Ep 2: Helen Stephens

Please join us in welcoming our first ever super duper special guest to the podcast: Helen Stephens, Illustrator and Author, sensational human with flair and really cool flags, plus she’s the genius behind the Substack Featured publication: Pencil Pals.

This conversation was such a joy and filled with wisdom on finding our way to a fun, easy, doable creative life that co-exists with subscriber growth, engaging with a thriving community and earning an income through Substack.

As Helen says, we have to be willing to waste time, stay flexible and be unattached to the outcome, allowing ourselves to play, experiment and mess about.

Plus, we talk about that time she thought there was a volcano in her kitchen and we're *still* waiting on her world-famous cheese scone recipe.

So. Pop that kettle on, have a cuppa with us and let’s chat...

In this episode we’ll cover:

Approaching ideas without attachment to the outcome.

How experimenting and ‘wasting time’ is crucial to the creative process.

Not getting caught up in planning everything out and just taking action and moving on to the next thing.

Style and how it can connect us to our own creative voice and unique styling.

Approaching branding as an illustrator and why they have a head start.

Growth strategies that are sustainable and bite-sized.

Helen is super generous with her numbers of both subscribers and Substack income.

Advice for illustrators wanting to join or use Substack.

Future plans for Pencil Pals and Substack

Mentioned in this episode:

Her Sunday House Chat post. (Bodies, volcanoes, sink holes, etcetera.)

The Logo post.

Our free Substack Branding Bundle

Helen’s Pro-create e-book

The Good Ship Illustration

Home by Lisa Post

The Substack Soirée class, starting on Monday!

From Helen:

Here’s my Substack, Pencil Pals

Check out my website

Let’s be friends on Instagram

Extra notes, caveats, disclaimers etcetera

Thank you Rory for working your editing magic as always.

And of course, thank you to Helen Stephens. (Whenever you’re ready, that recipe’d be great. Ta.) xx

There’s still time to join The Substack Soirée class!

Just a couple of days now until our festive soirée begins!

If you want to make Substack the most fun, free and far-reaching platform out of all of your online work then come and join us in The Substack Soirée.

We'll be digging into everything from growth, monetisation, writing habits, themes, topics, branding, copy, the works—and all by the twinkle of fairy lights. It’s an amazing community space to support each other, get guidance, advice, feedback, have a few laughs. (Plus a festive party thrown in for good measure.)

If that sounds like something you could do with right now, then we'd love you to come and check it out right here.

Until next time,

S & K x

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesoiree.substack.com