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What happens when the life you worked so hard to build no longer feels like the life you want?

There comes a point in many accomplished women’s lives when the question is no longer whether we are capable of doing the things we once set out to achieve, because by then we have accumulated enough evidence to know that we can work hard, build careers, navigate difficult environments, learn new skills, earn the promotion, take responsibility and continue moving towards whatever the next version of success is supposed to look like.

The much more interesting question becomes whether we still want it.

And if the answer is no, or even I’m not entirely sure anymore, what do we do with everything we have spent so many years building?

That was the conversation at the heart of my latest Starting From Zero Live with Tomide Awe, founder of On Your Terms, and although we were ostensibly talking about leaving corporate life and building a business, what we were really exploring was something much bigger: what happens when an accomplished woman begins separating the life that looks impressive from the life that actually feels meaningful to her.

Tomide knows the impressive path well. She spent around twelve years building a corporate career that included Accenture, an MBA from Wharton, Twitter and eventually Meta, where she worked in product strategy, while also building a multi-six-figure handbag business alongside her corporate career. She had achieved many of the things we are taught to associate with success and had accumulated the kind of experience that could have carried her very comfortably into another senior corporate role.

Then, in December 2024, she had her son, and the experience of becoming a mother was accompanied by something far more frightening because, as Tomide shared during our conversation, she almost died three times during childbirth, an experience that inevitably changed the perspective through which she viewed the life waiting for her afterwards. Two months later, while she was still on maternity leave, she was notified that she was being laid off from Meta.

What struck me was that Tomide didn’t describe the layoff simply as a devastating interruption to an otherwise perfectly planned career, because by then she had already begun questioning what corporate life meant to her and whether she wanted to return to it at all, so an event that could easily have sent her immediately searching for the next impressive company or title instead created the space for a very different question.

What if, rather than figuring out her next corporate move, she began building work and a life on her own terms?

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When an impressive life is no longer enough

Very early in our conversation, Tomide said something that stayed with me because I think it articulates a transition many women experience without necessarily having the language to describe it: after everything she had been through, she wanted to stop trying to live an impressive life and start creating one that had meaning for her.

There is an enormous difference between the two, because an impressive life is relatively easy to measure through salaries, promotions, qualifications, companies, job titles, achievements and all the other external evidence we have learned to use as proof that we are doing well, whereas a meaningful life is far more personal and therefore requires us to decide for ourselves what actually constitutes success.

Perhaps that is also why questioning an impressive life can feel so uncomfortable, because walking away from something that is obviously failing is one thing, while questioning something you are objectively very good at, that pays you well and that other people may admire is something entirely different.

There doesn’t necessarily have to be anything dramatically wrong with the life we have created for us to recognise that we have changed inside it, and wanting something different now doesn’t make everything that came before a mistake, nor does it diminish the woman who worked incredibly hard to get there.

It may simply mean that the definition of success she was building towards belonged to an earlier version of herself.

For Tomide, becoming a mother added another dimension to that decision because she wanted her son to grow up seeing that there isn’t only one predetermined path through life, and that it is possible to question the default rather than automatically accepting the next rung of whatever ladder has been placed in front of us.

But recognising that you want something different and knowing exactly what that something should be are, of course, two entirely different things.

And this is where I found Tomide’s story particularly valuable.

The messy middle we don’t talk about enough

There can be a tendency, particularly online, to compress major life transitions into neat before-and-after stories in which somebody leaves corporate life, discovers their purpose, launches a business and emerges six months later talking confidently about why everyone else should do the same, but the reality is usually much less linear and, in my opinion, considerably more useful.

Tomide didn’t leave Meta with On Your Terms already mapped out as the business and community it is becoming today. She needed time to recover both physically and mentally after what she had experienced, and during that period she began writing on Substack because she had thoughts, experiences and reflections she needed somewhere to put, rather than because she had developed a perfectly optimised publication strategy.

She also deleted Instagram because she recognised that constantly consuming what everybody else was doing was giving her more input at precisely the moment she needed enough quiet to hear herself think, something I found particularly interesting because starting again often sends us in the opposite direction, frantically searching for experts, formulas and examples of what everyone else has done successfully.

Sometimes the thing we need most is enough space to discover what we think.

By the beginning of this year, Tomide had started consulting with a friend and they attracted clients, but after a few months she realised that they had inadvertently created something that still felt remarkably similar to the corporate world she had just left, because she was working on things that didn’t particularly excite her while once again being accountable to somebody else.

They decided to stop, with the friendship completely intact, and Tomide moved towards another idea that appeared to make perfect sense given everything she had done professionally: becoming a fractional COO.

She hired a coach to help her develop the offer and create a pipeline, and then, during their third session, the coach stopped her and asked a question that disrupted the entire plan.

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Is this actually what you want to do?

Tomide knew she could do it and, more importantly, knew she could do it extremely well, but when she allowed herself to answer the question honestly, she admitted that what she really wanted was to build On Your Terms beyond Substack and turn it into something much bigger.

Her immediate response to that truth was also wonderfully recognisable: she couldn’t do that yet because first she needed to be responsible, build the sensible business, create income and then, perhaps six months or a year later, return to the thing she actually wanted.

Her coach simply asked her what would happen if the thing she really wanted to build could generate the income too.

That question gave Tomide something she hadn’t necessarily realised she needed: permission to imagine that the responsible choice and the desired choice didn’t automatically have to be different choices.

She left the call and spent hours writing down her vision for On Your Terms.

Being capable of something doesn’t mean you have to build your future around it

I think this is one of the most useful parts of Tomide’s story for women who are considering what comes next, because after decades of accumulating experience our instinct is naturally to look at everything we have done and ask what business, consultancy or next career could most logically be created from it.

It is a sensible question, but I no longer think it is enough.

Perhaps we also need to ask whether the thing we are exceptionally qualified to do is the thing we actually want to spend the next ten years doing.

Tomide could have built a perfectly credible fractional COO business from her experience and there is every reason to believe she would have been excellent at it, but being excellent at something doesn’t automatically mean it deserves to become the next chapter of your life.

That distinction matters because so many women reach this stage carrying an extraordinary amount of expertise and then assume that starting again means finding a slightly different container for exactly the same work, when perhaps the more exciting possibility is to ask how everything we have learned could be rearranged into something that hasn’t existed before.

We don’t have to discard the experience.

But we don’t have to carry all of the old rules with it either.

Starting from zero doesn’t mean starting with nothing

When I asked Tomide what Starting From Zero meant to her, I appreciated the honesty of her response because she was careful not to romanticise her circumstances or pretend she had taken an enormous financial leap without a safety net.

Her version of zero was having a blank slate and not knowing exactly what she was going to build or whether it would work, while also recognising that she wasn’t literally beginning with nothing because she had significant professional experience, had been diligent about saving and knew that, if necessary, she had the skills and résumé to return to employment.

As she put it, she had built a foundation that now allowed her to take her life back.

I loved that distinction because I think we sometimes talk about starting again as though everything that came before suddenly disappears, when for women at this stage of life the opposite is usually true.

We arrive at the blank page carrying decades of judgment, experience, relationships, knowledge, mistakes, resilience, skills and evidence of what we are capable of, which means that although the thing we are creating may be starting from zero, we are not.

Perhaps zero is simply the point at which we stop assuming the past gets to dictate the shape of the future.

What if confidence comes afterwards?

Another idea Tomide shared during our conversation was what she calls the bravery ladder, which came from reflecting on the relationship between courage, bravery and confidence.

We so often assume confidence needs to precede action, particularly when we are accustomed to operating in environments where we are already competent, so we tell ourselves that we will publish when we feel more confident, launch the offer when we know exactly what we’re doing, speak publicly when we feel ready or start the business once we’re certain it will work.

Tomide’s perspective is almost the reverse: courage may be something we already possess internally, but it is through repeatedly doing brave things that we accumulate the evidence from which confidence eventually grows.

I think this is particularly important for accomplished women because becoming a beginner again can be deeply uncomfortable when we have spent years knowing what we’re doing, and it is very tempting to interpret that discomfort as evidence that we’re not ready rather than recognising it as a natural part of doing something genuinely new.

Perhaps confidence isn’t what allows us to begin.

Perhaps beginning is what eventually allows us to become confident.

Building in public without pretending you’ve already arrived

One of the things I appreciate most about what Tomide is creating through On Your Terms is that she isn’t positioning herself as somebody standing at the finish line telling everyone else how easily she got there.

Her free writing draws heavily from her own experiences of rebuilding, experimenting and navigating the messy middle, while the paid side of her publication includes practical resources, monthly Decision Rooms where women can work through the next decisions in their businesses, and something I think is particularly valuable: a behind-the-scenes look at what building On Your Terms actually looks like financially and strategically.

Tomide was candid about the vulnerability involved in showing that process because it means being willing to share the months that aren’t spectacular alongside the ones that are, rather than suddenly appearing online with a large revenue number and leaving everybody wondering what happened between the idea and the result.

There is something about that approach that feels incredibly aligned with what I am trying to explore through Starting From Zero too, because I am increasingly less interested in polished stories told retrospectively and much more interested in what happens when women allow us to see the decisions, experiments, mistakes and uncertainty while they are still happening.

We need more examples of women building before the ending is known.

So what does “On Your Terms” actually mean?

Towards the end of our conversation, I wanted to bring everything back to those three words because On Your Terms sounds wonderful as a concept, but the interesting question is what it actually looks like when applied to the realities of money, work, motherhood, ambition, identity and everyday life.

Tomide told me that if I had asked her for her definition of success a few years ago, it would have been heavily connected to achievement, whether through climbing the corporate ladder or reaching significant financial milestones through entrepreneurship, and although money represented freedom, there was still a large amount of external validation woven into the way she understood success.

Today, her definition is much simpler and, I think, much more interesting.

For Tomide, living on your terms involves what she described as a kind of radical acceptance of yourself, where external perception begins to matter less and you become more interested in making decisions because they genuinely work for you and for the people you care about.

She still wants to earn well, travel, live comfortably and have financial freedom, but the ultimate measure is whether she can decide how she uses her time, do what she wants to do when she wants to do it, and afford those choices without feeling financially squeezed.

In other words, it isn’t a rejection of ambition, money or achievement.

It is about choice.

And perhaps that is one of the most useful ways we can begin thinking about what success looks like in the next chapter of our lives: not simply asking how much more we can achieve, but asking what we want those achievements to make possible.

What I Took Away From My Conversation With Tomide

If you are currently questioning what comes next, you don’t need to resign tomorrow, launch a business by Monday or know exactly what the next decade of your life should look like, but there are several ideas from my conversation with Tomide that I think are worth sitting with.

1. Ask what you want before asking what makes the most sense.
The sensible option will often be the one most closely connected to what you have already done, which is why it can be useful to temporarily remove practicality from the conversation and ask what you would actually want to build if you believed it could work, before bringing strategy and responsibility back into the picture.

2. Separate your expertise from your identity.
Everything you have learned is yours to keep, but you are not obligated to spend the rest of your life doing the thing you became good at simply because other people recognise you for it.

3. Give yourself permission to be in the messy middle.
There may be a period when the old life no longer fits and the new one isn’t financially or emotionally secure yet, and rather than interpreting that uncertainty as failure, it may be more useful to recognise that experimentation is often how we discover the shape of what comes next.

4. Be honest about the foundations beneath your freedom.
Tomide spoke openly about savings, professional experience and employability giving her the space to build without immediate financial desperation, which is an important reminder that creating a life on your terms doesn’t require us to romanticise unnecessary risk.

5. Stop waiting for confidence to arrive before you act.
If confidence is built through evidence, then the most useful thing you can do may be to take one sufficiently brave step today and allow the result of that action to inform the next one.

6. Explore before you optimise.
Tomide’s advice to somebody beginning on Substack was refreshingly simple: write what you want to write, give yourself space to find your voice and don’t immediately hand your new beginning over to experts telling you how it should be done.

7. Decide what your terms actually are.
Freedom is an attractive word until we have to define what it means in our own lives, so perhaps the more useful questions are how you want to spend your time, how much money you genuinely need, what you want your work to contribute to your life, what you are no longer prepared to sacrifice and what you want an ordinary Tuesday to feel like.

Perhaps the Goal Isn’t to Become Less Ambitious

One of the things I found myself thinking about after our conversation was whether women like Tomide are really walking away from ambition at all, because I don’t think they are.

Perhaps what changes is that after years of directing our ambition towards goals somebody else has already defined, we begin becoming much more selective about where that ambition goes.

We can still want to build extraordinary things.

We can still want financial success.

We can still want our work to matter.

We can still be incredibly driven.

But perhaps we no longer want any of those things at the expense of having a life we are actually present for.

And maybe that is why the phrase On Your Terms resonates so deeply.

It isn’t an invitation to burn everything down, reject everything you’ve achieved or pretend that responsibility, money and security don’t matter; it is an invitation to look at everything you have built, everything you have learned and everything you now know about yourself, and ask whether the terms under which you created your first version of success should automatically become the terms under which you create the next one.

Tomide is still building hers, which may be the most valuable part of following her story because she isn’t sharing these lessons from some distant point where every question has been answered and every decision has been proven right.

She is building while we watch.

She is experimenting, changing her mind, creating offers, developing her community, sharing what works and being willing to acknowledge what doesn’t, which feels far more useful to me than another perfectly polished story in which the messy middle has conveniently disappeared.

Perhaps that is what Starting From Zero is becoming for me too: a place to document women in motion rather than only celebrating them once they have arrived.

Because at this stage of our lives, starting from zero doesn’t mean erasing everything that came before or pretending we know nothing.

It means recognising that we have accumulated an extraordinary number of pieces along the way and, perhaps for the first time, we get to decide how we want to put them together.

And this time, we get to choose the terms.

