How to collaborate on Substack

And today we're going to talk about a topic that is super exciting. Feel free to add questions in the chat. I try to look at them, but sometimes it's a little bit tricky to talk and read at the same time, but I'll try to get back to you. And yes, from the Gold Coast. Oh, that's where my husband is from. Lovely. So welcome to the Substack Live series. This is a series of 4 live sessions. To help you grow your community on Substack and also monetize your publication. Today we are into session 3. So if you missed previously, don't worry, you can always go back. It's for paid subscribers, but you can always have a preview, a free preview. The first one was really about the basics, how to help you set up, I like to call it your digital home. And I always say this, you want to have your house ready before you have your guests visiting you. So I talked about how to set up the design of the publication, how to nail your vision and your value proposition, how to organize things like your hero post, your sections. So that was number 1. Then last week, these sessions are weekly, we moved to number 2 and it was about how to grow organically. And the keyword here is organically by leveraging the internal tools such as notes. I talked a lot about notes. I love notes. Talked about recommendations as well, and also do how to do live sessions because I find that it's an amazing channel to connect with your community because it's just you, right? And it's a really, really authentic way to build your community. So that was last week, and today we're on to number three, which is actually personally my favorite, and is about collaboration and community to help you scale. So the reason why I decided to create this series is because so many people ask me questions about Substack, and it felt that everything was a little bit. Isolated or a little bit ad hoc. And the thing that really worked for me was to have a more structured and strategic approach to the way that I create, to the way that I show up, to the way that I build my community. And so I wanted to share with you what has helped me, because for one year, one entire year, I did not have a lot of growth. So if you're in that situation, I know how frustrating it is. I know how sad it is to talk to the wall because I've been there. But after a year, I figured a strategy that works for me. That strategy has helped me grow. It helped me grow my English publication, which is now a Substack bestseller, yay, with over almost 11,000 subscribers. But I applied the exact same methodology to my Spanish publication called El Limonero, where I started completely from zero and is also growing quite fast. In a year, I'm almost at 3,000 subscribers and I have a lovely community. So I do think that That is a strategy that you can make it yours. You can customize it, but it will help you. So today we are going to talk about collaboration and community. And I decided to merge these 2 topics because to me, they go really hand in hand. The more you collaborate with other people, the more naturally you start to create a community because you attract these people who want to collaborate with you, but vice versa, when you start to invest in your community, and I'll talk more in detail about what I mean. That community naturally leads to more collaboration and not only with you and the members, but between the members with each other. So really the sum becomes much, much bigger than its parts. So I do think that these 2 topics that work wonderfully together, but you have to do your homework first. So please make sure that you work on your publication. You have your house ready before you invite your guests and you start to grow organically with things like notes, recommendations, and so on. So I always talk about the mindset, and that's one of the reasons why my publication is called The Lemon Tree Mindset, because everything we do in life has to start with our mindset. And in fact, during my race, I wanted to quit, you know, so many times. And really what kept me going was the mindset. So I'm gonna have a few words about that. When we are thinking about community, and especially when we're thinking about collaboration, One of the key values, one of the key filters that I like to have in mind is being authentic because there's so much lack of authenticity on social media, in digital, with AI that I think really being authentic, being genuine, honest, sticking to your values is something that is so important. And I say this because we see a lot of behaviors there that might be not the most authentic, whether it's pods or boosts or Things are really, are not coming from a place of honesty. So think about your values and dig deeper to find what are those values. For me, it's about being transparent, it's about being positive. So show up as you are. Being authentic also means having fun and stay true to who you are. For example, today I'm doing a live session and so many people tell me, oh, live sessions are not for me. I'm horrified. You don't have to do live sessions, but I do encourage everyone to step out of the comfort zone and try different things, try things that take you out of your comfort zone. Like a year ago, I didn't do live sessions, for example, because I thought it wasn't for me. And now I do them pretty much on a weekly basis. So authenticity, but also step out of your comfort zone because you're going to need a lot of that if you're going to collaborate with other people, if you're going to build your community. So that is definitely Required. Second thing is having a win-win mindset. When you think about collaboration, so many people, they have a bit of a tunnel vision, and I receive so many of these requests. Veronica, can I write a guest post for you? Can you help me grow? Can you do this? And I'm super happy to help people, but I'm always going to prioritize people