Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What if you could save 12+ hours per week in your business? Being a solopreneur sometimes focuses too much on the “solo” part: doing all the jobs, figuring things out yourself, and spending too much time in your business. But we didn’t start out own solo business to spend all of our time at our desk.
We did it because we want freedom: to travel; to spend time with our family; to watch a movie in the middle of a week day. That’s why Streamlined Solopreneur exists.
Each week, host Joe Casabona talks about how you can build a better business through smarter systems and automated processes. He does this by bringing on expert guests, and sharing his own experience from years as a busy solopreneur parent — so that being a solopreneur feels…less solo.
With every episode, you'll get insights, great stories, and 1-3 actions you can take today to improve your business processes and spend your time the way you want.
”Creating and being in the creator economy is a lot of work that people don't see behind the scenes to produce things and make podcasts and edit and all of that. And I think when people understand that they're willing to support the people who do the work.” - Nathalie Lussier
Joe Casabona: Choosing the right platform can feel like an impossible task sometimes. There are so many options from services to creating your own website and “owning your own platform”. How do you choose?
Well, today's guest, Nathalie Lussier and I have been around the block. She has been blogging for over 15 years, and she owns a popular WordPress-based LMS called AccessAlly. And I have tried dozens of platforms for LMS’s and memberships, including ones that I've built myself. So it was interesting timing when we both decided to start publishing on Substack in late November, early December.
Today, we're going to trade notes going over why we decided to move to Substack. What the migration process was like and what we like and dislike about the platform.
For members, we'll discuss our timing to move within the context of a bigger controversy surrounding Substack. You can hear that conversation ad free over at [howibuilt.it/join].
Look for these top takeaways.
- Social media for promoting and growing your work has been going downhill for a while now, but Substack has built in a number of features, like notes and recommendations to incentivize sharing while also staying on the platform. One of the main reasons we both moved there is the network effect.
- One of Substack’s best features is its interoperability. You can easily import email lists content, and even paying subscribers through Stripe. and moving off of Substack is easy too. Everything you can import, you can also export.
- And the best way to leverage substack Network effect is to find your tribe - people who you can work with to restack and recommend and follow on notes. Just like any social network, you shouldn't discount the “social” part.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Natalie. It helped that we were able to exchange notes because we're both so new on the platform and we're both more or less using it for the same thing. Though she did make a very compelling argument for me to do something that I have been hesitant to do. So be sure to look out for that.
You can find Nathalie and all of the show notes that we talk about over at [howibuilt.it/405]. That's[howibuilt.it/join]. You can also become a member there. But for now, let's get into the intro and then the interview.
Hey, everybody. and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps busy solopreneurs and creators grow their business without spending too much time on it. I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and each week I bring you interviews and case studies on how to build a better business through smarter processes, time management, and effective content creation. It's like getting free coaching calls from successful solopreneurs.
By the end of each episode, you'll have 1-3 takeaways you can implement today to stop spending time in your business and more time on your business or with your friends, your family, reading, or however you choose to spend your free time.
Joe Casabona: All right. I am here with Nathalie Lussier, a repeat guest from several years ago. Nathalie, it's good to talk to you again and have you back on the show.
Nathalie Lussier: Likewise, I'm excited to be here, Joe.
Joe Casabona: Same. I think that when we last spoke, we were both pretty heavily in the WordPress space, and I think we were talking about AccessAlly and building software on top of WordPress and stuff like that. And so I suspect you're still doing the AccessAlly stuff, but today we're talking about more creator economy solopreneur stuff, which is cool. Maybe we can start off with that. I said I wouldn't do this, but how are things going with AccessAlly? Is it still your main gig? Do you have a bunch of employees? What's going on there?
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. So it is still my main gig. I think we're a team of nine now, two contractors, and everyone else is full-time and it's going really well. We're still definitely in the WordPress space, and actually this came up as a conversation when I was starting to decide to move my newsletter to Substack. Because the concept was like, wait, is XS a sort of in competition with Substack? 'cause technically it's like a membership. It does take payments, you can have gated content. Is that something that our customers might see us on Substack is ask, you know, Hey, why are you using Substack? Why aren't you using XS for this? And we could definitely dive into my decision on that and then kind of why we decided to go with Substack for the newsletter. But AccessAlly is definitely still a big part of my life and my career basically.
Joe Casabona: I think that's a really interesting thing to touch on maybe first because it feels okay, so some background, like I'm doing some work with you screen, they're sponsoring my YouTube channel and I was talking to them and they're like, so why are you using Substack? And I'm like, well, Substack is like really good for like written stuff, right? And I really think about this a lot 'cause I do have a WordPress site and now I have a Substack and I was writing on Medium and it's like part of like this whole Be Everywhere strategy that I talked about a couple of episodes ago.
It just feels like even since the last time we spoke, which feels like a long time ago, but it's not that long ago, and like internet timeline stuff, there's just been so much more competition, so many different kind of niche tools, right? Like not that long ago, Substack was, Oh, well that's like the thing for journalists right? Now, I feel like it's exploded a little bit more.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah, it definitely has. And I think there's a place for different tools. So I think about people who use Substack. Usually, they also still have a website and they'll also have a YouTube channel, and they'll also have maybe a place where they host courses or some other thing as well, that if they have different parts of their business. So I don't think it's a, I'm moving everything to Substack and I'm never using another tool in my whole life, right? Even though I think some people may do that, but they might decide to branch out later and be like, no, I also wanna offer something off Substack and maybe not give a percentage to Substack as well.
