years to try really hard to figure out how I could get a book published. And I didn't really spend a lot of time focused on the newsletter. I didn't even, the fact that i was on Substack and that I could network with other people on Substack didn't even really occur to me. I didn't do anything to publicize the newsletter.
00:17:03
Speaker
I didn't, I just didn't do much. I put it out. It was mainly friends and family reading it. And then at around about the two year point, or maybe just before that I hit a thousand subscribers.
00:17:16
Speaker
You know, I probably was starting to to take it a little bit more seriously. and become more interested in it, hit a thousand subscribers. That number was pretty magic for me because that's when I started to get more engagement in comments, more likes on my posts.
00:17:33
Speaker
People might've started sharing them a little bit more. I was like, oh, like this is, I was started to get that kind of rewarding feedback that i really value and enjoy. um And it turned my head a little bit. So for the last, I'd call it the last 18 months now, truly, i have been full-time focused on the newsletter. And that is when all the growth has happened. yeah I just happen to know because I wrote this piece.
00:17:59
Speaker
in that eighty In the last 18 months, my subscriber list has grown 67%. Nothing was happening when I wasn't spending a lot of time on it. Now everything is happening, which is amazing and and fuels itself as well. Makes you want to keep going.
00:18:14
Speaker
um I think in that time, I've refined the content. I've defined my audience. And that's partly been because a couple of posts I wrote that I thought were interesting and even one in particular I wrote, i think the first one that I got real traction on was called Seven Rules for Midlife Happiness.
00:18:30
Speaker
And I was on a walk with a friend and I said to her, oh, I think to write a piece that I think and it's going to be like rules for midlife, like a little bit tongue in cheek, like something Nora Ephron would write. And so I referenced Nora Ephron in it because she famously had three rules for midlife happiness. And I wrote this post, but my friend said, yeah, don't know. People aren't, I don't think so. People aren't really going to know. Anyway, luckily I did. it was quite popular. I got picked up in a bunch of places, got me a bunch of new subscribers. And gave me confidence that happiness, midlife, advice were things that people wanted from me. Because I think, especially when you're starting out, even though I'm a naturally fairly confident person, i didn't feel super confident to give advice on a large scale to strangers. which is what I'm doing really a lot in my newsletter.
00:19:20
Speaker
It took some time for me to, I don't have a degree in newsletter writing or advice giving or midlife happiness. So I think as a little bit of a box checking kind of perfectionist, I struggled with just giving my myself permission to honestly write what I wanted to write. But once I did, that that content is what really resonates.
00:19:42
Speaker
That is interesting. I think that I presume there are some people who from the jump are so confident in writing exactly what they want to write and writing advice. But I think you're what you're saying, I think I've actually heard before on this show too, because there is a little something where you're like, who am I to give
Confidence in Advice and Audience Engagement
00:19:59
Speaker
advice to? and But eventually you're like- But you're like, it's funny. Then you try a few out and you're like, people really like this advice.
00:20:05
Speaker
And that it then instills some confidence in you to be like, it sounds because it sounds like you're person who's had tons of experiences and done a lot of work. Like you're actually very well qualified to give this advice. And but i that is really interesting. So it sounds like that was a particular important post that maybe did a couple things. One,
00:20:25
Speaker
helped with your growth, but also to give you that moment where you trusted yourself versus the opinions of others. And it really helped move you forward, which I feel like is probably such a really good, powerful experience in a lot of ways. Can you think of other moments or posts that were somewhat transformational in that way for you?
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, that was a big one. And it's funny. I often, I've written this repeatedly. I like to write lists of advice, but that is a great example of something I talk about a lot, which is never pay attention, you just ignore any data set of one. Only one person told me that wasn't a great idea. So I'm just lucky I didn't. Because in the past, I would have just listened to that. i think it's very easy to take one negative comment and be like, oh, okay, I won't do it. um So that was that. And then the next i big moments for me were when writers I admired with much bigger audiences subscribed to me.
