464- Can Pinterest & Substack Work Together?

Why I Wanted to Understand Substack Better

Lately I’ve been hearing more and more people ask about connecting Pinterest and Substack, but before even thinking about strategy, I realized I didn’t fully understand what Substack actually is anymore. So I sat down with Carla Contreras to talk through all of it, because she has been deeply immersed in the platform since 2021 and has watched it evolve in real time.

What stood out immediately is that Substack is no longer just a writing platform. While many people still think of it as a sacred place for writers and newsletters, Carla explained that it has shifted into something much bigger. Audio, video, podcasts, live streams, notes, community interaction, and newsletters now all live inside the same ecosystem. And according to Carla, the platform clearly prefers multimedia content, even if they won’t outright say they prioritize it.

The Most Interesting Thing Carla Shared About Podcast Growth

One of the most fascinating parts of our conversation was hearing how moving her podcast onto Substack completely changed its growth trajectory. Carla shared that after moving her podcast directly onto the platform, her show experienced massive growth over the following year. She believes part of that came from how Substack surfaces audio content combined with her intentional use of SEO and keywords.

What I appreciated most was that she didn’t frame this as some overnight success story. Instead, she talked about how she experimented, tested things, rebuilt parts of her publication multiple times, and stayed curious about how the platform was evolving. It reminded me so much of Pinterest in the sense that the people who tend to succeed are the ones paying attention to shifts in behavior, language, and strategy instead of expecting instant results.

Related: The #1 Growth Strategy for Pinterest Marketing

Substack Is Becoming More Social Than People Realize

Another big takeaway from my conversation with Carla was that many creators think they’re leaving social media when they join Substack, but that’s not really true. The platform has quietly become much more profile and engagement driven through features like Notes, Lives, comments, reposts, and follows.

Carla explained that one of the biggest mistakes creators make is assuming the platform works like a traditional newsletter tool when it actually behaves much more like a media ecosystem. And because the platform changes so quickly, it can honestly feel confusing even for people who teach it professionally. I really appreciated her honesty about that because I think so many entrepreneurs assume they’re “bad at tech” when really the platform itself is constantly moving and evolving.

Related: How the Pinterest Algorithm Works

How Pinterest and Substack Can Actually Work Together

What became really clear during our conversation is that Pinterest can be an incredible traffic driver for Substack when used intentionally. Carla emphasized that instead of sending Pinterest users to random Notes or temporary content, it’s much more effective to send them directly to a publication post that contains strong keywords, clear messaging, and pathways to deeper content.

She also shared something I loved, which is that even though she uses Substack heavily, she still treats her website as the true home of her content. Her Substack posts regularly link back to her website, podcast blog, offers, and resources. It’s not about abandoning your website for Substack. It’s about using Substack as another layer of visibility, storytelling, and connection while still maintaining ownership of your core platform.

Related: Troubleshooting Pinterest Part 3: Content

My Biggest Takeaway From This Conversation

Honestly, this conversation made me realize how important it is for creators to stay flexible and curious right now. Platforms are changing incredibly fast, and the people who are thriving are usually the ones willing to experiment instead of demanding certainty before they begin.

What I loved most about Carla’s approach is that she’s not teaching from theory. She’s actively building, testing, refining, and observing the platform in real time while helping other entrepreneurs do the same. And underneath all the strategy, algorithms, and features, there was one message that kept standing out to me: your content should ultimately serve the person consuming it.

Whether it’s Pinterest, Substack, podcasts, newsletters, or blogs, the goal is still connection. The tools may evolve, but creating meaningful experiences for real people is still what matters most.

You can find this podcast episode by going to Apple or Spotify

For More Pinterest Related Resources:

Follow Carla on Substack

Subscribe to Carla’s newsletter

Carla’s Website 

Shop: Pinterest Content Planning Guides

Watch: How to Pin in Your First 30 Days on Pinterest

Episode Transcript

[00:00] Kate: Let’s talk about Substack and Pinterest. So Substack has been around for a couple of years, and Pinterest has been around, well, now around 16 years. And a lot of people are coming to me with these questions about how to connect Pinterest and Substack. But I wanted to back up a little bit more and ask the question: what is Substack?

