Last week I told you what happened. 113 women joined the paid tier of my Substack in 11 days, and it generated $14,000. Most of them came from my list. Not brand-new people who found me because I went viral or the algorithm discovered me.
This week I want to talk about why. And why this is great news, especially if you’re a woman near or over 50, working to get your legacy work out into the world.
Want to learn how to leverage Substack without playing the visibility game on Notes? Without trying to get found & discovered?
Come to my next workshop and I’m walking you through exactly how I ran an 11-day micro launch. 113 women joined our paid tiers — and almost none of them came from the Substack app. On October 7th
Hopefully I’ve been cuckoo enough about Substack to bring you over there with me, because it’s so powerful and so simple. And Instagram has become an insane reality TV show, and not a good one, for women in business right now. I just can’t. If the latest season of Instagram has given you the same vibe it’s given me, which is enough already, come on over.
Let’s get to work. Let’s serve people. Let’s do our legacy work instead of this ego-driven content, trying to get an algorithm to recognize us. If you’re reading this, I know you’re done with those games too. You want to create the way you want to create. You don’t want to create for an algorithm. You don’t want to create because “this is the kind of content that’s doing well on Instagram right now.” You want to talk about the things you want to talk about.
So here’s what I want to talk about today: nurture. Relationship. Creating enough value that people can’t get enough of you. They’re magnetized. They want to come into your world, they want more from you, they want to listen to what you have to say.
Nobody wants to talk about this.
What I was taught ten years ago
When I came into this space ten years ago, I was like, oh man. I can’t just say what I want. I can’t just create the content I want. There has to be a hook. I can remember being taught: don’t give away your best stuff. Don’t just keep giving value. You need a better way to hook people in.
And I was like, ew. That’s not what I’m trying to do. And I know it’s not what you’re trying to do either. We’re not trying to play and win the internet marketing game. We’re so put off by it.
But we’ve fallen victim to it too. Because we want so badly for our perspective, our convictions, the value we have to give, to get out into the world. And we want it so badly that we fall for the hooks, and the internet marketers who are really, really good at being internet marketers.
So here’s the question I want to lay in front of you.
Do you want to be an internet marketer? Or do you want to be a transformational writer, speaker, author, mentor, guide?
Those are very different careers. Very different pathways.
The internet marketers are making millions, many of them, yes, because they’re really good at internet marketing. But they’re in constant churn. They make the sale and bring people in, but they don’t retain the relationship. People spit out the other side. High churn rates, high refund rates, a constant battle of perfecting funnels and ad copy and all the front-end stuff to bring people in. And very, very little on the back end to nurture, retain, create relationships, create clients for life.
You have to choose which battle you’re trying to win.
The battle I’m trying to win is not to become the next greatest internet marketer. What I’m trying to do is help women change their lives with the IGNITE Her Frequencies. I’m here to help women find their voice and put it out into the world, whether that’s podcasting, writing, books, Substack, programs, communities. That’s my life’s work: helping them do their life’s work.
So ask yourself: are you investing your time, your money, your focus in getting better at your life’s work? Or are you spending it trying to get better at internet marketing?
Why I list-build on Substack
If you’re sticking with who you’re here to talk to, and you’re giving value, and people are coming onto your list, I hope it’s through Substack, because I think Substack is the best list builder out there.
Quick reminder from last week: you can list-build on Substack through Instagram, through YouTube, through ads, through podcasting. When I say list-build on Substack, I am not saying your people need to be on Substack. They don’t. They get it in their email.
But when you list-build through Substack, you get something really important. You’re building a list and nurturing it with long-form, valuable content that creates a deeper connection with your people. And it repels the people who aren’t your people, which is also what we want.
We never wanted to be internet marketers. We never wanted to master ClickFunnels. We didn’t come into this to become seven-figure empire builders because we mastered internet marketing. We came into doing our work this way because we want to help people. Not help people once with one little thing they paid us for and move on to the next. We want to help people for the long term.
The rabbits and the gold rush
Here’s something I’m watching. People paying for information is going to keep dying off. You can find out pretty much anything you need to know from Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini. So what do internet marketers do to survive? They find the next gold rush and go all in with their internet marketing skills. Right now, that’s AI. They watched where the puck went, and now they’re using their skills to make millions again in that space. And they all become affiliates of each other’s gold rush, so it gets really loud.
I’m not saying it’s wrong. It works. It makes people millions. My question is: is that what you want?
It’s not what I want. I know it so deeply that I haven’t built that model in ten years. And if you’re reading this, there’s a 99% chance it’s not what you want either.
What we want is to do our life’s work, develop relationships, build community. Right now, community is everything. Community, and the ability for people to grow and transform on their own terms without needing a master coach or guru to tell them all the things. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about people learning to trust their intuition. It’s about relationships and depth of content that makes people feel something. Internet marketing goes after the masses. What we’re doing goes after connecting with our people, our tribe.
But we have to be discerning. If you have too many internet marketers in your world, in your ears, in your podcasts, in your ads, you will get sucked down the rabbit holes they’re promoting. I did this for years. Years. Even if the thing is good, even if they did a great job on it, it sends us down a rabbit hole of distraction and takes us off course from what we’re actually here to do.
We are going to be the tortoises
You may not want to hear this. We are going to be the tortoises, and the internet marketers are going to be the hares.
