How Teri Leigh Grew Her Substack In 12 Months Without Growth Hacks

Guest post from Teri Leigh

Hello, dear readers.

I want to introduce you to my friend Teri Leigh 💜 today. With tears in my eyes, I wonder how I can introduce this amazing human being in just a few short sentences?

I met Teri 8 months ago, and it was friendship at first sight. We just instantly clicked. She wanted help growing her Substack, but wanted to do it in an authentic way. You know, with less “GO GO GO!” energy and more “FEEL FEEL FEEL.” She was sick of the typical growth hack advice, and set about doing Substack her own way.

That’s the basis of her guest post today.

What her first 12 months were like on Substack.

I love this post because it paints a picture of what actual growth on Substack looks like. You won’t hear anything about how she got 67,000 subscribers in 4 weeks, or how she made $63,000 in 3 months. None of that. Just raw, honest, insights.

I got to say this: Teri is one of the best writers on Substack. Point. Blank. Period. She used to come into my trainings and help my own students rewrite their Notes better than I could. She’s a master of rhythm, and rhyming, and writes such captivating stories.

Here’s a viral Note she wrote months ago.

What I love most about Teri isn’t her writing, though. I love her spirit. Her soul. I love who she is. She is the kind of person who deserves to succeed online. I see so many gurus building large online businesses who don’t care about their customers, and prioritize profit over genuinely helping.

I hate that shit.

I’ve seen Teri spend hours of her time helping my own students take their 1 star Note to a 5 star Note OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF HER HEART.

Ladies and gentlemen of Substack, this is a gem of a person we must cherish. This is a diamond in the rough. Please, please, SUPPORT THIS WOMAN! Follow her, subscribe to her, pay her, whatever. You won’t be disappointed.

Speaking of supporting her, she’s running an incredible program with Ryan Delaney called The Creator Retreat. It is a monster 9-month cohort that flips typical “writing” cohorts on its head. Instead of primarily focusing on getting a 1,000,000 subscribers, it focuses on the inner world and work of being a creator.

It’s hard to battle anxiety, and fear, and doubts as a writer. Notice how the gurus never really help with the inner work? It’s all just promises about getting a billion subscribers, and most people who sign up for these programs quit because the inner work isn’t a priority.

It’s brilliant how Teri recognized that succeeding online is dependent on our inner world without exception. I love how novel her approach is.

With that said, this program WILL help you grow your Substack as well. It’s just not ALL about that.

To learn more about the program, go here.

I’ll be a guest presenter in March, by the way. ;) Teri has a bunch of other awesome guest presenters lined up, too, like Don Boivin, Megan Lee, Michael Thompson, Alexander Lovell, PhD, Amanda Saint, Kristi Keller, and Beckett Johnson.

Okay, I’ll shut up now. Here’s her wonderful guest post.

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In 2023, I paid a coaching firm $14K, and my barely-make-ends-meet business went so deep into the red I thought maybe I would just let it bleed out. (you can read that story here).

At a loss for what to do on the practical business level, I found myself one morning sitting with my ancestor shrine, and spilling coffee all over Reverend Phil Laporte’s picture.

“Stop shoulding on yourself,” his playful voice echoed in my head, “ It doesn’t smell good on you.”

Well, duh! I belly laughed as I cleaned up the coffee. I'd spent my time and money and loyalty seeking the ‘right’ answers from others (outside myself) and forgot the core truth I learned from Phil when I was 15 years old, the answers lie within! 🤦🏻‍♀️

I promptly took a longer-than-usual shower and washed all my regrets and woulda/coulda/shouldas down the drain.

What does smell good on me?, I asked myself while looking at myself in the mirror.

Writing!

I’ve been writing since I was seven years old. I don’t need some checklist or online program to show me how.

I’m a writer, damn it. And I’m here to write.

With my hair still wrapped in a towel, I signed up on Substack, a platform for writers.

Now, a year later, I realize that Substack has been a tumble-down-the-rabbit-hole for me as a creator in finding my voice, discovering my tribe, and redefining success.

I’ve had more success in 12-months on Substack than I had in 20 years of business.

• I am earning money for my writing.

• I have attracted and enrolled ideal clients to my coaching program.

• I doubled my newsletter subscribers with loyal and engaged readers.

• I redefined success, and started experiencing growth on multiple levels.

• I am cultivating deep friendships and a solid network with people who get me.

This article details my first 12-months on Substack.

January - April: The “Void”

Accept Being Unimportant - The Tao Te Ching

I imported 1300 loyal subscribers and posted articles weekly.
Two things happened:

• A chunk of my loyal readers unsubscribed. ouch

• A small handful of my loyal readers upgraded to paid. yay

For the next five months, I got real friendly and intimate with the dreaded VOID. No engagement. No likes. Zero new subscribers. And yet, I kept going.

Something miraculous happened.

I found a consistency and rhythm for my writing I’d never had before. I got comfortable in “the void” because it helped me give up perfectionism.

April - May: Commenting

Give, and it will be given to you. - Luke 6:38

I had a love-hate relationship with my “void” invisibility cloak. As a shy introvert, I felt cozy in anonymity, and yet I desperately wanted to feel seen and heard. I knew that if I wanted to make friends on Substack, I had to be a friend.

I decided to give generously.