[00:23] How can it serve the creator, the entrepreneur, and how should we use it properly? So in order to do that, I met with Chef Carla. She is all in on Substack — teaching it and monitoring it in every detail. You’ll hear more about that in the episode. I wanted to talk to her about all the things I had in my head about what I think Substack is, but actually don’t know, so I could frame up how to create a Substack-Pinterest strategy and be effective with it.

[00:57] So this episode covers everything you need to know when it comes to connecting Substack and Pinterest. If you want to join the conversation after this podcast, go to simplepinmedia.com and click on SPM Insiders — that’s our community. It’s really inexpensive, and it’s where we troubleshoot all things Pinterest, including how it connects out to things like Substack.

[01:20] So look for the link down below in the description, in your podcast app or on YouTube. All righty — let’s dive into the podcast. Carla, welcome to the Simple Pin Podcast.

Carla: Thank you for having me. I am so grateful to connect with you and your community and jump into Substack. I am so excited.

Kate: So I wanna start there — Substack to me feels like there’s some brand recognition, but there’s also some misunderstanding of what it is. So just so we’re all on the same playing field, ’cause there’s probably some people who are like, “Substack? What?” — I want you to tell people what Substack is.

[01:52] Carla: In its simplest form, from 2021 until about mid last year, it was a newsletter platform, and that’s what most people identify Substack with. They’re like, “I don’t wanna be a writer.” But what has shifted — and this is important, because it’s… they actually changed their LinkedIn bio, which is really key for me to notice as a content strategist. It says, “Substack: media app, audio, video.”

[02:18] Carla: So this is an indication to me — and I was recently on… they just launched the Substack recording studio. I asked the question directly: “Do you prioritize video?” Their answer — and I literally have the recording, I’m happy to share this with your community — was, “We will not say that we prioritize it. We will say that we prefer it.”

Kate: Interesting. I know — I was wondering what language you’d say they used, ’cause they’re always a little bit crafty.

[03:11] Kate: So with that — for the people who have seen Substack as, I’m putting these words in their mouth, a sacred space for writers — how does it feel to them to see video infiltrate and come in?

Carla: They’re not happy. Of course they’re not happy, because this was a writing platform. Now, I’ve been on this platform since 2021, and I’ve had different iterations here — I literally deleted an entire publication and started over again in 2023.

[03:44] My podcast lives there. Now, this was controversial to some of my writing friends. When I moved my podcast over in 2024, I saw a tip — and this is why Substack [04:00] carefully used the language of “prefer” instead of “prioritize” — because at the end of 2023, a Substack (I can’t remember her name) posted: “Substack prioritizes audio 2.5% over written content.”

Carla: And my content-strategist antenna went up, and I thought, “Okay, I’m hosting on a different platform, it’s going out to all the places — I’m gonna move it.” In 2024, my podcast grew 149%. In 2025 — and these are Spotify numbers, because Substack isn’t great with data — my podcast grew 999%.

[04:51] Kate: Wow — and that was only hosted on Substack? You moved everything over?

Carla: I moved all the episodes over, and I’ve literally been in the content universe like the land of the dinosaurs about this — it also lives on a podcast blog on my website, because I was terrified. I was like, “Well, if we lose all 100-plus episodes, what’s gonna happen?

[05:00] Don’t know.” So I have a backup, but I moved the episodes over and publish directly from Substack. I attribute this success to a number of things: one, the prioritization toward audio, but also — and we’ll get into this with Pinterest — I was using keywords and SEO.

[05:42] Kate: Okay, so for those who might be curious like me — is everything behind a paywall?

