Substack gurus, Tradwives, and the effortless success myth
How to tell the hack from the help
Last week I saw a note from a Substack growth expert. Claimed he’d cut back all of social media by 90% to go all in on Substack. The underlying message: if you do that, you too can experience this kind of growth.
So I checked - he links his other social media on Substack. At the time of writing: 3 LinkedIn posts in the last week, Instagram posts and stories.
It may not be an intentional lie. But it is misleading. Selling a life that isn’t what it seems.
So what do tradwives have to do with this?
The tradwife phenomenon endlessly fascinates and appalls me. The return to 1950s values: look after the family, cater to your man’s every whim, look stunning in a smock dress while simpering for Instagram with fresh sourdough in the background.
And crucially — make it look like this is all you do. No work. No hustle. Just family. Just the simple life.
Except this too is a lie.
Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm posts about her Utah farm and family of 10 to more than 20 million followers. She promotes brands like Ogee skincare and owns a $35,000 Aga stove. Her husband is the son of JetBlue founder David Neeleman, worth an estimated $400 million.
Nara Smith has 15+ million followers posting from-scratch cooking videos while landing paid ads for Marc Jacobs, Prada, and Ruggable. Click through and you find Amazon storefronts, affiliate codes, e-books.
They are essentially running businesses where the whole point is to look like they aren’t running one. And they definitely aren’t putting any effort into running them - because that wouldn’t be very trad-wifely now, would it?
The Substack gurus want you to know the same. They finish work at 2pm. They work 20 hour weeks.
“Money rolls in whilst I sleep.”
Some might say it’s just sales -
You are simply showing your audience the life they could have if they just bought what they’re selling — the Substack creator courses, the beautiful tradwife life.
Except it’s not just sales, is it?
It’s deception.
It is grossly simplifying the work involved to have the lifestyle they are selling.
And largely misleading you on the resources they are putting in to achieve it.
So why do I care?
There’s tons of misleading bullshit on the internet already. Why get my knickers in a twist about this one?
Because building a business is hard.
Building a successful one is even harder.
And for those people in the trenches who are going through it, wondering if that idyllic success story will ever be theirs, this kind of narrative is incredibly damaging.
Firstly, it invites comparison-itis. Why am I not like them? Should I work less to do what they do? Should I work more? Am I just wrong?
Secondly, it leads to the intended consequence — they buy whatever the gurus are selling. Now I am not saying they are all shysters, I’m sure for most (emphasis on most) of these people the intention to help is genuine. But telling people how to growth hack their way to a successful business is only effective if the business works in the first place. Otherwise you’re just pouring water into a leaky bucket.
Put those two together and you get a business owner who already feels shitty about themself, who then pays out over the odds for a growth hack course. And if that doesn’t work, then they are poorer, with a business which is no more successful and an extra helping of inferiority complex.
How to tell the hack from the help
So what do you do? How do you navigate this without becoming cynical about every piece of advice you read?
1. Look for receipts, not aspirations.
Anyone can show you the lifestyle. Ask for the work. What does their actual posting schedule look like? How long did it take them to get there? What failed before this worked? If they won’t show you the messy middle, they’re selling you a fantasy.
2. Check their actual resources.
It might look easy to perform when there is plenty of money — and brand deals — to fall back on. The tradwife with generational wealth and the guru who already had a massive LinkedIn following before they “went all in on Substack” are playing a different game than you are. That doesn’t mean their advice is useless — but it does mean you need to adjust for context.
3. Watch for what they’re NOT saying.
If someone is selling you a course on how to build a Substack empire but never mentions the email list they already had, the podcast audience they migrated, or the team helping them behind the scenes — that silence is telling you something. The omissions matter as much as the claims.
4. Get clear on what you actually want.
This is the big one. No amount of help is going to solve the problem if you don’t know what problem you’re trying to solve. Do you want a business that supports your life, or do you want the appearance of one? Do you want to build something meaningful, or do you just want the validation of looking successful online?
Because ultimately if you’re chasing someone else’s version of success without understanding what you actually want, you’re always going to feel like you’re failing. The guru’s 2pm finish means nothing if what you actually need is deeper work. The tradwife’s sourdough means nothing if you don’t actually want to bake.
5. Remember that real success is boring.
It’s repetitive. It’s unglamorous. It’s showing up when you don’t feel like it and doing the work when no one is watching. It’s failing more than you succeed and learning from it anyway. It’s not a highlight reel. It’s a practice.
The people selling you shortcuts are banking on the fact that you don’t want to hear that. But you already know it’s true.
The bottom line
The gurus and the tradwives are selling the same thing: the fantasy that success can be effortless if you just follow their system. But the “anti-hustle” lifestyle is, in fact, a thinly veiled mega-hustle — one much more convoluted than the Tupperware parties that came before it.
You don’t need another course. You don’t need another framework. You need clarity on what you’re building and why. You need honesty about the resources you have and the work it’s actually going to take. And you need to stop comparing your messy reality to someone else’s carefully curated performance.
Build your business. Not theirs.
What do you think? Have I just got sick of seeing the same thing time and time again here? Or is the growth-hack your way to success narrative starting to wear a little thin on everyone?
Wow, Claire, I love this piece. I absolutely agree with everything you said. The Instagram tradwives are truly their own category — they’re either already wealthy or quietly running full-scale businesses behind the scenes, just as you described. Yet people still romanticize the 1950s as if it were the happiest era of humanity.
And yes, the Substack “gurus” are no better — the ones preaching constant posting, endless engagement, and community building while never actually engaging with anyone themselves.
I’m with you that there is genuinely helpful advice out there, but a lot of what circulates is pure BS Thank you for writing this! It's honestly a must-read for every creator here.
Amen to this, influencers lie.