You can continue the conversation with Tomide through On Your Terms on Substack, where she shares the realities of leaving corporate, navigating the messy middle and building a business designed to make going back optional.

And after watching our full conversation above, I’d love to hear your answer to one question in the comments:

If you could change one of the terms on which you’re currently living or working, what would it be?

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Outside of Substack, you’ll find me creating Intentional Living Magazine and helping private clients build their platforms through House of Brand.

Her response wasn’t quite what I expected.

Wait. Do you live on Long Island?

It turned out that this woman I had discovered through Substack, whose work I had been reading online and who I was preparing to interview virtually, lived 7 minutes away from me (8 minutes with traffic).

The following day, she came into the studio and we met properly for the first time.

I love this story because it captures something I hadn’t anticipated when I began Starting From Zero. I thought I was building a publication, but increasingly I’m discovering that I’m also creating opportunities for conversations, friendships and connections that I could never have planned in advance.

And in many ways, that became the perfect beginning for my conversation with Nat, because so much of her story is about what can become possible when life stops following the plan we thought we were supposed to be following.

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When the thing you didn’t want becomes the thing you needed

Nat spent more than 35 years in corporate healthcare, beginning at ground level and eventually working her way into senior leadership. She earned her MBA, completed the training, accepted the promotions and continued moving towards the next level because, for a long time, that was simply what success looked like.

There was just one problem.

Somewhere along the way, she realised she didn’t love it anymore.

She loved aspects of it, and I appreciated how candid she was about that. She loved the title and the money, and she was good at what she did, but beneath all of those external signs that things were going well, she felt increasingly empty.

I think many accomplished women will recognise the complexity of that feeling because it can be incredibly difficult to question a life that, from the outside, appears to be working.

When you’ve spent decades creating something, walking away from it can feel as though you’re rejecting everything it took to get there.

But perhaps outgrowing something doesn’t mean it was wrong.

Perhaps it simply means it did its job.

For Nat, the decision was eventually made for her. In October 2025, she was unexpectedly told she would lose her job at the end of the year, and what initially brought pain, confusion and anguish ultimately became what she now describes as one of the greatest blessings of her life.

Without the corporate role, Nat began writing.

She came to Substack without a perfectly defined niche or a grand plan for what her publication would become, and through writing, talking to readers and paying attention to what continually interested her, The Midlife Reset began to emerge.

I found that particularly interesting because we can become so preoccupied with figuring everything out before we begin.

Sometimes beginning is how we figure it out.

Who are you when the title disappears?

One of the questions I wanted to explore with Nat was what happens to our identity when the professional title we’ve carried for years is suddenly removed.

Because a career gives us much more than an income. It can give us structure, status, validation, routine and a ready-made answer to that familiar question: What do you do?

But Nat’s experience also showed the other side of that identity.

The final years of her corporate career had taken a toll on her confidence. She described a toxic environment in which she gradually began questioning herself, becoming less willing to speak up and absorbing messages that made her wonder whether what she had to say was worth hearing.

What she has been doing since leaving isn’t simply discovering what comes next professionally; it is unlearning the version of herself that those years taught her to become.

We talk so much about everything women need to learn when they begin again, but perhaps one of the more interesting questions is:

What do we need to unlearn?

The belief that our value comes from a title.

The assumption that somebody else needs to validate our ideas before they’re worth pursuing.

The habit of making ourselves quieter in environments where being fully ourselves feels inconvenient.

And perhaps even the belief that at a certain age, our most interesting possibilities should already be behind us.

Nat is 52 and speaks about this season with an enthusiasm that is infectious. Her philosophy is that midlife isn’t the beginning of the end, but the beginning of some of our best chapters because we arrive here carrying an extraordinary amount of experience and knowledge with us.

Which is why I’m increasingly questioning the language of starting over.

We’re not starting empty.

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You don’t have to blow up your life to change it

There was another part of Nat’s story that I think is important to include because conversations about leaving corporate life can very quickly become unrealistic.

Nat was clear about the privilege involved in being able to step away from the workforce and the support she has from her husband. She isn’t suggesting that everybody watching should hand in their resignation tomorrow and dramatically reinvent their life.

The deeper invitation is to become more conscious of how we’re actually experiencing our lives.

Nat described spending years living towards Friday. Monday to Friday became a blur, followed by weekends that were themselves interrupted by the anxiety of Sunday and the anticipation of another week beginning.

Now, one of the things she values most is the feeling that an ordinary day can be a good day.

That might sound simple, but I think it’s an incredibly useful measure of success.

We spend enormous amounts of energy planning the life we want to have eventually, while sometimes paying remarkably little attention to whether we enjoy the Tuesday we’re currently living.

Perhaps a reset doesn’t always require a resignation, relocation, new business or dramatic announcement.

Sometimes it begins by recognising that the way we’re living isn’t working anymore.

And that is exactly where Nat begins her own process.

Nat’s Strategy for

During our conversation, Nat shared the story behind her 7R Reset, a framework that emerged from documenting her own experience.

Rather brilliantly, the seven steps first appeared at 4am when she woke, grabbed the napkin underneath her glass of water and wrote them down before going back to sleep. When she woke again, the sequence was still there.

She starts Recognition, and I think there’s something important about beginning there. Before we can change something, we have to become willing to tell ourselves the truth about it.

What isn’t working?

Where do I feel disconnected?

What am I continuing because I’ve genuinely chosen it, and what am I continuing simply because I’ve been doing it for so long?

From Recognition, Nat moves into Release beginning to identify what we’re willing to let go of so that a different picture can gradually come into focus.

And maybe that’s enough of a place to begin.

We don’t always need to know exactly what the new life looks like before acknowledging that something in the current one needs our attention.

What starting from zero has taught Nat

I also asked Nat what starting from zero on Substack had looked like for her, and I loved that she didn’t pretend she arrived with a perfect strategy.

She started writing.

She didn’t know exactly what her niche was.

She paid attention to what interested her, what readers responded to and what she couldn’t seem to stop thinking and talking about.

And gradually, the work found its shape.

Nat described the attitude behind what she is building as requiring a little delusion — the willingness to dream bigger than the available evidence currently suggests you should.

My business partner Jackie calls a similar quality being “foolishly optimistic,” and I think there is something wonderful about both ideas.

Because when we’re starting something new, evidence is often the one thing we don’t have yet.

We can’t always prove that the publication will work, that the business will grow, that the friendship will develop, that we’ll love the next career or that the idea scribbled on a napkin at four in the morning will become something meaningful.

At some point, we have to be willing to move before certainty arrives.

And perhaps that is the thread connecting so much of Nat’s story: she is learning to bet on herself again.

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If You’re Considering Your Own Midlife Reset...

You don’t need to dramatically change your entire life after watching this conversation, but there are a few questions from my time with Nat that I think are worth taking away with you.

Start with recognition rather than reinvention. Before asking what you should do next, ask what is actually true now. Where do you feel fulfilled? Where are you depleted? What have you quietly outgrown? Honesty gives you somewhere much more useful to begin than pressure to immediately create a new identity.

Look for the patterns that have followed you throughout your life. Nat realised that coaching and mentoring hadn’t suddenly appeared as a new career idea; people had been coming to her for guidance since she was 22. Sometimes the clue to what comes next has been appearing throughout what came before.

Ask what you need to unlearn. Starting again isn’t only about acquiring new skills. Consider which beliefs, expectations or versions of yourself belong to an environment you no longer want to carry forward.

Pay attention to your ordinary days. If you’re constantly living for Friday, the holiday, retirement or some future moment when life will finally feel different, it may be worth asking what could make the life you’re living now feel more like yours.

Don’t wait for perfect clarity before beginning. Nat didn’t arrive on Substack knowing exactly what The Midlife Reset would become. She wrote, connected, listened and allowed the idea to evolve. Sometimes clarity is the consequence of movement rather than the prerequisite for it.

And finally, leave room for the unexpected. A few weeks ago Nat and I were two women who had found one another on Substack. Then we discovered we lived seven minutes apart. Now we’ve met in person, she’s been photographed in our studio and we’re having this conversation together.

None of that was on either of our plans.

And maybe that’s rather the point.

Perhaps We’re Not Starting Again After All

The more conversations I have as part of Starting From Zero, the less convinced I am that starting from zero means what we think it does.

Nat didn’t lose 35 years of experience when her corporate title disappeared. She carried the leadership, mentoring, resilience, mistakes, knowledge and relationships with her, and now she gets to decide what she wants to do with all of it.

Perhaps the same is true for the rest of us.

At this stage of life, we aren’t beginning with nothing. We’re beginning with evidence.

Evidence of what we’ve survived, what we’ve learned, what we’re extraordinarily good at, what no longer fits and, increasingly, what we’re no longer willing to tolerate simply because we once thought we were supposed to.

So perhaps midlife doesn’t require us to reinvent ourselves at all.

Perhaps it gives us an opportunity to stop becoming who we thought we should be and become more interested in the woman who has been emerging underneath it all.

Watch the full conversation with Nat above, and then we would love to continue the conversation it with you in the comments.

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If you want premium content and closer access to my best work.

✔ The Editor’s Letter - One deep-dive article every month that highlights the live interviews, insights and the honest take-aways of nurturing a sustainable business and lifestyle.

✔ A Daily Intention in Notes - Small prompts that keep you moving.

✔ Intentional Conversations - Live conversations about Starting From Zero and Redefining Success.

✔ The Annual Vision Board Workshop - A guided session to map the year ahead with intention. Takes place every January.

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Pay Annually & Unlock Bonus Content:

✔ Quarterly Workshops - 4 x Members-only live workshops from dedicated Wellness Experts & Special Guests.

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✔ 10% off working with me 1:1 - When you’re ready for hands-on, strategic support, your subscriber discount applies to a Power Session.

→ See full details on the Become a Member page.

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From my heart to yours,

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Outside of Substack, you’ll find me creating Intentional Living Magazine and helping private clients build their platforms through House of Brand.

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There is something strangely vulnerable about making a new friend as an adult, and I’m not sure we talk about it nearly enough.

When we are younger, friendship seems to happen almost accidentally because we are constantly being placed in environments where the same people appear again and again.

Then life changes, particularly as we move through our forties, fifties and beyond, and suddenly friendship can require something it didn’t seem to need before: intention.

We have to introduce ourselves, accept invitations when staying home might feel easier, suggest the coffee, organize the lunch and risk discovering that somebody is busy, doesn’t reply or simply isn’t our person.

We have to walk into rooms where everybody else appears to know one another and resist the urge to turn around and leave before anybody notices we arrived. It takes courage, and yet many of us assume everyone else has somehow mastered it.

They already have their friends, their “circle” and belong somewhere. Except, many of those women are looking around wondering the exact same thing.

That was at the heart of my latest Starting From Zero Live with Julie Marvel, a woman who knows far more than most about what happens when somebody decides to stop waiting for community and begins creating it instead.

Julie spent eight years building a women’s community in Florida that eventually grew to a Facebook group of around 10,000 women, with approximately 500 women attending events and activities taking place five to seven days a week. What I loved most about hearing her tell that story, however, wasn’t the size of what she eventually built; it was discovering how extraordinarily simply it began.

Julie needed and wanted friends - so she organized a lunch.

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Sometimes the thing we create for ourselves is exactly what somebody else needs too…

Julie’s community began during a significant transition in her own life, when the end of a long marriage caused her to look around and realise that, somewhere amongst raising children, working, managing a home and doing all the things women become very good at doing for everybody else, she had lost some of her own sense of connection.

What she wanted wasn’t particularly complicated. She wanted to meet other women who understood the stage of life she was in, so she did what most of us would probably do and began looking for groups that already existed.

She tried Meetup groups, went along to a couple of gatherings and realized that none of them felt quite right.

At that point she could have continued searching, hoping that eventually she would stumble across the perfect group, but instead she decided to create her own and began with a lunch group for women in a similar stage of life.

What happened next taught her something she would see repeated thousands of times over the following years.

The circumstances bringing women through the door might have been different, but the questions underneath them were remarkably similar.

Some were navigating divorce or widowhood, while others were experiencing empty nesting, retirement, relocation or the loss of somebody they loved. Many were around 45 and beyond, reaching that stage where life had shifted enough for them to begin looking at themselves again and asking questions that had perhaps been buried beneath years of responsibility.

What happened to me? Who am I now? What do I actually want to do? And, who do I want to do it with?

Those questions feel incredibly familiar to me because they sit at the heart of so many conversations I have with women in this season of life.

We often talk about midlife as though it is primarily a reinvention of the individual, but perhaps part of creating a new chapter is also reconsidering who we want around us while we create it.

Because becoming a new version of ourselves can feel remarkably lonely when everybody around us only knows the old one.

One lunch became thousands of women

As Julie continued hosting lunches, the community began growing, but one of the smartest things she did was recognise that community did not have to depend entirely on her.

Women within the group began stepping forward to host the things they enjoyed, which meant one person’s idea of community didn’t have to become everybody else’s.

Some women wanted lunches and dinners, while others wanted happy hours, walks on the beach, book clubs, dance classes, art classes or pickleball lessons. Julie gave them the opportunity to create their own gatherings, and the community expanded around the interests and personalities of the women inside it.

Eventually there was a website and mobile app, the Facebook group grew to around 10,000 women, and hundreds of women were participating in events throughout the week.

But what I kept coming back to as Julie told me this was that none of it began with 10,000 people.

It began with one woman acknowledging something was missing in her own life and deciding to do something about it.

There is something quite powerful in that, because I think we can dismiss our own needs as though they are somehow too personal to mean anything beyond ourselves.

Yet sometimes the thing we wish existed is worth paying attention to precisely because we are unlikely to be the only person wishing for it.

Julie’s Story Took Me Back to My Own Search for Community..

Listening to Julie took me straight back to the period after I moved from the UK to America, because although I had moved towards a new life, what I hadn’t anticipated was how much I would miss having my people around me.