00:21:20
Speaker
that all liked to post, weren't subscribed to me and just hit on Substack, you see who people are, especially if they have their own newsletter. That would happen sporadically. And I'd freak out and take a screenshot and tell my husband who'd be like, I don't know what that means. Who is that person? but Like completely not excited for me. But that those little moments when you'd be like, oh, my God, she's following me. OK. And then I think the next really big one was Joanna Goddard, who I have great respect for and has a very successful newsletter at the top of the i fashion and beauty leaderboard, I think it is. And a newsletter website, Cup of Joe, that has been around for, i think, more than a decade. Yeah. And it's just a beloved writer for women, featured one of my posts on Cup of Joe. After she had become a subscriber, I had screenshotted that. I had sent her a thank you note. I had told everybody I knew. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Because even my friends know who she is. Yeah.
00:22:16
Speaker
And... She featured me on a Cup of Joe post linked to one of my pieces. It sent me hundreds of subscribers. I think it still sends me new subscribers all the time. It's still one of my most posts because of her. yeah And then that was another huge confidence boost.
00:22:33
Speaker
Totally. Yeah. I can totally imagine. I feel like there's a I remember it was maybe it had to be like eight years ago or more. i hadn't heard of Cup of Joe yet. And I remember my friend Lauren was like, Meredith, everyone reads Cup of Joe. Like, how have you missed this? You know, to that point, it was funny. She featured me really just in a link list of, she does a link list once a week and picks a bunch of different things that she includes.
00:22:58
Speaker
And what I thought was really fascinating was because she featured me in her link list, then so did a bunch of other people. Oh, interesting. I popped up I'm suddenly getting traffic from, you know, a food writer I've never heard of, a local newsletter in Connecticut I've never heard of, somebody from London. Like, it was that was really interesting.
00:23:18
Speaker
Everybody reads her. And when she features you, I think everybody pays attention. Or if people are paying attention, they're like, oh, I should take a look at that as well. Her judgment is really trusted. Yeah, a real knock on effect. That's interesting. That was really interesting to me. yeah Yeah. So you start the first half of its life.
00:23:38
Speaker
you're You're really still focused on the memoir. And this is like more pursuant of how do I get this book published? You hit 1000 followers, and it just shifts something and your content starts getting a little more traction, you find yourself having a few strokes of really good luck where good luck's not the right way to express it, but like people picked up on the good stuff you were putting out there and it, you, it shifted your perspective and you're like, actually, this is an incredible type of writing. I have an audience. I'm getting to say exactly what I want. I'm getting to get real time feedback. It all sounds. and And that's the track. And that's been the last 18 months or so is just like really consistent growth. And you found your, i think,
00:24:22
Speaker
I want to talk a little bit about, one, it seems like just being in process, being present with your experience of it, be doubling down and trusting what was it like interesting to you from a writing perspective, but also like allowing yourself to evolve a little and be like, actually, this newsletter is not what I thought it was. It's something more serious, and I'm gonna let myself like lean into that. There's so much there that I think is really helpful. And I also have to say, I presume for some people listening might feel this way too. It's so nice to always hear success stories that it's not like you started a sub stack and ah over the course of two months, it blew up and you got all this stuff. It was a whole process and a journey for you and you're four years in. I appreciate you sharing the whole story. And I think a lot of people are going to hear that be like,
00:25:10
Speaker
Oh, that's good news for me, maybe. I'm a huge fan of How I Built This podcast. And when I listen to those stories, those are hugely successful companies by the time they get to How I Built This. But there's usually like decades of failure and grind and like divorce and all sorts of things that, that happen on that journey too. So it's funny because I've listened to that so much. I'm like 18 months, two years, that's nothing. Like this is going to take me 20 years. I'm doing this forever. Like when when I finally get to how I built this, Oh, look, the idea of an overnight success is so amazing.
Strategies for Audience Building
00:25:53
Speaker
And that I think that fantasy was dispelled for me with the book.
00:25:56
Speaker
Like, cause like I was like, I wrote a book here, publish it. And The publishing industry was like, no, if you just don't, it doesn't work that way. um But it does work that way for some people. The other thing that I wanted to say though, I think it's really important also to add Joanna Goddard did not discover me by accident. At the point when she found me, i had wised up to the fact that Substack has many opportunities for small people to get noticed by big people. And one of the ways you can get noticed is by subscribing and paying to newsletters and then getting active in the comments section, restacking their posts. You got to write thoughtful comments. Sometimes i've I've tried to be the first one to comment because you know a writer is going notice that. Yeah.