who are in my community because I already have a connection, because I already know them, and because we have already built that trust. And so win-win also means that it's not only about what is the benefit for me, for myself, but also what am I bringing to the table? And when we have this approach, I do find that it's more sustainable and everybody wins. So instead of thinking, hey, how can this person help me grow? If we change the script and we think, how can I help this person so that we're both interested? in working together. And I do this all the time. My community focuses on writers, creators, authors. I love to call it creative entrepreneurs because I think that covers all of us. And I have a lot of skills that I bring to the table, but I also lack a lot of skills. So when I approach someone, I have this mindset of what is that person missing maybe in that community or in their skillset that I can bring to the table and vice versa? What is something that someone has, for example, to give you a very specific example, a few months ago, I invited one of my founding members, Alberto, to talk about Notion systems, how to be more organized, how to have better processes, because it's something that I'm not great at, but there are other people in my community who are really good at. So that's what I mean by win-win. Try to think always, what are we both gaining together? Because otherwise, if we only do collaborations where one person is winning, chances are it's not going to go very far. And it's not going to be very sustainable, which is the third point that I wanted to talk about, mindset. Always think about strategies that can be sustainable and that can help you grow, not just today, but on the long term. For example, I see a lot of boost programs out there and I could host one of those in my community, but I don't. And the reason why is because boost or anything that is so short-term is not really going to help you grow beyond And so trying to think in terms of what is a skill or what is something that I can share that can help people grow beyond today. That's what I mean by sustainability. It's not just, you know, the steroids that help you have the muscle today, but how do you bring a good routine that helps you go to the gym, that helps your members go to the gym maybe 3 times a week? So these are some things that are important for me. I hope that they help you as well. Ormila, welcome. Joanne Stewart, so many of my Collaborators, friends from the Lemon Tree Mindset, great to have you here. And we are going to get started. So let's kick things off with collaboration. And the way that I want to approach this is I actually have a little list here of questions that people ask me very often, because I think it's much easier if I tackle issues and challenges that many of you are facing. I've been there and I still face some of these challenges. So I think it's a good conversation. For all of us. So how do I get started? I just launched my publication on Substack, or maybe I still have a small audience. So yes, it's really, really hard to start collaborating when you're small, when people still don't know you, but that doesn't mean that you can't. And I'd like you to have this abundance mindset of starting first thinking about micro collaboration. And what I mean by micro collaborations is if you look around, You have so many opportunities to start having like these mini moments of collaboration. Just participating in today's live session, when I'm seeing your name, it starts to create already a bond. When you comment on people's notes, it's not just about you posting and posting like a machine. It's about taking opportunities to engage. Whenever someone leaves a comment on your post, don't just say, hey, thank you. Try to keep it further. What did you like about it? Try to ask maybe if they have a challenge with that, like try to keep the conversation going. One thing that I love doing to have these moments of micro collaborations is to send a resource for free. I don't try to sell anything that can help that person. So if they liked a post, for example, that I wrote about authors, I might send them another post where I'm sharing tips that help me lock a publisher deal, for example, and that might be a way to have these micro moments of micro collaboration. It's funny how in the digital world, we often overcomplicate things. How do we collaborate? And I often throw the question back, how do you collaborate in the real world? You don't just go to strangers like, hey, do you wanna have a coffee? It's not really how things work, right? It's a bit the same in the digital world. The very first thing is to build a connection. You are going to naturally start to be attracted to people in a similar field. You like their voice, you like how they show up. So start building those connections first because those collaborations, they are the result of building those human connections. And you have so many avenues to create those. It can be through notes, your own notes. It can be joining other people's notes. It can be joining other people's communities or chats. If you're in the Lemon Tree Mindset, you know that I have a very active chat. I think it was yesterday or 2 days ago, I opened the collaboration day, something that I do on a weekly basis. I invite everyone, free, paid subscribers, new, old, to introduce themselves and pitch their collaboration idea. Hey, I'm going to give a real example here because I have a founding member who's called Urmila and she just published her very first book. So her collaboration pitch might be, hey, I just published my first book. I love to discuss topics related to inclusion with anyone who is interested in that topic. And so you can leverage different communities around you to pitch your collaboration idea. And pitching is actually something that we'll talk about because we all struggle