Starting again can sound incredibly exciting when we describe it afterwards, but living through it can be disorientating. The places that once felt familiar are gone, the friendships that operated through years of shorthand are suddenly thousands of miles away, and even something as simple as having somebody to call for coffee requires creating relationships from the beginning.

Eventually, I realised that if I wanted more connection, I was going to have to create some of it myself.

Near where I lived was a beautiful path beside the beach that I now affectionately call Manifesting Lane, because I would walk in one direction releasing whatever was occupying my mind and then turn around and walk back setting intentions for what I wanted next.

One day, I wondered what would happen if I invited other women to walk with me.

So I created a simple poster for Walking Wednesdays, making it very clear that this wasn’t networking and nobody was going to be pitched anything; it was simply an invitation for women to walk and talk together.

Around 15 women came to the first one.

What happened afterwards was far more important than the number who arrived because some of those women became genuine friends, travelled together and created experiences and relationships that had absolutely nothing to do with me.

As Julie and I talked about that, I realised there is a lovely measure of community hidden inside it.

A successful community doesn’t require its creator to remain at the centre of every relationship.

Sometimes our role is simply to create the conditions in which other people can find one another.

There is a difference between networking and belonging

One of the things Julie was very intentional about when building her original community was that it wasn’t professional networking.

Julie had spent years as a family photographer and understood networking perfectly well, but she also recognised that many women weren’t looking for another room where somebody would hand them a business card or ask what they did for a living before they had even finished introducing themselves.

Some were retired, some had no interest in building professional connections and many simply wanted friendship, so Julie created a space where friendship itself was enough of a reason to be there.

I think that distinction matters enormously, particularly now when we are encouraged to think strategically about almost every relationship we make.

Not every conversation needs an outcome, not every coffee needs to become a collaboration and not every person we meet needs to become a client, subscriber or useful contact.

Sometimes the entire value of meeting another woman is discovering that you like her.

There is something wonderfully freeing about that.

And perhaps genuine community becomes possible when people sense that they are welcome because of who they are, rather than because of what they might eventually be able to offer.

But what if you aren’t a natural community builder?

This was something I was particularly glad Julie addressed because not everybody wants to organise the lunch, manage the group or stand at the door welcoming everyone as they arrive.

Some women naturally create rooms.

Others are simply trying to find one where they feel comfortable enough to stay.

Julie’s advice was to make the process easier by beginning with something you already enjoy doing, because an activity immediately removes some of the pressure from that intimidating instruction to “go and make new friends.”

Join the walking group, the book club, the pickleball lesson, the art class or whatever genuinely interests you, because when everybody is there to do something together, you already have a reason to start talking.

I shared with Julie that I had recently attended a jewellery-making workshop where twelve strangers sat around a table with old beads and pieces of jewellery, swapping things with one another while creating something new.

We didn’t have to arrive and immediately reveal our life stories.

Our hands were busy.

There was something to talk about.

Then the conversation began finding its own way.

Perhaps when friendship feels intimidating, we don’t need to start by looking for a best friend.

We can simply start by doing something we enjoy in the company of other people.

What happens in the first 30 seconds matters

One of my favourite practical lessons from Julie came from watching thousands of women walk into her events, particularly those arriving for the first time.

She knew what that woman was thinking.

Do I know anybody? Where am I supposed to sit? Does everybody else already know each other? Have I made a terrible mistake coming here alone?

So Julie and her team became very intentional about those first few moments.

If somebody was new, they would acknowledge her quickly, tell her they were glad she was there and then find some small point of connection that allowed them to introduce her to somebody else.

Perhaps both women were originally from Chicago, or perhaps they had something else in common. The detail itself wasn’t necessarily important; what mattered was that within those first moments, the woman went from feeling like an outsider standing alone to somebody who had been noticed and welcomed.

As Julie was explaining this, I couldn’t stop thinking about how relevant it is to what we are building here on Substack.

Because perhaps somebody joining an online community is asking exactly the same questions.

Will anybody notice I’m here?

An audience and a community are not the same thing

We talk constantly about subscriber numbers on Substack, particularly when we’re starting from zero.

The first 100.

Then 500.

Then 1,000.

Then whatever number we decide will finally make us feel as though this thing is working.

But a subscriber count tells us how many people pressed a button.

It doesn’t necessarily tell us whether those people feel like they belong.

Julie came to Substack after closing the in-person event business she had spent years building and decided to take what she had learned about community into this next chapter online. By the time of our conversation, she told me she had grown to around 4,200 subscribers, but what interested me much more than the number was how naturally the principles she had learned offline were appearing in the way she was building here.

Julie wasn’t simply publishing and waiting.

She was talking to people, reading their work, commenting, replying, reaching out, suggesting a Zoom conversation and inviting collaboration when it felt natural.

She described commenting on somebody’s work as a small invitation to friendship because, in essence, you are saying: I’m interested in you, I noticed what you said, I think we might have something in common and I’d like to open the door to a conversation.

I love that way of thinking about Substack because it changes the question from:

How do I get more people to notice me?

to something much more human:

Who could I notice?

Julie and I are a perfect example of that.

She appeared in my world here and something about her work made me think, I need to know this woman.

So I reached out.

We arranged a Zoom, and within minutes it felt as though we had been having versions of the same conversations in different parts of America.

This Live wasn’t the result of a complicated collaboration strategy.

It was the result of two people being curious enough about one another to start talking.

The opportunity came after the relationship.

Perhaps we need more of that.

Community needs honesty as well as common interests

One of the most moving parts of our conversation was hearing Julie talk about something she created within her previous community called What’s Your Story?

Women who felt comfortable doing so would share a difficult experience from their lives with a room of around 50 other women, and then the audience would be given questions that encouraged them to reflect and talk about their own experiences.

Julie noticed that something changed when one woman was willing to be vulnerable first.

We can be terrified of telling the truth about something difficult because we imagine people will think differently of us, and yet when another woman stands up and honestly shares what she has lived through, our response is rarely to think less of her.

Usually, we admire her courage.

Sometimes we recognise ourselves.

There is an enormous difference between discovering we like the same things and experiencing that quiet moment of recognition that says:

You too?

Julie saw how those conversations created a deeper level of connection between women because they gave everyone else permission to stop pretending life was always perfect.

Perhaps that is another ingredient of genuine community.

We need enough lightness to laugh together and enough trust to tell the truth.

Starting from zero doesn’t mean arriving with nothing

This entire Live series has made me think differently about what Starting From Zero actually means.

Julie and I both arrived on Substack without established audiences here, but neither of us arrived empty-handed.

Julie brought eight years of learning what happens when women walk into rooms, what makes them return, what helps strangers become friends and what women navigating midlife transitions repeatedly say they are missing.

I arrived with everything my own experiences of publishing, community, magazines, branding, business and starting again had taught me.

We were new here but our experience wasn’t.

I think that distinction is especially important for women in midlife because starting again can so easily make us feel as though we have somehow returned to the beginning.

We haven’t.

A woman can be starting a new business, publication, career, relationship or chapter of her life while carrying decades of knowledge, instinct, mistakes, stories, relationships and wisdom with her.

Starting from zero does not mean being zero.

Perhaps it simply means taking everything we have gathered and asking what we want to create with it now.

Maybe the community we’re looking for is waiting for us too

At the end of our conversation, I asked Julie what she wanted people to take away from our time together, and her answer brought us beautifully back to where our own friendship began.

Sometimes it can be as simple as:

“Hi. I want to be your friend.”

Obviously, friendship doesn’t always happen quite that instantly, but the sentiment stayed with me because we can make connection enormously complicated in our heads.

How many friendships never begin because both women are waiting for the other one to send the message?

How many lunches don’t happen because nobody wants to risk being the organiser?

How many communities never exist because everybody assumes somebody else will create one?

How many women are sitting at home thinking that everyone else already has their people, while thousands of other women are sitting somewhere else thinking exactly the same thing?

The invitation won’t always be accepted, and not every coffee will lead to friendship. We will occasionally walk into rooms and discover they aren’t our rooms, just as there will be people who simply aren’t our people.

That’s part of it.

But there will also be the message that turns into a coffee, the coffee that turns into a friendship, the lunch that turns into a community or, as Julie and I have discovered, the Substack comment or message that turns into a Zoom, a Live conversation and the beginning of something neither person could have predicted.

Maybe we don’t always have to wait for belonging to find us.

Perhaps sometimes we can be the woman who creates the invitation.

Takeaway’s For Creating Genuine Community

After eight years of bringing thousands of women together, Julie and Sarah have both learned an enormous amount about what makes people feel welcome and what helps a collection of individuals begin to feel like a community, and these are the lessons from our conversation that I think are worth taking with us whether we’re building on Substack, gathering women in our local area or simply wanting more meaningful connection in our own lives.

1. Be willing to go first

If you are always waiting for somebody else to send the message, organise the coffee or begin the conversation, you are leaving the possibility of connection entirely in somebody else’s hands. Going first doesn’t have to mean creating a community of thousands; it might simply mean sending one message to somebody you’ve been thinking you would like to know.

2. Create what you wish existed

Julie couldn’t find quite the right community, so she started with a lunch. I wanted women to walk with after moving to America, so I created Walking Wednesdays. You don’t need to reinvent something completely original; you can take an idea that inspires you and create the version that makes sense for your life and your people.

3. Make the first few moments count

Whether somebody is entering a physical room or commenting on your Substack for the first time, notice them. Julie learned how much those first moments mattered to women walking nervously into an event, and I think the same principle applies online: a thoughtful welcome can be the beginning of somebody feeling that this might be somewhere they belong.

4. Give people something to gather around

Connection often becomes easier when we aren’t forcing it. A walk, book, shared interest, Live conversation or creative activity gives people somewhere natural to begin and allows relationships to develop without the pressure of “we’re all here to make friends.”

5. Don’t make yourself the centre of every relationship

One of the strongest signs of community is when the people inside it begin finding one another. Introduce people who should know each other, encourage conversations that don’t require you to lead them and create enough space for relationships to grow independently.

6. Be interested before trying to be interesting

This may be one of the most useful Substack lessons from our conversation. Rather than publishing something and waiting for everybody to come to you, go and discover other people. Read their work, leave a meaningful comment, respond to something that genuinely interests you and allow connection to begin there. Julie described those small interactions as invitations to friendship, and I think that’s a lovely way to approach them.

7. Let people see something real

Community becomes deeper when people feel safe enough to move beyond the polished version of themselves. Julie saw this through What’s Your Story?, where one woman’s willingness to speak honestly often gave other women permission to do the same. Vulnerability doesn’t require sharing everything; it simply means allowing enough truth into the room for somebody else to recognise herself.

8. Remember that community is made of people, not numbers

Subscriber numbers can tell us something about growth, but they can’t tell us whether somebody feels known, welcomed or connected. A smaller group of people who talk, support one another and return because the space means something to them may be a far stronger community than a huge audience that never moves beyond consumption.

And perhaps the simplest lesson is the one Julie left us with: take the first step.

You never know what might be waiting on the other side of it.

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Continue the Conversation With Julie Marvel

If this conversation has made you think differently about friendship, community or the kind of next chapter you want to create, I would love you to spend some time with Julie’s work on Julie Marvel’s Substack, where she continues exploring friendship, community, confidence, purpose and what it means to create a life that feels like yours in this next season.

And if you haven’t watched the full Live conversation above, I really encourage you to do that too, because this essay contains the ideas that stayed with me afterwards, but there is something very different about hearing Julie talk about what she learned from thousands of conversations with women and seeing the conversation between us unfold in real time.

Most importantly, Julie and I would love to hear from you in the comments, because community becomes much more interesting when the conversation doesn’t end with the two women on the screen.

Tell us where you are with community right now. Perhaps you have found your people, perhaps you’re starting again and wondering where they are, or perhaps this conversation has made you realise that there is a lunch, a walk, a book club, a Substack conversation or even a simple coffee invitation that you have been waiting for somebody else to organise.

And if there is one woman you’ve been thinking, “I really should message her,” perhaps this is your sign to stop thinking about it and send the message.

You never know what one small invitation might become.

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From my heart to yours,

Outside of Substack, you’ll find me creating Intentional Living Magazine and helping private clients build their platforms through House of Brand.

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There is a moment almost every aspiring author imagines long before she has finished writing the final chapter. The box arrives, she opens it, moves aside the packaging and there it is: her name on the cover, her words inside, and something that once existed only as an idea in her head finally transformed into something she can hold in her hands.

After months, and sometimes years, of writing, editing, rewriting, rearranging chapters, questioning whether any of it is good enough and making the hundreds of tiny decisions involved in bringing a book into the world, publication day can understandably feel like the destination.

You wrote the book. You published it. You did the thing so many people talk about doing one day...

Then, once the excitement has settled and the stack of books is sitting on the desk beside you, another question tends to arrive:

Now what?

That question became the starting point for my latest Starting From Zero conversation with , Founder of Aviva Publishing & Marketing. Susan is a Book Marketing Coach and Author of 18 books, who has spent more than 30 years in publishing and book marketing and has worked with hundreds of authors navigating exactly that moment.

I knew Susan and I would have plenty to talk about because we share a love of publishing, marketing and ideas, and we have both experienced what it means to start from zero in different chapters of our lives. Since finding one another on Substack, we have also developed one of those friendships where one conversation can quickly turn into a stream of “Have you thought about doing this?”

What I didn’t expect was how much our conversation would make me rethink the role of the book itself by asking the different question of

What could this book now make possible?

Before you think about marketing, answer two questions

One of the first things Susan asks an author is not which social platform they are using, whether they have an Amazon launch team or how large their email list is.

She asks:

What do you want your book to do for you?

And:

Who is it for?

They sound deceptively simple, yet Susan says they are often the questions authors struggle with most, particularly when the answer to the second one is, “My book is for everyone.”