They’re fast. They capitalize on a fast-growing part of the market with their skills. But they have to always be the rabbit. They always have to find the new, because they’re not developing the deep relationships on the back end. Constant new, constant churn, constant filling the front of the funnel. That’s fine if that’s the game you want to play. For most of us, it’s not our life’s work.
I have been a tortoise for ten years, and I’m proud of it. As the tortoise, we are slow and steady, giving value, developing relationships and community, deep brand loyalty and trust, clients for life, retention, depth.
My focus for the last two-plus years has been building the right team on the back end of the business, not the front. Most internet marketers have a team on the front end: the marketing engine, the sales engine. The tortoises have their team on the back end. On delivery. On retention. On building communities that last.
It’s not easy. When you’re the tortoise and every hare is flying past you to win the race, it can mess with your ego. And then I want to go down the rabbit hole with them. I have to remember to be a tortoise. Maybe you need to hear that too.
We’re in it for the long game. I’m in it until I die. My mentor, my absolute example of the life I want to live, is Bob Proctor. He did the work he wanted to do until he was 87. He was a tortoise. What he talked about in 1983 is what he was talking about in 2021, and he had loyal readers and a community for decades. That’s what I want.
I’m even watching people who have real depth, things they want to share and be in the world, fall prey to the fast buck. Instead of delivering transformational work, they’re selling protein powder. You know what I’m saying? I’m very opinionated about this right now because I want to help my people not go down those rabbit holes. Put the blinders on. Focus on what’s right in front of you and the people in front of you.
The tortoise numbers
I love facts. I love data. So here’s what this last micro launch showed me.
113 women joined the paid tier of my Substack. 73% of them were already on my list, the email list I’ve been building through Substack. Most of them had been there for months. The single biggest group that bought had been on my list for over six months. I love that fact.
And my best-selling post: one podcast article. I love that on Substack you create a podcast and an article and it becomes a web page you can run ads to. That one piece of content brought 44 women into my paid tier. That has never happened, ever, in nine years on Instagram. And 92% of the women who consumed that post came from email. They got an email that it was available, it looked interesting, they opened it, they consumed it.
That’s tortoise content. It takes a little longer to create, but it lives on. Substack is a tortoise platform. Instagram is a rabbit platform. The content disappears in two seconds and you’re back on the hamster wheel. On Substack it sticks around and you can keep driving traffic to it.
Here’s another factoid from the rabbit world. In internet marketing, the numbers go like this: list build, list build, list build. Get as many people on your list as possible, and about 1 to 2%, maybe 2.5% if you’re good, will ever buy from you. So I’m going to put all this money and time and energy into constant list building... for 1 to 2% to buy? That’s a rabbit move.
Here’s my math. As I write this, I have 10,153 total subscribers on Substack, and 1,169 of them are paid. That’s eleven and a half percent of my list that is a paying customer. Versus 1 to 2.5% in the rabbit world.
And I have a list double that size over on Kajabi, over 20,000 people. When I was doing regular emails the way the internet marketers teach, nothing was happening. No one was buying between launches. I’d have to do a big, concerted effort to get anyone on that list to move. On Substack I’ve been building a different strategy, long form for the long haul, and 10,000 versus 20,000, eleven and a half percent have converted. That’s a huge difference.
Scaling with intimacy
Even me writing this, my ego, my type-A competitive nature, wants to be the super-fast-growing one, two to twenty million in a year or whatever. And then I’m like, no. No, I don’t. Because if something’s going to break on the back end with the people, I don’t want it.
For several years now my focus has been scaling with intimacy. Scaling with delivery only improving, not breaking. It’s why everyone on my team is after the sale. I’m a marketing department of one right now (I’m working to change that), and my entire team is on the back end. We had our quarterly meeting last Thursday and one of the things we’re working on is making the client journey after the sale even more top-notch than it is. One of our team members came from hospitality; she worked in marketing at the Ritz. Client service and excellence first, no matter what.
And it’s paying off. We just had our highest retention rate ever on our September renewals. It’s because we’re willing to be the tortoise.
Information is information. What people are going to buy now is being part of your community, being part of something with you, a movement. And people are going to crave being part of a tortoise’s world a lot more than a rabbit’s world. Just saying.
So, which race are you in?
Do you want to be the tortoise or the hare? An internet marketer, or a transformational leader creating value-driven content that lives on, with a long tail? What race are you in?
Something to ponder. And something to be careful about as you think about what you’re consuming and what you’re letting into your brain. Remember what game you’re in. Remember that the end game is to do our life’s work and serve.
I hope this gave you some permission to be a tortoise with me. It’s something I’m keeping myself on track with. Maybe we can keep each other on track.
Next Wednesday, October 7, at 12pm Eastern, I’m teaching all of this live on Substack.
The micro launch strategy, nurture, list building on Substack, how to actually make money from a list, and how to build a list of the right people.
It’s for paid subscribers. Learn more here!
If you’re reading this for free, welcome. You don’t have to be on Substack to get the value; it lands in your email every week. Make sure you’re subscribed, because the next one is about how I’m using my own Claude to build out my team, and why I’m not buying another course to learn it. It’s going to blow your mind.
And if you have your own strong convictions about this, share it. Tell me what your experience has been.
xo, Julie