a little bit with that. So these are your micro moments. These are your opportunities to start building that relationship. Now, something that helps me a lot personally, Is back to this idea of win-win and back to this idea of an abundance mindset. Many people tell me, oh, but I reach out to people and I tell them that I want to go on podcasts or be interviewed and I don't have a lot of success. And this idea is actually very simple, but why don't you host first? Don't expect people to invite you for a coffee if you haven't invited them for a coffee first. And I find that this is the lowest denominator of collaboration is you opening the digital doors of your digital home and saying, hey, Carol, I love your work on this topic. This is what I do. Would you like to write a guest post for me? This is what my publication is about. I have this many subscribers. This is what we talk about. And chances are when you go to someone and you open the doors to your publication, You start to develop the relationship, you start to create more trust, and possibly that person without you saying anything is probably going to do 2 things. Most of the time, at least in my experience, one, they're going to recommend you because it's something that we do naturally. We recommend the waitress at the bar because she's nice. She gives us a cookie with a coffee. I love cookies. So that's what people recommend. I don't just recommend publications, if I'm honest, I recommend people. Because what we do here, we think that is a writing business. It's a people business. So focus on the people first. The second thing that tends to happen is that they're probably going to invite you to collaborate with them later. Magdalena, for example, one of my friends, founding members, hello. That's exactly her approach. She opens the door. She invites so many people to her publication, whether it's do an interview, write a guest post on the Voices of Courage, I think she calls it. I think it's— Beautiful. And then that evolves, that goes to the next initiative. It might be a joint webinar, it might be a joint live session, whatever that is. But remember this idea of inviting people for coffee first if you want them to invite you to their house later. And I do find that that works extremely, extremely well. So this is a little bit about the first question that I get asked so often. How do I start collaboration? How do I find these partners? The, the, your collaborators, they're probably already around you, by the way. So don't look too far. If one very tactical thing, but one thing that you could do is you could filter your subscribers and go to the ones that have 5 stars. And you can do this in your dashboard. Those who have 5 stars, they're the ones who are the most engaged already with your work. They read everything. They probably reply to comments. You can do that filter as well. By the way, if you want to know the ones that are more vocal, those are your collaborators potentially because they already enjoy your work. So you can actually proactively reach out and see who are the people who are the most likely to collaborate with you. So now moving on a little bit to the types of collaborations that there are, and I think the list is so long that I wouldn't have time probably in this session to cover everything. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the ones that I've done, the ones that I personally enjoy to just give you some ideas. So this is really more a bit of brainstorming ideation, but with real examples. So the most basic one I think that most people are familiar with are guest posts. So at the Lemon Tree Mindset, I invite my premium members to write guest posts. And in my case, I invite them to share their story. The last one that I had is from Jacqueline Hollow, who is a public speaker, and she was sharing her story about conquering the fear of speaking in public. So you can invite people to write guest posts for your publication, and that way you're amplifying their message, you're amplifying their word, you're giving them the microphone, right? And they're the ones, in my case, I give them the lemons and they're the ones who squeeze the lemonade. And that works really, really well because you are really enabling someone else. The second part of the guest post that I always recommend people to do is to do a cross-post afterwards. And this is a little bit tactical, but in any post, it can be from a third person or from yourself. You can just go to the 3 little dots, the top right, and you can cross-post it, which means that if I see a post that I like or something that someone wrote, I can just then distribute it to my entire audience, my community. And so that way, in the example of Jacqueline, That's exactly what she did. I published her post under my publication, it went to all my subscribers, and then she cross-posted it. So what happens here is that instead of only reaching my community, we are now reaching 2 communities. And so that's something that allows you to have much more reach, to give your content much more longevity, and to have a bigger loudspeaker or more lemons, right? So that's something that works really well. If you haven't done a guest post, I really encourage you to start finding your partner right now and inviting them for coffee to your digital house. So that's the first one. Another one that works very well, and especially this year since Substack launched the live sessions, is the co-hosted live sessions where you have 2 people talking together and you could have different formats also. Back to authenticity. What do you like doing? Do you like maybe Interviewing. Last week, a very good example that I have is Natasha Hines. I think I'm pronouncing this well. She's a former journalist. And so her expertise and where she feels very comfortable is interviewing people. So she started to interview a lot of different