Perhaps your book contains an idea that could help a great many people, but that is very different from being able to market effectively to all of them at once. Even the biggest companies in the world do not communicate with everybody; they understand who they most want to reach and become very good at speaking to those people.

The same is true of a book.

There is a real person on the other side of those pages. She has a reason for reaching for them, whether she is trying to solve a problem, make a decision, understand something or change something in her life or work.

Once you start thinking about that person rather than an anonymous audience, marketing becomes much more human.

Who is she? What is happening in her life when she finds your book? What question is she asking? What would make her recognise that this book was written with somebody like her in mind?

And then comes the question that, for me, changes everything:

Who already has a relationship with her?

Susan’s answer to that question resulted in one of the most extraordinary book-marketing stories I have heard.

The very niche book that reached half a million people

Susan’s first book was called Exhibiting at Trade Shows: Tips and Techniques for Success.

It was not a book for everybody.

At the time, Susan was working in trade show training and speaking when she asked an experienced member of the National Speakers Association how she could develop her career. His advice was to write a book.

Susan’s immediate reaction was essentially, Please tell me something else.

She had never particularly enjoyed writing at school and becoming an author had not been part of some lifelong plan, but she trusted the advice enough to follow it. After several rejections, she eventually found a publisher.

Susan remembers walking into a bookstore in Cincinnati and discovering her book on the shelf. Naturally, she pulled it out and turned the cover forwards.

I smiled when she told me that because it is such an author thing to do! But what happened next is where the real lesson begins.

Susan realized she did not want to build her entire strategy around selling books one or two copies at a time, so instead of simply asking who would buy the book, she started thinking about who already served the people the book was written for.

She approached companies within the trade show industry and one ordered 2,000 copies. Rather than going directly to that company’s competitors, Susan looked at another part of the industry and approached a company selling portable exhibition displays.

They ordered 250,000 copies. Then they ordered another 250,000. The book was translated into five languages.

Half a million copies of a highly specific book ended up travelling around the world because Susan found the right relationship between the book, its reader and an organisation that already had access to that reader.

What stayed with me wasn’t simply the enormous order. It was the thinking behind it.

Susan stopped asking:

How can I sell more individual copies?

And instead asked:

Who already has the people this book was created to help?

That question opens up a much more interesting way of thinking about book marketing.

Perhaps there is a company whose employees need what you teach, a professional association whose members share the problem your book solves, a conference, university, membership organisation, subscription box, retreat, community or brand whose audience overlaps with yours.

Marketing starts to feel less like endless promotion and more like finding the right relationship.

I realized I had done my own version of this

As Susan was telling me her story, I realized that I had approached Live What You Love in a similar way, albeit on a very different scale. After all the writing, editing, restructuring and decisions involved in publishing the book, I reached the same now what? moment.

I printed around 250 copies and started leaving them in serendipitous places where another woman might unexpectedly discover one: beach libraries, local libraries and community book boxes. I loved the idea that somebody might pick it up on exactly the day she needed it.

But the much bigger opportunity came through collaboration.

I connected with a women’s subscription box with approximately 2,500 members, and they ordered around 2,500 copies of Live What You Love to include in their boxes.

Rather than allowing the experience to end with the book arriving, I created a workshop to accompany it so the women receiving it could go deeper into the ideas.

Suddenly, the book was no longer simply a book. It became a conversation, a workshop and an experience. And eventually, some of the ideas inside Live What You Love became part of the inspiration behind what grew into .

I could not have mapped any of that while I was worrying about chapters and publication dates, which may be one of the most exciting things about publishing: sometimes the book has to exist before you can see what it wants to become next.

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Give your book a role

One of Susan’s most useful suggestions was to think of your book almost like an actor in a play and give it a role.

What is the book actually there to do?

Perhaps it establishes your expertise, opens the door to speaking opportunities, becomes the foundation of a workshop, supports a consulting business, gets you interviewed or starts conversations that would not have happened without it.

Perhaps an organisation buys hundreds of copies because the book helps its employees, customers or members. Perhaps it becomes the beginning of a community or allows somebody to spend several hours understanding how you think before they ever decide to work with you.

The answer will be different for every author, but I think having an answer matters because otherwise the default strategy often becomes:

Put it on Amazon and hope for the best.

Susan described Amazon as a shop window, which is such a useful analogy. Amazon can display your book and make it easy to buy, but somebody still has to arrive at the shop window in the first place.

Availability is not the same thing as discovery and book marketing is the work that happens between the two.

Stop thinking only about selling books

Susan returned several times to a phrase I think I will remember for a long time:

“You’re not selling books. You’re selling opportunities to open doors.”

A book can lead to a keynote, which leads to another conversation, which leads to a client. A podcast interview can introduce you to a collaborator. A bulk order can lead to a workshop. A workshop can reveal the next problem your audience wants help solving.

The book is the object, but its value can travel far beyond the individual sale.

That is why I think a much better question than “How many copies did I sell?” is:

What happened because this book existed?

What invitation appeared? What conversation began? Who discovered you? What work came from it? What changed for the reader?

Those questions reveal a much richer picture of what a nonfiction book can actually do.

A book has a final page. Your ideas don’t.

This is where Substack becomes especially interesting for authors because a book may end, but the conversation around it does not have to.

If you are still writing, Substack can become somewhere to explore your ideas before the finished manuscript exists. You can share a story, test a premise, ask readers questions and notice which subjects create meaningful conversation.

By the time publication day arrives, you are no longer stepping into an empty room saying, “Hello, I wrote a book.” There may already be people who understand why you wrote it.

And if the book is already published, you have an entire body of work waiting to be explored again.

A chapter can inspire an essay. An essay can become several Notes. A Note can begin a conversation. A conversation can become a Live. A concept can become a workshop, resource, podcast discussion or collaboration.

Susan made another observation during our conversation that feels particularly relevant now: with information becoming increasingly easy to access, particularly through AI, simply providing more information is not enough. The greater opportunity is helping people move from information to transformation.

The book may explain the idea - what you build around it can help somebody apply it. and that is when a book starts becoming a body of work.

And then there is the voice asking who you think you are

Of course, all of this requires visibility, and that was another part of our conversation that resonated with me deeply.

Susan described the self-doubt authors experience as head-trash.

Who wants to hear what I have to say? Am I really qualified to write this? What if somebody disagrees with me? What if I get criticised? What if nobody cares?

Susan experienced those thoughts herself before discovering how common imposter syndrome is, even amongst highly accomplished people.

I think experienced women can have a particularly complicated relationship with this because what we know has often become so familiar to us that we stop recognising how valuable it might be to somebody else.

There can also be years of conditioning behind the instinct to become quieter.

I know what it feels like to put something into the world, receive criticism from somebody who was never really the person I was speaking to in the first place and immediately want to pull back.

But one of the things Substack is reminding me is how different it feels when the right words meet the right person.

You write something you almost didn’t publish and somebody replies, “I feel that too.”

You share something you learned the hard way and another woman tells you it helped her move forward.

The goal is not universal approval. It is meaningful recognition.

Confidence often comes after we start

I asked Susan how authors move through that fear and part of her answer was wonderfully simple: begin.

Know what you want to say, understand who you want to help and take the next step even if the fear has not completely disappeared.

She also talked about something she once found difficult herself: asking for help. Susan had believed she should know everything, until she realised that she could not possibly know everything and that people often genuinely like being able to help.

That has been one of the strongest themes of this entire Starting From Zero series for me.

Starting from zero does not have to mean doing everything alone.

Find the editor, designer, marketer, accountability partner, friend or person one step ahead who can help you see what you cannot see yet.

Then, when you become the person who knows something somebody else needs, turn around and offer it back.

Sometimes you need to create your own invitation

Towards the end of our conversation, we began talking about something that feels very close to my own way of thinking.

If the opportunity you want does not exist, could you create it?

If nobody invites you to an author evening, host one. If you wish there were a book club around your subject, start it. If you want people to go deeper into the ideas, create the workshop. If you want meaningful conversations with other authors, invite them to have those conversations with you.

We can spend an extraordinary amount of time waiting to be invited, chosen, featured or discovered when sometimes the opportunity only exists because we decide to create it ourselves.

In the past, I have often hoped I would eventually find the room I was looking for.

Increasingly, I have learned to ask:

Could I build it?

Sometimes you have to create your own invitation.

Then you have to be willing to RSVP.

So what is the best way to market a nonfiction book?

After everything Susan and I discussed, I do not think the answer begins with Instagram, Amazon advertising, podcasts, Substack or any other particular tactic.

It begins with clarity…

Who is the book for, and what do you want the book to do?

Once those answers are clear, you can work backwards.

If your reader belongs to professional associations, go there. If she listens to podcasts, become a thoughtful guest. If companies already gather thousands of the people your book was created to help, have conversations with those companies. If the ideas lend themselves to workshops, teach them. If the conversation needs somewhere to continue, build it on Substack.

If one aligned partnership could place your book into the hands of 2,500 people, perhaps that deserves more of your attention than creating 2,500 promotional posts.

Good book marketing is not doing everything.

It is knowing enough about the book, the reader and the outcome you want to recognise what is actually worth doing.

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Three Book Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

1. Believing your book is for everyone

The clearer you become about the person the book was created to serve, the easier it becomes to understand where she is and who already has access to her. Susan’s first book was incredibly specific, yet that specificity helped create an opportunity that eventually resulted in 500,000 copies being distributed.

Specific does not always mean small.

2. Treating publication day as the finish line

Publishing is an extraordinary achievement, but the book may only be the beginning of speaking, workshops, consulting, partnerships, community, articles, Substack conversations or the next body of work.

The final page tells you where the book ends.

It does not tell you where the idea ends.

3. Measuring success only by individual sales

Selling books matters, but one aligned partnership can sometimes create more impact than months of trying to sell copies one at a time.

Instead of asking only, “Where are my customers?”, also ask:

Who already has a relationship with my readers?

What I’m Taking Away From Susan

If you have a nonfiction book inside you, are currently writing one or already have a book quietly sitting on the shelf, these are the lessons I would keep close:

Know what you want the book to do. Consider sales, but also authority, speaking, workshops, consulting, partnerships, community and the other doors it might open.

Know who you want to read it. The clearer the reader becomes, the clearer the marketing becomes.

Find the people who already have your people. Look for companies, associations, communities, memberships, podcasts, conferences and collaborators who already serve the readers you want to reach.

Give your book a role. Decide whether it is a credibility builder, door opener, conversation starter, teaching tool or something else entirely.

Think beyond one-at-a-time sales. Look for opportunities where the book can add value to an entire group.

Continue the conversation beyond the final page. Turn ideas into essays, workshops, Lives, Notes, interviews and resources.

Think transformation, not only information. Ask what somebody should be able to do differently because she encountered your work.

Ask for help. You do not become more credible by making every mistake alone.

Expect the head trash. Feeling uncertain about sharing your work does not mean the work lacks value.

Create the opportunity if it does not exist yet. Host the event, start the book club, create the workshop, begin the conversation.

Your book deserves a life beyond the bookshelf

I went into this conversation expecting Susan and me to talk about book marketing, and of course we did, but I came away thinking much more deeply about what happens when we stop treating a book as a destination and start seeing it as a doorway.

What if we measured a book not only by how many copies were sold, but by what happened because the book existed?

The conversation it started, the person it helped, the invitation it created, the room it got us into, the workshop it inspired, the community that formed, the collaboration that appeared or the next piece of work it made possible.

My own book eventually helped lead me towards Intentional Living Magazine. Susan’s first book helped establish her expertise in one industry, and the experience of publishing eventually became part of the path that led her into the publishing work she now does with other authors.

Neither of us could have known exactly where those books would lead when we first sat down to write them.

Maybe that is the most exciting part.

You know where the book ends.

You have absolutely no idea where it might take you next.

So if you have had the idea for years, perhaps it deserves a first page. If you are halfway through, keep going, and if you already have a published book sitting quietly on your shelf, perhaps take it down and look at it again.

Instead of asking only:

How do I sell more copies?

Ask something bigger:

What could this book become the beginning of?

Continue the Conversation With Susan Friedmann

Susan shares weekly book-marketing insights through Book Marketing With Susan:

Book Marketing

Bold, unconventional book marketing techniques to build authority and sell books in bulk. Created by Susan Friedmann, CSP — Book Marketing Coach and creator of the Author Authority-First Method for Nonfiction Book Marketing.

By Susan Friedmann

Listen to Susan’s long-running Book Marketing Mentors podcast:

https://www.bookmarketingwithsusan.us/podcast

And learn more about publishing and book-marketing support through Aviva Publishing & Marketing: https://avivapubs.com

Most importantly, watch our full conversation above. This essay captures the ideas I carried away from our time together, but hearing Susan tell the stories herself - particularly how one highly specific first book eventually reached half a million readers - gives the lesson an entirely different depth..

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From my heart to yours,

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Outside of Substack, you’ll find me creating Intentional Living Magazine and helping private clients build their platforms through House of Brand.

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If you’re building from zero, trying to grow without losing yourself in the numbers, or wondering what separates a publication people simply follow from one they’re willing to invest in, this conversation is worth your time.

Watch the full interview above, then keep reading for the biggest lessons and takeaways I’m applying to my own journey here on Substack.

There are some conversations where you know, even while you’re having them, that you are going to come back to them again and again... this was one of those conversations for me.

I have been looking forward to sitting down with Sinem Günel since I first discovered her on YouTube while trying to make sense of this whole new Substack world I had decided to throw myself into. If you have ever typed some version of “How on earth does Substack work?” into YouTube, there is a very good chance you have found Sinem too.

Alongside and , she has built Write • Build • Scale into an extraordinary publication and business, with tens of thousands of subscribers and thousands of paid members, so there was obviously plenty I wanted to ask her about growth, paid subscriptions and what it actually takes to become a Substack Bestseller.