Carla: Absolutely not. For the first two years of Nourishing Creativity — that’s the name of both my publication and my podcast — I gave everything away for free. I literally did. I had a paywall that just said, “Hey, if you want to support the podcast and the team,” because — you and I both know this as podcasters — it costs money to produce these episodes, edit them, post them, and so on.

[06:21] So I had basically a blanket statement: “If you’d like to support the team of women creating this, you can give us five bucks a month.” Plenty of people did that. I didn’t really hone in on offers — and that’s what I’m going to call them, ’cause that’s what they are. They’re paid offers that can be monthly, yearly, or founder-level. There are different tiers. I didn’t really hone in on this until I started working with my clients, since 2021 as well. But my clients [07:00] in 2024 really brought in my — this is year 15 of entrepreneurship — my strategist brain around what offers are going to resonate with people.

[07:17] And I feel like 2026 Substack is even further into this, because we’re saturated with people on Substack, saturated with offers and enticing things to participate in. But I’m thinking: what does my community actually want to pay for, and what do they want to participate in — which could be two very different things.

[07:44] Kate: Okay. Do you feel like an entrepreneur, creator, or writer could use Substack as a standalone — that they don’t need a website?

[08:00] Carla: That’s an interesting question. I do work with some entrepreneurs and creatives who treat Substack as their “1.0 website.” Why? Because they want to use it as a testing ground [08:13] — before investing in a designer, colors, fonts, a photo shoot, you name it, they want to test things out first. I’m 100% for that. But am I in support of using Substack instead of a website? Well, if you listened to the beginning of this conversation, I have my podcast blog.

[08:41] I have it for a reason — it’s the home of my content. It also happens to be home to my recipes, because I’m a trained chef — I was a food stylist for 13 years. I have recipes, but I also have my offers, my [09:00] Substack workshop, how to work with me one-on-one, freebies — all of it lives there.

[09:05] And what I do with Substack — Substack doesn’t love this, I’ll say that — is I use it as a place to bring people back to my website, and it’s increased my website traffic significantly. I haven’t looked at this month’s numbers, but it’s at least 10 times what it used to be.

[09:32] Kate: So you can drop links in your articles that link out?

Carla: Yes. And Substack has gotten really crafty with this — they even created a recipe template recently, because they noticed food bloggers dropping their own PDFs or sending people back to their website, and they want them to stay on Substack. [09:58] So they tried this, and I’ll call it a Band-Aid situation, because the food writers I saw use it, used it once and moved away from it. Which is the curse of the entrepreneur, right? We have great ideas, start it once, and stop.

Kate: So I want to go back to thinking about Substack 1.0 [10:23] — this person with an idea, who wants to use Substack, and is going to post more than once, seeding out ideas. Does that person have to be an amazing writer?

Carla: Absolutely not. I teach this to clients and students all the time — it really depends on you, your bandwidth, and what you want to make in the world. [10:53] There’s literally a collage next to me right now — I could do photo essays and collages, post that in minimal words. [11:00] If I wanted to make videos of me cooking — I actually talked to a client earlier today about this, who wants to do cooking videos. [11:17] Fantastic — she doesn’t want to write. For me, it happens to be my voice, since I have an audio podcast. So writing could be one of those things, but it definitely doesn’t show the full picture of what Substack is. The way I like to describe it to people: it’s the place where I get to tell my full story.

[11:42] Kate: So then is there a rhythm or cadence you have to keep — once a week, twice a week — or can you just do it whenever?

Carla: I think it’s important to talk about this, because entrepreneurs try things once and [12:00] then leave it. The average Substack creator — I was actually just on a workshop and looked at the founder’s Substack — [12:09] she had about 12 posts, and that’s literally the shelf life. It’s like, “Okay, I’ve done this a couple of times, put myself out there, it didn’t work,” or, “I’ve decided to put my eggs in a different basket.” [12:32] Maybe they go all-in on Instagram, Pinterest, their website, or a newsletter on Flodesk. So it’s important to highlight that the average creator only makes 12 posts. What I teach is: what’s the thing that’s going to make you commit, and how are you going to get this content [13:00] out? Once a month? I talked to an entrepreneur this morning who wants to do a once-a-month founder digest, since she’s already doing a weekly newsletter — she wants that extra space to share her voice. Totally fine. For me, I drop my podcast once a week, and after that cadence, my newsletter comes out once a week too.