creators and I was one of her guests last week. I'm much more comfortable actually being the guest. I'm not a very good interviewer because I just start to chat with the person. And so, excuse me, try to find what you like doing, what is your strength and who is someone that you could go live with? I have done live sessions with so many people in my community, and I tell you what, it's much easier to go with someone else than going solo. So if you want to experiment the live sessions, I definitely recommend you to find one person to go with, and you'll see that it's quite fun. It doesn't have to be perfect. So live sessions are another one, but then you have so many other things that, that you can do. You can, for example, interview people. I know that for many of you, you don't like the camera. That's totally fine. Although I would still challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone because that's what I did. But maybe you like the written format more, and so many people do. So you could reach out to people who are in your field and have a written interview. And I have done this both ways, interviewing other people, but also being interviewed. So for example, if you have a community of solopreneurs, for example. So you could invite all the solopreneurs who are members to be your guest in these interviews. I did this previously. I did it both in English and Spanish, for example, and I contacted Substack bestsellers in different categories. I wanted it to be very, very eclectic, very broad, have a lot of diversity, and I asked each of them 3 very simple questions. The first one was about their vision, The second one was what they wanted to achieve. And the third one, it was something else. It was very, very simple. And then I consolidated everything together. And the beauty of that is all of a sudden it was 3 of them interviewed plus me. So 4 creators, 4 writers were amplifying their work, were reaching out to their community. So it's a really lovely way to grow. And even if you think that having a small publication is a challenge, I still think that being small has so so many opportunities because there are so many other people who are going to relate to where you are in your journey. So maybe instead of saying, hey, I'm looking for big publications, I'm looking for people who are starting, I'm looking for beginners in Substack. Like, let's join forces together, talk about the challenges that we are having when we're a beginner, for example, or maybe it's about new authors. So being small is not always a challenge. It's always a challenge is being small is in your mind and that we can totally control, right? So, so think about that for a moment and what are different initiatives that you could have to collaborate with others. As I said, there are so many other ways that you can do that. I've done multiple webinars, for example, joint webinars with other creators, sometimes from Substack, sometimes even external. One of the most popular webinars that I had was with my publisher, and I don't have the book here, but I invited Penguin Random House. When I published my book last year. And for once, I was actually interviewing my publisher and asking her about what they're looking for in an author. What are some tips? How can authors set themselves up for success when they're pitching to publications? So you can bring an external resource, an external expert, and do a joint webinar, and it can be free, it can be paid. We'll talk about monetization in the next session. You can also invite someone who you might think is a competitor, but actually your competitors, in my experience, they're your best collaborators because we always have so much that we can learn from each other and we always have gaps that the other person can complement. So you can do another webinar, which could be on a specific topic. One that I'd love doing, for example, I haven't done it yet, is mompreneurs. What are the challenges that we have as mompreneurs? How do we organize our time better? How are we able to keep sane with everything that we have going on with the little ones and work and sports? So think about a topic where you can potentially have one or even 2 people and have a session together. So there are so many different ways that you can collaborate. And I started talking at the beginning about micro collaborations that start with just participating, being active, supporting other people's work. And then we go into micro. Macro, sorry, macro, the big ones, collaborations where it could be as big as even launching a second publication with another creator, which is a wonderful example from Christina Godd and Fleur Hull. They created these publication for authors. Sorry, I don't remember the name, but it's really about helping authors, especially indie authors, raise their profile and ultimately be more successful and sell more books. So it starts very small, but it can be as big as you really want it to be. So, so many initiatives there on how you can have these different types of collaborations in your community. Now, another thing, now that we've covered different types of collaborations, is how you actually pitch. And I really want to talk about the elephant in the room because writers, we are generally so crap at pitching. And I put myself out there. I struggle with these, the whole sales things, but we have to do it, right? We really have. To put ourselves out there. And so the best way of pitching is instead of thinking that you are selling is changing the mindset and how can we grow together? How can we both benefit from this? It's the win-win mindset that I was talking about at the beginning. It's the abundance mindset. So when you're reaching out to someone, do your homework beforehand, look at their publication, look at what they're good at, but try to find gaps. What are some little gaps where you might have an incredible