But, as often happens with the best conversations, what I took away from it was much bigger than the question I went in wanting answered.

Because we did talk about becoming a bestseller, but we also talked about building the foundations, confidence, consistency, experimentation, visibility and what it really means to create something that offers enough value that people want to pay for.

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Starting from zero doesn’t mean starting with nothing…

One of the first things Sinem said was that although Write • Build • Scale has only been on Substack for around two years, she has been writing online since 2018, which is such an important distinction when we look at somebody else’s success and wonder why ours isn’t happening at the same speed.

Sinem didn’t arrive here without experience. She had spent years writing on Medium, experimenting, sharing what she was learning, turning workshops into articles, writing about books she had read and paying attention to what people responded to.

It immediately made me think about the whole premise of Starting From Zero, because the more I build this publication in public, the more I realize that starting from zero is rarely about having nothing.

It’s the opportunity to build something worth growing from all your previous knowledge, wisdom and experience.

I intentionally didn’t import an email list and I wanted to experience what it was really like to build a publication here from a completely blank canvas - because if I was ever going to teach or advise other women on doing this, I wanted to understand what it felt like to actually do it myself by living it out loud.

But I didn’t arrive with zero experience. I brought nearly twenty years of building businesses with me. I brought everything I had learned in media and marketing, publishing magazines, building communities, creating brands, getting things wrong, getting other things right and starting over more times than I probably care to count.

And I think that distinction is particularly important for women at this stage of life. You might be starting a new publication, business, career or chapter and technically the numbers beside your name might say zero on creation, that’s only your starting point for what you’re building at this moment in time.

That feels very different from starting again empty-handed.

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Twenty people are still twenty people

Sinem then told a story that I loved because it reminded me how quickly our expectations become distorted online. When she first started writing on Medium, an article receiving twenty views blew her mind.

Twenty people had read something she had written and if somebody left a comment, that mattered. Then, when she received her first payment from her writing, which she remembers being somewhere around seven dollars, she went and told her mum because she couldn’t quite believe she had created something on the internet and somebody had paid her for it.

There was something wonderfully grounding about hearing that from somebody who now has the numbers she has.

When did five hundred people choosing to subscribe to something we created become merely a stepping stone to a thousand, rather than something worth stopping for a moment to appreciate? I am asking myself these questions too.

I recently passed 900 free subscribers on Starting From Zero and, as I write this, that number is already moving quickly, built almost entirely through showing up consistently on Notes, having conversations and allowing people to get to know me before I started heading into their inboxes.

I don’t take that lightly.

Those aren’t 900 numbers on a dashboard to me. They are 900 people who saw something I wrote, felt enough of a connection to want to hear more and invited me into their space.

When you think about it like that, it feels different.

And that led us into one of the most valuable things Sinem said during the entire conversation: Attention has to be earned.

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We aren’t entitled to somebody else’s attention

This one landed - big time.

Because I think there is a subtle trap we can fall into when we create something, particularly when we have worked incredibly hard on it. We spend three hours writing an article, another hour editing it, find the perfect image, agonize over the headline, press publish and then somewhere in the back of our minds there is an expectation that people should read it because “look how much work I put into this.”

But the person on the other side of the screen doesn’t know how long it took - she has a life - children, work, dinner to make, messages she hasn’t replied to, twenty other newsletters sitting in her inbox and approximately a million other things competing for her attention.

Our effort does not automatically create an obligation for others to stop what they are doing and to read what we made.

Sinem described this as a kind of entitlement creators can develop without realizing it. We can create something phenomenal, but that still doesn’t mean attention is guaranteed, because the amount of work we put into something and the attention it receives are not directly correlated.

I actually find that incredibly freeing because instead of sitting there thinking, Why isn’t anybody reading my work?, we can ask a much more useful question:

What would make this worth somebody’s attention?

Much more useful and impactful - making it unmistakably something the right person wants to stop and spend time with. That is also a very different way to think about visibility.

I don’t want to feed another content machine

This part of our conversation also helped me articulate something I have been feeling since I arrived on Substack.

Have spent enough years around social media to know what it feels like to feed the machine - you create something, post it, watch what happens for a few hours and then tomorrow you need something else because yesterday’s work has already disappeared beneath everything that came after it.

One of the things I have loved so much about Substack is that it doesn’t feel like that to me because I am still receiving engagement on things I wrote when I first arrived here. An old Note can suddenly be re-stacked. Someone can discover an article weeks or months later and leave a comment that brings it back to life.

Sinem compared that behaviour more closely to YouTube, where a video can suddenly start gaining traction months after it was originally uploaded. She talked about thinking of your Substack as a library, rather than simply focusing on what is appearing in the feed today.

I love that way of thinking about it because I don’t want to spend this next chapter of my life creating disposable content.

I would like somebody to arrive at Starting From Zero six months from now, wander around, read something I wrote months earlier, watch one of these conversations, follow a link into another idea and feel as though she has discovered somewhere worth staying for a while.

That is very different from chasing today’s likes and quick wins.

So what does becoming a bestseller actually mean?

This was the question I really wanted to ask Sinem because right now, there is a lot of conversation on Substack about becoming a bestseller, and understandably so.

We see that little orange badge and think, I want one of those.

But I wanted to know what sits underneath it. What actually makes a publication something people want to pay for?

Sinem’s answer reframed the whole thing for me.

The bestseller badge matters because it is a trust signal. It tells us that at least 100 people have trusted the creator enough to pay for what they are creating, and Sinem made the point that whether somebody pays you one dollar, ten dollars or a hundred dollars, the fundamental shift is the same: you have moved from somebody enjoying your free work to somebody deciding that what you offer has enough value for them to exchange money for it.

That is significant.

Write • Build • Scale talks about the badge in a similar way in their own guide to becoming a bestseller, not as the final destination but as evidence that you have created something people genuinely value. (writebuildscale.substack.com)

And I think that is a far more interesting thing to aim for than a badge.

Trust.

Because you can’t fake that.

Nobody needs another newsletter

Then Sinem said something that I think every person thinking about turning on paid subscriptions needs to hear:

Nobody wants to pay for another newsletter.

I laughed because, of course, she’s right.

Who amongst us is sitting there thinking, Do you know what my life really needs? More email.

We are drowning in it.

What people are prepared to pay for is access to something they believe will make a meaningful difference.

If you share knowledge, Sinem’s advice was to become incredibly clear about who is on the other side of the screen, what she is trying to achieve, what problem she is trying to solve and what you could create that genuinely helps her move forward.

And that could look completely different from one publication to another.

It might be an exceptional paid essay.

It could be a workshop, template, resource library, community, conversation, guide or something we haven’t even thought of yet.

The format is not the point.

The usefulness is.

That immediately made me think about how I am approaching paid membership here, because I don’t want to turn on paid and simply say, Great, now you get more Sarah in your inbox.

That doesn’t feel like enough.

I want to ask what would make somebody who chooses an annual subscription feel genuinely delighted that she did.

What can I create that saves her time, gives her confidence, helps her build something better or allows her to benefit from the things I have spent years learning?

Suddenly the question is no longer:

What should I put behind the paywall?

It becomes:

What would make this worth paying for?

That is the question I want to keep asking.

Maybe we need to stop looking for the perfect Substack formula

I also loved Sinem’s honesty about the questions we all seem to ask when we arrive here….

When should I turn on paid?

How often should I publish?

What time should I post?

How many Notes should I write?

Should I publish one free article and one paid article every week?

We want somebody to give us the answer because a formula makes us feel safe or confirms that we’re doing the right thing.

But Sinem made the point that whenever somebody gives you an absolute answer to a strategic question like that, you should probably be a little cautious, because the answer depends on you.

What are you building? Who is it for? How much time do you have?

What is your ultimate goal? What can you realistically sustain?

That really validated the way I have chosen to build Starting From Zero and the reason I haven’t rushed this process - because I didn’t know the answers.

I didn’t want to arrive here, immediately start sending emails and assume I knew what people wanted from me before I had actually spent any time with them.

Instead, I focused on Notes.

I listened.

I interacted.

I watched who was being drawn into the conversation.

I asked questions.

I allowed people to get to know how I think and write before I started asking for anything in return.

Could I have moved faster? Absolutely!

But I am trying to build something I still want to be nurturing years from now, and I would rather build that intentionally than race towards somebody else’s definition of growth.

Consistency without reflection can keep you stuck

This might have been the lesson I needed most.

We hear constantly that consistency is the answer - just keep showing up writing, publishing, keeping going. And yes, consistency matters enormously.

I know that firsthand because showing up on Notes every day has completely changed my whole experience here. But, Sinem talked candidly about spending almost two years consistently publishing long-form work without the feedback loops that could have helped her progress more quickly.

Eventually, she asked a different question.

What are the people getting better results actually doing differently?

And then she became slightly obsessed with finding out. She printed successful articles using the copier at her internship, took a yellow highlighter to them and studied how they were constructed. She looked at introductions, hooks and structure and started analysing why certain pieces travelled further than others.

They call this “modelling excellence.”

I absolutely love that. There is a big difference between copying somebody and studying what excellence looks like. We do it everywhere else":

• Writers read great writers.

• Musicians study great musicians.

• Designers notice beautiful design.

• Entrepreneurs study successful businesses.

Why would we decide that when we arrive on Substack we suddenly have to invent everything from scratch?

We can look at what works, understand why it works and then comes the important part: We make it our own in our own unique way

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90% proven and 10% you is enough to begin

At the very end of our conversation, I asked Sinem for one thing somebody could implement today. Her answer was so good that I think I am going to borrow it as a principle for my own work.

1. Find the proven pattern.

2. Study what somebody you admire is doing well.

3. Then ask yourself:

   1. What would I change?

   2. What doesn’t quite feel like me?

   3. What am I curious enough to experiment with?

Sinem suggested thinking about creating something where perhaps 90% is based on a pattern you have reason to believe works, while the remaining 10% becomes your experiment.

Maybe it works brilliantly, or, maybe it falls completely flat - the key is to experiment. Either way, you have learned something and you anything at any point. Until, eventually, all of those tiny experiments start becoming your unique way of doing things.

I find that so much more appealing than the pressure to constantly be groundbreaking. Originality isn’t always about inventing something nobody has ever seen before - it's more about taking what we have learned, filtering it through our own experience, taste, personality and perspective and allowing it to become recognizably ours.

Visibility is Currency

There was another moment in our conversation where I shared something I had read recently that stopped me in my tracks when I read it - visibility is currency.

This really resonated because I have been in business for almost twenty years and I know I have something to say.

I have knowledge and wisdom that I know can help other women.

I have experience,

I have built things.

I have made mistakes.

But if I am completely truthful, there have also been plenty of times when I have hidden. I have been the woman happily creating the magazine behind the scenes but not necessarily stepping forward and saying, Hi, I’m Sarah. I created this.

It has often felt easier to build the thing than to stand beside it and SHOW UP - maybe some of you know exactly what I mean when I say this as I’m sure that I’m not alone.

Particularly as experienced women, we can have an extraordinary amount to contribute while simultaneously feeling uncomfortable drawing attention to ourselves - but this was also a great reminder that visibility does not have to mean performance.

It doesn’t have to mean shouting. It doesn’t have to mean turning ourselves into influencers or becoming somebody we aren’t.

If we genuinely believe our work could help somebody, perhaps making sure she can find it is simply part of the work.

There is a difference between saying “look at me” and saying “I made something that might help you.”

That is the kind of visibility I can get behind.

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So, would I still want the bestseller badge?

Absolutely.

I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I will be thrilled when Starting From Zero earns that little orange badge. But after this conversation, I think I understand what I actually want it to represent.

I don’t want 100 people to pay simply because I ran the cleverest promotion.

I want them to stay, feel glad they joined for them to open something I’ve created and think, that was so helpful and exactly what I need.

I want this publication to become a place where women find ideas, conversations, resources, friendships and encouragement for whatever they are building next.

The goal isn’t simply to grow. The goal is to create something worth growing.

A bestseller badge won’t magically create trust if there isn’t substance underneath it. The aim here is to build the substance, nurture trust and create something that offers value.

12 Things I’m Taking Away From My Conversation With Sinem

If you are starting your own Substack - whether you have zero subscribers, 100 or 10,000 - these are the things I would write down somewhere and come back to:

1. Starting from zero does not mean starting with nothing. Bring your previous experience with you. That is part of what makes your perspective valuable.

2. Twenty readers are still twenty human beings. Don’t become so obsessed with scale that you stop appreciating the person already paying attention.

3. Attention has to be earned. Effort alone doesn’t guarantee readership, so keep asking how you can make what you create more valuable to the person receiving it.

4. Build a library, not simply a feed. Create work you will still be proud for somebody to discover six months from now.

5. A bestseller badge is really a trust signal. The number matters because of what sits underneath it: real people choosing to invest in your work.

6. Nobody needs another newsletter. Give paid members access to something genuinely useful, not simply more email.

7. Stop searching for somebody else’s perfect schedule. The right rhythm is the one that serves your reader, your goals and the life you actually have.

8. Consistency needs a feedback loop. Don’t spend a year repeating something that isn’t working simply because you’ve been told to keep going.

9. Model excellence. Study people whose work you admire and understand why it works before deciding what you can learn from it.

10. Run tiny experiments. Let most of what you create rest on something proven, then add the twist, idea or instinct that makes it feel more like you.

11. Visibility is part of the work. You don’t have to shout, but you do have to give the people who need your work a chance to discover it.

12. Have fun with it. Sinem ended our conversation with this and perhaps we all need the reminder. Not every post, Note, Live or experiment has to work. Try something. Learn. Change it. Try again.

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✔ The Editor’s Letter - One deep-dive article every month that highlights the live interviews, insights and the honest take-aways of nurturing a sustainable business and lifestyle.