[13:29] Now, I used to do this consistently, but life lifes. And this is the thing —

Kate: How do you commit to yourself, especially as an entrepreneur or creative? Because the only one expecting that of you is you.

Kate: And I think one of the hardest parts is — what you said about Substack is very similar to what people say about Pinterest. [13:53] They get six to eight weeks in and say, “This doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything.” [14:00] A lot of these platforms that build long-term reach for us don’t give you dopamine hits. It’s different — I could post on Instagram and get a like or a comment, instant feedback, but it’s not actually converting the way I want. [14:18] Whereas something like Substack or Pinterest converts later — grows your podcast, grows your website, makes sales — that’s not as fun in the moment. So I appreciate you naming that commitment piece, because you have to commit to why you’re doing it, what tool you’re using, and how you’re going to show up in whatever cadence. [14:40] It doesn’t have to be every day — it can be once a month, like that creator you mentioned. That’s totally doable.

Carla: Yeah. And we should talk about the dopamine hits here, because there’s a social component to Substack called Notes. [15:00] Notes operates similarly to Threads, and maybe Twitter back in the day. [15:06] I hear this from clients a lot, so I want to underline it: the dopamine hit might not be there in Substack Notes. I tell people, “If you got one like, treat that like 1,000 likes on Instagram,” because it’s a newer platform and a lot of people are scrolling on by. [15:32] They’re not hitting like or comment unless they’re already in the Substack ecosystem. For me, this matters in terms of numbers — my newsletter, and most of my clients’, can be 90–99% email-only, meaning they’re not interacting in the Substack app or [16:00] the Notes ecosystem at all. [16:03] It’s a very similar flavor to LinkedIn, where about 99% of people aren’t creating.

Kate: Okay, I’m glad you explained that difference, because I’ve seen long-form content and comments online, and it seemed like a lot of the engagement happens when people write longer articles. [16:29] I started an account over there just to see what setup was like, and I think I was immediately prompted to do Notes, which was interesting — I thought, “Is this what people are writing?” But it looked like maybe seven pages, so…

Carla: Okay, so this is actually a brand-new thing, and it’s why I teach the Substack workshop pretty much monthly — it’s a moving target.

Carla: It [17:00] literally is.

Kate: Pinterest moves, but not like this.

Carla: No, it doesn’t.

Kate: Compared to the rest of the internet, it doesn’t.

Carla: Not this. Okay — so what happened is there was a prioritization, and I want to say this happened around two months ago, on the profile itself. Think of this like your Pinterest, Instagram, or LinkedIn profile. [17:27] What they’re prioritizing is that people aren’t actually creating publications — they’re simply engaging on the platform, posting Notes, liking, or commenting. They’re not creators. And what happened on the back end — which is deeply concerning to me, and makes me grateful I still have a blog — is that if you go into the back end of the publication, it now [18:00] says “custom,” which shows your publication, and there’s also a button where you can choose to show only your profile.

[18:13] Carla: So the difference: a profile is essentially something someone can follow, just like any other social platform. And to anyone who says they’ve left social media to come to Substack — I’m sorry to disappoint you, Substack is a media app. They may not say “social media,” but it is a social platform. [18:38] A publication, on the other hand, is where people actually subscribe and get your newsletter — or in my case, my podcast — directly into their inbox. But the prioritization has shifted so this is becoming profile-led, which tells me the platform is headed toward [19:00] followers rather than email subscribers.

