Lucy Werner knows a thing or two about building something from nothing. The founder of PR agency The Wern started her business with just three months of savings and a quirky company name. Fast-forward through years of freelancing, agency growth, team expansion, a move to France, three children, and multiple business pivots, and Lucy has become one of Substack’s rising stars with nearly 13,000 subscribers and 480 paying readers.
However, when we caught up with Lucy for this interview, she was experiencing every content creator’s nightmare: her entire Substack publication had accidentally been deleted while she was trying to tidy it up. Everything gone. Every post, every draft, every recommendation, paid subscribers, and 18 months of work vanished.
What struck me most wasn’t the crisis itself, but Lucy’s response to it. “The PR in me just thinks, whatever happens, I’ll make it into a great story,” she laughed during our call, embodying the exact mindset that has carried her through years of entrepreneurial ups and downs.
From agency life to newsletter success
Lucy began her career working for large PR agencies, and then started her business, The Wern, when she noticed that a lot of people were starting businesses but couldn’t afford big agency fees. She grew from a solo freelancer to having an office in Shoreditch with staff and payroll within two years. But life had other plans. Pregnancies led to business pivots – first moving from retainer clients to project work, then bringing in her partner Hadrien Chatelet to launch the branding side when he was made redundant.
The move to France during COVID became a turning point. Lucy launched hypeyourself.com, focusing on DIY PR and branding resources, just as lockdown made online presence crucial for businesses. “It was actually a time where loads of people were thinking ‘I need to sort my website out, I need to sort my branding out’ because they weren’t meeting people in person,” she explains.
After her third child, Lucy took a complete three-month break from social media to reassess. She’d been spending heavily on MailChimp and wanted to practice writing beyond just PR topics. “From my own experience of being self-employed, and from all the businesses I’d supported, I knew so much about freelancing and entrepreneurship that I wanted to share.”
A webinar on creating a Substack publication changed everything. Within six weeks, she’d become a Substack bestseller, and within months had built a sustainable part-time writing income.
Three essential Substack strategies
Despite what she calls her ‘casual Substack nightmare’, Lucy’s advice for building a successful Substack newsletter remains solid:
1. Connect strategically with fellow writers
“Find other writers who have an audience that would be a match for yours,” Lucy advises. But don’t chase direct competitors – look for complementary audiences. Lucy collaborates with freelance-focused publications, authors, and fellow lifestyle entrepreneurs. “Think about who you want to be positioned alongside – like if someone went into a bookshop and picked up five books, what would those other four be?”
The key is authenticity over size. “Go for the people in niches that you want to be alongside – somebody you actually want to be mates with, somebody who’s not going to give a random political opinion that later you’ll wish you hadn’t collaborated with.”
2. Set a realistic cadence and stick to it
Many creators burn out quickly by starting too ambitiously. “A lot of freelancers are quite neuro-spicy and get over-excited. They come out of the gate swinging, do loads of posts, then run out of steam when life happens or a big client comes in.”
Lucy recommends starting with a commitment you can maintain, even if it’s just once a month, and keeping drafts ready for emergencies. “Have some stuff planned in draft, and maybe keep your drafts in a Google Doc, not just in the platform itself.”
3. Build genuine community connections
Success on Substack isn’t just about broadcasting – it’s about engaging meaningfully with the platform’s ecosystem. Lucy grew organically through recommendations from other publications, gaining 400-500 subscribers monthly without paid advertising or growth hacking tactics.
The three-bucket approach to content creation
One of Lucy’s most practical frameworks for consistent self-promotion involves organising your expertise into three distinct categories. “I have a running document of things I want to talk about, split into three buckets,” she explains.
Bucket one: Business expertise. This covers your professional knowledge – for Lucy, that includes growing paid newsletters, pitching for podcasts, writing press releases, and building brands online. “For service-based business owners, you’re going to have so much business expertise that you don’t even realise people will be interested in,” she notes.
Bucket two: Human interest stories. These are personal experiences that connect with your audience on an emotional level. Lucy shares stories about relocating to France, running a business with her partner, or finding resilience when her income disappeared overnight.
Bucket three: Passion points. These are the quirky, personal elements that make great press opportunities. Whether it’s an unusual hobby, charitable work, or unique traditions, these stories often provide the most memorable content. Lucy’s favourite example? “Someone who has an annual Christmas tradition they do with their cat – for the right audience, that’s an amazing press opportunity.”