So there's a lot of pieces. To me, Substack is great as a discoverability engine or for networking. I've been calling it long form social media, if that makes sense. And I think people will come to it for different needs. And I think something like AccessAlly is also, we're kind of moving more towards people who wanna sell courses into corporations, into bigger groups and things like that. So I don't see them as competing in my opinion.
Joe Casabona: I would agree with that. And I really like what you said there because this is, again, like something I've wrestled with a lot, you know, like I have a whole like course library that was part of the membership and now I'm like, I should just sell that one off. And how am I gonna manage memberships and am I gonna run it all through Substack? But I have some people over here. It's just, it's a lot. I'm an overthinker to put it nicely, I guess. And so it's something that I really think about maybe a lot, maybe too much. And so when I saw you moved over there, I'm like, I gotta talk to Nathalie. This is gonna be great.
So let's start here. Well, I guess let's move here since we've started already. What were you using before Substack?
Nathalie Lussier: Yes. So I've been sending a newsletter for, I wanna say like 14, 15 years. Really long time. Just weekly emails, you know, to my newsletter. And for most of that I've been using Keep, which was formally Infusionsoft. So that's basically a big contact management system. It does email marketing, email automation, and I still really like Keep and tools like it. And I think there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with like tagging and figuring out, you know, who opens emails, who clicks on emails kicking off different automations based on, you know, what somebody raises their hand for. Or if they haven't opened an email for a long time, what do you do then?
But what we realized, and the reason we decided to make this switch is that my newsletter tends to be not necessarily super AccessAlly related. And I share stuff about living on a farm and I share stuff about, you know, my family and things like that. And a lot of people were staying on my newsletter who maybe aren't ever going to buy AccessAlly and that's fine. But I kind of realized it's not necessarily in benefit to AccessAlly to have this newsletter the way that it is right now. And I also think it could reach a lot more people than how we've been doing things. So, that sort of also informed the idea of kind of splitting it off.
Joe Casabona: I like that because I think this is something that feels like a lot of creators, online business owners are facing right now is the, should I do a brand thing and then a personal thing? Should everything be my personal brand? Should I only focus on the business? Like Jay Clause, he relaunched his own blog that's separate from Creator Science. It's something that I struggle with a lot.
And I know Pat Flynn a couple years ago started to turn smart passive income into not Pat Flynn. And now like I think it's mostly run by other people and it's really interesting, right? Because on the one hand, right, if you've gained a bunch of social capital and under your name, you wanna leverage that, but you don't maybe always want the business tied to your personal brand. So I think it's really interesting that you've said this. So are you still using Keep for like the email marketing and automation stuff?
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. So we still use Keep for email marketing and just in case anyone's curious, what we're doing instead of the newsletter is when somebody opts in for our demo for Access Ally or you know, opts into like a download from our blog posts or something like that, we basically have sort of this evergreen email sequence that they get.
So they'll still get an email every week and we're sort of staying ahead of it, you know, a couple months or so. So we're rating content for that. But it's evergreen content and it sends them back to blog posts that are super useful and like other things that we've created over the years. So I don't have to come up with something fresh that also promotes at the same time, which can be a little bit harder than if you're just sending an inspirational newsletter or something that's more personal.
So for me, it kind of took the pressure off of having to sell every week. Not that I was always selling every week, but you know, to feel like it's in pursuit of improving sales for AccessAlly so we can still serve those people who are coming in, who are curious and who are probably gonna buy someday without necessarily having it to be about me, if that makes sense.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. That's really smart, right? Because you do want to nurture those people coming onto your list. And we are both CaboPress alumni. And it might've been the same year that you were there, but I remember Justin St. Thomas asked me, by the way, Justin's a great guy. I should probably have him on the show. He's a great guy though. And I was telling him about my podcasting business and coaching and he said, you know, it really feels like this relies on you a lot. Like how are you gonna separate yourself from the business? And I kind of made a decision that, you know, I'm like really like into solar entrepreneurship and I have a couple of contractors, but I bring this up because what you just said about having to come up with a personal email that kind of sells is that's where I am kind of right now, right? I do have like a nurture sequence. I use ConvertKit for everything. I have a nurture sequence. Then they just get put into my normal weekly emails or whatever. I think maybe the main difference, maybe not though. I mean, I'd love to learn more about your plans. We'll talk about that later. But one of the main reasons that I went to Substack in the first place was I really Want my membership to be a large portion of my income in the coming years.
Last year, I realized that my income relied too much on sponsorship and when like economists start saying the word recession, nobody wants to sponsor anything. And I was like, man, I need to really fix this. And so Substack felt like, I think as you said, like there's a good discoverability engine. Feels like a good place to hitch my wagon because that is a weak spot of using WordPress, is that there is no discoverability.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah, and I had this idea that, okay, I wanna do more like personal stuff on my blog. And I kind of like resuscitated my blog on WordPress, which was just [natalielucia.com], which I had many years ago before I started AccessAlly and like crickets. Like I'm not gonna SEO optimize those posts. Like I'm not gonna do anything to try to get traffic there. And yes, I can link to them from my social media and stuff, but it wasn't really doing much. That's why I really was excited about Substack because I was like, you know what? I think this is where people are. And I had a lot, like the more of my friends that were moving to it, the more I was like, oh, it's getting this critical mass. Like I think this is kind of the place where we're gonna all converge again. And you know, maybe not forever, but I do think that right now it feels like it is. And so that was a big reason for me, for sure.
Joe Casabona: And that's so crucial, right? Because again, it feels like in the last couple of years promoting anything on social media to take people off social media, it's not gonna work.
