You are the Story

This is a true story with a clear beginning, middle and end.

It’s a story that is very much about you, being part of the unconventional flock, here on substack, you are the heroes and heroines of this tale; because for all of us, our health and our stories are so important; together as readers and writers, even when we feel rubbish, we can do anything.

So off we go….

Once upon a time there was a platform called Substack.

Substack set out to help writers find readers who valued their output.

Every day, substack grew from an initial handful of subscribers in 2017 to a global phenomenon with a reported 49.4 million unique visitors to the website in January 2024.

With everyone wanting to be saved from social media, the ad-free platform flourished as writers shared their stories and a new economic engine for culture was built.

One of those writers was Chris Broadbent 2.0 and all of those readers, well, they were and I hope will continue to be, you.

Every week Chris tried to spend less time consuming rubbish via social media and more time spreading positivity and encouraging better mental health via substack.

By writing about his own journey and hopefully inspiring others with the thought that ‘you can do anything’, Chris delivered a weekly non-fictional newsletter that covered everything from acknowledging when low mood affects you, to how to buy a sheep or sign up to the Better Business Act.

Family, friends and colleagues joined the ‘unconventional flock’ because they knew Chris and wanted to support him; importantly, there was no obligation or payment required.

Chris was pleased and felt progressively more inspired himself; because sharing his stories seemed to be helping others, he noticed he was using social media less, eventually taking twitter, facebook and instagram off his phone for good.

The inconventialnal flock continued to grow beyond the UK, with most new readers seemingly being strangers to Chris but bonding with him via substack from as far away as Japan and the United States of America; “You Can Do Anything” was relevant to many.

The newsletter continued, usually every Friday lunchtime in the UK, the sharing and comments via substack and notes were complemented with shared distribution on facebook and Linked-in too for the more ‘businesslike’ stories.

And then, one week, it got to Friday, and something wasn’t right.

Chris was ill.

He had been mainly sitting up in bed for three days not able to do very much and certainly didn’t have the mental capacity to write; because, finally, after four years of avoiding it, he had COVID-19 and was joining the 775 million reported cases cumulatively across the globe.

Of course, Chris was one of the lucky ones, it was not going to kill him and despite a resurgence in the disease and the UK’s pretty poor historical handling of the pandemic, he was able to experience the symptoms from the safety of his home, feeling rather sorry for himself and isolating while another (mainly European, it has to be said) forty two thousand individuals were sharing the same plight, according to the WHO (latest data available, 7 days ending 11th August 2024).

Because of that, he was able to write this piece and more importantly, he was able to say thank you to each of you because you, too, are seemingly still here.

Because Chris had used the storytelling techniques that he learnt from Mark, he had hoped they would be enough; and that the flock would forgive him for not perhaps being as philosophical or interesting a read this week.

You see, Chris had fallen into that trap of wrongly assuming nobody would read or comment on his post this week and his followers would be disappointed and probably leave in droves, believing he had nothing to say as a writer and they had no interest in his words; all because of the ‘imposter syndrome’ and lack of self belief that was wrapped up in his illness, isolation and self-pity.

He sat up in bed that Friday morning, frantically typing out this story, checking the clock, meeting the deadline, surrounded by many cold cups of tea and empty tissue boxes.

He had reverted to being a crowd-pleaser and despite the events of the week, forgot that his own health and especially his mental health, was the most important thing to look after.

Typing, worrying, sweating, mumbling, despairing; he typed on, and on, and on.

Until finally; he stopped.

He realised. 

His health was more important than trying to get everybody to follow him.

His health was the whole reason he had started writing in the first place. 

His health was the most important thing; People would understand.

The writing was to help others and therefore perhaps help himself in the process; being authentic on this Friday about his own situation was THE best thing he could do.

So he stopped, he tidied it up a bit, and he pushed the' ‘Send to Everyone’ button, it was just ahead of the 1pm deadline…

He felt better immediately.

Loyal followers interacted spontaneously, sending concerned notes of best wishes that made Chris feel loved and valued.

As for the unconventional flock; the hundreds grew to thousands and then to millions, and everyone on substack flourished and lived happily ever after, inspired by “You Can Do Anything” 

In fact, it was only when Chris looked back the following week, having recovered from that horrible illness, that he realised the story had been exactly a year in the making; the COVID week had actually been scheduled to be a super celebratory 52nd consecutive week posting to celebrate that first year on Substack for You Can Do Anything.

So, what was possibly one of the shortest and most spontaneous of newsletters had supplanted and saved everyone from something far less genuine, illustrating that the most important thing to say is a big thank you to you; the real heroines and hero’s for living happily ever after here with me and every other sub-stacker here on our fabulous storytelling platform.

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Of course, I have been using the excellent storytelling framework of Mark Edwards ‘Best Story Wins’ (Economist Books, 2024) to help me this week; I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do anything more than the simplest of stories; I hope you have enjoyed it, I very much value you being here and look forward to healthier times together  in the years ahead.

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Postscript: One further excellent piece of advice from Mark is always to reference your data sources and offer up more detail in an appendix rather than blind your audience wirth meaningless data; therefore for those of you interested in further data around COVID and Substack; my sources are as below.

World Health Orgainsation - COVID 19 Dashboard

https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/cases?n=o

Important substack user stats from Backlinko.com

https://backlinko.com/substack-users