Lighthouse posts
A curated collection of Substack posts that help me build The Bright Side Projects
I didn’t make it to Macao last week. So I wrote a lighthouse post instead.
Lighthouse posts are not necessarily the biggest posts, the most polished posts, or the ones with the most dramatic promise. They are the posts that did more than just inspire, and helped me navigate. Some helped me understand Substack better. Other posts helped me think more clearly about writing, audience, growth, judgement or trust.
This is my curated collection of lighthouse posts from my first months building The Bright Side Projects. It is not a ranking or a definitive list. I will keep adding to it as I discover more posts worth returning to, and as my own understanding of this platform evolves.
- Cecilia 🪁
P.S For my Swedish readers and network: I have a growing collection of great posts written in Swedish too. Those will be covered soon, in a separate post. If you are new to Substack, you may want to read about my key learnings from the first four months here. (in Swedish)
Discovery and growth
Mack Collier (Substack), Tracy Friedlander (Substack), Alicia Teltz (LinkedIn)
For platform discovery, audience building, and growing without losing your judgement.
The first months (or year) on Substack ar very much about discovery and growth. At least if you have a publication and want others to read it. Substack growth is kind of a hot potato on Substack, which I am well aware of, and I also do not like when my feed gets filled up by “growth gurus”. I even wrote a Note about that recently and as it turns out, many of you feel the same. At the same time, unless you have no interest at all in growing your publication, you need to figure out how to do it. I have therefore included three Substack creators who I find helpful for figuring that out, without being loud or too salesy.
This collection of posts was inspired by Mack Collier, who has written about the value of surfacing not only favourite publications, but specific posts worth revisiting. That distinction stayed with me. Needless to say, perhaps, but Mack’s post on Greatest Hits and Mixtapes has to be the first one on this list.
Tracy Friedlander consistently delivers witty and engaging Notes on Substack. That is how I initially found her, why I kept reading and subscribed. But this list is about lighthouse posts, not Notes, and Tracy has several I wanted to include here so it was hard to pick just one. I chose this one because it has a very strong positioning focus. And yes, it is a post about Notes. Everyone who is trying to grow their Substack audience knows that Notes can be great for discovery. But it is very easy to get caught up in numbers and simply settle for being discovered by as many as possible. Without giving much thought to the positioning.
Alicia Teltz is a former LinkedIn employee who generously shares her expertise about LinkedIn on Substack, and she does that with integrity. Being open about both what she knows based on her previous experience and current network, but also about what she cannot possibly know despite having so much more insight than most people. Refreshing and worth reading. This is a particularly good one.
Alicia has published some more recent and quickly actionable posts too. I picked this one because if we want to be on a certain platform (and yes, that includes Substack too) we need first and above all to understand what its owner is optimising for.
As mentioned, I will continue to update and expand this list as I discover and learn along the way of writing and growing my own publication, The Bright Side Projects. Some other favourites that I believe will be useful for me within the next 1-12 months are listed below.
Writing, books and publishing
Gunnar Habitz
For writing, book projects, publishing, and taking ideas all the way to readers.
I love structure and useful frameworks, so this post easily made it to my list here.
AI with a human angle
Sam Illingworth, Mia Kiraki & Alyssa Fu Ward
About AI, but differently. About creativity, learning together, judgment, thinking and human direction. Plus, Sam prescribed poetry for me to read.
If you found this list useful, please consider sharing it with others who you think can benefit from reading these posts.
Thanks for this wonderful curation Cecilia. Also delighted to be featured alongside Mia and Alyssa, who are two brilliant creators and humans that I greatly look up to. 🙏
Thank you for this Cecilia ❤️🥰 I learn a lot from these peeps too!