Anytime I post an external link or say anything that's like not in line with like who the algorithm thinks I am, it gets nothing. I think being someplace where you're doing this personal running, especially like starting anew, Substack has no impression of who we are yet. And so it has a chance to learn and leverage like who we are today versus, I joined Twitter April Fool's Day 2007. I will never forget it was April Fool's Day. 'cause every year I'm like, who was really the fool?
Nathalie Lussier:I love that. Yeah. I joined in 2008. So, yeah. It changed so much, right?
Joe Casabona: I was like a dumb college kid when I joined.
Nathalie Lussier: Same. Same.
Joe Casabona: That's amazing. Just again, to recap where we are so far, you're still using Keep for the marketing automation stuff for the business. Substack is an opportunity for you to do a personal newsletter and blog because it publishes all there. Is that where all of your content is now? This was like a question I was gonna ask later, but you mentioned the WordPress blog.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah, so I also have a podcast off the charts, and I imported that into Substack. So that was one less thing for me to manage on my WordPress site, which I was publishing on there before. And I probably have a couple older posts I could import into Substack, but I haven't done that yet. But, yeah. Basically my website is sort of just very basic, like here's who I am, my about page, my very basic, basic things and most of my publishing it now is on Substack.
And I know you mentioned the money piece. So, I'm happy to dive into that too, on monetizing, 'cause I haven't monetized yet on Substack. So, I'm happy to dive into that too.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Yes, I definitely wanna get to that. First, I wanna talk about moving to Substack, but let's take a quick break for our sponsors and then we'll get back to the migration stuff.
Look, when you have an online-based business, speed and reliability are the most important aspects of a service. Not far behind that is actually owning the website that your business relies on. When you own your website, you're not subject to algorithm-changing terms or accidental shutdowns.
That's why I'm so excited that Liquid Web is back as a sponsor of How I Built It this year. Their cloud VPS is some of the best-in-class hosting you can get when your business relies on your website. From speed to security and protection to regular backups, with LiquidWeb you can trust your website will remain in tip-top shape.
Not technically savvy? Don't worry. LiquidWeb offers fully managed hosting, which means they have a team of knowledgeable experts looking after your website for you so you can focus on running your business. If you need fast, reliable, and secure hosting for your business, check out Liquid Web. Head over to [howibuilt.It/liquidweb] today.
Hey, real quick, before we get back into the episode, I want to tell you about my free newsletter Podcast Workflows. If you are wondering how I can successfully run this show plus two other shows, plus run a business, plus run three children, Podcast workflows is for you. You will get weekly emails with behind the scenes look on how I produce this show experiments I am trying with other podcasts and general advice to start, grow, and monetize your podcast. You'll also have the opportunity to become a member and get ad free extended episodes of this show as well as bonus content.
You can do all of that over at [podcastworkflows.com/join]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/join]. Sign up for free today.
Joe Casabona: All right, and we're back. We teased it a little bit. You started to mention it. You moved most of your content, your podcast over to Substack. Did you also move any email subscribers? Like do you move like the AccessAlly people over there?
Nathalie Lussier: Yes. So, we basically picked a date and we were like everyone who's been getting the weekly newsletter is officially just gonna be imported to Substack. Any new people will be added to that kind of nurturing sequence that I talked about. But we did have people who've been on our list for like five years or like a really long time and it didn't make sense to put them on any sort of nurturing side of things. So we imported almost 5,000 people from Keap into Substack.
Joe Casabona: And how did that migration go? 'cause both of us being from the WordPress space, migrations can feel really scary. But I imported my entire Pro podcast, right, like 300 episodes or so, and it went pretty smoothly. What was your experience like?
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. Importing both subscribers and my podcast was really smooth. I was kind of surprised. I actually imported my podcast as a test before I decided to move because I wanted to make sure it wasn't gonna be glitchy. I wouldn't lose any episodes or any of the content and stuff that goes with episodes, and it worked. and I was like, okay. I think that's my sign. So that was really smooth. And also the same for importing the contacts. You can't import any tags or any kind of other information that you have. But at the same time, since I'm just sending the newsletter, it's not like I'm segmenting and doing any other type of complicated stuff. So that felt really easy.
Joe Casabona: Nice. That's really good to hear. I did the same thing. I imported the podcast as a test. 'cause I figured there's nothing destructive there, right? It's just reading an RSS feed. And I made a decision to not import my ConvertKit subscribers. And now I'm publishing in two places and I'm wondering if maybe I should just do that.
Now, you started from scratch, right? Because now I see that there are some people, 'cause I was like, I'm writing on Substack too, if you wanna join over there, and like some people did, but now I find myself writing two newsletters, right? I'm like publishing two podcastworkflows.com, publishing on Substack and then sending the email newsletter out. And I'm like, this feels like a lot of work and it is part of like a Be Everywhere strategy, but I don't tag people based on those opens either, because that was like the otherthing. I do wanna still market, like my coaching services or whatever, but I'm not tracking every click. That's interesting. I'm rethinking my strategy a little bit as we speak.
Nathalie Lussier: So building emails in Keep is not the most intuitive. So that was part of my move to Substack too was like if you wanna add an image and if you wanna resize it and make things look pretty in an email and Keep, at least with the kind of old builder that they have, they're coming out with some new stuff, I think. But it was just like, I just want like one simple publishing process that doesn't take like a ton of time. And the other thing, you know, around marketing and things like that. So there's a great substack called Ash br and she has the middle finger project. I've seen a couple emails of hers that are basically promotions and I think in Substack you can have it so that it sends an email, but it doesn't publish as a post. So I think that might be what she did with those emails. 'cause you don't see them on her publication. So there's ways to do that too if you wanna email more promotional things for a little while because you're doing a promo or something that aren't gonna be like posts on your publication.