expertise and you can actually propose that? So it's not always about having big numbers. Of course, if you already have a big publication, if you have 1,000, 10,000, you put the number subscribers, it's gonna be easier to get traction, but that's not the only way. Maybe there are things that you've achieved outside of Substack, like the world is so much bigger than this. Maybe you've published different books. Maybe you have had success transitioning from the corporate world. Maybe you were a C-level executive and now you're a solopreneur and you have an incredible story to share. Even if you're starting, maybe you have a beautiful story of courage and resilience and you reach out to a publication that is doing really well in that space and they like your story, but we really have to find what is that selling point? What, how are we going to make ourselves interesting for the other person? And I find this exercise fascinating and also so challenging because it's not about what we do. It's about what value are we going to add. Also, let's normalize rejection. I'm rejected every single day. I have people who ghost me. I have so many people who unsubscribe. I have so many, in fact, that I turned off the notification because I don't want to feel down about it. So it's fine. Honestly, if you reach out to 5 people, 10 people, chances are the more you reach out with intention, with authenticity, the more yes you're going to get. So don't take it as something personal. So that's something very important. So think about your pitch, what you're bringing to the table, how you're going to really sell your value proposition, and that's going to help you with your pitch. Again, if you don't know how to start, where to go, I mentioned you can reach out to people who are already in your community. You can also go to communities like in my case, in the Elementary Mindset, for example, every week I have like these open days where people collaborate. So you can really take advantage of different communities and use it also as a testing field. How can you refine your pitch? How can you explain what you do in just one line? These things that we all really struggle with. So think about that for a moment. And the last thing about collaboration. So we've talked about how you can find your collaborators. How you can pitch the different types of collaborators. Try to think also, and this is more tactical, but how to make a bigger impact. Very often people think that the most successful collaborations are the ones that you do with people who have the biggest communities, the biggest numbers, the biggest, largest numbers of subscribers. In my experience, it's not like that actually. If you bring someone who is huge, but that person doesn't move a finger, chances are you're not going to have much traction. However, if both of you come really hungry and really want to drive these and are excited, want to promote the work, now you have 2 people who are going to be making noise. So that's why I talked about the cross-posting. If you have a live session, for example, what I love doing afterwards is repurposing that content, that collaboration, and that live session can become a video post with a summary. And then that goes to my entire community. Something that, uh, Siler, one of my collaborators, did the other day that I thought was fantastic. She invited me to a live session. We were talking about building a digital ecosystem, communities around those topics. It was here on Substack. And afterwards, she actually took a little clip and she posted it on LinkedIn. I didn't even know that she was active there. I'm super active on LinkedIn. It's my main platform for B2B, for my work as a public speaker. And when I saw that, immediately I shared it with my community. And now we were not just one person, but 2 people promoting our collaboration, not just in one network or one platform, but actually 2. So when you pick that person, make sure that you're both in that same mindset, in that same spirit of, hey, let's make this grow. Let's make this work. So I think that really, really works. Yes, Magdalena, turning off the notification makes you happier and stronger. I agree. Love that comment. So now Magdalena and Nira are very hungry to collaborate. Yes, very good example. I know that you ladies recently did a live session where you had over 55 attendees, so good on you. That's exactly what I mean. You are walking the talk. So that's a little bit about collaboration. The second part that I wanted to address today is community. As I said at the beginning, collaboration, community, They come hand in hand. And I think most of us, we want and we aspire to create communities, but it's really quite, quite challenging. Very often, I'm sure you have this experience, you might write a post in the chat and no one replies. And then you think you're the problem, or maybe you're not engaging. And we start to play like these, these tricks in our mind and we give up. And the reality is that building your community, it involves that. It involves Talking to the wall, and it involves showing up and showing up again and wanting to give up and not giving up. Because when you're building a community, the key element is trust, and you can't buy trust. You can't rush it. You can't have any tricks. So it really does take time. And so you have to find your own unique ways of creating that trust. For me, I do these live sessions because you see me as I am. You hear my accent. You see, how I speak. And so I find that although many people hate lives, it's a very good way to show up authentically as you are. You smile, you laugh a little bit with the audience. So you do have to take time to build trust, whatever that means for you and whatever channels you want and you can use. So building trust is the very first thing. And so how can you build a community, right? That's a question