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From my heart to yours,

Outside of Substack, you’ll find me creating Intentional Living Magazine and helping private clients build their platforms through House of Brand.

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Perhaps one of the most important parts of starting from zero isn’t what we build next, but finding the people who make us feel more like ourselves while we’re building it.

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There is something about friendship that seems to become more precious with age and I think it’s because we understand time differently. Experiences have taught us the difference between knowing a lot of people and being truly known by a few.

After many years of trying to fit into places, relationships and versions of ourselves that weren’t quite right, we become better at recognizing the people around whom we can simply exhale.

Whatever the reason, finding your people matters. It matters when life is going beautifully, when there is plenty to celebrate and you want someone beside you who is genuinely delighted by your happiness.

That was the conversation at the heart of my latest Starting From Zero Live with . Ellen and I didn’t know each other a few months ago. We met here, on Substack and what began as a serendipitous online connection quickly became regular conversations, brainstorming, accountability and friendship.

Fast forward to today and we support one another in what we’re creating here, but increasingly in everything else we’re building too. During our conversation Ellen shared that at the beginning of the year she had written about wanting to find her tribe - she wanted women around her who understood this season of her life, including someone who could become an accountability partner.

Somehow, we found each other - thanks to Substack! Here we are.

There is something incredibly serendipitous about those moments in life when someone who was a complete stranger a short time ago suddenly feels incredibly familiar. You find yourself thinking, there you are - where have you been all my life?

Maybe one of the gifts of getting older is that we become better at recognizing that feeling. We know what it feels like to perform a version of ourselves to belong somewhere, and we know how different it feels to be around people who require no performance at all.

Eight years ago, I moved from the UK to America and, in many ways, genuinely started from zero and what I hadn’t anticipated was how disorientating it would feel not to have my people around me.

For the first few years, the absence of community affected me deeply. There were times when I felt incredibly alone and overwhelmed, and when I struggled to understand who I was within this completely different version of my life.

We often romanticize starting again. We talk about fresh starts, pivoting, new chapters, possibility and reinvention - and all of those things can be true. But there is another side that deserves acknowledging.

Starting from zero can also involve grief for what was familiar. It can mean losing the people who knew the shorthand of your life and having to rebuild a sense of belonging alongside everything else.

What Ellen and I talked about was that nurturing friendships is far more than encouragement. The people we need around us aren’t necessarily those who constantly tell us how wonderfully we’re doing. Sometimes the greatest act of friendship is grounding someone.

Ellen did that for me recently. I had a lot of opportunities to consider and, as I tend to do when possibilities start appearing, my mind was running in several directions at once. Her message was essentially: Feet on the floor. Buckle up. This could be quite a ride, but I’m going to be one of the people who keeps you grounded.

I remember thinking, hallelujah. Because those are the women we need.

Women who remember what we said we wanted when we become distracted by everything else. Women who can see when we’re disappearing down another rabbit hole and gently bring us back to ourselves.

Accountability, when it comes from the right person, doesn’t feel like pressure. It feels like kindness with a kick. And during our conversation, Ellen turned that idea inward.

She had recently been challenged about whether she was giving enough time to something that matters enormously to her: her music. She had intended to spend time singing, but hadn’t put that time into her calendar. Other things happened. The days passed. The singing didn’t.

What could easily have become a conversation about productivity became something much more interesting. Had she shown up for herself? Ellen reflected one of the most important points our our conversation:

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That thought stayed with me because it reminded me of something my mum used to say. Whenever she talked herself out of doing something or knew she had stood in her own way, she would say, “I’m my own worst enemy.”

I always found that phrase strange. Why would we want to be our own worst enemy when we have the opportunity to become our own best friend?

It is a simple question, but the older I become, the more profound it feels.

What would change if we treated ourselves with the qualities we value most in a good friend? If we encouraged ourselves without lying to ourselves, kept the promises we made to ourselves, noticed when we needed rest and gently challenged ourselves when we knew we were hiding?

One of the analogies Ellen shared during our conversation was to think of Substack like moving into a new neighbourhood.

Imagine arriving at your new home, closing the front door and waiting inside for everybody to discover you. Eventually, you might begin wondering why nobody has introduced themselves or invited you anywhere.

But you haven’t come out of the house…. I love this anology!

We can spend an extraordinary amount of energy online wondering why people aren’t finding us, reading us, subscribing to us or talking to us. Yet genuine community has never been built by standing in the middle of the room shouting, notice me.

You have to notice other people too. You have to come out of the house.

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So, how do we actually find our people?

Perhaps the most useful thing to take away from my conversation with Ellen is that finding your people rarely happens by accident alone.

Serendipity might make the introduction, but friendship is built in what happens afterwards. It happens when we show up.

When we become interested in somebody else’s story rather than simply hoping they’ll become interested in ours. When we move beyond liking a post and start a conversation. When we remember what someone told us, check in again and slowly allow an online connection to become something more meaningful.

That is certainly what happened with Ellen and me. So, if you’re starting from zero here too, there are a few things our conversation made me think about.

Come Out Of The House

I think Ellen’s neighbourhood analogy is one of the best descriptions of Substack I’ve heard. Don’t publish and run… spend some time wandering around this rather wonderful neighbourhood.

Read publications that genuinely interest you. Join Lives. Leave thoughtful comments. Respond to Notes because you have something meaningful to add, not because you’re trying to get noticed.

And, when you find someone whose words make you think, I like how this woman sees the world, tell her. Sometimes friendship begins with something as simple as, “I really loved what you said here.”

Look Sideways, Not Only Upwards

When we’re building something new, we’re often encouraged to find the expert, the mentor or the person who is ten steps ahead of us. Of course there’s enormous value in that, but I think we sometimes forget to look beside us.

Who else is figuring something out right now? Who is building at a similar stage?

Who makes you feel excited after you’ve spoken to her? Who could you brainstorm with, learn alongside and perhaps hold accountable?

Ellen and I don’t need to have the same goals to support one another. In fact, our work is very different. What matters is that we understand what it feels like to be creating something that matters to us.

There is something powerful about having another woman beside you who can say, “I know you can do this. Now, are you actually doing it?”

Find The Women Who Can Give You Kindness With A Kick

We all need cheerleaders. But we also need truth-tellers.

The women who aren’t intimidated by our ambition but aren’t dazzled by it either. The women who can celebrate the exciting opportunity and still ask whether it actually aligns with what we said we wanted.

The right accountability partner isn’t another person to disappoint when you haven’t completed your to-do list. She is someone who understands the bigger picture well enough to remind you of it.

That’s why I keep coming back to the phrase kindness with a kick.

Encouragement without honesty isn’t helpful and honesty without kindness isn’t friendship - the magic is having both.

Be The Friend You’re Hoping To Find.

This may be the most important one because if you want women who recommend your work, remember that relationships are an equal exchange of energy:

• If you want someone to check in with you, check in with someone.

• If you want thoughtful conversation, start one.

• If you want women who celebrate your success without comparison, become the woman who celebrates theirs.

And if you want an accountability partner who encourages you to show up for the things you say matter, begin by asking whether you’re showing up for yourself.

We can spend years waiting to find the community we need.

Sometimes we have to start creating it.

Show Up For Others Who Support You.

There’s a lovely full-circle moment in all of this because the very thing Ellen and I were talking about - showing up for the people we care about - is something we can now we can all put into practice.

Ellen is creating something incredibly special. After decades of working with sound, healing and helping other people reconnect with themselves, she is reclaiming another part of her own voice: her music.

She has written an album, Reclaiming My Voice, and her vision doesn’t stop there. She’s developing a show around the music and beginning to imagine taking it out into the world on tour.

So let’s do what we’ve been talking about throughout this entire conversation.

Let’s show up for Ellen, Listen to Ellen Newhouse on Spotify

Listen to Ellen’s music. Follow her journey. Subscribe to what she’s creating. Tell someone else about her. And when that album arrives, when the show takes shape and when Ellen announces those tour dates, let’s be the women in the audience saying:

We remember when you were talking about this before it existed.

Perhaps we were never supposed to do this alone.

The more I think about our conversation, the more I realize that finding your people is a life lesson. There will always be seasons when we have to walk into the unknown ourselves - but - doing it ourselves doesn’t mean we have to do it alone.

We can surround ourselves with women who remind us who we are. Women who make us laugh when everything feels too serious. Women who challenge us when we’re hiding and ground us when we’re flying in seventeen directions at once.

Women who see what we’re trying to create before the rest of the world can see it. And perhaps, as Ellen reminded us, it starts even closer to home. We become one of those women for ourselves.

And every now and then, if we’re lucky, amongst all those conversations we find someone who makes us think:

There you are. Where have you been all my life?

And maybe that’s one of the greatest things we can find when we’re starting from zero - finding someone to walk beside us while we become everything we’re still becoming.

We’d love to know: have you found one of your people here on Substack? Tag her in the comments and tell us how you found each other.

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8 Conversations. 8 Women. 8 Inspiring Stories.

Over eight Substack Live conversations, interviews women who are beginning, building and scaling - exploring the courage, choices and lessons behind creating success on their own terms.

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The Courage to Leave What’s Comfortable

Editors Note By Sarah Stone

Starting From Zero Live Series - Day One with

There’s something I’ve been wanting to do since Starting From Zero began to take shape, I wanted to create space for the conversations we don’t hear enough of.

Not the polished stories about what someone has built once they’ve made it, but the conversations that happen while they’re building it. The decisions, self doubt and the uncomfortable moments that challenge your belief system.

Because so many of us are starting from zero somewhere in our lives right now. Whether that’s a new business, publication or relationship with ourselves.

And very often, starting from zero doesn’t necessarily mean starting with nothing because we already have so much experience, wisdom and evidence of everything we’ve already survived, created and figured out along the way.

That’s what inspired me to create the Starting From Zero Live Series.

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The Interview Day One: Jennifer Villasante

has spent more than six years building a community of nearly 20,000 followers on Instagram after originally opening her account to hold herself accountable to a goal of losing 50 pounds.

What began as a personal challenge became something much bigger - a community built around lifestyle, health, encouragement and the lessons Jennifer learned through transforming not only her body, but the way she thought about herself.

Now, as she approaches 54, she’s making another enormous change. After a lifetime working in hospitality - a world she shared that she could now walk into and operate “with my eyes closed” - Jennifer has made the decision to step away from the career she knows and pursue the work she feels increasingly called to do.

At the same time, she’s arrived here on Substack and is starting from zero. This is something I wanted to talk about - leaving the comfort and safe of everything you know, to lean into the purpose-led vision that is being birthed into the world.

We unpacked what changes when, in midlife, you finally have enough evidence behind you to think “I’ve figured things out before. I’ll figure this out too.”

And then Jennifer said something that, for me, captured the entire conversation:

“Every time I’m scared and I finally do something that I’m scared to do, it turns out to be way better than I ever expected.”

And I thought...

Well, there’s our Day One lesson.

Sometimes the thing waiting on the other side of comfortable is far better than the thing we’re frightened to leave behind.

Enjoy the interview,

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The Courage to Leave What’s Comfortable

Sometimes one decision changes far more than we expect.

Jennifer’s story on Instagram started around six and a half years ago with a very personal goal - she wanted to lose 50 pounds.

She had struggled with her weight throughout her life and, at one point, reached 342 pounds. She described the cycle so many women will recognize: wanting to change, believing she couldn’t, trying again, and finding herself back in the same conversation with herself.

Eventually she decided to try something different so she opened an Instagram account - her thinking was simple - if she put the goal out there publicly, it would hold her accountable.

What she couldn’t have known was what that one decision would eventually become. The account grew and people began following her journey and slowly, what had started as personal accountability became a community of inspiration and motivation for herself and others.

Visit Jen's Substack

She realized that losing 50 pounds wasn’t going to magically make everything wonderful because the bigger work was learning how to create a life she could actually sustain.

We often focus on the visible transformation but changing the way we think about ourself. Jennifer wasn’t simply changing her body - she was also building the confidence that she could trust herself.

And years later, that evidence is helping her make a completely different kind of change.

The voices don’t disappear… we just stop letting them make the decisions.

One thing I particularly appreciated about Jennifer was that she shared that even before coming to a recent lunch we’d arranged, she almost cancelled.

Those familiar thoughts crept back in.

The doubts. The reasons to cancel. The voices telling you to fear the unknown.

The difference now is that she recognizes it. As Jennifer put it, she doesn’t allow those thoughts to “speak loud in my head anymore.”

Instead, she tells herself:

“It’s okay. I’ve got this. I am going to do it.”

I loved that. Because perhaps we’ve misunderstood confidence. What if confidence isn’t reaching a point where we’re no longer frightened - maybe it’s where fear is no longer automatically given the deciding vote.

We spend weeks, months - and sometimes years - imagining everything that could go wrong on the other side of a decision. Very rarely do we give the same energy to imagining:

What if it’s better?

If you’re starting something new too, you’re in the right place.

Starting From Zero is where I’m sharing the honest conversations, experiments and lessons behind building something meaningful from the very beginning.

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Starting from zero isn’t the same as starting from nothing…

This was probably one of my favourite parts of our conversation because Jennifer has started again several times and when you’ve lived for five decades, you have evidence.

Evidence that you’ve figured things out before.

Evidence that the route doesn’t always go to plan.

Evidence that sometimes there’s a detour.

Evidence that things can take longer than we expected.

Evidence that we’ve survived days we once couldn’t imagine getting through.

Jennifer’s own story contains so much of that.

Read Jennifer's Story

Want to keep reading?

Paid members can continue the conversation below, where Jennifer and I talk about becoming a beginner again, what she’s building next, the three promises she’s making to herself—and the advice she’d give another woman standing at the edge of her own comfort zone.

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From influence to impact.

Jennifer worked three jobs when that’s what life required. She has navigated enormous personal experiences and now she’s reached a point where she’s prepared to leave the career she’s known and put her energy into something that feels much more connected to what she wants to contribute next.

