Nan, the Substack Goddess
Kudos from Douglas Halpert of Intermittently Human
The best way to look your best is to surround yourself with extraordinarily talented, stylish people who have mastered the skills that you lack. I am not particularly adept at computers and have studiously avoided the great majority of social media during my life.
So, when a literary advisor told me that I had to create a Substack site to start sharing my stories in the public realm, I knew that I needed to figure out who was the best qualified to help me. I did some deep research into Substack gurus and one of the names that popped up was Nan Tepper of Style Your Stack. I looked at several Substack sites and author websites that Nan had designed and was impressed by how different each one was. I noticed that the sites artistically captured the unique persona of each writer—from the wordmarks to the color selection to the photos to the layout. They all looked cool and polished and inviting.
Personality also matters to me. I read Nan’s Substack entries in her The Next Write Thing and was impressed by not only her writing ability, but by her openness, humility and sense of humor. She offers an initial consultation to those who want to stick their toes into the Substack waters before deciding to hire her to do the whole project, and I took advantage of that.
The first correct decision I made was to hire Nan for the full Style Your Stack package. The second correct move was to give her wide leeway to do her thing. By that, I mean I provided a title, some concepts and text and let her bombard me with her many curious questions about who I am as a person and a writer, and what type of audience I am looking to attract. And then I went away on a vacation, leaving Nan alone with my project.
When I came back, there was an e-mail from Nan in my inbox containing a link to my new Substack. I have just put up my first post and already I am getting rave reviews from people about how beautiful my Substack looks, how it is “so me” and that they are eager to share it with others. I am proud of my wisdom in delegating the entire arduous Substack project to Nan since she did a wonderful job for a very reasonable fee, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the fun Zoom sessions that we had during the Substack Lamaze process.
See my full profile of Douglas Halpert here.