Joe Casabona: Oh, that's really interesting. I like that. I guess this gets to like the heart of something, maybe my biggest frustration with Substack. And we're gonna talk about our favorite features in a second. By the way, how long have you been on Substack?
Nathalie Lussier: Two months, officially.
Joe Casabona: Oh, we moved at like the same time.
Nathalie Lussier: Oh my gosh. But I think I talked about it a lot before we did it,
Joe Casabona: Yes, you did. because I feel like really, what you were saying is the thing that encouraged me to move over. And so something that we're gonna talk about in the pro show Is that Nathalie and I both picked a very interesting time to move to Substack because we moved right around the same time the Atlantic published a piece called Substack has a Nazi problem, and so we put a bunch of effort in. Then a lot of things, public relations wise went south for Substack. So, we'll talk about our feelings about that in the Pro show. If you wanna join, you can head over to [howibuilt.it/join] Well, guess what? You can subscribe on Substack, 'cause I'm publishing this member content over there as well.
But I think one of the frustrating things about Substack is it doesn't have any Zapier. You know me. I love automating my entire life and usually Zapier or make integration is a must have for whatever platform I use. But because there are a lot of benefits to Substack, I was like, you know what? Maybe this is just a soft requirement for me.
And so one of the things I would love to do is like simultaneously sign up new ConvertKit subscribers for Substack. Or when I like publish a Substack, it becomes a ConvertKit email or whatever. But you can't do that. So I think that's like one of the small frustrations that I have.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing I do like about Substack is you could export out of it and there are tools to help migration in that direction as well. And you can also just export your contacts anytime. It's not automated, because if you wanna import them back into ConvertKit or some other system, that would be a manual thing. But the fact that you can do it is nice. Not, I don't think all systems are necessarily as easy in terms of interoperability like that. So I would say, That's pretty good. But yeah, I agree. I usually like to be able to run Zaps or do something else to the data that I have. I feel like Substack is probably gonna add that eventually if we like put enough pressure. So I don't think it's a forever thing. But yeah, I think those are important considerations for people to, if they need to do something with the data. We really like made that choice to just like split off from our CRM. It's been interesting 'cause I've been seeing people that I've known, like from 10 years ago, 15 years ago online join my Substack, who had opted out of my newsletter, you know, on my Keep Newsletter. So it's been really interesting to see almost like full circle on some of these things too.
Joe Casabona: That's really interesting, right? So I do want to keep talking about interoperability because one of my favorite Substack features has to do with that. But this just occurred to me when you do the impor. What if somebody doesn't have a Substack account? It just gets emailed to them?
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. It just gets emailed to them. Yep.
Joe Casabona: Okay. That's pretty smart. I guess that makes sense because you can import and then if somebody is already on Substack, that's when they might subscribe. So I like that. you're convincing me more and more to just move my email list over there and use Substack as command.
I'll also just say email service providers, like the marketing ones are very expensive. And I'm not gonna say it's not worth it because like I have made my money back using ConvertKit, but it feels like a lot of money. Ofcourse, maybe 10% per subscriber is a lot of money to other people as well. So I think that's another thing that you'd wanna consider, right, is Substack is no upfront cost, but they're gonna take 10% of every transaction.
Nathalie Lussier: Yes. And I think that's really interesting to me 'cause I've seen a couple people on Substack say, I'm never gonna turn on paid. I just wanna be free to all my people forever. So that would be one way to not have to pay for a CRM platform or email platform. However, I also think, yeah. If you do turn on your paid and you see a certain percentage of people take you up on it, that can add up over time, right? And it can be a really nice revenue stream. Like I said, I haven't turned on paid yet. I have one person who pledged so far. Which I was like, Hey, that's cool. Like in the first week I was like, wow, I don't even know who this person is. But that's nice. And I feel like it's interesting. I've seen a lot of people kind of, I wanna say like tiptoe around the idea of paid. Like they don't feel comfortable asking people to subscribe to a paid thing for me because my newsletter's been free, like I said, for like 15 years almost. It is weird 'cause I always saw it as my marketing, but I think there is a lot of benefit to the work that we do. And I do think people wanna just kind of give back and support the people who are doing all this work. I think creating and being in the creator economy is a lot of work that people don't see behind the scenes to produce things and make podcasts and edit and all of that. And I think when people understand that they're willing to support the people who do the work.
Joe Casabona: I love that. And again, it's easier than ever, right? When I offered my first membership, it was Patreon or WordPress, like those were the only game in town. And you have a membership platform built on top of WordPress. It's no picnic building out your own e-commerce platform at all, let alone one that needs to manage subscriptions and payments and churn and this and that. And so I am doing it in two places for like a grand experiment. But the more we talk, I'm like, Substack really feels better for me and would certainly cut down on the amount of work I have to do.
But this also brings me to one of my favorite Substack features is you can connect your Stripe account, and this is how I should say, this is how they do payments, right? They don't have Substack payments or whatever. You just connect your own Stripe account, which I think is great because again, comparing to ConvertKit Commerce, you don't have to connect to Stripe account, but it's their Stripe account and they decide when to pay you. They don't decide, but they made a decision as to when to pay you. And the money in Substack hits your Stripe account right away. But the other thing it does is it says, Hey, we noticed that you have six subscriptions in Stripe right now. Do you want us to convert those for you? And that's so brilliant. Oh, just a little switch. I'm like, afraid to do that. I'm like, is this as seamless as they say it is? And I'm willing to bet it is because this is how they make all their money and it's so smart.
