Happy holidays, friends.
I know you’re probably in the middle of holiday chaos (wrapping, cooking, traveling, parenting, all of it).
But I’m going to interrupt your festive to-do list for something that might genuinely reinvigorate you for the new year:
Automation.
In this Substack Writers’ Salon episode, I sat down with Yana G.Y. (who I genuinely believe is a genius—yes, I said it), and we talked about how she built an AI-powered, automation-driven writing business that’s bringing in $5K–$10K/month, while she still has a demanding 9-to-5 and a full life.
Yes, mind blown!
After watching what she’s built, I had one thought.
I want to be Yana.
“I have three kids. I need my business to run like a well-oiled machine.”
One of the reasons this conversation hit me hard is because… same.
My life is busy. I have children (including teenage twins), a house, a husband, animals, client work, and a writing business that I’m intentionally growing.
So when I see someone running systems in the background that keep selling, organizing, tagging, and repurposing content without constant manual labor…
I pay attention.
Yana’s work is basically this dream scenario:
You create.
You publish.
And then behind the scenes, your systems do the rest.
Email funnels. Sales sequences. Content repurposing. Distribution. Even “webinars” run like live events without you needing to show up every time.
It’s like having invisible minions.
(Respectfully.)
How Yana got into automation
Yana didn’t wake up one day and decide, “Let me become an automation queen.”
She’s always been fascinated by technology, AI, tools, systems, and even smart devices at home.
And she started using ChatGPT early, right when it launched.
But the real turning point came from a very practical problem:
Her time was limited.
She has a demanding job in senior leadership. Sometimes she works after hours. Her life is full.
So she brought the same “efficiency mindset” from her 9-to-5 into her online writing business.
And then she asked the question that changed everything:
Not “How can I do this?”
But “How can I get the outcome… without the time investment?”
That’s the automation mindset in one sentence.
The automation that doubled her paid subscriptions
Here’s one of the biggest takeaways:
Yana built an automated system to convert free subscribers into paid subscribers, without having to do constant manual promotions.
When everyone tells you, “You have to promote all the time.”
Yana said:
No. I can’t.
She wanted her selling to happen in the background while she focused on writing and delivering value.
So she created a workflow:
New Substack subscriber joins
Subscriber is automatically sent into Kit
Subscriber enters a 30-day email sequence
That sequence nurtures + sells
And over time, conversions happen
The key detail: Substack doesn’t have automations.
Kit does.
So she bridged the gap using make.com, creating a pipeline that updates subscriber data automatically.
And yes, this took work to build.
But once it was running?
She said her paid subscriptions doubled.
Not instantly. Not in a week. But after enough time had passed for subscribers to actually move through the sequence.
Automation isn’t magic. It’s a delayed reward.
“But aren’t you worried people will unsubscribe if you email them every day?”
I asked this because I worry about it constantly.
Like… how many emails is too many emails?
Yana’s answer was very straightforward:
People will unsubscribe. That’s normal.
Email is still the highest-converting channel (and she says this from experience in telecom/marketing).
The rule of thumb is: the more you send, the more you sell.
As long as your unsubscribes are lower than your new subscribers, your net growth stays positive.
And then she said something that might sting a little (but is probably true):
If they unsubscribe, they probably weren’t going to buy anyway.
Why she chose Substack over LinkedIn
This was another big moment.
Because you’d assume someone with her corporate background would go all-in on LinkedIn.
But her logic was:
LinkedIn gives you followers.
Substack gives you emails.
And from a business standpoint, email is the asset.
She tried other platforms. She tried Medium. She tried lead magnets. She tried pulling audiences from social.
But the moment she discovered Substack Notes, everything shifted.
Because Notes did something no other platform does quite the same way:
You post like social media…
but instead of gaining a follower, you gain a subscriber.
That was the “Okay, this is it” moment for her.
Her highest-ROI tool: the viral Notes GPT
Out of everything she built, Yana says the tool with the highest ROI might be her Substack Notes GPT, a custom GPT that helps writers create Notes that actually perform.
She wasn’t even sure whether the Notes GPT or the email automation was #1… but she emphasized:
That GPT has brought her the largest number of paid subscribers because it’s a practical, immediate benefit people can use right away.
And it’s not the only one.
Paid subscribers also get access to:
A long-form writing GPT
Title + subtitle generators
Call-to-action generators
Her full 30-day sales sequence (plus a workflow to adapt it to your own offer)
Tutorials and recordings showing how to implement it
So, basically: she builds tools for herself… and then shares them with her paid community.
Automated content distribution: Notes → everywhere
This is where my brain truly melted.
Yana built a system that takes her published Notes and posts and automatically repurposes/distributes them across platforms.
She said:
Some Notes get posted automatically to X and LinkedIn
Some get turned into quote images
Some become creative images posted to Pinterest and Instagram
Some become short videos for YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram
All happening in the background.
Because Substack doesn’t have an official API, she created her own automation app for make.com to do it.
Again: minions.
What happens if Substack releases an API or lets you schedule Notes?
I asked her the devil’s advocate question (journalist instincts):
What happens when Substack makes all of this easier?
Her answer:
That would make her life easier.
Scheduling Notes already exists through third-party tools, but an official Substack version would simplify things.
An official API would be even better—right now, much of this work involves testing, troubleshooting, and workarounds for bugs.
Her plans for 2026: community + smarter growth
For 2026, Yana wants two things:
1) A stronger sense of community
She feels Substack’s community features remain limited and wants deeper interaction.
But she’s also hesitant to move people off-platform because… people are already on Substack.
“I’d rather build where people already are,” she pointed out.
2) Better growth outside Substack (without burning time)
She wants to leverage social platforms more,ideally with automation.
She’s also interested in paid advertising, but not in a vague “boost a post” way.
She wants a profitable paid funnel she can measure clearly.
Right now, she’s getting subscribers through ads, but her cost per subscriber is around $4–$6, and she doesn’t feel it’s profitable yet.
The “fake live” webinar that actually works
This was one of my favorite parts.
I attended one of Yana’s webinars and genuinely thought she was live… until I realized she was responding to messages while still “presenting.”
Because the webinar wasn’t live.
It was an automated webinar using a tool called eWebinar, which runs on a schedule like it’s live, but she can still chat with attendees in real time.
She built it because:
Live webinars require time
Her job makes scheduling unpredictable
People miss live events
She wanted something scalable
Her results:
70% engagement rate
10% conversion rate for course sales
That’s huge.
Where to find Yana
If you want to explore her work, Yana’s Substack is:
And consider becoming a paid subscriber. I love supporting her work and learned so much from all the tools she provides for paid subscribers.
If there’s one thing I’m taking from this conversation, it’s this:
You don’t need to work harder. You need your business to work smarter.
And maybe 2026 is the year we stop duct-taping everything together… and start building systems that hold us.
Happy holidays, friends.
And if you want more conversations like this, tools, strategy, and behind-the-scenes building, stick around for the next Substack Writers’ Salon.
Natasha
Thank you Katy Gillett, MagickMica, Amy K Williams, and many others for tuning into my live video with Yana G.Y.! Join me for my next live video in the app.