Now she’s sharing that influence is more than numbers - it’s about the impact you have on another person because you shared something…. someone who doesn’t believe in herself borrows a little of Jennifer’s belief.

Someone who doesn’t feel confident sees that Jennifer didn’t always feel confident either. and someone struggling to stay motivated sees a woman who got up and did the workout anyway.

That’s the impact Jennifer is making and I think that’s where platforms like Substack become really interesting - there is room for the whole person here.

Not just the highlight reel.

So, what is Jennifer building now?

This is where I think Jennifer’s story becomes particularly exciting. She doesn’t want to keep everything she’s learned over the last six and a half years to herself anymore.

She’s building Hey Now Jen as a place to share it and she’s not gate-keeping anything there! It’s not just about meal plans and recipes - it’s about the moments that happen before the decision.

That conversation you have with yourself when you’re tired and you’re about to stop at McDonald’s because you can’t think of anything else to do.

The habits. The shortcuts. The thoughts. The mindset.

The practical things that make taking care of yourself easier when you’re living an actual life rather than a perfectly curated one.

Subscribe to Heynowjen

The Takeaway: Make The Promises To Yourself.

Jennifer shared something wonderfully simple that she’s practising right now. She’s doing a 30-day challenge built around keeping three promises to herself every day.

They don’t have to be enormous…. drink the water, get your protein, take the walk - whatever your three things are. Choose them.

And then keep your word to yourself. Jennifer said:

“Make those three promises and keep them to yourself because you are worth it.”

I think that’s such a lovely place to begin because we often make stepping outside our comfort zone sound enormous.

Quit the job!

Launch the business!

Write the book!

Move across the country!

Start the Substack!

Sometimes courage does look like that.

But most of the time, I think courage is built much softer - one promise kept, then another, then another… until one day you have enough evidence to realize:

I can trust myself with the bigger decision too.

What Jennifer wants you to know…

If I had to distil our conversation into one piece of advice, I think it would be this:

Don’t assume fear means no.

Jennifer has been scared before every significant new beginning and the fear didn’t ever disappear but she moved anyway. And repeatedly, the thing on the other side turned out to be better than she’d imagined.

Perhaps the question isn’t:

“How do I become fearless enough to do this?”

Perhaps it’s:

“Am I willing to do this while I’m still scared?”

That’s a very different question.

Discover Heynowjen

If Jennifer’s story resonated with you, I’d love you to support her as she builds this next chapter.

She’s starting from zero here on Substack, bringing with her more than six years of lived experience, practical ideas and the kind of encouragement that comes from somebody who knows what it’s like to have to begin again herself.

Subscribe To Heynowjen

JOIN THE STARTING FROM ZERO COMMUNITY

🎁 Today’s Birthday Celebration Perk For Annual Member’s

And because this conversation is part of my eight-day Birthday Celebration, I’m also revealing another reason to join me as an Annual Member.

Today’s perk is my:

Substack Branding Kit - 22 Canva Templates

A ready-to-customize collection created to help you give your Substack a polished, cohesive look without having to design everything from scratch.

If you’re building your own publication—or thinking about starting one—I want to make that beginning feel a little easier.

Everyone who joins the Annual Plan during my Birthday Celebration receives the Branding Kit, my Business Resources collection and all the additional Birthday Celebration Perks I’ll be revealing throughout the series.

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Love Jennifer’s Substack Style?

There’s another part of Jennifer’s story that you may not know. We’ve been working with her behind the scenes to help take everything she already had - the ideas, the experience, the personality, the audience and turn it into a Substack publication she felt confident taking live.

That’s the work I love.

Because sometimes starting from zero doesn’t mean you need another course showing you 47 things you now have to figure out yourself. Sometimes you want someone beside you.

To help you clarify the idea.

Shape the publication.

Create the brand.

Build the platform.

And support you until you’re ready to press publish.

If you love Jennifer’s Substack style and you’ve been thinking about creating your own, I offer packages designed to help you go live with your Substack with clarity, confidence and support.

Book A Call To Explore This With Sarah

Starting From Zero has honest conversations about what it really takes to build a business, community and life that actually supports you in every season.

Talk Topics Include:

Make big moves toward the success you actually want - without doing it alone.

Show up consistently as the woman you’re becoming, even when life gets messy.

Build a community so the right people find you, trust you and stay with you.

Take action towards everything you’re worthy of.

Free For Everyone

Start here if you would like to receive public posts, selected guidance and access to the Intentional Conversations.

✔ The Journal - Honest essays, twice a month.

✔ A Daily Intention in Notes - Small prompts that keep you moving.

✔ Intentional Conversations - Live conversations about Starting From Zero and Redefining Success.

Become A Monthly Paid Subscriber

If you want premium content and closer access to my best work.

✔ The Editor’s Letter - One deep-dive article every month that highlights the live interviews, insights and the honest take-aways of nurturing a sustainable business and lifestyle.

✔ A Daily Intention in Notes - Small prompts that keep you moving.

✔ Intentional Conversations - Live conversations about Starting From Zero and Redefining Success.

✔ The Annual Vision Board Workshop - A guided session to map the year ahead with intention. Takes place every January.

Annual Membership Special

Pay Annually & Unlock Bonus Content:

✔ Quarterly Workshops - 4 x Members-only live workshops from dedicated Wellness Experts & Special Guests.

✔ Private Networking Sessions - Quarterly Substack Social, Annual-members-only Zoom to learn, connect, collaborate and meet other women doing great things.

✔ 10% off working with me 1:1 - When you’re ready for hands-on, strategic support, your subscriber discount applies to a Power Session.

→ See full details on the Become a Member page.

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From my heart to yours,

Outside of Substack, you’ll find me creating Intentional Living Magazine and helping private clients build their platforms through House of Brand.

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It’s just... happened.

The more I have started to shared with you, the more I have realized that there is so much value in documenting the journey while I was still living it and deep in the trenches of experimenting, doing it messy and not having it all figured out yet.

So today, I thought I’d recap some of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt so far. Firstly, though... if you’re one of the many people who has recently subscribed to Starting From Zero, thank you.

I don’t take that lightly. Every new subscriber is a real person who has chosen to spend a little of their time with what I have to say and that’s something I’ll never take for granted. Thank you for being here.

In fact, that’s exactly what I wanted today’s conversation to be about.

Because one of the very first decisions I made when I joined Substack was that I didn’t want to arrive in someone’s inbox simply because I could. I want to feel confident that if I showed up in your inbox, it’s because I had something valuable to share and with good reason.

That decision has now become the foundation of everything that’s followed…

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When I first joined Substack, I remember thinking...

“Where on earth do I even begin?”

Articles? Podcasts? Lives? Community? There are so many ways to use this multimedia platform that it can feel overwhelming.

One of the first pieces of advice I was given was simple: Start with Notes.

Thank goodness I did. Notes have been a breath of fresh air because they have become my daily journal prompt. Sometimes it’s a photograph I’ve taken on my morning walk with Cooper and sometimes it’s a thought that’s been sitting with.

I made a commitment to myself to create an Intention of The Day, everyday consistently - in the hope might encourage someone else that day.

There’s never been an algorithm in mind or a desire to “go viral”. The objective has been to create a place to share what feels authentic in that moment.

Looking back over these past few months, I have already come to realize that Notes have done something else. They’ve helped me become intentionally consistent - I don’t get out of bed in the morning until I have posted my Intetnion of The Day.

In the past, I’d often start something with lots of enthusiasm, stick with it for a couple of weeks and then move on to a more important task. This has been different because this IS important.

Sharing an Intention of the Day has become a ritual that now feels just as much yours as it does mine.

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580 subscribers later...

Something else happened that I honestly wasn’t expecting. At the time of writing this, 580 people have subscribed to this publication. Every single one has arrived organically.

No imported email list. No paid advertising. No shortcuts.

Just me posting notes daily, engaging in notes and doing a collection of Substack Lives. That number blows my mind because someone paused long enough to think,

“I’d like to hear more from her.”

That feels incredibly special.

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Why I chose to wait

People have asked me why I didn’t immediately start sending newsletters.

The answer is that I wanted to understand the platform first. I’m so bombarded by emails that I don’t want to feel like spam - I want to share articles and insights that are genuinely helpful.

This season of starting to regain confidence by starting from zero after nearly 20 years of building authority platforms and publications - this choice isn’t only about writing on Substack... it’s a conscious decision to now build what I am creating in public.

The highs, lows, experiments, recommendations, insights - EVERYTHING. There’s going to be no gate-keeping here because I think there’s value in seeing someone build something while it’s still becoming.

Starting From Zero isn’t simply the name of this publication - it’s my proof of concept.

I deliberately started with:

• No audience.

• No imported email list.

• No shortcuts.

Because everything I teach and support others with - I want to demonstrate first and then lead the way.

If something works, I’ll share it.

If something doesn’t work, I’ll share that too.

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One of the biggest surprises hasn’t necessarily been the subscriber growth (even though that does blow my mind) - It’s been the people.

I’ve met incredible women and made genuine friendships.

I’ve had conversations that have turned into collaborations and I’ve found women who are doing extraordinary things.

It’s reminded me that community isn’t something you create after you’ve become successful.

You build it while you’re still finding your way… and that has probably been the greatest gift of all.

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Three things building in public has taught me so far…

If I had to summarize everything I’ve learnt so far, it would be this.

1. People connect with honesty and vulnerability more than perfection.

2. Consistency builds trust long before it builds numbers.

3. Community spirit changes everything.

Those three lessons are going to be shaping the way I continue to build this publication.

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This Saturday is my birthday.

I’m an 8/8 Lionsgate birthday and whether or not you believe in the symbolizm, I’ve always felt there’s something special about this time of year. It feels full of possibility and good energy.

I’ve decided to celebrate this by spending the eight days here on Substack, going live every day from Monday, August 10 (all details to follow).

I’ll be inviting women who are choosing to zig while everyone else zags and have intentional conversations around building your community, publishing in a different way, redefining success and what it really looks like to build something from zero.

I hope you’ll join us.

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Birthday Celebration Perks 🎉

To celebrate, I’m also opening my Birthday Celebration Perks for anyone who upgrades to the Annual Membership during these eight days.

Rather than offering a discount, I wanted to create something genuinely useful.

It begins with:

✨ My popular Substack Branding Kit with Canva Templates.

✨ My Essential Business Resources Library - the tools, software and resources I’ve relied on throughout almost twenty years in business.

✨ A $100 credit towards a Pick My Brain Session.

✨ Plus a brand-new surprise revealed each day throughout the celebration.

If you’d like to become an Annual Member, I’d love to welcome you.

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A final reflection…

Looking back over these first few months, one thing has become incredibly clear.

At the beginning, it was quiet. Very quiet. Tumbleweeds in fact… there were days when nobody commented. Nobody re-stacked or seemed to notice and I found myself wondering...

“Am I doing the right thing?”

“Is this the right platform?”

“Should I keep going?”

I’m so glad I did.

Because now I can see something I couldn’t see back then. Nothing was wasted. Every note, article, conversation and live have all become like the little seeds that continue growing long after I first shared them.

That’s probably the biggest lesson building in public has taught me.

You don’t always see the impact straight away.

Sometimes you simply have to keep planting.

And trust that, one day, everything you’re creating transforms into something far bigger than you imagined.

Whether you’ve just arrived or you’ve been with me from the beginning, I’m so grateful we’re building this together. Thank you for being here.

With gratitude,

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Yesterday marked my first 90 days on Substack.

Ninety days of showing up. Every. Single. Day.

And I need you to understand what that means coming from me.

I’ve built multiple businesses and reinvented myself more times than I can count. But daily consistency… the unglamorous, no-one-is-watching kind… was the one thing I had never truly mastered.

Until now.

So today, in honour of the woman I was 90 days ago when I was staring at an empty profile, wondering if anyone would care - I want to share the truth of what these first three months have looked like.

The real numbers. What worked. What didn’t. What I would do differently.

And the intentional decisions that helped me grow faster than I expected.

I wanted to share this for anyone who is also building from zero here too, you deserve honest numbers instead of polished highlight reels.

Where I started

Ninety days ago, I had zero followers, zero subscribers and one simple belief:

If I showed up with intention, the right women would find me. I decided to call this publication Starting From Zero because that is exactly what this season was.

Yes, I’ve spent years building Intentional Living Magazine. Yes, I’ve helped women step into visibility, authority, reinvention and a more intentional next chapter.

But on Substack?

Nobody knew my name and the organic algorithm owed me nothing.

I was starting from the same place every creator starts:

With an empty page and a decision to begin.

And in many ways, that was the whole point.

The honest numbers

Here is my 90-day scorecard, straight from the exports:

• 408 subscribers and 748 followers - from zero

• 178 Notes posted

• 22,900+ impressions

• 2,200+ likes

• 400 comments

• 130 subscribers that Substack traced directly to individual Notes

No ads. No viral moment. No hacks.

Just Notes, conversation, intention, and ninety days of not quitting.

And while the follower growth has been exciting, the number that matters most to me is this:

130 subscribers directly from Notes.

That was the moment daily posting stopped feeling like content for content’s sake — and started feeling like a real growth system.

The rest of this post includes the five things that worked, what I’d do differently, and the behind-the-scenes decisions that helped me grow faster.

If you’d like to read the rest and follow the next chapter as I build it, subscribe here.

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What these numbers actually taught me

What surprised me most is this:

My growth did not come from polished strategy. It came from visibility, conversation, and the courage to be seen.

The Notes that performed best were not always the cleverest. They were often the most human. The most direct. The least overthought.

That changed the way I think about Substack entirely.

Five things that actually worked

1. The Note that grew my community most had no words at all

My single best-performing Note of the entire 90 days - 15 new subscribers and 191 likes was a quote:

No caption. No hook. No polished insight.