Nathalie Lussier: That is so brilliant. I think that is the hardest thing is moving payments. And I think because Stripe is kind of that magic glue, right, that a lot of different companies use. So, I think it's a really great way to be able to import your payments from Stripe into Substack. That's awesome.
Joe Casabona: Again, because I've changed my membership four times in the last three years, I'm very reluctant to ask my members to have to change again. And this allows me to get at least some number of them. I don't have to ask them. I can just do it and then it's done.
So, I think I do have some people on PayPal. Actually, what are your…as someone who, this is a major part of your business, right? I've always been bullish on like let people pay however they want. That's why I have PayPal turned on and this is like one thing that's like if I didn't have PayPal turned on, maybe I wouldn't have those members, but maybe I would just be able to move them over 'cause they paid with Stripe too.
Nathalie Lussier: I'm a huge fan of Stripe. I know there's been some issues with Stripe over time and things, but I think there's also been equal issues with PayPal. So, I think I kind of do fall in the similar category of like let them pay whatever way. 'cause I do know some international people, like they can't pay with Stripe or they have a PayPal balance. Maybe that's how they get paid. And so for them, like it doesn't convert to different currencies or whatever, so it's like better for them to pay with PayPal. We still offer it on our site, but yeah, I totally see the benefit of Stripe and like we are actually building more integrations for AccessAlly with Stripe to do other cool stuff like direct deposit and all kinds of other stuff.
I think actually I saw that Substack is also doing something similar where you'll be able to take payment in multi currencies as well. So I think it's just really cool, like Stripe basically is building this infrastructure that is really great for global businesses. And I think that right now, Substack does feel probably more US, maybe European a little bit, but I think it is gonna kind of get bigger and more global.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And it's just, I mean, those are waters that I don't wanna navigate at all. This is why, for example, Apple can do some of the things that they do, right? Because you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcasts. Like you can join the membership and get the bonus content that way too. And all I had to do was set a price, right? I don't have to worry about that tax or conversions or anything at all. And I'm like, is this worth? I think it's 30% for the first year and 15% for subsequent years. And I'm like, is it worth that? And I'm like, is it worth it for me to never have to think about this? Yeah. It is, right? Sometimes Apple just sends me money is the way it works. And that's really nice.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. I'm currently in like my tax, you know, basically 'cause I live in Canada, but I also have a US business, right? So I'm in like the weeds of the tech stuff. So, yeah. Anything you can do to avoid being in the weeds of the tech stuff and actually focus on creating and making money.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Love that. Let's move to making the most of Substack. We've already started talking about this a little bit because as we've both found, migrating to Substack was super easy. I will say again, like you alluded to the other side also feels really easy. Like I know some big substackers who have recently moved off of Substack, learn why in the Pro show. One is the Popehat report. I don't know if you follow like American politics at all, but I think that Ken White, he's a former federal prosecutor. I just think he's like so funny in the way he talks about legal stuff, but he recently moved off of Substack for a number of reasons and it felt like it was a very easy thing for him to do, and he had a lot of paid members and subscribers and a huge following. And so that's really cool to see, like you said, the interoperability. So, I really like that.
Okay. So, let's talk about making the most of Substack. I think one reason that you and I are both on Substack, I can't even say, I think you explicitly stated it earlier in the show, is the network effect still pretty early days, right? How are you leveraging? Are you kind of like writing and putting it out there and hoping for the best? Are there any growth hacks that you're trying to leverage Substack and their discoverability?
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. So, I'm coming from the world of, you know, the big social media networks, right? And I think what has worked on those platforms is publishing often finding your tribe, kind of getting people to cross promote and things like that. And I think a lot of that does translate to Substack too, but I think the difference, at least what I'm seeing on Substack right now is the algorithm is not quite the same. So I think on social media, it's pretty much posting into the void at this point in a lot of ways, right? And you mentioned that too. Anytime you post a link, anytime it doesn't fit, whatever they think they wanna promote, it's not gonna go far.
And so I think what I'm seeing on Substack is the notes functionality, which is sort of like a lot of people are calling it very Twitter like, but it is sort of like you can post short notes and you can connect with other people, so like comment on each other's things you can restack, which I really like because that allows you to share a quote from another post or something that you wanna comment on, but also share with your followers. Those are things that are working really well for me when people have restacked something of mine or if I restack something of theirs, they might share it too. So that has brought a lot of new people and new people that maybe didn't know me before.
The other thing I'm noticing is that a lot of the people I've known for like a decade online that we sort of lost touch because of those big algorithms. And even though we were following each other, like we just never saw each other, it was like we were not on the same social network anymore at all. We're rediscovering each other. We're like, I didn't know you were here. I didn't know you were here. And so we're like reconnecting and being able to like promote each other 'cause we have, you know, that past experience, we've met each other in person or we know each other's work pretty closely, but we just literally did not know we existed anymore. Yeah, right? Because of social media, those big platforms. and so I'm finding a lot of benefits to that as well.
And another feature I really like is the recommendation engine. So basically you can recommend other publications when somebody subscribes to yours. So then as somebody subscribes to yours, they'll see what else you recommend. And so you can build those networks there too.
Joe Casabona: I love that. I think that's really smart. The recommendation engine's really smart, right? Again, ConvertKit rolled out their creator network and it felt very stealing the Substack thing. I think Substack does that really well. They have that ability, right? Because everything's on the same platform. And as you were talking, I was thinking like it is kind of like a social network, but in the sense that you still need to do the social network things, right? If you just wanna write and you want people to find your writing, like then SEO is what you need. But if you wanna build a following and build a bigger network and get that cross-promotion going, you do need to restack things and comment on other people's stuff.
