(Live) Aligned Growth on Substack and Beyond

Thank you Sarah L Kent, Rachel Joy 💖, Ruth Dale, Natalia Papiol, Karen Oline, and many others for tuning into my live video with Veronica Llorca-Smith! Join me for my next live video in the app.

AI Summary, thanks Claude.

Here’s a summary of this ~42-minute conversation between Veronica (Hong Kong, The Lemon Tree Mindset) and Claire Venus (Northumberland, UK, Sparkle on Substack) — two creative entrepreneurs discussing building lifestyle-aligned businesses:

Who they are Veronica is a triathlete, author, and public speaker with three business pillars: corporate keynotes/workshops, writing/digital business, and coaching. Claire is an audience development consultant and Substack expert with ~18,000 subscribers, focused on helping women align their voice with how they want to show up online.

On building community Both emphasised that a newsletter should be treated as the start of a conversation, not just an email. Veronica uses group chats, open “collaboration days,” and a mastermind — the latter born directly from her community asking for a “sounding board.” Claire segmented her audience into three distinct groups (beginners, creative expressionists, creative entrepreneurs) and designed different touchpoints and offers for each.

On growth not being linear Claire was honest about periods of slow growth and even losing paid subscribers. She did a deep data dive — exporting all unsubscribe emails — and found most people left on good terms, having simply moved on in their journey. Key takeaway: unsubscribes are usually about the reader’s path, not your quality.

On the LinkedIn–Substack flywheel Veronica uses LinkedIn primarily for B2B/corporate leads and recommends it strongly for anyone wanting to sell to organisations. Practical tip: don’t put Substack links in LinkedIn post bodies (LinkedIn suppresses them) — put the link in the comments instead. Profile banners and CTAs are better long-term placements.

On YouTube Claire has built a niche YouTube channel around beginner Substack content, with her top video getting 14,000 views. Veronica recently launched her own YouTube channel to repurpose existing live sessions — not to create new content, but to give existing content longevity and discoverability that Substack alone doesn’t offer.

On motivation Claire’s advice: understand how your creative practice gets fuelled — whether that’s solitude, nature, or clearing out comparison triggers. Veronica’s framing: don’t tie motivation to outcomes (likes, subscriber counts). Find it in the act of showing up — like in training for a triathlon where a bad race time doesn’t diminish the effort.

On going viral Both noted that the posts most likely to resonate are often the ones you hesitate most to publish — the vulnerable, personal ones. Veronica’s biggest LinkedIn post (40,000 views) was about starting to write at 41; she nearly didn’t post it.

Closing advice Stay aligned with your purpose, know what to say no to, and celebrate incremental wins. Veronica recommends writing a monthly public review as a discipline to pause, reflect, and course-correct.