Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:00.985)
If you're business owner struggling to build deep, meaningful connections with your audience without getting overwhelmed by social media algorithms or constant live launching, then our guest, Claire Venus, is about to give you a simple win you can implement today. Claire is a Substack expert and audience development mentor based in the UK, and I am so excited to have you here, Claire. Thank you so much for jumping on with me today.
Claire Venus (00:24.448)
Hi Adam, it's lovely to be here.
Adam O'Leary (00:26.981)
Absolutely. So I've heard you discuss how focusing on connection over numbers can transform audience engagement. Why is this approach so effective for business owners looking to build lasting relationships?
Claire Venus (00:39.832)
Yeah, such a gorgeous question. And I think as business owners, we have been plugged into so many platforms and we've had so many different demands on our time, know, become content creators, switch to Instagram stories, make video, do podcasting.
And my passion is really about that connection. So it's like, which is the platform that is gonna give me the deepest connection and really help me to understand my audience because from understanding our audiences, their wills, their desires, their pain points, their blocks, we really understand how to meet them with the work that we're doing. So.
For me, it really is about seeing the person, you know, reframing away from the vanity metrics of numbers and seeing the individual as they arrive. So whether that's in a thoughtful comment or a DM reply and really kind of connecting into the fact that that is a human that has taken time out of their day to send you a message and you are then plugging back in again, rather than just moving through to the next thing or looking at.
creating huge audiences that are of scrolling away as soon as you post. So the reframe and the refocus on connection is about seeing the real person behind the screen and really connecting to who they are as a person and how you can best serve them as a business owner.
Adam O'Leary (01:56.499)
I love that. And can you tell me, you're talking about these deeper connections with people. And I think that's fascinating because I mean, that's kind of what a community is all about, right? Is having that deeper connection. How would you say you've seen your business impacted by making these deeper connections as opposed to just general list building like most people go ahead and do?
Claire Venus (02:18.51)
Yeah, and so it's been a really interesting one. started my newsletter in 2017 and built it up to about 350 email subscribers on MailChimp. And I used to get one or two replies and I used the people who replied to kind of model my ideal client on. So they were very different. There was sort of, yeah, there was about three of them that replied, two of them I knew in real life that were very different to each other and one of them that lived overseas in America. And I was like, if these people are the people that wanna deepen,
and wanna reply, how can I then mirror what I'm doing back to them so I get more of these replies and get more of this connection? So I just got really geeky about it all. And then everything that I was doing, it's basically like everything that I was touching had that intention behind it. So with Instagram, I was incredibly frustrated by Instagram. I just couldn't make it work for me. And everybody would talk about, you know, once you meet your people on Instagram and I'm like, what people? Like for me, it just felt like a social media app where we were trying to
to get likes or grab attention. And when I arrived into Substack in 2022,
I finally felt like I'd arrived home. It just felt like people had so much time to witness you writing, leave thoughtful comments, have an actual conversation. You I always say a comment isn't a comment, it's actually the start of a conversation. So rather than feeling like you are moving through the comments and replying to people, you're unloading, okay, what is this response from this person and how can I make that into a conversation that feels really worth
for both of us, you know? And I think it has completely changed. It's like, it's almost that kind of line of invisible trust between me and whoever is replying to me, where people feel deeply connected to me as a person. They feel like they know me, they like my work, they share my work. My co-author of How to Build a World Class Substack talks about them as evangelists, the people who will really rave about your work and share what you do. And for me, it all started from that kind of first connection point.
Claire Venus (04:25.296)
So rather than searching for more and more and more, and don't get me wrong, like I've had a really busy time online, but I was never searching for that. I was always just honouring the connection where it was meeting me.
Adam O'Leary (04:39.152)
I love that. And can you walk us through how, because I want to talk about the growing the audience side, because I think this is very important. So would you mind being able to walk us through how Substack's recommendation tool organically grows your audience by sharing and supporting others' works?
Claire Venus (04:44.622)
Mmm.
Claire Venus (04:55.086)
Yeah, so we have a recommendations tool within Substack and what you're actually doing is recommending another writer, another author, creator on Substack and their publications. So we call them Substack publications. And you can write a few words of like a blurb, know, of encouragement as to why you think other people should subscribe. And then at the point of sign up for a new subscriber to the Substack network, they will be presented with other like-minded publications and writers that they can subscribe.
