Grow: How Jo Hutton Reimagined Yoga for Real Life
The Grow interview series is designed to share the nuts and bolts of how writers have gone independent and grown their audience on Substack. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Yoga teacher
built her community at around the philosophy that the practice should meet people where they are. In this interview, Jo describes creating an alternative to picture-perfect social media videos, being inspired by bad advice, and the Notes strategy that more than doubled her subscribers.
What is your Substack about?
I offer short, simple yoga and relaxation sessions that you can weave into your day. They’re all designed so you don’t have to change your clothes or get out a mat—you just press play and get started. It’s about making yoga part of your actual life, not something that only happens for 60 minutes in a studio.
What were you doing before Substack?
I’ve been a full-time yoga teacher since 2010, mostly teaching in-person classes and running a yoga teacher training school here in Newcastle upon Tyne. For years, I complained about the way yoga was portrayed online. In late 2023, I decided to stop moaning and actually offer an alternative to all the polished, picture-perfect videos.
I started taking Instagram more seriously, and apparently there was an appetite for it, because it grew really fast. I gained 165,000 followers in a year. It was exciting, but honestly? Exhausting. The pace and speed of Instagram was too much for my nervous system at times. It started to feel like I was shoveling coal into a hungry machine that was never satisfied.
When did you decide to start?
I was just coming out the other side of a big burnout, and I was looking for a way to work that still let me connect deeply with a community, but without running myself into the ground. During that time, I’d had to completely rethink my approach to yoga, how I practised, what it was for, what it could be when you’re really tired, and I started to wonder if there were other people who might need that too.
I do still really like Instagram, and I’ll always be grateful for the people I’ve connected with there, but I wanted a space where I could go a bit deeper. Luckily, I’m friends with
from , and she managed to convince me to give Substack a try. I was hooked. Substack is such a thoughtful, intelligent platform. The slower pace felt like a breath of fresh air.Growth by the numbers
Started Substack: July 2024
Launched paid: Right away
Total subscribers: 33,500
My first subscribers came over from Instagram. I did a big promotion for my birthday at the beginning of August, and far more people signed up than I expected. I became a bestseller on the 8th of August, and I was honestly stunned. It was the first time I thought, okay, this Substack thing might have legs.
I’ve been surprised and delighted to find that Substack itself is a brilliant way to meet people. According to my dashboard, just under 27,000 of the 33,500 people here found me on Substack, which is kind of wild, really.
Have you run any series or campaigns that worked well?
I decided to host my annual advent calendar on Substack this year, and it turned out to be the perfect place for it. Every day during advent, I sent out a relaxation, and the level of engagement was incredible. People from all over the world were having thoughtful conversations in the comments, cheering each other on. That’s when I really started to understand the potential Substack has to be a place of genuine connection.
What’s your strategy for free and paid subscribers?
I decided to go paid pretty much straight away, because I wanted this to be a sustainable part of my life. Paid subscribers get a new short session sent to them every Monday, plus access to the full archive of past sessions. They can also join in with chats, leave comments, and request specific sessions.
Free subscribers get one session a month, and I have a complete beginners’ yoga course for people who want to try yoga but have never even stepped on a mat—that’s free, and always will be.
How do you use Notes?
At first I didn’t really understand Notes, and I used it like Facebook statuses in 2007. But I saw real growth when I stopped seeing Notes as an add-on and made it central to the way I teach yoga. I know not everyone has the time or headspace to add something extra into their day, so I started asking myself, How can I meet people exactly where they are? And I realised Notes had so much potential. I meet most of the people in my community that way now.
I post videos on Notes—which I know is a bit controversial—but as a severely dyslexic person, video is the best way I know to communicate. And honestly, I think we can rip up the rule book here. We don’t have to copy what’s already been done on other short-form video platforms. We’re not playing to advertisers, so the algorithm works differently, and that means we can be way more creative, thoughtful, and considered. I can’t wait to see what illustrators, poets, and other radical creative beings do with video on here. It’s exciting.
You said Substack felt “slower” than other social platforms. What do you attribute that to?
The work has a longer life span, so you’re able to actually digest it. On other social media platforms, it feels like you have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention, but by the time you have it, they’re already gone. There’s no space to go deeper than sound bites. It can feel like you’re standing on the side of a busy motorway holding a sign while people whizz past. And because of that pace, so many things get flattened. There’s not much room for nuance.
It sounds simple, but just the fact that you actually see the work of the people you’ve chosen to follow changes everything. It gives creators space to breathe, to take their time.
What advice have you received about growing your publication that didn’t prove to be helpful?
Oh, I think all advice can be helpful—even if what helps is deciding to ignore it. I had a really clear sense of what I wanted to create on Substack, and in the early days, some people couldn’t quite see it, or didn’t think it would work. But I don’t think that was bad advice. If anything, it made me more determined.
What questions do you have for Jo that we didn’t ask? Leave them in the comments!
To read more from this series on growing your publication, see our interviews with Mikala Jamison, Wendy MacNaughton, Noah Smith, Carissa Potter, Jørgen Veisdal, Anne Byrn, Nishant Jain, Michael Fritzell, Glenn Loury, Erik Hoel, Jessica DeFino, Mike Sowden, Elizabeth Held, Jonathan Nunn, Polina Pompliano, Michael Williams, Judd Legum, and Caroline Chambers.
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