Kate: [19:04] So fascinating how a lot of these platforms start out one way and then iterate into becoming, quote-unquote, “social platforms,” where they prioritize certain types of engagement — followers and so on — and it just changes. [19:29] So for you, having seen it since 2021 to now — what are the good changes you like, and what are the ones you’re less of a fan of?

Carla: For me, the biggest thing was my podcast. I’ve been podcasting for eight years, and I’ve never seen that type of growth. Especially since Nourishing Creativity is a personal project — [20:00] it’s about the creative process, how entrepreneurs and creatives move through creative blocks. It’s very personal to me, a very niche podcast, so getting that kind of visibility has been epic. The things I don’t like are the confusion — which is why I started teaching Substack workshops so regularly, because people are thoroughly confused, especially with the naming of “profile” and “publication.” [20:36] The two P’s are very confusing. It also gets confusing because in the dashboard, there are actually two separate places to create. [21:00] There’s a place to create from your profile, and I actually have an orange “X” for my clients not to create from there — [21:04] if people are watching on YouTube, they can see me X-ing it out. Because when you create from that space on your profile — say, a post, which used to be called “article,” which made a lot more sense, and now it’s “post” — [21:28] there’s a lot of confusing, shifting terminology. And honestly, even if someone’s listening to this six months or a year from now, this information could be completely obsolete.

[21:28] Carla: So if you’re creating from your profile as of right now, it publishes to the profile, not the publication. [21:52] And this is going to sound wild, but it actually creates a double publication for my [22:00] clients — sometimes they end up with two or three profiles I have to go delete.

Kate: So confusing.

Carla: It is infinitely confusing, and thank you for saying that. [22:23] When I’m teaching workshops or working with clients, I tell them, “This is not you not understanding tech.” This is an infinitely complicated, moving-target platform we’re all trying to wrangle.

Kate: So then, talking about the Pinterest-to-Substack connection — using our example of the person doing Substack 1.0, seeding out everything (though some of this could apply to more seasoned creators too) — [22:44] where do we send the Pinterest user? I’m assuming we could link them to a Note, a profile, or a publication. Where do we want to send them?

Carla: For me, instantly — [23:00] I would not send them to a Note.

Kate: Why?

[23:00] Carla: Okay, this gets complicated, but I’ll give you an example with a Substack Live. [23:11] A Substack Live has a link, and if you share that link — I’ve seen clients do this — in an Instagram story, it leads to nowhere. This is important to know — I say it a lot: please stop doing this with your Note. [23:37] And furthermore, don’t do this either. What I do when I go live — since this is infinitely confusing for people who aren’t already Substack users — is direct them to my profile, because while I’m live, that live will be the top thing on… this is [24:00] a new thing, as of a couple of weeks ago — the live will actually replace the top of your publication and show there. So I’ve been sharing my publication link so people can actually see me go live, because even people already in my own chat can’t see the live from the link the live itself generates.

Carla: Yeah, don’t do it —

[24:30] Carla: Okay, and I do this day in and day out, and sometimes, Kate, when I’m teaching a workshop, I’m like, “Oh my goodness, that’s moved.” It’s humbling, because even though I’m building these day in and day out and teaching this, it’s still [25:00] changing.

Carla: And I’m like, “Oops — well, all right, give me grace.”

Kate: Yeah. ‘Cause everything’s moving at the speed of light — it’s like Claude Design comes out, and a week later it looks different, and two weeks later it looks different again. So totally makes sense. Okay, so we’re not linking to a live. We’re linking to…

Carla: A post. I’d link to an actual post in your publication. [25:22] And again, this might be different advice six months from now, but here’s my reasoning: the post links out — so, for example, my podcast post will link out. I could link that from LinkedIn, and people land on the podcast. [25:50] But what I’ve noticed is a subscribe prompt pops up instantly, which might be a deterrent for some people. Don’t know. I have [26:00] tried this with a podcast in an actual paid ad on Pinterest.