00:26:43
Speaker
I met somebody, I met Jenny Rosenstrack who writes Dinner, A Love Story last week. Oh yes, we love that. Yeah, yeah. And she's been blogging for a long time. and It was funny, I met her at a networking event last week and I introduced myself and she said, wait, I know you.
00:26:58
Speaker
you often comment on my posts. And I was like, oh my God, Jenny, you do? That's crazy. And she was like, look, you never forget the people that comment. and i And I think that's a really good thing, especially for starting out writers to know. And that is how Joanna Goddard found me. I commented on every post and she probably noticed that I had a newsletter, like moseyed along, whatever. So that, and then the other thing I forgot to say that was a really big moment for me was After that, still after that, after I got featured on Cup of Joe, a few months later, it changed the name because I was still calling it, I was calling it Some Happy Scribbles, which was derived from the scribble pad. I changed it to Happy On Purpose, which is a much better name. I felt much more proud of, confident in that it telegraphed what the newsletter is really about.
00:27:52
Speaker
And I think that honestly, I think the name makes a big difference as well. And I do think people should know and not be afraid to change their name if they feel like the name of their newsletter does not represent them well. I was nervous to do it, but so what? it was It was the right thing to do. And it has really made a big difference. I've received so much positive feedback on the name.
00:28:11
Speaker
Okay. i Thank you for saying all that. I kind of want to I feel like i want to pick your brain in two directions. Sure. One, I want to ask you for more sub stack tips like that because I lot of people listening will like them and like, I'm like, oh yeah, that's genius. Why didn't I think of that? It's actually really similar to some LinkedIn strategies actually. Yeah. Engage with the people you want to become your clients or to be aware of you. And then second,
00:28:33
Speaker
I want to make sure to try and save some time to dig into your wisdom and like what you have found and what you're reporting on around happiness and midlife. So maybe if we could stick with tips and tricks for a bit, if you're comfortable to share, and I know you've written stuff about how to have success on Substack essentially, or what you've learned after read writing for so long.
00:28:53
Speaker
If someone came to you and they were maybe approaching that thousand follower count moment, but they really wanted to grow, how would you advise them? And I know it's probably complex because it depends on the subject and the audience. but i think the I think that it's been true always of media. And I think for me, it's true that the first thing is the quality of your content. And that I also think that you need to be, if somebody has already gotten to the thousand subscriber point, they probably have a pretty good sense of what they're doing in terms of content and consistency and how often they're publishing and all that sort of thing. i think...
00:29:35
Speaker
The big thing I've learned probably in the last year is that if I want to grow my newsletter, it is not gonna happen by accident. um Every now and again, you get lucky and that's amazing. But for the most part, like the story I told about Joanna Goddard, you get discovered because you're doing something to put your work in front of other people.
Practical Tips for Newsletter Growth
00:29:58
Speaker
And I think Substack in particular,
00:30:01
Speaker
unlike most other email service providers, it's certainly that I know of, does provide this kind of networking ability within notes. And because you can see how big people's subscriber accounts are for the most part and where people sit on various leaderboards. So you can strategically subscribe to and pay for anybody you want to emulate. You can watch really closely what they do, where they place from, from,
00:30:31
Speaker
how they ask people to comment, you know, what questions they pose to where they place their subscribe and share buttons to how often they publish to how they structure their paid offering. i think the other thing that's really important on Substack is that you should just have that paid option turned on from the beginning, even if you mostly want to offer free content. Free content is the thing that helps you grow, of course, because it's easily accessible and shareable. But Substack uniquely...
00:31:00
Speaker
is a business and gets paid when people pay for subscriptions. And so they, you can only get on a Substack leaderboard if you have a paid publication. Get out of town. That makes so much sense when you say it. I didn't know that.
