For some months now I have been trying to get help from Substack with an email not going to subscribers issue. Finally it has been resolved. As a function of the resolution I was able to track subscriber activity from my 135 readers. I discovered that 50 of them have never opened an email, never left a comment or a like, never engaged in any way at all.
I offered a silent invocation of thanks to them for coming here at all in the first pace, and then I deleted them. Pruned the tree. The new total subscriber graphic shows a cliff face. (See below.)
I love it. I didn’t fall of this cliff. I jumped or perhaps I flew.
In a past life as a professional buyer and then as a salesman, I regularly used the model of Pareto’s Analysis to prune the tree. This analysis suggests that 20% of your warehouse stock value accounts for 80% of it’s value in £’s, or that 20% of your buyers account for 80% of your sales. I managed my stock value and my sales base accordingly. The result. Meaningful organic growth.
In substack terms, 20% of my readership accounts for 80% of the traction. I am choosing to focus on that 20% with care and nurture. Leaving comments, reading their work, enjoying their presence in my wee corner of this writerly community and therefore consciously growing those relationships. And relationships they truly are.
I am not after the numbers here. I wasn’t ever after the money in my previous life. I wanted only real connection.
If you are still here it is because I see the possibilities of that, and welcome it with all of my heart.
Living a solitary life in my cabin in the woods brings with it a weight at times. That weight is shared by those of you who choose to meet me here in prose and poetic connection and I am eternally grateful that you are here.
Small is indeed beautiful.
I am simply in awe of the deep and meaningful connections I am able to make with YOU, across vast geographical distances in some cases, and it reminds me that community can be deep and abiding, even when distance is a seeming obstacle.
YOU are my Anam Cara, soul friends and a profound and comforting balm.
“To be holy is to be home, to be able to rest in the house of belonging that we call the soul.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Dear community of kindred souls, you have my hands and my heart.
I like your analogy, we are pruning all the time for revitalization of thoughts and deeds. I resonate with strengthening roots and growth at the same time by clearing out the rapidly growing brambles.
We do need a clear out every now and again. I have to admit, though - the sheer number of emails is driving me insane, so I’ve just been deleting them until I can figure out how to turn them off completely.