Kate: Interesting.

Carla: And it did work.

Carla: It worked really well, because — full disclosure — I was promoting a summit. [26:16] I wanted clicks on that link to show I’d done the work for this summit, and yes, did it work? A thousand percent. So there’s some backup here. And also, as we’ve heard, every single one of my posts links out to my blog — so if anything happens to this ecosystem, or something breaks, [26:49] there’s still a link to my blog.

Carla: And my blog is always going to be there.

Kate: Genius. All right, thank you. So I want you to back up even more into —

Carla: Yeah —

Kate: — your Pinterest. [27:00] Let’s talk Pinterest image. You know I’ve talked before about putting copy on the pin, making it look great — is there any value in the image letting the user know it’s a Substack post?

Carla: Not to me — and also, we have to bring it back to the fact that I’ve been a food stylist for 13 years, I’m very attached to aesthetics. It’s not really a Pinterest strategy question for me, it’s an aesthetic strategy question — how do I want this to look. It may not necessarily be the most Pinterest-aligned strategy, [27:44] but I’ll full-disclosure that, because of how I create.

Kate: Okay, got it. Totally fine. And I think, to your point, there’s so much value in people hearing that — because everybody brings different pieces of their branding into their [28:00] marketing, and that has to factor into whatever you’re creating, whether on Pinterest or elsewhere. [28:09] Your Pinterest image is a representation of your brand, of you, of what you prioritize and value — and that’s okay. There’s not one right way to do a Pinterest image, but there is a right way when it comes to you, your brand, and what’s converting. You can make minor tweaks, adjust here and there, but the goal is to get that Pinterest user to your post on Substack. [28:38] You want them to read it, and now there’s another opportunity for them to land on your website. So — you mentioned using keywords on Substack. I’m assuming you’re also using keywords on Pinterest to get in front of them and connect the dots?

Carla: Yeah, this is the whole thing — and honestly, [29:00] it’s not the sexy part of writing a title for Substack. [29:08] Some of my clients bring it back to aesthetics and brand alignment, but for me, I’m very focused on my keywords, my SEO, what my users, clients, and podcast listeners are actually looking for. Because what I’m in service of — even my profile description on Substack — is in service of the people who are going to read that publication, as opposed to leading with accolades. [29:48] I could list them all out, but for me, what’s listed first is a nod to the publication: a space to nourish your creative [30:00] projects and dreams. It’s about them first, then me — “Oh, I’m a strategist, I was on Chopped,” and so on. [30:12] People love hearing that, and they’ll often follow me based on Chopped — but the bigger thing is, how do you create in a way that centers their journey? It’s not about you, and that’s a hard thing to learn, especially when creating for brands. [30:36] It’s not about me — a lot of my content was white-labeled for brands. It’s really about their user, the person who’s going to engage with that product. It’s not about me. And your content, as much as it’s your heart, your soul, your art, your projects, whatever you’re selling — it really [31:00] is about their experience.

Kate: Hmm — yeah, that’s a mic-drop moment right there, Carla. [31:02] Okay, so if somebody’s becoming Substack-curious — maybe they’ve listened to this podcast, they’re already into their Pinterest marketing, they have their website, and they’re looking for a new door to open because they’re exhausted with Instagram [31:30] and don’t want to do TikTok, feeling like there’s another avenue — what would you say are the first couple of things they need to do to start cracking open the Substack door?

Carla: At minimum, create a profile on Substack — because, as we’ve covered, there’s a prioritization on the profile. [31:54] You do it simply, like on LinkedIn, [32:00] Instagram, or TikTok — create a profile, add a picture. Now, the banner has changed, and that’s a recent change, as of two days ago, so I’m not going to talk about that.