00:31:16
Speaker
It's funny, i suspected it. I think people are now freely talking about it, but it wasn't, it's not publicized. Like Substack doesn't, as far as I remember, I haven't looked at their help pages recently, but I don't think that they tell you that. they But I think if you have no chance of getting discovered. I also might, I suspect that your discoverability just in that notes algorithm, if you're a paid publication, I would just assume you go into a different,
00:31:43
Speaker
Shoot. with substance and they know And I think Instagram does the same thing as I understand. like they're only going to show a certain amount of your content to your subscribers unless you start boosting and paying and doing all the things they want you to do to help them make money. So that's another thing about Substack. You've got to have... Even if you keep the majority of your content free, you got to turn on paid. If you want to take advantage of that discoverability that they have, if you don't, it doesn't matter. I also think notes, Substack is really pushing notes as
00:32:19
Speaker
a place that people should be. If people listening don't know what it is, it's sub stacks, Twitter clone, similar to threads on Instagram. It's mainly text-based. You can post images in video. I actually find video won't upload to it, but maybe other people have success with that. I think Longtime sub stackers are disappointed in it you Wish that sub stack wasn't turning into a little bit of a social media thing. But I think if you're small, um it gives you an opportunity to interact with other writers who are bigger. If a bigger writer posts something to notes and you comment on it, you have an opportunity to interact with them there in the comments. In addition to commenting on a post, you can stack their post and write something thoughtful of your own above it and maybe their audience will see that as well as your audience. I don't, nobody really knows what Substack is doing behind the scenes, of course. And I think that they're changing that all of the time as well. yeah But when I just looked over the last 90 days, 10% of my new subscribers have come from Substack notes. And that is a function. That's me doing it every day. a lot of the time, here's what I do and works for me on notes that may be helpful for people listening. i
00:33:32
Speaker
have found for me, What works is simply restacking my own posts with a one-line summary or description of what it's about, like almost like a one-line headline, as as enticing as I can make it. And then, of course, the post itself is attached right underneath with its thumbnail image and with its original headline. i do that effective.
00:33:55
Speaker
I also take popular posts that I've written. yeah I respect them to sub to to notes and I literally say, this is my most popular post.
00:34:06
Speaker
And that is successful. Surprisingly, it's a very simple thing to do. Even, even when I was even pre 10,000 subscribers, like myself, even at 13,000, that's not like the most impressive subscriber list compared to other people on Substack. But um I just think it it raises the curiosity factor with a reader who's scrolling through. They're like, oh, that was popular. I want to see what that was. yeah yeah We're all intrigued by what's popular. Sometimes I'll vary that and say, this one's got a lot of comments. It's a great comment section. But what I find works best is usually like, this was the most popular of the year. This is the most popular of the month. This is the most popular ever. And I keep doing it over and over again with the same posts and I still get a good reaction. That's been effective for me. I know there are posts on Substack that you can search and find about what works on notes and other people have had other things be successful and go viral. The other thing that I just want to point out on notes that is fascinating to me
00:35:08
Speaker
Before Substack provided much in the way of backend stats on what was happening with notes, I couldn't understand. Like about six months ago, was like, where are these new subscribers coming from? It was making no sense to me. I could not understand where they were coming from. Then Substack added a new feature where you can actually see how many people are clicking on and subscribing from notes that you've posted.
00:35:32
Speaker
Because what I find shocking and bizarre is that many of my notes that might only have 20 or 25 likes may have gotten 200 subscribers.
00:35:43
Speaker
But no, that's invisible. Invisible. And I would not think that a post with 20 likes would equate to 200 subscribers. Some posts I have with 20 likes have gotten no subscribers. Like, it this is, I don't understand. there you go. Yeah.