And the notes function I think is really what sold it for me because you can follow people via notes, but you don't need to subscribe to their newsletter which is cool because like I already have too many newsletters to read. And so it's really good at kind of surfacing things that could be of interest to you, which is cool.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. And also what I've noticed, and I'm the same, I definitely like to follow people and subscribe to newsletters, and then sometimes I'm like, oh my God, I have 50 newsletters coming in. I need to make it more doable again.
But yeah, what I've seen also that works really well is that you can mention other people in your newsletter and that will link to their publication and to their Substack page or their Substack profile so that other people can follow them or read their articles.
And I have found a couple places that they like to do like roundups and stuff like that, and they might include other sub stackers and stuff. And so that starts to build that community aspect that I think is really powerful too. And the cool thing is that everyone will get those emails, right? It's not like an algorithm where somebody shares a roundup post on social media. Only like a hundred people will see that. Their whole newsletter will see those roundups. So I think that's really cool too.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, that's great. I'm gonna do something rush probably right after this and just import all of my ConvertKit subscribers over to Substack. Maybe I should give 'em a heads up first. You gave your people a heads up?
Nathalie Lussier: I did. And that's why I talked about it so much before we did it because we didn't wanna like surprise them. My instinct was just like, import tomorrow and we're gone, right?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Do it.
Nathalie Lussier: But my team was like, okay, no. Let's warn them, send them an email. That's like next week you'll be getting an email from this address. Because some people might have filters set up to put your newsletter in a specific folder or whatever. So we did it the like, not my favorite way, which my favorite way is just pull off the bandaid.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Let's go, cowboy.
Nathalie Lussier: My team is like, okay, slow down. Do it the right way.
Joe Casabona: This brings up another interesting question. Who is the sending email address? Let me tell you. My substack email, like the email address that gets subscribed to Substack newsletters is my read wise email. It just goes into my feed reader basically. And so it just kind of occurred to me that I don't know what the sending address is on my own Substack newsletter?
Nathalie Lussier: It is at substack.com.
Joe Casabona: it is at substack.com. Okay.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. So I thought that was also interesting with all the changes to the inbox with Google and Yahoo, and people worrying about their emails, not making it into the inbox anymore and stuff like that. So it kind of factored, but just like a tiny blip in our decision making process.
Joe Casabona: That's really interesting 'cause now I'm wondering like, is this actually gonna like help deliverability, right? Like I assume Substack has much better domain authority and reputation than I do. And I do know that some people I email, just some people I email, it goes to spam. I think Outlook is the culprit and I think I finally updated like my DKIM or DMARC or whatever.
Nathalie Lussier: Yep.
Joe Casabona: Again, master's in software engineering and that stuff is so confusing to me. I don't know. What's your DMARC policy? Is it like none, like you get yelled at within. It's like a NUN policy, right?
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. Yeah. We figured all that out too.
Joe Casabona: We just got in the real techie weeds. I guess if you have a newsletter, and you're listening to this though, you've been hearing all about it for the last two months. Yeah, real confusing and like ConvertKit would let you essentially borrow their authority and then like this broke that for them.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: They very smartly set up a thing that you would use this service to log into your DNS and then they would do the changes for you, which was real smart. We're a little bit off task now. I just got In the weeds with all that stuff, and now I'm thinking through a lot of things. This is why I have these interviews, right? I'm thinking through some of this stuff. And so how are you leveraging Substack and what's your advice for leveraging, I think we kind of talked a little bit about it, but is there anything that you have found, I guess first of all, if you're willing to answer this, like are you happy with the growth you're seeing so far?
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. So it's interesting 'cause we got some unsubscribes, which is normal when you make a switch. I think there are probably some people who were on the list but not receiving emails. Like I think that happens. And then they started receiving emails all of a sudden.
Joe Casabona: And they really piss out. Yeah.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah, exactly. So I think that's normal. But, yeah. I am seeing like new subscribers almost every day, like a nice handful, you know, when I do new posts and stuff.
And I do like the stats on Substack that tells you like how many new subscribers per post. So you know, like, oh, this one really resonated because I got some new subscribers from it and stuff like that. So I think that's really useful too, because if you're posting on a blog, yeah, you could actually sometimes look at your stats and see how many opt-ins you got from that blog post and stuff. But it's not as direct, I think, or as guaranteed to be accurate maybe. So that's been helpful for sure. There was a couple of weeks where I'm like, okay, like I still have some other stuff to post and keep. So it wasn't a hundred percent like weekly, but I think since I've been weekly, I've been seeing like the traffic and the subscribers and actually like open rates increase, which has been really nice.
Joe Casabona: I love the new subscribers per post thing, right? Because something that I don't want to dog on ConvertKit, that's the one I use and I'm sure other ones are like that too. But one of, I think the most frustrating non features of ConvertKit forms is there's no way to track the URL that the form is embedded on. You have that, right? You know that. I have to use JavaScript to embed this form. So, instead what I had to do was like recreate the forms in Gravity Forms and then map the referring URL to a custom field. And I kind of hate that, right? Because there's no way for me to, I guess I can write like some query type things to be like, show me every time like Lucky URL equals this specific URL or contains this URL in case there's like some other stuff tacked onto the URL. It's real easy in Substack to be like, oh, hey, this post got me X number of subscribers. Maybe I should write more like that. More on this topic, which I'm glad you pointed that out 'cause it's not something I've really leveraged that much.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah, totally. And like we use Fathom Analytics on our website so we can kind of see like, you know, which are the most popular pages and like how many opt-ins and stuff. But it's not always like a direct a hundred percent perfect analytics, whereas I feel like Substack, like they got that figured out and they have it all in one place.