That taught me something important:

2. Comments beat almost everything

My top-converting Notes had one thing in common:

Conversation.

The Notes that brought in the most subscribers often sparked 13 to 19 comments. That changed how I post now. I don’t just publish and disappear. I stay. I reply. I ask real questions.

Those first ten minutes after posting matter so make sure you’re engaging.

3. Tuesday and Saturday became my golden days

When I looked through my data, Notes posted on Tuesdays and Saturdays brought in significantly more subscribers per post than my quietest days. That may not be true for everyone. But it was clearly true for me.

Your best strategy is often hidden in your own numbers, not someone else’s advice.

4. Imperfect beat perfect every time

The Notes I almost didn’t post were often the ones that did best.

The vulnerable share.... the one that made me hesitate and almost delete.

Those were the ones that landed because nobody is waiting for your perfect Note - they are waiting for your honest one.

5. Generosity compounds

One of the most unexpected lessons of these 90 days was how much momentum came from being a real participant, not just a publisher.

Celebrating other writers.
Restacking with intention.
Leaving thoughtful comments.

Showing up in genuine support. This platform runs on reciprocity. The more sincerely you participate, the more trust you build.

And trust, over time, creates growth.

What I would do differently if I were starting again today

This is the part I hope helps someone else most.

1. I would turn on paid from day one

Not because I now see Substack as a traditional subscription model but because I see paid as a form of backing for being of service.

If I were starting again today, I would switch paid on immediately and treat it less like a subscription and more like an invitation into deeper support.

2. I would go live more, much earlier

Lives opened up some of the best conversations I’ve had on this platform. They also did something writing alone cannot do: they let people experience your essence.

Your voice.
Your energy.
Your warmth.
Your personality.

In my first 90 days, I hosted four Lives:

• one with my accountability partner,

• one with , whose audience is beautifully aligned with mine

• one with , where we talked about making Substack home

• one with , where we explored what it means to lead with soul

Every one of those conversations opened new doors. I’m officially hooked on Lives now and I’ll be doing more of them both here and through .

3. I would have an instant resource ready the moment someone joins

This is a big one.

If someone subscribes - and especially if someone pays - there should be something immediate waiting for them.

A welcome resource.
A guide.
A page that says: you made the right decision, and here is something valuable right now.

If I were starting over, I would build that from the beginning because those first moments after someone joins matter.

A few quiet decisions that helped more than I expected

Not everything that helped me grow was visible from the outside. Some of the smartest things I did were thoughtful decisions behind the scenes.

I designed my About page with care. I also created a Start Here page that felt styled, intentional and distinctive.

I wanted someone landing on my publication to feel, immediately, that this was different.

That mattered more than I expected.

Because on Substack, people are not only deciding whether they like your writing. They are deciding whether they trust the world you are building.

I also created Canva templates in the exact dimensions for profile images, article graphics, and email headers:

22 SUBSTACK CANVA TEMPLATES FOR $22

I originally made them while helping a client launch her Substack. I wanted a clean visual system that made the process simpler and more professional.

Then I realised: if this helped me, it would probably help other writers too.

So I turned it into a one-off product: 22 Canva templates for $22.

That offer did not come from trying to invent something new.

It came from packaging what I was already using in a way that could help someone else.

What didn’t work

A few things consistently underperformed.

Announcement-style Notes. Anything that felt too much like “here is what I’m doing” without giving the reader a reason to care.

Anything that felt too much like a pitch. People can feel when something reaches for a transaction before it has earned trust.

Sunday evening posting. For me, those Notes were usually much quieter.

And so were the moments when I got too precious about saving my best ideas for later.

Momentum matters more than perfection. Every single time.

The part I want to say out loud

Ninety days in, only a fraction of my followers have become subscribers yet.

I’m sharing that on purpose. Because growth here is slower, more relational, and more human than many online gurus would have you believe.

And honestly, that is part of what I love about it.

This does not feel like performing for an algorithm.

It feels like building trust with real people over time.

That kind of growth may be slower.

But it is stronger.

Who this is really for

One of the most beautiful surprises of these first 90 days is that the women finding me are exactly the women I hoped would.

Writers.
Founders.
Coaches.
Creatives.

Women in midlife building something meaningful and refusing to disappear. When I looked more closely, I found that 94% are writers and builders themselves.

It is proof of concept for the kind of woman this space is built for:

A woman with life experience.
A woman with depth.
A woman with wisdom, ideas, and a next chapter still waiting to be expressed.
A woman who is not done.

If I can do 90 days of daily consistency from absolute zero, with a magazine to run and a full life around me, then so can you.

What happens next

I’m not done. If anything, I feel like I’m just beginning.

1. Join my First 90 Days Live Review

I’m going live on Substack to walk through this report in more detail - the dashboard, the surprises, the flops, the lessons, and the questions people don’t always ask out loud.

If you want the behind-the-scenes version, make sure you’re subscribed so you get the invite and the replay.

2. Book a Pick My Brain session

I’ve opened a small number of 45-minute Pick My Brain calls for women who want focused support on their Substack, visibility, positioning, personal brand, or next chapter.

If you want thoughtful eyes on what you’re building, this is the closest way to work with me directly.

3. Get the Substack Branding Kit

If you’ve seen my visuals and wondered how I’m creating that polished editorial look, I’ve bundled the exact system into my Substack Branding Kit.

It includes 22 Canva templates for $22, designed to help your publication look intentional, distinctive, and established from day one.

If you’d like the link, comment template and I’ll send it over.

Final thought

Ninety days ago, I was afraid nobody would care.

Today, hundreds of you are here.

And I know some of you are exactly where I was — cursor blinking, profile empty, wondering if it is worth beginning.

Here is my answer:

It is.

Somewhere in these last 90 days, I didn’t just build a Substack. I became the kind of woman who shows up before she feels fully ready.

If you are starting from zero too, tell me in the comments:

What could change in your life if you gave something 90 honest days?

I’ll be reading every one.

Sarah

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One of the greatest privileges of publishing Intentional Conversations is creating space for the conversations we don’t have often enough.

This week I was joined by the wonderful . Anne-Louise is an Intuitive Spiritual Channel and Mentor who helps women reconnect with their inner wisdom, raise their energetic frequency and live in alignment with their soul's desires.

We shared a conversation about self-trust, intuition, feminine magnetism and what it truly means to lead with soul. As we talked, one message kept returning:

The life you’re looking for isn’t created by becoming someone different. It’s created by coming home to yourself and for so many women, that’s the real work we often don’t have time to focus on because we’re prioritizing everyone else.

The Struggle

From the outside, many women look incredibly successful. They’re capable, independent, responsible, high-achieving and driven. Yet beneath all of that is often a quiet whisper of... “Is this really it?”

Anne-Louise described how many of the women she works with aren’t unhappy. They’re simply no longer fulfilled. They have spent years striving, achieving, ticking the boxes and building the life they thought they were supposed to want, only to discover they’re disconnected from themselves.

One sentence particularly stayed with me:

“We become so busy building a life that we forget to stop and ask whether it’s still the life we want.”

I think so many of us can relate to that.

The Remembering

One of my favourite parts of our conversation centred around the idea of remembering. Remembering who you’re becoming. Anne-Louise shared something beautiful:

It already knows what lights you up.

It already knows what you’re here to create.

The challenge isn’t finding the answers, it is becoming quiet enough to hear them.

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do isn’t push harder.

It’s taking the opportunity to Pause, Take a Breath, Drop Our Shoulders & Listen.

The Embodiment

One question I was particularly curious about was the difference between intuition and fear. Anne-Louise explained it so beautifully -

“Intuition is quiet. It speaks slowly, feels calm and simply knows.

Fear is loud. It rushes in with endless reasons why now isn’t the right time. Why you’re not ready. Why people will judge you. Why you should wait.

The more we practise listening to that quieter voice, the easier it becomes to recognise it."

And perhaps that’s where confidence is really born.”

Visibility Begins With Authenticity

As creators, writers and entrepreneurs, visibility can feel uncomfortable - especially when we’re trying to sound like everyone else. One thing Anne-Louise said really resonated was that “when you’re trying to become who you think you should be, showing up feels exhausting.”

We came to the conclusion that when you’re simply being yourself, visibility feel much lighter and more fun. That reminded me why I love conversations like these.

They’re unscripted, honest, imperfectly perfect and most of all - they are real.

Because I don’t think anyone connections with perfection anymore, they are seeking a connection with truth and trust.

Reflections Of Our Conversation

Near the end of our conversation, Anne-Louise shared something I haven’t stopped thinking about that is so relevant for us all who are more introverted when it comes to showing up:

“When you’re nervous about showing up don’t imagine everyone watching you. Imagine one person. One woman whose shoulders drop because she finally found someone who understands her.

Someone whose life might quietly change because you had the courage to press “Go Live.”

Sometimes we underestimate the ripple effect of simply showing up.

Intentional Practice This Week

Before reaching for your phone tomorrow morning...

Pause. Take one deep breath. Ask yourself: “How do I want to feel today?”

Not what you need to achieve. Not what needs fixing. Simply...

How do I want to feel?

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Meet Sarah

If we’re starting from zero, I want to start with something I’ve never said out loud before.

For the past few years, I’ve held back from sharing images of our life here in New York. Not because I didn’t want to or I didn’t have anything worth sharing but because I was afraid of being judged.

That we were bragging… or swapping our old life for a glitzy glossy version and were “rubbing it in” somehow.

The truth is so much messier than that. And this series is me finally being open and honest about all of it… the good, the bad and the ugly.

Four weeks’ notice. Six suitcases. One enormous leap of faith.

When Andy told me we were moving to New York, we had four weeks to make it happen.

Four weeks to close down my photography studio - a business I’d built and loved for over ten years. Four weeks to sell and empty our homes in Newport and Winsford. Four weeks to say goodbye to the lifelong friends, family, neighbours and the life we had in the UK.

I remember standing in our house in Chepstow Road with my best friend Sam as the last of our things were packed onto the shipping container parked out front - looking around at the empty rooms, thinking: this is really happening?

The feeling was surreal, like a numbness but with no panic - at least not visibly. We were in the zone of ‘let’s do this and get this done’ because it was happening whether we liked it or not. We were nervously excited.

If I’m honest, I had no idea what the next few month’s would look like - so I was going along with everyone else’s vision of what life in New York was going to look like.

You know the one…

Carrie Bradshaw. Brunch on a Sunday. Walking the streets of the City with shopping bags swinging. The skyline glittering in the background. The electric energy of anything being possible, just by stepping out of your front door.

We were going to live.

The first few weeks gave every reason to believe the dream.

Andy had gone ahead a few weeks earlier while I stayed behind to close everything down. By the time I finally landed (six suitcases in tow, yes, six) and stepped out into New York City for the first time as someone who actually lived there, life was already moving fast.

Within days we were attending a glittering gala at the Cipriani. Conversations and photos with Johnny Depp, an event hosted by JK Rowling and Whoopi Goldberg. The following week, New York City red carpet premieres with J-Lo, Vanessa Hudgens and Milo Ventimiglia - the kind of events you see and think that’s not real life.

We were living it…

The reality nobody saw.

Everyone back home was living through the images we were sharing… but, here’s what the photos didn’t show.

We had moved to a community where everyone already had their people. Their families were nearby. Their friendships were decades deep.

I had no role. My visa restrictions meant I couldn’t run a business, and after ten years as a female entrepreneur, the idea of working for someone else felt like putting on clothes that simply didn’t fit.

I was proud of the businesses and success that had been built in the UK. I’d been someone with a purpose and a place in the world. In New York, I was none of those things yet.

I tried to make friends the way you do when you’re new somewhere. One afternoon, I put together one of our beautiful Moments Candles Co (a company I invested in) gift bags and knocked on a neighbour’s door...

I started attending networking events, gathering up the courage to walk into rooms full of strangers and introduce myself. Every time, the same three questions came back like a checklist:

Where did you graduate? Do you have kids? Where do you work?

Three questions. Three strikes. And the conversation would swiftly drift away to someone they could “connect” with. The whole experience was soul destroying.

Andy was extraordinary during all of this - my husband, my best friend, my entire world. But I knew, even then, that I needed more than just one person to help me through this season of change. I needed a community. I just didn’t know how or where to begin.

There was something else... something I hadn’t told many people before we left the UK.

Just before the move, I’d had major surgery to remove two fibroids - one 9.5cm by 7.5cm, the other 5.5cm by 3cm. Thankfully, the surgery was a success and I had been given the all-clear to travel but what I hadn’t been fully prepared for was what came next.

Just like a switch had been turned on, my body began going through surgical menopause, I was 39 years old. I didn’t recognize any of the symptoms at the time. I put the exhaustion down to the move. The anxiety down to being far from somewhere I called home. The loss of confidence was attributed to being in a new country without a purpose.

I had no idea that my hormones were in freefall. I didn’t know that my energy, my focus, my creativity - all the things I’d always leaned on - were being affected by something I couldn’t see and didn’t yet have a name for.

I just knew that I felt like I was failing. At everything. Every single day.

I was spiraling and it was a scary place to be.

This is where the ‘starting from zero’ story really begins.

Not at the Cipriani. Not on the red carpet or everyone else’s excitement of our new life in New York.

It’s in the quiet, uncomfortable, messy space between the life everyone imagined we were living (which looked wonderful on social media) and the reality of the life we were actually navigating - alone.

Over the next four articles, I’m sharing all of it - the lowest moments, the unexpected pivots, the things I thought were failures that turned out to be the most important chapters of the whole story. Because I’ve come to believe that starting from zero isn’t something that happens to you.

Often without you realizing, it’s something that’s for you. It’s a gift.

I hope you’ll stay for the whole story.

With love, Sarah x

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Up next in Starting From Zero: Article 2 - The Body: The storm nobody could see.