Carla: So you used to be able to put a picture aligned with your brand — [32:17] you can’t do that anymore. They pull it from a publication, or give you new dimensions for a banner. I say: one link. This is controversial, and my clients don’t love it — but where’s the one place you want people to land? That’s the link you use. For me, it’s “Work With Me.” [32:38] They can land there, access my workshops, learn how to work with me one-on-one — and all my social links are there too. Why list 15 different things, when the chances of them landing on my website go up with one link —

Kate: I did this on Instagram a long time ago, and I had a [33:00] 495% increase in website traffic.

Carla: Yep. Mm-hmm. One link — because people don’t want to click around or dig. They want one link that gets them everything they need. [33:03] So that’s — I don’t do a Linktree, none of it. And once you create that profile — picture, whatever banner Substack has decided on, [33:26] we don’t know —

Kate: We don’t know.

Carla: — then your one link. Then you start subscribing to publications and/or following people, depending on your bandwidth. You can also create Substack Notes without having a publication — sharing pictures, videos — and there’s a strategic way to grow your community, which is restacking other people’s content. [33:58] Which, I mean, [34:00] we’ve been doing since Twitter and Tumblr, restacking and sharing.

Kate: Okay — you’ve got me so curious. I have Simple Pin Media, and then I have kateall.com, where I’m doing a lot more experimenting. I actually got a profile after you and I had our initial conversation. [34:20] I didn’t do anything with it yet. But you’ve talked about your workshops, and about your passion for helping people understand Substack — and what I love about what you’ve shared feels very similar to my journey with Pinterest, in that we want to pay attention to what corporate is saying. [34:41] We want to pay attention to the language they’re using, because it gives us cues as marketers on how to work with them, not against them. Sure, we might not love that Notes are prioritized, or that video is preferred, [35:00] but to be a good marketer, you have to pick up on these signals. [35:04] So where can people go to work with you? I assume it’s the “Work With Me” link — but talk to me about your workshops, because those sound intriguing even to me as I think about diving into Substack.

Carla: So I have everything — and you’re right, I have one link. It’s KarlaContreras.com/gift. [35:24] There was a Substack 101, but it’s obsolete now, so I’m building a new Substack profile workshop that will live there — completely free, with all my links attached. The paid workshop is Build Your Substack in a Day. I’ve taught this for almost two years, in a lot of different formats, and I’ve realized my community needs monthly updates because it’s such a moving target. [35:57] This really goes — [36:00] and Kate, I have no interest in having a membership as of this recording — so when people purchase the workshop, they get the updates. That’s just how I like to run my business: buy the workshop once, get the updates forever. I’ve had people come back a year later saying, “What’s going on with this platform? [36:24] Everything I learned doesn’t make sense anymore.” That’s why we do it that way. And then I have a founder level on my Substack, which I do strategically — it’s the only place you can book a 30-minute call with me. [36:46] The founder level is the more expensive tier in most cases, and it includes that 30-minute call, plus access to Creative Study Hall, where we co-work together. [37:00] And then there’s an even higher level — hire me, work with me one-on-one. I have people with fully built-out publications; [37:13] I reworked a founder-level client’s entire publication and offers yesterday — because let’s be honest, they’re not “subscriber benefits,” they’re offers. She texted me this morning saying, “Wow, what did you do? I would have never done that myself.”

Carla: And that’s the work — bringing 15 years of entrepreneurship and 13 years of working with big brands into it. [37:47] I’m not just sharing what works for me —

Carla: — I’m sharing what works for hundreds of people.

Kate: I appreciate that a lot. We’ll drop the link down below in the description. [38:00] In the meantime — do you want them to follow you on Substack?

Carla: Oh my goodness — please subscribe, not follow! Subscribe to Nourishing Creativity, and all those links are at karlacontreras.com/gift. [38:17] Send me a DM if you’ve listened to this on Substack, Instagram, or LinkedIn — I want to know your thoughts and takeaways. I appreciate you so deeply for taking the time to be with us.

Kate: Yeah, it’s so great. Thanks so much, Carla. I really appreciate it.

Carla: Thank you, Kate.