Hi All,
Welcome to the Substack Lives Series:
4 exclusive LIVE sessions to help you grow and scale your Substack by building your community and getting paid for what you love doing:
Session 1: Getting the basics right (28 minutes)
Session 2: Tools to grow organically (36 minutes) Today 🌟
Session 3: Scale with collaboration and community (next)
Session 4: Monetize with a clear strategy and offer
The sessions are a mix of mindset, strategy and tactics paired with practical exercises to help you turn the theory into action.
The content is 100% based on my experience growing 2 publications (1 Substack Bestseller and the Spanish version with almost 3,000 subscribers in 1 year).
You can upgrade now to get access to all the live sessions, recordings and the VIP group chat for Q&A and personalized feedback.
Session 2: The Best Tools to Grow Organically
Today I hosted Session #2 and 57 people joined live!
The topic was how to grow organically – no ads, Notes Boosts or external platforms; just the tools Substack already gives us for free.
95% of my subscribers come from within Substack, and in this video I share how and my 3 key levers: Notes, Recommendations and Live sessions.
1. Notes
Notes are still the #1 growth engine on Substack and while we can’t predict the algorithm, there are things we can control: consistency, intention, and connection.
Also, it’s important to highlight that success is not measured by vanity metrics. It’s the depth of conversation and the real human connections that turn into subscribers (sometimes even friends!). Here are some tips that work for me:
Cadence and timing
Try to be consistent (1–2 Notes a day if you can) and be in sync with your audience’s time zones, as they will spread across different continents. In my case, my key market is US but I have many subscribers in Europe, so I try to catch their awake time.
Let your Note breathe. Don’t post again 30 minutes later just because it’s quiet: Notes often take hours or even days to pick up steam. The content on Substack has incredible longevity compared to other platforms, so being patient pays off. Let the chicken marinate.
Topics: what to post
Every Note should ideally do one of these two things (if it does both, even better):
- Build connection: Share who you are as a person - your hobbies, your struggles, your little daily stories, your late start, your personal thoughts…
Share you story and humanize your content.
- Build credibility: Share what you’re learning in public, your flops, your backstage, your tiny wins, your process. People follow journeys, not perfection. And don’t take yourself too seriously!
Notes as your digital lab
I love using Notes as a “laboratory of creativity and ideation”. Test an idea in a Note before writing a full Post.
If it gets curiosity and questions, that’s your signal to expand it into a Post (or even a series of of Posts).
If it gets crickets, you just saved hours writing something nobody wanted.
My most popular Posts are the result of a lot of trial and error on Notes. Fail fast and move on.
What to avoid (lessons from my own mistakes)
These are some practices I stay away from because they push people away:
- External links: Substack wants to keep its users inside.
- Posting too frequently (cannibalizes your own reach).
- Humble-bragging or over selling: you always build trust first.
- Long walls of text – people are scrolling and are not ready for a full meal. Give them a tasty snack.
- Bad titles: your title will make it or break it and very often it becomes an afterthought. Here is a tip you probably haven’t tried: your best line is often your last line. Try moving it to the top.
2. Recommendations done genuinely
75%+ of my subscribers come directly from Recommendations (in the Spanish one is over 85%) and my strategy is simple: be genuine and have an abundance mindset.
You can’t force them, but you can earn them: give first, support others genuinely, collaborate, show up in their chats and lives, leave a thoughtful comment and recommend first.
Be like the nice waitress who always has a warm smile and gives you a free cookie with your flat white (I love cookies).
The most powerful recommendations are born from real relationships, not swaps.
If you want to go deeper into Recommendations, I have a dedicated video for my Paid Subscribers with best practices and examples:
🎬 Making Sense of the Recommendations Shenanigans (21 min)
3. Live sessions
I only started hosting live sessions on Substack earlier this year, and every time I go live, 3 things happen:
It brings new subscribers because some people discover you in the app.
It deepens the connection with existing subscribers because they get to know you better in a very casual and conversational way.
It builds confidence as a writer, creator and person. If you can speak live to strangers while stumbling over words and still think on your feet, you can do anything. It gives you the courage to launch webinars, host Masterminds and you feel comfortable in podcasts and interviews. Even if your audience doesn’t grow, you do, and just for that, it’s worth it.
To go deeper into Substack Live sessions, you can watch this video for paid subscribers:
🎬 You Can Actually Grow Your Audience With Live Sessions (25 min)
Plant the seed
Organic growth on Substack is slow at the beginning, then suddenly compounds. It rewards consistency, generosity, and genuine connection over time.
Show up, give more than you take, share your full messy human self, and trust the long game. Nothing happens until one day, everything happens.
Next week is Session 3 (my absolute favourite): Collaboration & Community: how to go from growing to truly scaling with the help of others.
🗓️ Monday 24 Nov 8pm EST || Tuesday 25 Nov 9am Hong Kong || 12pm Sydney
💬 Join the VIP Group Chat to keep the conversation going and get your personalized feedback.
I would love for you to comment and ask questions below, and if this is helpful, please share it with one person who could benefit from it.
What goes around comes around 🌳🍋
Gracias 🙏🏼