00:35:57
Speaker
That's fantastic. I was taking notes as you talked. It's funny. It is reminding me so much of the science of LinkedIn in some ways too. Like we have, there are nine major post types that MedBerry uses for our client base. And it's kind of like, these are the archetypes and structures. And when you're talking about that, when you're like, take your most, like a top performing newsletter,
00:36:15
Speaker
restack it with this note. I'm like, the tricks are there. The things are on the algorithm or not tricks. I suppose tricks makes it seem cheap, but really it's just strategies and understanding it. And what you just said is so interesting too. I'd say it's an obvious thing. It's so strange about social in general, but certainly like I could think of a lot of client posts we've put out where the engagement was actually pretty low, but then eight people signed up for the webinar we talked about and like the funny behavior that happens. Yeah. it's fascinating and Yeah. I find it interesting too. And actually it's one of the things I enjoy about
00:36:48
Speaker
learning how to write and grow a newsletter. Like some of this minutiae of like human behavior and psychology is just fascinating to me. Yes. In what makes people, what makes something popular, what makes people click, what makes people follow. And the other thing, i actually think I forgot to say this in the post that I wrote about my lessons learned. But the other thing i would say about notes is,
00:37:11
Speaker
I find that the subscribers I get from notes are high quality subscribers. They're already on Substack. They're looking for things to read. They're coming from a post. I'm pretty much always reposting an entire post. So they're clicking on that, reading it, then subscribing.
00:37:26
Speaker
But I know there's a lot of other people have gone viral with notes that are just text, like hot takes basically. And I don't know, but I wonder how durable those subscribers are because they're subscribing from a hot take not from an entire post you've written.
00:37:43
Speaker
Maybe they don't know what your newsletter is about. This is just a hypothesis. I don't really know, but I'm in it for like steady, slow growth if they're more durable and they're the people that really want to read what I'm writing. I have not, I think, to my knowledge, i by my by my standards, gone viral in any way ever. And And I think that there's some benefits to the slow, steady thing over going viral. And then maybe you go viral and get a thousand or hundred thousand, and then maybe you'll lose 80.
00:38:12
Speaker
That would make me so sad. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. you No, it's maybe I'm just projecting, but I'm like, oh, you're as much of a, you're as fascinated with the art and science of Substack as like I am with the LinkedIn side. And I'm like, oh, I see a Substack wormhole in my future. I'm going to be going to wrap up on that. It's funny. Once you've been immersed in it for a few years, if you do immerse yourself in it, it's fascinating. yeah it's It's people doing people things. It's so interesting.
Substack's Evolution and Strengths
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Incredible. All right. These are such incredible Tips, any before we move on to midlife, yeah anything else that you feel like you'd really want to say as a bit of Substack advice?
00:38:52
Speaker
Well, i yeah, I think it's hard and slow unless you're an overnight viral success, which, you know, Godspeed, that does not happen very often. i think it's definitely, i don't know what people's preconceptions are about Substack. I think now that it's well known, when I first started four years ago, if I told anybody i was on Substack, they would look at me blankly. I feel like when it was mentioned in that episode of Succession in the final season, i think it was the final season, people still didn't know what Substack, broadly, people didn't know what it was. People in the media did, of course.
00:39:30
Speaker
But now everybody knows what Substack is and almost everybody I know who has a Substack profile and is reading something on Substack. yeah But I think that that there might be a misconception that it's easy or that you have to be there. I think the other thing you know is just because it seems like everyone's on Substack does not mean that everyone should be on Substack. It's just an email service provider. just It's just a platform for writing a newsletter and also a blog. And i I think that there are competitors in other options. And I think that LinkedIn actually has a pretty robust newsletter feature that I've heard of. And for many people, that may be all they need. They're already on LinkedIn. Their profile is there. Their business is something else. The newsletter is just like an additional thing that they want to do. So I think that would be one other thing I would say, just because it's hot doesn't mean you have to be on it.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And I feel like too, there's a lot of conversations lately. Like I know Amy O'Dell recently left for Beehive. She was like one of the OG fashion writers on it. A few other big folks have left for Beehive.
00:40:41
Speaker
And so I feel like there's a lot of conversation i conversation happening there. I will say from For some of our B2B clients, one of our clients, one of the main goals of our work with him on LinkedIn is he has a Beehive newsletter with 100K subscribers. And we're trying to draw awareness, attract more subscribers. And Beehive lets you pixel pages so you can run paid ads to them if you want. And if people don't convert, you can retarget them. And I think from a B2B perspective, Beehive might, it like there's a lot of benefits there.
00:41:14
Speaker
Substack to me and so much more than I do about it. But it definitely feels more like B2C community building focus, long term writer, audience relationship building. I think that's right. And I think what I've got an eye on Beehive as well, actually, other people have moved to Ghost. adam a future ghost Should I look that up You know, I don't know much about Ghost either, actually. I haven't looked. I have looked more closely at Beehive, mainly because my understanding is that it's monetization, like the ad network that you mentioned, is so much stronger.
