In this episode of the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast, Carly Hill explains why she is “all in” on Substack and why therapists, coaches, and other thought leaders should adopt the platform. She contrasts Substack with mainstream social media, emphasizing that platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn are “borrowed land” where algorithms control reach and can arbitrarily suspend accounts. Substack, by contrast, is a publishing platform that combines long‑form writing, email delivery, audio/video, and community tools, giving creators direct ownership of their subscriber list. Hill highlights Substack’s rapid growth (nearly 100,000 paid publications, doubling in a year) and its simple monetization model—Substack takes a 10% cut, leaving creators 90% of revenue, with typical subscription prices of $8‑$15 per month and options for free, paid, and founding‑member tiers. She argues that Substack’s audience is higher‑caliber, more intentional, and more likely to become paying clients, making it a “social media for smart people.” Hill also offers a free 23‑page Cash Infusion Playbook and promotes her own founding‑members tier where she shares detailed growth and monetization tactics. Throughout, she stresses the strategic advantage of owning an email list that can be exported if the platform ever disappears, positioning Substack as a resilient, organic growth channel that aligns with the depth‑focused, IP‑driven work of therapists and thought leaders.
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Hey, hey, hey, my friends! Welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. I am talking about Substack today. I have talked about this in passing with my clients, of course, inside of some alumni trainings that I've done, and I've been talking about it on Instagram as well, but I haven't fully broken down what's going on with Substack, why I'm going all in on it, and I've actually been getting a lot of questions Recently, like, Carly, why do you seem to be so obsessed with Substack? What the heck even is Substack? Why do you keep bringing it up? And so in today's episode, I am pulling back the curtains completely on why I am going all in on this platform, what the platform actually is, and why I am genuinely enjoying it in a way that I haven't enjoyed a platform in years. And I'm going to show you why I think you as a therapist and every coach, just any thought leader, needs to be on Substack and why it is so amazing. So if you have been building a business for, let's say, more than 5 minutes, okay, you have some type of platform, right? You have Instagram, you have TikTok, you have LinkedIn, you have Facebook, whatever the case is. And that's all borrowed land. Your Instagram, that's Instagram's audience. Your Facebook group, that's Facebook's platform. Your TikTok, that's TikTok's algorithm deciding whether your people see you today or not. LinkedIn, same shit. So I have watched the platform change their algorithms, throttle organic reach, make you upgrade to the blue check mark to get extra support, penalize certain types of content. And more recently, I have seen so many content creators get banned and deleted from Instagram specifically And it is because AI is taking a next step in monitoring everybody's account. My ad account recently got shut down for no good reason, just because AI was running an audit on everybody's account. And so it's a sketchy time to be living in where we don't own everything. This is why I talk about email addresses and building your email list and why that is so incredibly important as an entrepreneur because you own that completely. That is your real estate. And so we've all lived through this era of posting and praying, and I hope the algorithm decides to be on my side and show the content to the people who opted in to see it. And it's kind of exhausting, okay? And especially as a visionary, a thought leader who has a lot of IP and thought into what they are creating, especially us therapists who have so much clinical knowledge that we want to share. This is why I'm loving Substack. This is why Substack is not frustrating me. And the difference is so fundamental that once you understand it, you're going to wonder why you didn't know about Substack sooner and why you didn't make the move sooner. You don't have to point and dance and be an entertainer Substack is— I'm calling it social media for smart people. Okay, so let me explain because I think there's a lot of confusion around what Substack actually is, and I actually got that question from a client the other day, like, Carly, what even is Substack? I haven't even heard of it before. So Substack is another platform. It's a publishing platform that combines long-form writing, so think like blog post, okay, email delivery. It goes straight to people's inbox. Hello, this is The Shortcut. You can do audio clips, you can do video clips. I've been going live a lot on Substack. It really rewards you for that. And then there's a community aspect as well. This is all in one place. So think of it kind of like a newsletter, a blog, a podcast— and you can put your podcast on there, my podcast is on there— and a community platform rolled into one. And the people who subscribe to your Substack, which they can do for free, they're going to receive your content directly in their inbox. So there is no algorithm standing between you and them. This is what we have been praying for. This is gold, okay? I don't know if you guys realize how huge this is. Here's the most important thing: unlike social media platforms where your audience essentially rent it, like I said, Substack allows you to own your own subscriber list. You have a direct line of communication that is not subject to the algorithm changes or platform policy shifts. This is the main foundational difference