Speaking of the opt-ins, so they do have different like opt-in buttons and things like that you can put within posts, which I think is really cool and you can also kind of change what it says. So I think that can also help increase your opt-in rates and all of that.
I have seen a couple people do landing pages outside of Substack and then they just embed their little Substack form on there too. And we have that just 'cause we already had like a landing page for it. So we get a couple people from there too. But something to think about too, like what can you do to drive people to opt in directly, not through a post as well.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is interesting because I think my initial thought for moving to Substack was, I'm still gonna get people to sign up in ConvertKit. I just wanna leverage Substack network. But now a few months into this Substack is a really good place to write and grow and have the type of newsletter that I have.
I'm considering a lot of things here. Hopefully the people listening are too, right? I mean, if you are happy with your current email service provider, like definitely keep it. But I'm a couple months into this Be Everywhere strategy that I concocted in December. I can tell it's untenable already, unless I have my VA do way more. But usually I'm writing 1200 to 2000 words and then publishing them. It doesn't make sense. Send this to my VA just so she can post it in multiple places. And so I'm considering a lot of things here.
And to close out, I wanna talk more about these really well thought out Substack features, because I think this is really the kicker for me is that with a membership item, WordPress, right, you need to pick the right one. I'm using Wishlist Member on one site and Paid Memberships Pro on another. They work as expected, but there are the things that you need to tweak still. What happens when a user tries to see a locked post, right? With a Wishlist Member, they're just like, this is locked. Sign in. And I'm like, that's not great. And so like, I need to customize that.
And then with ConvertKit, right, their subscriptions, you don't know when someone churns, which I think is real weird that they rolled this out and like didn't consider that at all. And like had to write documentation because like one of the things they're like, how to subscribe people to your pro podcast when they become a subscriber in ConvertKit. You set up this Zapier and then it's like, what happens when they stop subscribing? Well, we don't have a way to do that yet, so you just have to do that manually. Like someone had to write this and be like, people are gonna read this and think why? It's very clear we know that we should have this and we haven't rolled it out in three years. But Substack, like you said, right, there are these buttons and there's a lot of stuff that's really well thought out and I like that a lot.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. And I think there's other things too. If you do wanna be in the page side of things, you could comp people, you could do different things like that. So there are ways to make exceptions if you wanna make them, which sometimes systems just aren't flexible that way. So I feel like they did think about some of those things that You could do like a flash sale or like different things like that, that I think help you promote yourself better and get more paid subscribers over time. And maybe you wanna comp someone your paid stuff.
And you can also do I think secret links, like unlock links or something. So if you have something that it is behind a paywall, but then all of a sudden you wanna share it to your inner circle, you know, that you have somewhere else you could do that too. So I think there's like a lot of flexibility, even though it is a “closed platform”. I know we kind of mentioned it that way before.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. And you know, something that I really love that has not been clear, I think in any platform really that I've used, which is wild, maybe I just haven't used the right ones, is it's very clear like when content becomes paid in substack. Whereas like with ConvertKit, you need to use like their liquid markup and like know the exact tag and it's only tag which is wild 'cause like you can also have segments.
The same thing with like the WordPress plugins I've used. It's like, is this protected or do you want to protect it after the read more? And I'm like, none of the above. Like I want it to be free up until this point. And then they see a button. Substack like really understands the assignment, right? And sorry. I just… like millennial that Gen Z saying, but they get it. They know what their users want. And I think when you deal with a frictionless platform on this scale, you really feel it like you really understand it.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. And that's the thing, like they've had enough people kick the tires, right? To figure out what works, what doesn't, and make those improvements. And I'm not saying that it's perfect. I know sometimes they're rolling out certain features. I know they started doing like autoplay videos in notes and some people were like, no, no, like this is a writing platform. Please don't autoplay videos. So there might be some things like that where they're trying something new.
But I think for in general, like all of the basic things of doing a newsletter, doing a paid newsletter and all of that is really well run and well tested and all of that.
Joe Casabona: The paid podcast stuff too, right? Because this was something else that like I'm paying Transistor extra for that. Patreon, when I tried it didn't even have an RSS feed, URL for subscribers, like they'd have to listen in Patreon. You know, maybe it's that like Substack was later to market or they really understood it, but the way they do it is so smart. You can upload the paid audio and then you can upload a free version, which is just so well done. Kudos to the development team or the product team, or like whoever's making those decisions, really understands their customers to feel this frictionless experience when I've felt a lot of friction in other places is very nice.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. I like that for the paid podcast too. So like I said, I haven't turned it on yet, but I think that's such a brilliant way to do it because yeah, you wanna give people a preview, right? And if they like it and they want the rest, then it's an easy upgrade. The frictionless part I think is really powerful to getting people to convert to paid.
Joe Casabona: Yes. And just so people know, I'm not just like gushing about this platform. There are two things I wish I wish, right? I do all of my writing in Ulysses. I think Ulysses is like the most perfect writing app on the planet and you can't publish to Substack. So I have to do like the HTML preview and copy it and paste it over, and then like my footnote tool break, and so I have to refix it. Even though Substack does footnotes really well, but they don't handle like markdown footnotes. And so everything kind of looks weird.