00:41:46
Speaker
I think Substack is going to do something like that. Beehive also has better formatting options, which I care about how my newsletter looks, and that's important to me as well. Substack has very basic formatting options. You have to make it up yourself in Canva. Um, the ad network is really interesting on Beehive. have, what I've heard is that Beehive is better for growth. I don't know why, and I don't know how, and I'm still trying to figure out whether that's true. I i don't know. I think Substack works the best for media people with, and in that I include authors, public pre-published authors or celebrities with an established following. i yeah yeah That's what I've seen on Substack. For someone like me who's an unknown, it is a steep uphill climb and you almost need to be taken under the wing by one of those people with a much bigger following. And so on the other hand, Substack gives you the opportunity to build relationships with those people, which you as an unknown otherwise wouldn't get. So it it offers opportunities, but coming with a large audience is a huge head start, especially if you're trying to sell other products like you've
00:42:56
Speaker
Or what would you'd be very successful on Substack are established journalists who don't want to work for a big media organization anymore. They want to get paid directly by their readers and their readers are willing to do it. I think that was really the heart of Substack's mission at the beginning. And I think that is actually pretty successful. if But again, you've got to be pretty big for that to work out financially. feel like Maybe I'm like, maybe we eat medbury should do this. I'm like, one needs to create a chart of some kind that these are all the different options, pros and cons. Here's the flow chart to pick the platform that's right for you. I actually think that would be really helpful with people who haven't started a newsletter yet and are thinking about doing it because everybody's doing it for a different reason. Yeah.
00:43:39
Speaker
Thank you for being so generous with everything you've learned here. I could pick your brain about this for hours and I'm so appreciative of everything you just shared. I bet folks listening are taking notes
Key Themes in the Newsletter
00:43:50
Speaker
too. But now in like our last little stretch together, i want to talk about the topics that you're writing about and this theme that you're centering around on how to like, to be happy on purpose. I love the title. I love the title change too.
00:44:04
Speaker
And like, how can you, I don't even know how to frame this question, I suppose. As you are writing about happiness in midlife, what are the themes that you keep circling and what's the advice that you find yourself giving over and over, maybe in different ways, but like, you're like, this is the heart of it, guys, pay attention.
00:44:22
Speaker
Oh gosh, it's funny. i One of the things that I love about doing it is that I am my own kind of like research you know rabbit. I'm like my own little kind of lab and I try things out.
00:44:36
Speaker
And if they work for me, or if I hear about something working for someone else and I try it out and then I write about it. So every week for my, I have my newsletter is weekly for my paid subscribers. That has been a fairly recent change. And I try to every week, that's a happiness hack or advice and time tested proven last weeks. I think to answer to really answer your question, what I circle back to over and over again, because I'm mostly writing for women the,
00:45:06
Speaker
giving people, myself and my readers, permission to be ourselves, to do what makes us happy, to prioritize what matters most, and to live a fulfilling life according to what we want. And I think that culture is changing, but the way many of us, especially in Gen X, were brought up was to do what we were told to follow established paths, And that if you were different and something that worked for everybody else didn't work for you, then there was something wrong with you. And I think that one of the great things about midlife, when you know you're in it because you're like, I just don't care anymore. I know enough to know what I like and what I don't like.
00:45:53
Speaker
And I'm going to give myself permission to just do it or not do it, whatever the case may be. I think the other thing that really surprises me about the posts that end up being most popular are what seems to be a craving for common sense advice. Like I'm often talking about the importance of maintaining good boundaries in a variety of different ways. Last week, I talked about how to say no.
00:46:22
Speaker
Like people will say no is a complete sentence. I gave an example using a reader quote about how somebody had said a very clear no without excuse and how that made the recipient of that no feel so much better. They didn't feel like they were imposing. Next time they asked, they knew that it wasn't, they would get a clear no if the answer was no. There was no weird guilt or kind of like negotiation or kind of murky feelings. And I think that that's, it's not basic advice, but it's, I'm just surprised at how often what we want to hear is, yes, it's okay to go to bed early.
