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⏪ Last time, a framework for figuring out what to say. That's here.
⏩ Today, a Creator Briefing Q&A with
.How do you transform your expertise into engaging content while also creating a genuine place for connection, creativity and impact?
seems to have figured it out.In less than a year on Substack, Kate has grown to a top 15 best-selling newsletter in the health and wellness category with
.A registered nurse with a doctorate in integrative health, Kate is focused on making “wellness” feel simple and realistic for busy people—more than 15,000 readers. She’s said she’s “where ‘crunchy’ meets science” covering all things health, food, home décor, motherhood and lifestyle.
And now, with an exclusive replay straight from
, Kate joins the Creator Briefing with insights into her journey as a creator and how she brings her expertise to life on Substack.
Why is sharing your story important to you?
Yeah, I love that question. And it's, it's almost innate. Like, I think some people are innately really private and some people the moment something happens, are like, my gosh, I can't wait to tell someone. And I fall into that second camp, I've always been kind of an open book, I've always loved expressing my thoughts, whether it be like in journaling or writing, or even just, I remember in elementary school, these kinds of weekly reflections, and I loved writing there.
So I think for me, just getting thoughts out of my head and putting them out, whether it's private for me, like in my journal, or if it's more in a more public setting, like online, I feel that sharing my story is just, it comes natural to me. And that's ebbed and flowed throughout the years. In some ways I'm a total open book in some things like motherhood or my marriage, I've kind of shared less of that over the years just because it's so sacred to me.
But I think the guiding light that I've tried to follow is just sharing what feels good, not sharing what doesn't, you know, always keeping some of those sacred things to myself. At the end of the day, I've just had this innate desire to write, to share, to express, to record my thoughts, my experiences, my tips, and share them.
Like I'm just that friend that's like, my god, you have to try this. If I find something I love, I can't keep it to myself. And I feel like that's kind of translated to how I am online, where it's not enough for me to, you know, discover a health hack. It's like I have to tell people about it to really kind of feel complete in it.
Can you give us a little bit of an overview of your creator journey?
Yeah, I think I mean, the first place I remember sharing was Facebook, funny enough, you know, and that was just like middle school, high school, but I truly loved, you know, uploading my profile picture, writing captions, I just felt creative, I felt joyful doing it. And then as things go with the internet, you know, you kind of ebb and flow with certain platforms, I kind of got over Facebook, transitioned to Instagram, and started sharing there personally, like, going through college, going through nursing school, sharing my boyfriend at the time.
And with that kind of came an audience because I was sharing a bit more. I'd share my writing, I'd share a little, you know, self-growth kind of reflections in the caption. But I was generally just sharing my life.
And then I entered the nursing world and loved it in many ways, didn't love it in many ways. I've just always been more drawn to more lifestyle remedies. And I just felt like in the hospital, I was helping people when it was too late. Like at that point, they needed that pill, they needed that medication. And I just felt this desire of like, I want to work with people before they get to this point, you know, when we can address these things with nutrition and lifestyle and stress management. And so I went back to school to get my doctorate in integrative health.
And with that, that's when my content kind of shifted because I am someone that I always like to have a plan A, B, C, D. And, you know, I knew the career path I was taking was a bit unconventional. And I was like, you know what, if I just start sharing, you know, these holistic hacks and sharing that natural remedies can be evidence-backed and responsibly practiced in medicine, you know, I'll kind of pave a way for myself. And if all comes to it, I can bet on myself and have my own business.
And so, I started just sharing more about what I was learning. One, because I was joyful about it and two, because I was like, I wanna really establish myself as an expert in this space. And that's kind of what my Instagram became. It was still lifestyle, but sprinkled in with like holistic health hacks and recipes and non-toxic living. And that was great and beautiful for a long time. And in many ways it's still became that way.
So it grew into a blog, The Foundation Blog, where I'd share really concrete health tips. That was more where the lifestyle piece filtered out a bit more. And it was more recipes and concrete things. But eventually, it just got to a place where I realized when I had my son, I just simply didn't want to spend my time creating, creating, creating, or I simply couldn't spend my time, spending all this time on content that wasn't necessarily moving the needle.
And there's many ways to make money as an online creator. I never really felt super aligned with taking sponsorships or ads. I just wanted to write about what I wanted to write about and not try to find the perfect sponsorship or find someone to pay a few hundred dollars or specifically cater all around a certain affiliate link.
It's like, I just wanted to share what I wanted to share, whether it made money or not. But then I had my son and it's just like, I had to figure out a way to make the time I spent online worth it.
Because I think people have this impression that, you know, if you have an Instagram following, you're immediately making all this money. And you can be, but if you're not really taking sponsored ads or that kind of thing, you really are creating for free.
And so for a long time, I was like, I know I want to monetize it, but I want to do it in a way—and I was making money through like affiliate income, but it was unreliable, unpredictable. And I'm like, I want to make this more monetized, but in a way that feels right to me. So I was thinking like, hey, maybe I'll do YouTube, or maybe I'll start a Patreon and just like nothing felt right. Maybe I'll start a podcast, I just was truly sitting on it, sitting on it, sitting on it.
And then I found Substack and it just like, I just felt like, my god, this is what I've been waiting for. Like I can write how I have been on my blog. I could share personal info like I have been on my Instagram. I could record a podcast. I could upload a video like YouTube and I could have this membership like Patreon. It just felt like everything that I was considering in one place. And it was reader-supported, which feels so cool to me instead of, you know, having to chase advertisers or you know, really depend on affiliate income. It's like, the people that want to read my stuff can pay for it. And that is so motivating and empowering to me.
And that's kind of how I ended up on Substack. And so Substack has become kind of my main place I hang out. I have been like gradually planning an exit strategy from Instagram. I just feel like the app itself has become more draining and fast-paced and requires so much time to be relevant there.