And then I wish that I could connect my podcast RSS feed, because right now this is something my VA does do is she's uploading the episode to Transistor and the Pro episode to the pro version of Transistor bonus episode to Apple Podcast, and then the pro version to Substack with the free version to Substack. And that feels ridiculous. And if I had to do it myself, I almost definitely wouldn't. I think that, again, there are some places where the friction could be a little bit easier, but it's very obvious that they've specifically made these decisions. The fact that there's no API support and that they don't have rest API or whatever, like something for me to send my writing to that platform outside of the platform. So it's stuff I'm willing to deal with because of the stuff we just gushed about, right? It's so good.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah. I like to write, obviously not directly in Substack as well, and so I'll, I usually have like a Google doc or a Scribner or something, copy and paste over, but at the same time, it gives me time to do all my edits and everything and then upload images and make sure it looks good and everything in the email preview and all of that. So, I think it is interesting and also that's another thing I like is that you can obviously upload your own images if you have a more visual kind of vibe for your newsletter, but they also have like a built in like find stock images as well.
Joe Casabona: I didn't know that.
Nathalie Lussier: It's really helpful.
Joe Casabona: Oh, that's awesome.
Nathalie Lussier: That was always the thing with a blog post, right? Like you wanna have an image and maybe you have one that you took, but maybe not. And so then you have to go find it, upload it, actually put the link back to where you got it from if it's public domain and all of that. So it auto does all of that for you.
Joe Casabona: Oh, that's cool. I've just been using Dolly to generate silly images.
Nathalie Lussier: That's cool too.
Joe Casabona: Well, you just described it as a lot easier. I like that. I'll wrap up with this question and then we've talked about our newsletter, so you gotta tell people where they can subscribe, but neither of us like writing in the web editor. I've heard this from a lot of people who've used WordPress from a long time. Do you think it's because we have like battle scars from writing in the WordPress editor?
Nathalie Lussier: That may very well be the case. I don't know actually, but, yeah. I pretty much never write in a online like sometimes Google Docs, but that's mostly for collaborative writing. Like if I'm writing with someone else, I'll use Google Docs, but otherwise I like to write offline or something where it's like on my own computer. And yeah. I could be from like battle scars from losing stuff in the past. I dunno.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. right. I just lost a thousand words here. Crap. When I do collaborative stuff, I still write it in Ulysses first and then like copy and paste it into Google Doc for the rest, which is like, sure, there's no syncing or whatever, but like once I'm done writing, it goes to the archive. Like I'm never looking at the stuff I wrote in Ulysses again. I think about that often 'cause I wrote about my writing process and someone was like, why don't you just write in the WordPress editor? And I'm like, why would you ever do that? Between you and me and everybody listening, especially now, like the block editor is not my favorite, to put it nicely. It's not my favorite place to write.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. I will copy and paste into the block editor all day.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly.
Nathalie Lussier: But, yes.
Joe Casabona: Which is another thing I love about Ulysses, right, is you can publish directly into WordPress from Ulysses, which is real swell. And I guess like when they publish, like they grab the GUID, which is like for those listening, the unique identifier for the post. And so you can also update the post from Ulysses, which is….
Nathalie Lussier: That's cool.
Joe Casabona: Super cool. Great app. This just became an ad for Ulysses. Hashtag not a sponsor. Maybe soon to be a sponsor.
Natalie, this has been great. Obviously, we're gonna continue our conversation and talk about that Nazi thing in the Pro Show, but if people want to learn more about you and subscribe to your newsletter, where can they find you?
Nathalie Lussier: Yes, so my newsletter is called The Momentum Memo, so you go to the-momentum-memo.com. You'll see my Substack there and Opt-in and all of that. Or just breed what's there first and decide if it seems like your kind of thing. A lot of nature analogies and farm stuff that relate back to business. So that's kind of my jam.
And then obviously if you're curious about my business, [accessally.com], that is where all the cool WordPress online course, especially on like the more corporate side would be as well.
Joe Casabona: Love that. I will say, I'm about to timestamp this episode, I guess, but your newsletter this morning, I think you open up with something like, we had a visitor to our farm, and they said, I'm not a bird person. You're like, what does that mean? I knew what that meant. I was like, I got it.
Nathalie Lussier: That's awesome. I know what that is.
Joe Casabona: I think the least likable thing about me by and large is that I'm not like an animal person at all. People are very shocked and appalled to hear that, but Nothing against animal people.
Nathalie Lussier: Are you a bird person though?
Joe Casabona: No, I'm not a bird person.
Nathalie Lussier: Okay.
Joe Casabona: The closest I'll get to being an animal person is like certain dogs, but they've gotta be good dogs, like they can't bark.
Nathalie Lussier: So I'm basically not a bird person, and so I understand completely what you're talking about. I walk as far away from our geese and our ducks as possible and our chickens, but yes, totally get it.
Joe Casabona: Yes. My wife's former coworker has a farm now. We took our kids there and like they're feeding the chickens and I'm like, don't get too close. Like you'll lose a finger or an eye. Probably not, but duh. Erin's like, relax. I'm like, okay. Sorry.
Nathalie Lussier: I love that.
Joe Casabona: Well, Natalie, this has been great. Thanks so much for joining us and talking Substack with us. I was really excited to have this conversation.
Nathalie Lussier: Yeah. It was so much fun. Thanks for having me.
Joe Casabona: If you want to find Natalie or anything we talked about, you can head on over to the show notes, which you can find over at [howibuilt.It/405]. That's, I guess for our California people. Head on over to the 405 and you'll find all the links that we talked about there.
You can also become a member to hear ad-free extended versions of this and every episode, and you can do that again at [howibuilt.It/405] or on Substack. Or if you're listening on Apple Podcast, just subscribe in Apple Podcasts. I wanna make it as easy as possible for you to give me your hard earned money.
So, thank you so much. And thanks to our sponsors. Until next time. Get out there and build something.