that many people ask me. And look, the advice that I have is to look around you and think about communities that you like. Think about communities that you admire, and it can be in the creator's world, in the writer's world, but it can be outside because we are surrounded by communities. Schools are communities, churches, Toastmasters, book clubs, all of that. And look at what is it that you like about those communities? What are some of the things that you could replicate? And so, I'm a very visual person. I always say this. I need to have a visualization of some sort to be able to explain. A concept. Because I just came back from my triathlon in Phuket, I'm going to use a triathlon club as an example for community building. For me, being part of a triathlon, it gives me so many things as a member. My triathlon club is called the Tritons. It gives me, first of all, a place where I can ask questions. And especially when you're a beginner, we don't know anything. I'm like, how do I even put the helmet? Or where do I get things for the bike? Or how do I get those funky shoes that you clip into the bike. So it's a place where you can ask questions and you don't feel silly about asking questions. And that's so important, not being judged, safe space where people are like, hey, you know, I've also been a beginner, I'm here to help you. So it can be a place for resources, but that's not all. It's because if it's only about information, you can ask Claude or ChatGPT or not Veronica, right? Someone else. And so think about all the things that you get from these communities. And for me, one thing that's huge is the support and the celebration. It doesn't matter if you come last in a race or if you didn't even show up because you were sick, the support that you get in a community, that's probably what I gained the most of as a member. And I try to replicate those things. I try through the Lemon Tree Mindset to, yes, be a place where you can learn and you can have resources to grow your business, turn your creativity into your lifestyle, but it's also a place where I want people to feel included. Where I want people to be able to ask questions without feeling silly. I very often say the things that I don't know, the mistakes that I've made, to make sure that people are comfortable in saying, hey, if the founder of this community is struggling, it's okay for me to struggle too. I really want to create this safe space. Celebration is huge. I almost on a weekly basis, I have days where I invite people to celebrate, celebrate a small win. It doesn't have to be huge, Maybe your first win is that you were able to even record a video, or maybe it has nothing to do with writing online, but celebration is something that's very important for me. And then, as I said, personally, I do find that collaboration and community go hand in hand. So for me, that community is also a place where I try to boost collaboration between my members. Very often what I love is that People who are inside my chat, they start talking to each other and then off they go and they do things that are outside of the lemon tree mindset and good on them because if they have a good experience, if they took something from my community, from my lemons, chances are they might recommend me or they might refer me to someone else. So that's part of the win-win mindset. You might not get the benefit straight away, but we're all going to be growing together as a result. So. Try to think again about the communities that you enjoy. What are the things that attract you to those communities and how you can replicate those internally? In terms of the how, I find that the chat is probably the hardest one to crack, but once you crack it, it's probably the best community builder because at one point people start posting their new launches. They pitch their collaboration idea. They start to celebrate. And so once you crack it, you really start to have that feeling of community. You don't have to post every day, so it's not as overwhelming as sending emails and it becomes much more organic. So yes, it does take time, but try these different approaches and what works better for you. Some people, for example, love doing challenges. Back to my triathlon, we just came from a race that was a challenge. We go together as a team, we do this challenge, and then we come back, we regroup, We talk about the challenge, what went well, what didn't go well. My run was a disaster. I have to change my nutrition. So these challenges, they also help people bond. So you have a lot of different ways that you can use the chat to really build this sense of community. Some of the things that work as well, or that don't work, and also let's talk a little bit about maybe things to avoid. If I ask a question very open, and I see this all the time, What would you like me to talk about in December? Chances are I'm not gonna get much because I'm just asking too much. It's too broad. I'm giving people too much homework. Don't give your community too much work. Don't give your members the homework. Make it easy for them. Like fish or meat? What's your preference? A little bit like that. So instead, back to that example, instead of saying, what would you like me to talk about in December? I could say, would you like me to talk about planning and setting you up for success? For 2026, or would you like to talk more about strategies, digital strategies, and different topics? And that way you're already getting people to think about 2 options, not 10, not 20. You're guiding them. So this is a tip that has worked very well for me. Try to have more guided conversations. One of my most, my favorite chats that I had, and it's still there, is quite recent. It was super simple, but I really wanted to get to know my community better. And so I just asked them, what is your hobby? What do you like doing? So obviously I talked about