00:46:58
Speaker
No, you don't have to read a book you don't want to. yes You don't have to read it to the end if you don't like it. You just don't. you You don't have to watch that TV show just because everybody's talking about it. You can be perfectly happy as a stay-at-home mom or a full-time working person. You don't have to have kids or you can't. I think that I'm really surprised by how often what resonates is permission to be and do what you want to be. Yeah.
00:47:24
Speaker
Pretty common sense. advice, like put put relationships first. It's going to be the thing that makes you most happy. Yeah. As you're saying that, I'm thinking of all the ways where I feel relief when someone says something. when I'm talking to a friend, and I'm like, I don't want to finish this book. And if they're like, you don't have to, I'm like, what what? But it's, of course, I know that it's, and it is true. I wonder, it's like, there's something within us that if there's There are certain things that we're so likely to question if our instinct or our preference is wrong or bad. And it's so nice when someone just says, yeah, if you want to go to bed at 930, love that for you. Good job. Like you're it's not a moral failing. what's it's Yeah.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah. No, it's, I really feel like that's the advice that I'm giving quite a bit and people like it and I need it. I need constant reminders of all of this sort of thing as well. And to give myself permission. what At the heart of it, is there like a deeper theme around telling people it's okay to do what they want as long as it's not hurting anybody, telling people it's okay to trust themselves, telling people their preferences are valid and that other people don't know better? That's like the themes I feel like.
00:48:34
Speaker
I don't know. is there anything else there? I think if I was writing for an audience of men, it would be different than men in midlife. I think the themes I circle back to a lot are These ideas of permission to be yourself and to be your most fulfilled, happiest self, to prioritize the things that you know are most meaningful for you.
00:48:51
Speaker
And those things are always good things. They're usually our families, our friends, our health. our own emotional wellbeing. So it's, but it can be easy to get pulled away from those things because of the demands of other people. And because these days of the demands of technology, which can feel really urgent and important. And I really not. And we all lived without before they came along. um I think that is probably the theme. Another big theme that's close to my heart and was very much the theme of the book that I wrote is, and I hope it comes through.
00:49:25
Speaker
in my newsletter is permission to feel your feelings and not judge them as well. It's related to what we've just been talking about, but I think we often learn in childhood and some of us do this with our kids as well. I know I'm guilty of it. of They say I'm hungry and we say, you can't be hungry. You just had lunch. Like yeah it's it's little and it's it's not that big a deal to say that. A lifetime of being told that you're not hungry when you are hungry or you're not cold when you are cold or you're not tired when you are tired or you should do this work because it's a good thing to do and everybody wants you to. a lifetime of that, I think, adds up to an inability to know who you are and what you want. So I hope that comes through as a theme as well.
00:50:13
Speaker
right. I'm so great. I know we're over time. Thank you for being so generous with your advice, for for your tips and for these themes. I feel like I know I've read some of your stuff, but I can't wait to go back and read all of it now. Can i so we will put the link to your sub stack in the show notes. Is there anywhere else that you'd want to send people if they're really curious to read more and get to know you more?
00:50:37
Speaker
No, until the memoir is published, it is sub stack and a sub stack. So I would love, i hope to see your readers there. and And if anybody does subscribe because they listen to this, then let us know. Thank you so much. I also have to call out before we end, you're wearing the most amazing sweater that says Amelia rating on it. and I should have led with that.
00:50:58
Speaker
My next one that I'm going to get is going to say happy on purpose. Ameliorating is also when I fantasized about being writer. I think I was fantasizing about being a writer my whole life. I also, I love the idea of my name is Amelia. Ameliorating means to make things better. I love the idea. That's my life's mission.
00:51:14
Speaker
So I was, this was my Christmas present to myself. I myself i love it. It's one of my favorite words. And I feel like people don't use it enough. I wanted to call the newsletter ameliorating, but everybody told me that nobody could say it or spell it and didn't know what i was talking about.
00:51:28
Speaker
Thank you so much. great. So glad to know you and grateful for your time. Thank you for having me, Meredith. This has been super fun.