Welcome to a free edition of Start Up To Grown Up: Your source for ideas, insights and tactics to take back control of your business and scale it sustainably and profitably by Heather Townsend, award-winning author of The Accountants’ Millionaires’ Club and Founder of The Accountants’ Growth Club
Well, the big one finally happened.
9 months and a bit after starting Substack, I got to 1000 subscribers for my Start Up To Grown Up publication. That’s also over 1800 followers to my name.
For avoidance of doubt, that’s starting from ground zero. No importing of a list. No massive platform elsewhere which I happened to bring with me. No orange tick… yet.
I published a short note on Substack when I got to 900 subscribers. This note went viral.
I kind of wish it hadn’t! It was a busy week, and I didn’t have time to tend to a note that had all the hallmarks of going viral. But when these opportunities come along, you need to grab them and get every single bit of juice out of them.
A number of the 110+ comments on my viral post were asking me
“How did you do it?”.
In fact, a dear buddy of mine (whom I met here on Substack) who actually helped me get initial traction asked me privately:
“So, how did you get 300+ subscribers in a month?”.
I’d like to say it’s my brilliance and magnetic personality. However, it’s the same playbook that I've used on many social media platforms to build a decent-sized following. Yes, there are some Substack quirks, but that’s the same for any platform.
To honour the moment, I decided to write this article on how to grow your tribe on social media.
Decide on your why
Too many of us, me included, just jump onto a social media platform in some hope that it will be good for us. But, if you are going to get the value out of any presence you need to know why you are doing it. There were a multitude of reasons for me. In fact, this formed my first post here:
To save you reading the post I needed to get back to my writing. I was being challenged to re-write the 4th (or as we like to call it, the 10th anniversary) edition of Poised for Partnership. And beyond some 1000 word articles for Croner-i I hadn’t written anything of substance, i.e. book type length, for years. I felt rusty. And if I am truly honest, my confidence as a writer had slipped. It had become formulaic rather than something that filled my soul.
Writing had always, in the early stages of my business, been part marketing and part therapy. Helping me understand and process the business world around me.
At the back of my mind, my Substack was going to be my retirement plan. The thing that gave me a regular income when I had sold The Accountants’ Growth Club into an employee owned trust. Did I know how I was going to get there? No. But sometimes with these things you just have to start. So I started.
Decide on your brand
This isn’t always as clear cut as you may think. Firstly, my business partners were dead set against me being on Substack. They thought it was going to be a distraction. I think you now realise that I ignored them! In fact, they have come around to the fact that me being here is yielding positive results for both businesses.
Anyway, I digress. Yes, my Substack presence was initially around building a platform for a retirement income. But I also needed a space that wasn’t ’How to make partner’ or ‘The Accountants’ Growth Club. The platform that would credentialise my expertise in growing and scaling small typically knowledge based businesses. Which would then help me to grow Heather Townsend, the speaker and personal brand.
That’s why I originally started as Start Up To Grown Up. When I started to see the power of the platform materialise, I changed my name to Heather Townsend. In the last month or so we have added a new publication called ‘How To Make Partner’.
I wrote about this here:
When it comes to social media people like people. They much prefer a photo of a person not a brand. Of course, if you want to engage here as your brand name that’s your choice. But I made that choice in the early days of twitter. If you were interested it was ‘the efficiency coach’. By the time I realised that I would get more engagement as me first, brand second, my real name ‘Heather Townsend’ had already been taken, so I had to be ‘Heathertowns’.
Choose your narrative
If you are a naturally private person, like me, it’s not easy to put stuff out there in the public domain. However, I know the more real, vulnerable and authentic you can be on social media the easier it is to pick up followers and connections. That means ditch the showreel highlights stuff and be prepared to share the good, bad and the downright ugly.
I’ve shared a more than a few of the tough things here on Substack.
Someone else asked me on the viral note about how I got over the hump of not wanting to put my head above the parapet on social media. It turns out that when you need to put food on the table to feed your family AND there is no plan B that you can overcome many of your inhibitions!
When I started on Substack I did a number of things when thinking about my narrative:
Decided who was my target reader and what they wanted to read. That rule normally guides every single one of my posts and notes. I deliberately aim to post on the whole topic of scaling and growing a small business. In fact, I have a very detailed reader persona which I have trained AI on to help me get the first draft on the page.