Time management with limited hours
As a mother of three living in France, Lucy has had to become ruthlessly efficient with her time. “I’m probably more efficient now that I have less time, because I don’t have the opportunity to go ‘I can do it later,'” she says.
Her schedule is strictly compartmentalised: Tuesday afternoons and Thursday afternoons for work calls and monthly membership activities, with French lessons on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Mondays are dedicated to her youngest child, and Fridays have recently been added to her work schedule.
The key insight? Lucy writes whenever she finds pockets of time – before the children wake up or after bedtime – but maintains around 100 drafts simultaneously. She systematically asks new paid subscribers about their struggles, then either directs them to existing resources or adds new topics to her writing list.
“I loosely base each month on a theme, and I already know what the themes are,” she explains. This planning approach eliminates decision fatigue whilst ensuring content variety.
The prep work behind successful promotion
Lucy challenges the common misconception that self-promotion is all about flashy social media presence. “Hyping yourself isn’t just the jazz hands showing up on socials – it’s all the prep work that goes into it,” she emphasises.
For every media appearance or article feature, Lucy spends hours, if not days, crafting the perfect pitch. The actual interview or publication is the brief, visible outcome of extensive preparation work.
Currently taking what she calls an “Instagram sabbatical,” Lucy proves that stepping back from constant posting can be just as valuable as showing up daily. “Don’t be afraid to disappear from social for a while and see what comes through in the silence,” she quotes from Michaela Coel. Lucy’s best promotional ideas come during dog walks, away from any distractions.
Essential tools for instant opportunities
Lucy emphasises being prepared for unexpected PR opportunities with a basic media toolkit:
- An up-to-date biography that’s easily accessible (bonus points for making it downloadable from your website).
- Professional headshots in landscape format that work for various uses – podcasts, newsletters, social media graphics (these don’t need expensive photography; good phone photos work for online use).
When responding to journalist requests or pitching for opportunities, Lucy’s attention to detail consistently sets her apart. Her secret weapon? Always providing landscape-format images.
“If you respond to a pitch request and you’re the only person who includes a landscape image embedded in the email with a high-resolution link, you’re going to get chosen,” she explains. This seemingly small detail has landed her thumbnail positions in Forbes articles and double-page spreads in print publications, whilst others received only quote inclusions.
Creative stunts that build community
Perhaps Lucy’s most memorable promotional effort was the “PR tip dress” – a custom-made outfit with her 50 PR tips attached as removable cards. Originally designed for a London speaking event, the dress became a virtual experience when illness prevented travel.
Despite spending £1,000 on what seemed like a failed stunt, Lucy transformed disaster into opportunity. She hosted a live session where paid subscribers could request specific cards from different areas of her outfit, receiving personalised PR advice based on their businesses. This “tarot card PR reading” approach generated approximately 35 new paid subscribers and created a unique, shareable experience that reinforced her community connection.
Know your dream collaboration
Lucy’s approach to goal-setting includes identifying dream collaborations and reverse-engineering pathways to reach them. Her current aspiration? Appearing on RuPaul’s Drag Race as a guest expert for a PR challenge. “It’s an amazing example of branding and marketing,” she explains. “The format hasn’t changed for 17 seasons.”
Resilience in crisis
Perhaps Lucy’s most valuable lesson isn’t about marketing tactics but mindset. Facing the potential loss of 18 months of work, she demonstrates the resilience essential for entrepreneurial success. “I try to go with that mantra of ‘why is this happening for me instead of why is this happening to me.'”
Every crisis becomes a learning opportunity – from HR policies learned through team challenges to business insurance discovered through legal issues. “As freelancers, we probably will hit a crisis at some point, and we never necessarily know what that’s going to be.”
Lucy’s story reminds us that successful self-promotion isn’t about shouting the loudest – it’s about consistently showing up, providing value, building genuine connections, and maintaining resilience when things go wrong. Sometimes the best hype comes from how gracefully you handle the unexpected challenges.
Key takeaways for hyping yourself:
- Maintain three content buckets: business expertise, human interest stories, and passion points
- Prepare professional materials in advance – biography, headshots, and landscape images
- Focus on authentic connections over follower counts
- Set realistic publishing schedules that you can maintain consistently
- View setbacks as storytelling opportunities
- Remember that preparation work is promotion work, even when invisible
- Know your dream collaborations and reverse-engineer pathways to reach them.
Lucy is rebuilding her Substack publication from scratch. Subscribe to her Hype Yourself Substack for more amazing advice.
