This is a podcast by Helen Redfern and Claire Holden.
Hello and welcome to our fourth episode of our podcast about our Substack journey.
Today we are talking about (and it’s another bumper one - we do like to talk!):
How we have both got on on Substack during the month of April.
How we learn from the art of doing.
We quote a number of times from
’s Show Your Work.How we focus on the disappointments or the ‘failures’ when, in reality, we’re doing so much better than it feels. (And they’re not actually failures - but lessons we can learn from.)
Claire talks about feeling grief when she released her last post to the world. (It was this one.)
We also discuss the pressure Claire has put on herself and how she will be changing that going forward.
Helen, after struggling with pain for much of the month, wasn’t happy with her April masterclass and is considering re-doing it. We discuss pressure we put on ourselves when we’re not fully up to it.
We talk a little about marketing our Substack. How can we do this in a way that suits us and our creativity?
And the launch of Substack Notes. How do we feel about this additional feature?
Plus lots more.
Claire and I are feeling our way forward with the Substack platform and could talk about it for hours. Do let us know in the comments how your Substack journey is going or how you feel about some of the issues we’ve mentioned.
Links to items we mentioned:
Helen’s piece that refers to her car accident and her piece about Substack Notes.
Claire’s piece about Ali Smith.
Our Substack Story is a podcast about our progress on the relatively new medium of Substack. What works, what doesn’t. How we grow, the mindset issues we struggle with and how we hone in on what we want to write about. Plus the often icky subject of money and charging for subscriptions.
Helen has been on Substack since June 2022. And Claire launched her Substack in January 2023.
We are both coming to Substack from different places. Helen has around 15,000 followers on Instagram, a small YouTube channel and a previous mailing list. Claire has a smaller Instagram with no previous newsletter.
We want to share how we get on with Substack, how we use the platform, how we use it as a place to share our writing, how we grow subscribers, create a community, and hopefully make an income. At the same time as writing our books and, in Helen’s case, creating videos on YouTube.
If you are launching your Substack, or thinking about it, or if you’ve been on here for a while we would love you to join in and share your experiences.
Our Substack Story: APRIL Reflections | Episode Four