There's also the opportunity to follow these writers. So there's now a Substack social network called Notes, which is a bit like Twitter. It's like Substack's version of Twitter or X. And you can follow those people. So Substack make those recommendations at the start. Again, what's been really beautiful for me is with my membership Sparkle on Substack, I encourage them to think about it as a monthly gratitude practice. So to log into recommendations, to see if they've got any new recommendations, to really feel the words that have been left for them, those beautiful
words of thanks and recognition of their work and then to leave some other recommendations for other sub stackers that they've been enjoying reading. And so it's quite unique. I know another couple of the platforms have started introducing tools like this. think Kit do one, but it is quite unique to sub stack in terms of how it makes the platform feel because it just feels like a very, very generous platform. It doesn't feel like a competitive platform, although obviously some of those elements do get rolled out and we've all got to
our imposter syndrome but it feels generous and it feels generous to be able to do the work and to lift your colleagues up as well as you know focusing on your own stuff as well.
Adam O'Leary (06:34.374)
love that. is one of the things that you're saying here is that the way that you typically grow on Substack is by helping others out and referring them. Has that been the biggest way that you've seen your own self grow?
Claire Venus (06:45.644)
Yeah, definitely. So I've had over 10,000 subscribers through the Recommendations Network since I started Sparkle on Substack. And then I've got another best-selling publication that is kind of more behind the scenes of my business and Whole Hearted Living, which has worked in a really similar way. It's a smaller publication, but it's worked in a really similar way. And I think seeing those numbers, like that just feels beautiful, doesn't it? I think, you know, when we first came to social media and people would share your work on socials, you know, there might be a little trickle of one or two people.
will come through, but we can see the power of people with influence sharing small business owners or their colleagues or doing things like this on podcasts, just to kind of help people see this is something that you might also like. I just think it's a really beautiful way of going about our day online as we build our businesses and our empires.
Adam O'Leary (07:35.921)
I like this. So really what we're looking at here is that it does come down to these connections. It comes down to connections with other Stub Stack authors and also with your audience. So when we're looking at this, how would you say has been, I guess, your biggest way and your best way of going ahead and building these connections? Like what would be your step-by-step process that you would say somebody should follow in order to ensure that they are making these connections?
Claire Venus (08:03.009)
Yeah great question Adam and so for me I think very...
quickly into my journey on the Substack because I was very passionate about holding Zoom calls behind the scenes. So my first iteration of my publication had four seasonal Zoom calls, so four a year, and we would get together. And so those were my members that were paying me, but I was able to deepen the connection and understanding of who those people were in the world and what was bringing them into my work. And then from there, I organized a couple of writers meetups, one in London, one up here in Anick as part
of a bigger book festival that was happening. And we all just talked about our passion for writing and Substack. There are so many ways to join communities on Substack now. So whether that is a paid newsletter community or whether it's got more interactive elements like a membership. I think that positioning yourself in those places where there are already lots of people like-minded people doing what you want to do is a great way into it. But also meeting people in person again. So I was just at the Substack Best Sellers party.
in London and lots of these people, you know, I've seen online and I know who they are. I've had Zoom calls with them. Like all of that sort of stuff has happened and then you meet them in real life. And of course it's a far more beautiful experience than online can ever be, but it solidifies, we're here for each other. We all want each other to succeed and we'll do collaborations and we might do projects together. We might share each other's work. We might buy each other's books, you know? And I think that that just ripples and grows. And you know, I often wondered about
capacity for this, you know, because realistically, how many people can you hold and how do you keep growing when it is a really popular publication or there are lots of people gathering around. But I found a way to kind of work with the ebbs and flows of it all. And almost like, I feel like I'm sort of, yeah, like a conductor in an orchestra at times, just kind of going, okay, like if I do these things, this is what I trust is gonna happen. This is where the engagement's gonna be. This is where people are gonna show up.
Claire Venus (10:07.409)
this is where it's gonna be quieter. So I think it's about leaning into what you want and how you want to hold your own space online and then finding the people that deeply connect with your work and you deeply connecting with their work as well.
Adam O'Leary (10:23.108)
I love that. And can we talk about the live section? So in Substack, they have a, I think it's called Substack Live. And I know a lot of our community members will go ahead and do live events. How do you go ahead using?
