Substacker Personal Log: Keeping focused in the chaos

I cannot quite believe that we’re in March already. It feels like 2025 is in some kind of time super-slipstream or in alternative universe given the amount of political and economic volatility.

It is hard to stay focused in such times. I could spend hours doom-scrolling on a wide variety of platforms if I wasn’t being disciplined and keeping focused on my shiny new business and growing it.

It has been hard, but I’m incredibly grateful for how much I’ve achieved in the past month, even my Substack progress which is very, very slow. That is alright, because where I am making traction as a business is on the coaching, mentoring and training side thanks to networking.

I’ve been more active physically networking in February. I’ve met some great people, connected with a lot of people in my local area, and I have some great collaborations in the works.

Where I’m finding interest in my services is in this Learning and Development space. I’ve had a long career in business and digital transformation and that is lending itself well to attracting professionals who want to progress their careers or who need a neutral sounding board outside of their workplace.

And there has been success

Two of the people I mentor have secured their next roles in their careers – dream positions for them that will help them further develop and achieve their potential. As their mentor, it feels fantastic to know that I’ve been part of helping them make it happen. They did the work, of course, but I helped them prepare for interviews, looked over CVs, and talked through their options when one of them had multiple opportunities.

It has also been satisfying to hear from the people I coach and mentor how the solutions we work through on their day-to-day problems of achieving change in their organisation, or leading their teams, makes an impact.

I love this part of my job.

I love writing too

I’m proud of the articles I’m writing. Yes, there are things to improve – there are always things to improve – but I’m pleased that I’m providing useful information out to the world even if it feels from the lack of subscribers, comments, likes, and shares here and at my website that it hasn’t found an audience in these places yet.

I did get some lovely feedback over on my Bluesky channel about a couple of the articles, and I’ve had some reposts and likes on LinkedIn, so I know the information is useful and people appreciate it. I have modest but steadily growing subscriber numbers on both Bluesky (520 as of today) and LinkedIn (where I’ve just cracked 1000), but my analysis shows that I get excellent engagement on the majority of what I post on LinkedIn so I’m comfortable I’m making progress on these platforms.

So, what to do about Substack?

I always do a strategy and plan review at the beginning of the month. What is working, what is not working, what do I want to change up or drop?

My organic growth is small. I have a handful of subscribers and followers, 80% of which are fellow ‘subscribe back’ supporters. All are free.

Now, I never expected to join Substack and immediately have a large number of subscribers, especially paid subscribers. My original 2025 business plan assumed up to 2 paid subscriptions in my first few months based on what I had investigated with others and from Substack’s own YouTube videos out there. And I’m certain that this will be true for some people. Maybe they bring an existing audience to their Substack, maybe they write on topics which garner more interest, or maybe they just have a viral post which prompts a lot of subscription or just that minimal starting number.

Clearly any paid subscriptions was optimistic. It is going to take a while to grow Substack, and it is going to take longer for people to opt for the paid subscription. Revising my business plan is definitely on the task list for next week.

Do I stay or do I drop Substack as a failed experiment? I’m all about agile failing fast methodology.

Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve given it enough time or effort to make that decision. This is only my fourth week on the platform. I’ve posted 10 times (11 including this article). I’ve been posting daily notes for three weeks, but again without many likes or comments.

I’m assuming that my main problem with Substack is that I’m just not active enough myself and I don’t have enough engagement with my content for it to get pushed by the algorithm.

The first part of that I can attempt to fix. I can dedicate time in March every day to Substack and being more active myself in hunting out content I enjoy, liking and subscribing. One of my new connections in March, encourages ‘strategic engagement’ and I like the idea of giving that a go across my platforms but especially here.

On the second part, I can encourage people to like, share, and comment at the bottom of the articles, and perhaps through chat. It is a more difficult aspect to tackle.

The wider plan is also to get the video/podcast side up and running in March too. This might add some variety to what I post here on Substack.

With these strategies in mind, I’m looking forward to March and seeing how they work (or not!) as I continue on my Substack journey.

I just need to continue to keep my eye on the ball and not get distracted by the insanity of the world around me even as I assess its implications for the success of my business strategy moving forward.

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