And I love that Substack just feels like more of a safe space. It's for the people who want to be there. It shows up in your inbox. You don't have to check an app 50 times a day or post a million stories to be relevant or make reels. It just feels really nice and cozy, I guess, if that makes sense. And so that's how I've ended up on Substack.
Can you talk a little bit about how you think about translating your experience, your expertise into content? How do you do that?
Yeah, great question. I think one thing that I'll pat myself on the back for is just I've always played the long game. You know, when I'm truly like making these blog posts to take hours in addition to my doctorate, in addition to working as a nurse, like it was taking more time than it was earning. But I just had this vision that like someday when I graduate or someday if I need a backup plan, I will have built this. And that to me was worth the showing up consistently, serving for free and just trusting that like, I am establishing myself.
And so I think with that, sharing along the journey, it brings people in and the acceptance that nothing is ever going to be 100 percent perfect. So just kind of do the best you can today. Like don't settle, do the best you can today, but just understand that, you know, in a few years, maybe you'll look back and be like, what was I thinking a few years ago, but it is that journey and that consistency that I think brings people along.
And so I do think playing the long game, whether it's any online platform or Substack is understanding that it's rarely going to be one post that gets you the results you want, it's going to be consistency and showing up over time and never having one perfect post, but a lot of posts that feel authentic and aligned and predictable, I guess, to your audience, like they can count on you.
And I think just if you do that and stay in line with your morals along the way, like, I remember the first time I got offered a sponsored post on Instagram, and it was a few hundred dollars and I just I tried the product, it was for a collagen, a certain collagen, I hated the taste. And I just was like, no, I don't want to do this. You know, even though I'm creating these blogs for free, and I'm not making money, and it's taking time, I know that this will pay off someday, and it will become predictable someday. And just kind of, you know, trusting that audience trust matters, I really think.
And so, for me, I served for free for so long and Substack was really one of the first times I ever monetized and I didn't know how that was gonna go. And that was intimidating, but I think I had so much audience trust at that point that like, I will show up, I will be consistent. I do have this expertise that was part of what made it successful from the get-go is because I didn't “sell out” or take an easy route. I really built the base and then, you know, capitalized on it when it felt right.
Can you share more about how you think about that kind of one-to-one, very conversational, friendly-like approach to how you show up?
So this is something I'm actually self-conscious about. But I also think is a skill. So I'll kind of talk about both forms of it.
You know, I think on Substack, there's so many—this platform is for writers and I would never identify myself as a writer. I picture a writer has multiple book deals, they write for publications, they went to school for English Lit. That is not how I identify. But in the same lens, I mean, I just got my doctorate. I can write an APA-formatted paper in no second. I can write scholarly papers. I can write, you know, a journal article.
I can do all that, but I just have the realization of what I want as a consumer. And even though I can write in this buttoned-up, polished, scholarly, proper way, how I like to communicate and how I like to read is more fluid, less polished. You know, I probably, I do break a lot of grammatical rules. I write how I talk.
And that is something that I do get self-conscious about because randomly I'll get, you know, some feedback that people don't like it, but by and large, I get a lot of feedback that people love it, that I write how I talk, that it feels like they're reading my diary; it feels like they're talking to me.
And so for me, it's been really the finding the sweet spot in between, you know, sharing the evidence of a journal article, but instead of telling you guys, okay, well, these are the results and this is the methods they use and this is—no one wants to read that. I don't really want to write that way.
Instead, I try to summarize it in a way that's easy to understand that keeps the reader engaged and that feels human-to-human instead of that, like I'm talking down to you.
And so for me, it's really just about finding my writing voice. And I do think I'm kind of in a unique spot where I'm talking about these scholarly evidence-backed topics, but yet my writing is very fluid and free flowing and, you know, like not “correctly” correct.
And I struggle with that at times, but at the end of the day, that's just what feels most authentic to me. I've tried writing a few posts that are more buttoned up and proper, and it just doesn't feel as relational to me. I really always do want to be talking to my reader. And that's kind of how I've approached that.
With everything that Substack offers, with it being a reader-supported platform, has it shifted at all how you think about or connect with your community?
One million percent. I think that's my favorite part of the platform. You know, I mentioned that Instagram just feels different. And I think we can all feel it where it's just, it's so intense. People have such polarizing opinions. No matter what I share, I feel like I'm making someone mad. And I just have realized that over the years, there's a lot of people that kind of lurk on Instagram, for lack of a better word. And they—they can just see everything where the paid subscribers, to me, feels like a safe space, like, they truly want to be here. Like, they are my community. I feel safe there.
I feel safe sometimes that I can put up a paywall on a topic that, you know, I just did a full post on motherhood.
I liked having that paywall as a way that I felt like I could be fully authentic after that paywall because I knew the people that were reading it really wanted to be there. They get me, they support me. And there's just something very cool about feeling reader-supported.
I've never been more motivated or consistent with my blog. I would get about one post up a month, maybe two. And with my Substack, I do four to six posts at least every month, no matter what, because to me, I respect the value of a dollar. And I know that people are spending their hard-earned money to support me. And it's like, I will show up for you.
And so I think there's a kind of more of a symbiotic relationship. Like you're supporting me, I will show up for you. Where on Instagram, it can feel like people just demand, demand, demand—where did you get that? What is that link for? Can you send me that recipe? It's just very demanding, but yet I'm not really receiving anything on the other end.
Where Substack, it's like this beautiful like really, it feels like a relationship and the comment section being so lively and just the different ways that people can heart your post. There's just so many ways that people can engage and that has felt really encouraging and motivating to me.
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[Creator Briefing] Transform your expertise into engaging content