(Live) Joyful Growth, Depth of Connection and what we're really missing out with Substack in 2026!

“The main work to do in life and in the online world is nervous system work.”

Thank you Eva Lydon 🌿, RAJ KAUR, mary beth kaplan🪶, New Harmony Homeopath, Geetika, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Here are the resources and people I mentioned…thank you for coming to my impromptu Ted talk with over 850 PEOPLE - woah!!

* Kendall Marie Platt 🌱 at The Seed

* Keris Fox at The Ladybird Purse • Talk Money to Me

* Amie McNee and The Pound Project - video here in my lives or listen in your podcast app.

* Caro Giles at Open In The Middle

* Audience Alchemy - my FREE audience development classes.

* My wonderful mentor Leonie Dawson - sign up for her brilliant academy here.

* Home page design video -

AI Summary - thanks Claude.

Summary

This is a live session by Claire on her Substack Sparkle on Substack, covering joyful growth in 2026 — specifically how to grow a Substack publication in a way that feels sustainable, aligned, and community-rooted rather than hustle-driven.

Core themes covered:

Substack growth tools: Claire walks through the key in-platform tools for growth — the Recommendations feature (she credits it with 10,000+ subscribers), the welcome page with blurbs, and Substack Notes. She emphasises curating your Notes feed to protect your nervous system, using fresh (original) notes over restacking, and treating the whole thing like a networking event built on genuine reciprocity.

Depth of connection: The central argument for 2026 is moving away from vanity metrics toward genuinely knowing your audience. She talks about the “magic trio” of likes, comments and shares for algorithmic reach; using the subscriber tab to send targeted emails; adding polls in posts; and understanding whether your readers engage passively or actively — and being okay with both.

Audio and video: She cites a Substack stat that publications using audio grow 2.5x faster than those that don’t. Video, she says, is the “golden egg” — it breaks the parasocial wall instantly. She personally felt terrified of video for years and encourages self-compassion in learning it.

Unsubscribes and churn: Handled with a healthy perspective — subscriptions are fluid, unsubscribes aren’t personal, and the pause button exists for a reason.

Off-platform growth: For faster growth, especially toward Substack’s “Bestseller” tier (101 paid subscribers), you need to grow off-platform too — whether through Pinterest pins, SEO blog posts, or Meta ads (which she’s curious about but hasn’t used herself). Going viral is described as “a lottery.”

Making time with a full life: For someone with a young child and full-time job, she recommends optimising your phone (delete other social apps, keep Substack and a notes app), capturing threads of ideas, and writing in small windows like nap times.

Guest posts and collaboration: She did guest posts once a month to build confidence and visibility, and invited guests onto her Substack. She notes there are far fewer gatekeepers than people think.

“Subscribing to someone’s life — it’s not natural to be subscribed to multiple people’s lives for the long term. We need to think about the power of REAL and power social relationships and the impact we want those to have on us and our work”

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