triathlon and then I was blown away. I had people who were professional surfers, karate, windsurfers. There was so much talent in the community that we could actually just have like an entire other community dedicated to these hobbies. And it sounds like nothing, but it's not nothing. It's actually building trust. is getting to know something else about someone. When you see a name pop up, you're like, oh, I know that this person likes playing football. Oh, I know that they like windsurfing. So these little things, even if they seem that they don't add a lot of value, they add trust. And we can't put a metric, we can't put a return on investment to trust, but it's there. And when you build that trust, it's definitely gonna come back to you in the currency of collaboration, in the currency of community, so definitely worth doing it. So that's a bit about community and the chat. You have many other ways to keep building your community. Again, I do find that these live sessions, they're great for community. So many people afterwards send me a message afterwards, hey, I enjoy these, or you encourage me even though English is my second language to start going live, or people who did not do single or solo sessions before, after seeing me, They're like, oh, if she can do it, I can do it as well. So I really find that it is a great way to build community. Don't be afraid to press the button, go live. No one expects you to be perfect. No one is perfect. So always remember that when, when you go on camera and other things that you can do for community. Again, I've tried, I do all of these webinars. For example, if you feel a little bit intimidated going camera on camera, in front of a lot of people, you can create a more safe environment where it's really, you have more privacy, it feels smaller. So I do this on Zoom. I used to do it more in the past where I get my paid subscribers and we come together on a specific topic where I'll be sharing experience, strategies, tips. So that can work very well, especially if you're starting and you have a bit of a smaller community. So that's a very good way to start. And something else that I launched this year to take my community to the next level that I personally really enjoyed is mastermind sessions. They sound similar, but it's actually different. Webinar is much more about a subject matter expert, could be yourself, could be external talent talking about a topic. Mastermind is more, let's pick one topic and bring our brains and our energy and our troubleshooting skills and come together in a room to help each other, to support, to try to see how we can collaborate. I love these mastermind sessions. I do them for my founding members. And by the way, I have to launch one before I go on holidays this Christmas. So please keep me accountable. Magdalena is saying that her first challenge was a disaster, but it was fun. I know exactly that feeling. I have done some sessions where it was just one, me and another person, and we still went ahead. We had an amazing time. And then I posted the recording. So yes, I do believe that having fun is a big one. So wrapping up community, think about clubs, communities, associations that you're a part of, how you can replicate that and use the different channels that you have around you. The chat, it can be webinars, it can be masterminds, but you have so many ways of bringing people together. Again, we overcomplicate these things. Let's bring people together. What is one topic that people will be interested in and how can we join forces. So that's about it about community. So let's bring everything together. I like to keep these sessions short, actionable, and to the point. And so what we've talked about today is really these synergies that we can create between collaboration and community. I talked about the mindset. That's probably the most important thing. How to think win-win with an abundance mindset, how to find new collaborators, reach out, pitch, don't sell, really try to think bigger so that both people are winning from that partnership. I talked about different types of collaboration, whether it's guest posts, live sessions, joint webinars, and so on. And then we moved on to community and how you can really start to create this small tribe that is based on trust. Trust is something that takes time. It's not gonna be overnight, but the more you show up and the more you give, chances are the more you are going to get. So this is about, uh, collaboration and community. This was session 3 of the Substack Live series, and next week I have the final one, which is about monetization. We will talk about how to go from free to paid. We'll talk about how to use the paywall, how to create an offer that is compelling, and how you can really turn your creativity into your lifestyle. For me, this has really been a journey. It's gonna be 3 years in February. And so everything that I'm gonna be sharing is things that have worked for me, just like today, things that haven't, some tips that can really trigger some ideas, and hopefully you'll be able to make not only your own lemonade, but you plan to plant your own lemon trees, because that's the whole philosophy about the Lemon Tree Mindset. You can watch the replays of the sessions. The first one about growing a publication, designing it. The second one was about organic growth. The one of today. The entire series is for paid subscribers. And if you would like to reach out to me, send me a message, You can also reach me in the group chat. I'm always there available. So I just want to say bye to the people that I see on the screen right now. Angelica Sembly, Sondra Imperati, one of my new paid subscribers. Welcome, Alan. It was really, really lovely to have all of you here. The number is making me laugh. 69. Brilliant. And I hope I will see you here next week. Bye. Take care. Big hug from Hong Kong. Bye, Sophie.