Claire Venus (10:36.725)
Yeah, yeah, the live, stack lives are just so fun and so good. So they rolled it out around about this time last year and they usually roll out new products to best sellers first. So that's anyone with over 101 paid subscribers. So I just had a play around with it and I wasn't really sure how I wanted to use it. I wasn't really sure who was going to turn up to it, but mainly it is people that subscribe to you and then other people that sub stack push it out to. So you can go live from the sub stack app. can invite other people.
who have a Substack account to go live with you. You can have a chat, you can do a Q and A, people can type in the comments below and it is just really fun.
Adam O'Leary (11:23.9)
So based on our discussion, what's one simple win our listeners can implement today to start deepening audience connections and seeing immediate engagement results.
Claire Venus (11:39.76)
Beautiful and I suppose it depends where you are in your journey. So if you are like me back in 2017 when you've got you know 300 mailing list subscribers, but you don't really know who any of them are I'd definitely be encouraging replies. So encouraging replies really speaking to the human that you know is receiving that email at the other side. If you've been growing your audience for a while, I think it's about giving back. So it's a great time of year for giving back, know running a competition or doing a zoom get together. I'm doing one
next week for Substack Best Sellers that I'm having an audio scribe come along actually, not an audio scribe, sorry, an illustrator scribe. She's gonna kind of scribe the whole meeting in really fun graphics. So that's gonna be so good. And I just wanted to do that for my best-selling colleagues because it is a very up and down space, the internet, and we've to be so conscious and careful about how we see ourselves in that. yeah, think thinking about how you wanna give back or really getting to know your audience
would be my two kind of top tips depending on where you're at in your journey.
Adam O'Leary (12:43.889)
love that. And I know that you've gone ahead and worked with other clients to go ahead and implement Substack for themselves. What sort of results have you seen from your clients going ahead and using Substack?
Claire Venus (12:54.635)
Yeah, and it depends what people want. So sometimes people have a really successful newsletter mailing list off platform. So it's quite confusing for them because they, you they might have 30 or 50 K on a newsletter list and they're not sure how to use Substack to either grow that audience or deepen connection with that audience. So it's kind of bespoke really, but because we can use Substack as a video and audio podcasting tool as well. So it's free to put host podcasts on Substack. I quite often just do a big zoom out with them,
about the mixed media approaches. So I've got an illustrator client and her sub stack notes always go viral. She does really cute illustrations of animals. Yeah, and they always go viral. just, people love them. And so that's been beautiful for her to use that as a funnel into our sub stack publication. She's launched a paid membership there now. And then she also has a mailing list off platform, which is more of a shop, you know, so where she can kind of email people about what she's got on offer in terms of her.
books and artwork and things so it is very bespoke but usually what people want is to understand how to use the platform.
in a way that it'll work best for them. And people will always say, I can't do another platform. You know, I just joined blue sky or maybe I should do Patreon. But when you get to the crux of it, what they're missing is that they've been churning out content for a long time. And I say churning out because it does feel like another full-time job on top of running a business. And they're very curious about, could this be an evergreen income stream for me? Could it diversify the way that I'm speaking to my audience? Could it diversify the connection? And like Russell
says, is it going to give me some evangelists who are going to go off and share my work? And I guess the answer to all of those questions is in my experience, yes, you know, I've seen some incredible results and sub stack are very good at supporting people as well and, you know, featuring them in their sub stack posts. So I've had some clients be featured and done incredibly well. Some of the things that they were doing on social media, they've basically replicated into sub stack notes and those have gone viral, you know, bringing hundreds, sometimes even thousands of subscribers.
Claire Venus (15:03.537)
into their publication and we get to keep those email addresses, right? So it's up to you what you wanna do with that, whether you wanna zap them into your other list or whether you wanna download them and start another list somewhere else or you just wanna keep them all within the Substack network. There's so many options.
Adam O'Leary (15:20.101)
I love that. And where can people go to learn more about you if somebody is looking to go and start implementing Substack for themselves?
Claire Venus (15:26.141)
sure, so I am on Instagram at creatively.conscious and then my Substack education space is Sparkle on Substack. So if you just Google Sparkle on Substack, you'll find me there or within the Substack network.
Adam O'Leary (15:39.313)
Thank you so much, Claire. This was such a great episode.
Claire Venus (15:42.455)
Well thank you Adam, thanks for having me, it's lovely to meet you all.
Adam O'Leary (15:45.65)
Absolutely. Thank you all for joining me and I will see you on the next episode. Have a great day. Bye now.