I wrote gushing gratitudes and oozing compliments in the form of paragraphs-long comments. As I showed up for others, something shifted: I forgot about how lonely I felt about my own stuff.

June: Receiving Help

If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path. ~The Buddha

In the spirit of giving generously, I attended a free webinar by Tom Kuegler. During the Q&A, I requested a private session. In that session, Tom got curious about me. He wanted to know how I tick, not just professionally, but emotionally, vulnerably, and spiritually.

He wasn’t like the other coaches.
He didn’t suggest a fixed formula.
He said we would figure it out together.

I’ll never forget the yummy feeling when he said, “Teri, I just want to see you succeed.”

July: Joining a Community

I see God in every human being. ~Mother Teresa

I enrolled in The Substack Campfire, which intended to teach Substack users how to use Notes to grow subscriber lists.

Something entirely different happened.

In writing one note each day and commenting on each other’s notes, we discovered that we are all mirrors to each other. We shined light on each other, and our imposter syndromes started to dissolve.

I developed real friendships, and started to break out of the “void”. For the first time in my 20-year career as an online creator, I didn’t feel alone.

August: Collaborating

Ask, and you shall receive. - Matthew 7:7

In his book Shy By Design, Michael Thompson recommends that introverts market best in 1-1 connections, and suggests reaching out to people you admire.

I contacted creators I liked and invited them to zoom chat with me 1-1.
This changed everything.

What started as “I like you and want to get to know you better” turned into “how can we work together to support each other”.

Collaboration and partnerships have evolved in ways I never could have imagined.
I started getting 1-3 subscribers per day.
I wasn’t just out of the void, I was building a community.

September: Branding & Organization

Embrace Simplicity - Lao Tzu

I stumbled upon an AI-tool to create watercolor illustrations of myself. I spent a whole weekend generating new cover images for my posts, and hired Kristi Keller to prettify my homepage with them.

Simultaneously, I hired Megan Lee to help me with branding and design. Like Tom did, Megan got curious about my work, and I felt fully seen and heard. She conducted an extensive audit of my business and provided a branding & design plan that was easy to implement and felt more authentic than anything I’d ever done before.

For the first time in my 20 year career, I now feel like my homepage is a simple and clear visual representation of who I am at depth.

October - Going Viral

The sage has no mind of his own, he is aware of the needs of others - Tao Te Ching

The Substack Campfire opened its second month-long event, a process of crowd-sourcing storytelling notes and writing a hero post.

30 creators wrote and commented on 5-notes a week for two weeks.
One of mine went viral, over 4K likes to date.
My invisibility cloak came off entirely.

Remembering my experience in “the void” I wanted to stay humble as I got more attention than I was used to receiving. On the suggestion of Don Boivin, whom I lovingly call “the grandfather of Substack”, I started the practice of opening every new subscriber email notification and reading the name of each new subscriber out loud to myself, offering a moment of gratitude for each one.

This practice helps me to see every single like, comment, follower, and subscriber as a special person who gave their love to me in the form of time and attention.

November - January: Planning The Creator Retreat

I am now working closely with Ryan Delaney and a team of Substack Creators to launch the first annual Creator Retreat Small Group Cohort & Online Self-Study Program which starts in March 2025.

This is a supportive community to help you pull the wisdom out of yourself and share it online with integrity.

My average Substack work day

An effort-ease balance of spiritual practice and business effort.

Most marketing programs focus entirely on the practical business steps to achieve success, while most self-help programs focus entirely on the spiritual practices to achieve desired results. I think the magick that happened for me with Substack was the merging of the practical business efforts with the internal work of spiritual practices. Below is an outline of how I spend my time.

Business Effort

• 1-3 hrs/week writing and posting one article per week.

• 15-30min/day writing and posting one note per day. (Monday-Friday).

• 1-3 hrs/week zoom meetings to explore or plan collaboration efforts.

• 30min/day reading, liking, commenting on notes (10-20 comments/day).

• 30min/day reading, liking, commenting on posts & articles (2-3 restacks as notes).

Spiritual Practice

• 3-5 bullet-list daily gratitude journal.

• Reading new subscribers names out loud.

• 5x a day MOZI Method body-mind-spirit 30-second exercises*

• 1x/day 30min spirit practice: yoga, walk in nature, meditation, or ancestor time.

*The MOZI Method is a spiritual practice system I developed based on my years of study of language and linguistics, body mechanics and alignment, and breathwork. It includes a series of 30-second exercises that link body actions with mindful affirmations and specific breathwork to reset the nervous system to baseline calm. This is the base system I facilitate in The Creator Retreat Curriculum.

Summary

my unplanned step-by-step Substack path*

1. Establish Consistency - embrace “the void” and banish you perfectionism as you explore what is the best posting schedule for you.

2. Comment - play on the Substack playground and give generously by writing meaningful comments on the notes and articles of others.

3. Receive Help - seek creators who are slightly ahead of you on the path, and connect the ones who exhibit the service-leadership model, and ask for their help.

4. Community - join a cohort or small-group and actively participate so that you no longer feel isolated and alone.

5. Collaborate - reach out to the creators you enjoy to get to know them personally and possibly explore ways you can collaborate and mutually support each other.

*The Creator Retreat Curriculum will help you find your own meandering path through this general process.