What would happen if... I focused all my attention on Substack?

This morning, I miraculously had a second to sit down and eat my breakfast while the kids were quietly playing. (Who am I right??)

As a fellow mompreneur you know how it is… The day hasn’t even started yet and a million thoughts are swimming through my head. So instead of drowning in them- I thought, I'm just going to pull out my notebook and write them all down.

Here’s what came out:

I’ve been feeling SO GOOD about Substack.

I've been connecting with people here, learning more about the platform, your feedback from the first episode has been so great, and the more people I talk to, the more I'm falling in love with this space.

I was reading this article by Hunter Burgtorf and she hit straight on it for me:

“When I started, I remember having this overwhelming feeling of, “I need to be in this space and write” and not much else.”

Substack is something that once you start to see it. You can't unsee it. You get so excited about it and you can't put a finger on why but it just has this energy behind it of *this is something.*

Last night I tried to take that first substack post I did and turn it into IG carousels- I thought “this should make for easy work.” (Feel free to chuckle along here 🤣)

It felt HARD. So I went to Etsy to buy some templates to see if that would make it easier but all I kept coming back to was:

Why am I on Instagram? What am I doing there?

Prompting my next question: What would happen if, I focused all my attention on Substack?

What would happen if, I focused all my attention on Substack?

If I focused on connecting there, learning the platform, creating there, and podcasting there (specifically if I play with the difference between podcasting through Substack vs. podcasting and then having to share it to a bunch of other places.) What would that look like?

Even just saying that: “What would happen if I focused all of my attention on Substack?” feels different, right? My mindset, the way I'm spending my time, all of that would streamline if I only show up in one place.

…. That's one part of my mind.

Meanwhile the other side is like, “Oh no, gut check, scarcity, fear, fear of failure, abort!” We've been conditioned that social is where you go, and that's where your “people are.”

So…..

Would I need to post on social?

If I only focus on Substack, would I still need an outside source to call people's attention to what I'm doing?

I gave myself some options here (a Rory Gilmore pro/con list of sorts):

Option A: Post a Reel like a Pinterest Pin about what I shared on Substack + 9 Grid

I saw this person do a reel with text on it like a Pinterest pin- it made me think: “Ooooh, that would be a really cool way to share my Substack with the least amount of steps.”

Pair that with a 9 grid so people can easily see what I do- and maybe I’d be good to go?

If you're not familiar, with a 9 grid/Instagram puzzle template- basically for at least 9 squares (a lot of these templates were actually 18, which felt like a little bit too much to me) you can make your regular profile page on Instagram look like your website. You post these 9 images in a specific order so they look like one cohesive image, sharing all of your basic information like: who you are, what you're about, and how you can help them. The theory is you just have that and then post to Reels and Stories, without worrying about your feed.

Option B: What if I did less? Could I just post a 9 grid and ghost?

What would happen if I literally walked away from social media and only focused my attention on Substack (Plus Pinterest + SEO which we're really focusing on now.)

Option B2/Option C: What if I only posted a 9 grid + Ads to sell our podcast production services

What if I only focused on social as a sales channel and nothing else.

Well…. What's the benefit? Why am I on Instagram? What's the point?

Is it just because I think it's the “only place people are?” Is that why I feel so tied? Like, I have to still have to have some sort of presence. I couldn't just completely walk away and ghost Instagram.

Is that true?

Substack vs. Pinterest vs. Instagram

One of my key phrases is, Is that true? I say it to the kids (+ myself) all the time when they say something like, “I can’t do this.”- Is that true?

So what is the truth?

Substack launched in 2017. And in ‘21 they reported 500,000 paying subscribers (meaning people who are paying to read other people’s Substacks) and 25 million visits. (I would assume that number is much larger now.)

Pinterest, which you can use to get more eyes on your Substack, has 482 million users.

Is it true Instagram is the “only place” people are?

Instagram has 2.4 billion users. But you only have access to what? Less than 5 percent?

So, like 120 million people… less than Substack + Pinterest.

Add in the weight of, feeling like you need to show up constantly for the algorithm, and that you need to perform how Instagram wants vs. just creating how you want.

(That's a big shift that I felt on Substack- it’s a free space to play. i.e. I wrote these notes and now I can sit behind the mic, share them with you and know they're getting out to the people I want them to get out to-in my way. Instead of contorting myself and my message so that it will be fed to my people because it meets Instagram’s standards.)

Instagram also wants you to spend time on the app and it feels like they penalize you if you're not on there as much time. As a mom with young kids, I want a slower business. I don't want to have to be on there all the time… I'm so tired.

I don't like to say it because I don't like to breathe that into existence, but honestly right now I'm tired and I don't want to have to constantly show up just for all these other back end reasons, right?

Which brought me back to, why am I showing up there at all?

Why Show Up on Instagram?

1. Because I have something to share

2. I want to find others who relate to what I share

3. And as a business owner, of course, I want to sell our services and make money for our family so we can live how we want and support other people too.

So what is truly in support of that?

If I'm focused on selling products fast, wouldn't I focus my time, my money, my effort on ads? If I want fast sales wouldn’t it just be a numbers game?

If I'm focused on selling selectively, (because we are only looking for a very small handful of clients) then wouldn't I focus on building relationships and referrals? On that deeper connection?

If I'm focused on selling passively, wouldn't I focus on building a machine? That's the efficiency way, right?

Gut Check Time

Selling fast, for me personally, feels rushed and messy. Not in alignment with my slow living and feminine business vibe. It just didn't feel right.

Selling passively, felt dreamy at first, but I also thought to myself, does it feel clinical? Does it feel too masculine? Where's the soul? Is it like rose colored glasses? Or the grass is always greener? i.e. does passive sound fun in theory, but not as fulfilling in execution?

Relationships and referrals, the connection piece, has always been my thing, so in this moment that's what resonated with me.

So for right now- that looks like me pouring into Substack, doing these recordings, sharing my thoughts, sharing it with you, meeting new people here, having conversations, collaborating- doing all of the things I love to do.

Instagram feels heavy for me. Creating content there, for whatever reason, right now is feeling harder. So what if I let that go- let Collin play with it if he wants, but I get to step back?

Pinterest and SEO that all feels easy and fun knowing I have a solution and when this person searches for it they can find me, we can connect and when they read or listen to what I have to say we realize we're twins and start fangirling over each other.

Join Me On this Experimental Journey

These are my thoughts right now and I’m going to keep documenting them. Maybe you want to join me in our paid community to hear the progress of what it looks like to step away from social and focus on podcasting and sharing on Substack? How we’re implementing this for our clients? Do I end up doing the 9 grid? Do we do ads? Do we do a little bit of everything? What’s working and what do our results look like?

Diving deeper into that feminine business strategy, uncovering: How can we show up and share in a way that feels really effortless and fun to us?

We'll have community with like minded women who are interested in feminine business and living a more slow, intentional, mindful life, we'll have conversation, we'll bring in experts too, and I’ll be able to lay out my plan- letting you see, maybe there's a different way to show up in your business.

So this is me tuning in with myself today. Maybe these questions can help you tune in with yourself too:

1. What would happen if you focused all your attention on (Insert your favorite platform)

2. Would I need to be in these other “should” places if I focused all my attention there?

3. What's the benefit for being in the “should” place?

4. What’s the truth of that “should” place vs. your favorite platform?

I can't wait to hear from you in the comments. Were you able to apply these questions to your business?