Season 4, episode 3 is here!

Olivia Wickstrom didn’t set out to build a Substack. She set out to make affiliate income from a cottagecore blog. What happened instead was a slow, sometimes frustrating, eventually life-changing discovery of what the platform could actually do for a writer willing to experiment. We covered a lot of ground in this one.

What we discussed:

- How Olivia’s Substack started as something completely different and gradually found its identity across three very distinct content pillars.

- The nine months where almost nothing happened, and the specific change in her Notes strategy that finally broke the plateau.

- Why she sometimes makes her best, most actionable content completely free, and what that counterintuitive decision does for her paid tier.

- How she’s driving major Pinterest views to her Substack and what she’s still trying to figure out about it.

- What romanticising your life actually looks like in practice.

- The cultural differences between American and French attitudes to work that have subtly started to change how she thinks about her own life.

- A brand new year-long series she’s announcing here for the first time, and why it might be her most personal project yet.

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