Decided what about my life or me was not going to go into the public domain. And yes, despite my seemingly ‘open book’ type attitude on Substack both written and on the podcast, there are red lines which I don’t cross. For example, I don’t name my current employees here. Neither do I give them a starring role in my writing. And yes, a number of them do read it and let me know about the typos I left in…
I deliberately put my own business and what was happening to me and it as the hero in my Substack. Remember, this is part of why I am here.
Commit to the platform
I’ve built followings of 1000+ on Facebook, Twitter, Substack and LinkedIn. I’ve failed to do this anywhere else. Not because I didn’t want to. But because I didn’t have the time or energy to commit.
As you can see from my graph, stuff started to pick up in December when I realised that I needed to commit to the notes feature of Substack. It wasn’t enough to write a decent article once a week and hope that the universe would find me. I needed to get out there and engage daily.
I have a set posting schedule for Substack. I aim to restack my articles most days, but also share others posts and notes every single day. There are a few days when I don’t turn up, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
The right frequency for you to turn up will be personal to you and the platform. In the early days of twitter it needed to be multiple tweets a day. But, take my lead on this, whatever platform you choose you need to be regularly posting and engaging on it. You can’t dabble or turn up infrequently and hope to get results.
I’ll be honest, the first 4 months here on Substack were a grind. I was putting my best stuff out there and my subscriber count remained firmly static. It was incredibly disheartening. And each note I saw that talked about someone else’s meteoric growth in a few months would be another dagger to my heart.
Put your best stuff out there
I’ve always worked on the basis that I was going to put my best stuff out there when it came to my blog, articles and social media. I’ve been told many times, often in the early days of social media, that I was bonkers. I think that I am probably having the last laugh on this one!
At the time of writing this I have 12 people recommending the ‘Start Up To Grown Up’ Substack. And, from the bottom of my heart, I thank each and every one of you. I would have never got these recommendations without putting my best stuff out there. Yes, sometimes I take a transcription of a session I have run and old post and ask Google Gemini to plan and write the first draft of an article for me. But I still aim to deliver good value with every single post. (My no AI rule from my first post needs to be quietly amended…)
It’s these recommendations that have driven the explosive growth I’ve seen in my Start Up To Grown Up publication since February. Yes, the recommendations feature is a ‘Substack’ thing, but it’s the same principle regardless of what platform you are on. Always deliver great value to your target reader or follower and growth will follow.
Listen and learn
Every social media platform has its own quirks and Substack is no different. For example, it’s on Instagram knowing to not put links in the written stuff and how powerful hashtags are. Then Linkedin has its all powerful algorithm. Which frigging well changes too often. Just when you know what content works or not, it changes again and my reach reduces to frankly not much.
But if you are to get the benefit of the platform you choose you need to listen and learn what worked. I chose not to do a ‘your quick start course to get going on Substack’. Now that would have probably helped me. But I am a stubborn so and so and wanted to work it out for myself. Which means I am looking at my stats and seeing what works and what doesn’t work. If you are interested my articles that hint at a business car crash are normally very popular.
Be kind and helpful
I saw in the early days of Substack a note saying:
‘be generous here if you want to grow’
And yes, this is part of the culture of Substack. But its also a good rule for any social media platform. Do raise other people up, and don’t be a dickhead. Yes, there were a few moments when I tired of the continual question on my viral post of:
‘how did you do it?’.
And yes, I did answer each of these questions. But for most it was ‘read the comments as I have answered this already’.
In Substack, it really does pay to restack others work. But remember, is this relevant to your ideal reader? It also pays to pop a heart on the stuff you love. People remember this stuff.
Forgive the arrogance, but I currently am growing too many subscribers to have the time to send each one a personalised note to say thank you. But when your subscriber acquisition rate is low, this is a great tool to buy a little bit of goodwill.
Final thoughts
I was asked a question this week from some lawyers getting into business development. They asked me:
‘How do you go into a social media platform and establish your brand’?
Funnily enough, I took them through this article. But if I was to summarise it, I’d say:
Know why you are investing in a platform as it normally takes 3-6 months to see results.
Identify your target reader and ensure everything you post is valuable to them.
Turn up as person first, human second.
Be consistent and commit to your platform
Lift other people up
Your actions this week
It’s to double down on the social media platform of your choice. If you were being consistent and committed to your platform what would you start, stop or continue?
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