because you own it, you built it, nobody can take it from you. And if Substack disappeared tomorrow, which I'm not suggesting it will— it is absolutely going to blow up, mark my words— And I've actually been studying Substack for, gosh, almost a year now at this point. I was at an entrepreneur event, Gary Vee was on stage, and he was like, y'all didn't believe me when I talked about TikTok and blowing up, and sure enough, it blew up. He's like, Substack is the next thing that is absolutely going to blow up. Get ahead of the game now. So I'm not suggesting it's going to disappear. It's not. It's going to blow up. Get ahead of it, but you would have your entire subscriber list if it did disappear in your hands to take anywhere else. Unlike all the people who are losing their Instagram right now and they don't have anything from that. Substack occupies this rare position where it's going to help you grow organically, be discovered organically, and in a meaningful way. Because people are actually searching for you, reading for you. It's not just about you again like pointing and singing and dancing. It's combined with genuine audience ownership as well. You own that list, and you as the creator on Substack can email your list, and you can export them at any time. So there's no barrier with you getting your message across. To them. This platform is growing so freaking fast. Nearly 100,000 publications earn money globally on Substack as of the time of this recording, and this is probably going to tremendously continue to increase because it's up from 50,000. So that doubling happening in under a year, this is signaling that people are catching on to Substack. Monetization on the platform is accelerating really fast and sharply. It's not just a trend, it is absolutely a structural shift in how content is being created, how content is being distributed, how content is being monetized. I'm going to talk all about the monetization of Substack here in a second because it's one of the easiest platforms to monetize, and It's cheap for your users and it adds up really quickly for you. Hey friends, quick pause. Because you're listening to this episode, I want to give you something special completely on me. I'm gifting you my 23-page Cash Infusion Playbook. This is the exact playbook I use in my own business, hand directly to my clients. It is packed with money-making, needle-moving activities you should be doing every single day to generate revenue and make easy sales. Too many entrepreneurs are spending their time on the wrong things, busy work that feels productive but doesn't pay. And this playbook cuts through all of that, gives you the exact revenue-generating activities that actually move the needle forward in your business. Click on the link in the show notes, drop your email, and I'll send it straight to you. It is my gift to you for showing up, doing the work, and listening to this episode. Let's get back to it. This is absolutely going to be an additional 6-figure revenue stream for me. That is the goal. We have the plan in place and it's already working. So I am just in the newbie stages of Substack, but again, I am absolutely in love with it because this is something that I feel like I've been craving in the online marketing space for years. I've tried all the platforms. I'm on all the platforms. Okay, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn— I'm on it. I know them all. Okay, and for most of these platforms, my relationship has been a love-hate. Okay, the algorithm rewards performance. There's like setbacks. Again, I'm not like a big singer, dancer, trending audio girl. I've never had something go viral. I am a thought leader who loves delivering knowledge. An IP, okay? I'm not built for being an influencer. I've done all these brand deals and they send me free shit to my house. I just can't like post my sunscreen or me putting my deodorant on or be this like brand influencer and show you making my cup of coffee. I don't care if you know what I ate for lunch or not. Like, that's not my zone of genius, okay? My zone of genius is real business acumen My zone of genius is depth. Again, it's thought leadership. It is real conversations. It is conviction in the work that I'm doing, which is why I love having this podcast. But it's also why I love Substack. Again, I'm calling it social media for smart people. You do not have to produce a perfectly edited 30-second reel with trending audio to communicate your value. You write, you share, you teach, you go deep on the things that you actually care about, and people find you because they're looking for that depth. And this is something that's really beautiful about the Substack audience. Just like podcast listeners, they are higher caliber clients. They are more intentional, they are more engaged, they are more discerning, and they choose to subscribe and opt in because They're not just scrolling past your content looking for entertainment. They're opening the email because they want to read it. They care. That's completely different from any of these other social media platforms that exist out there today. Let's talk about monetizing it for a second because I love this part and it's so easy. Substack takes 10% cut of subscription revenue, leaving 90% for you, which is the creator. No middleman. And the platform's not taking a massive cut. That's a big deal for you to take 90% home as the creator. So you're going to set your price. Typically people are setting their price at like $8 to $15 a month for the subscriber, and then you can have an annual plan, and then you can also have a founding members plan as well, and you keep all of it. If you need examples of this, just go look at my Substack, okay? You can see what all of my tiers are. And this is just such an easy way to reach people directly without singing, dancing, with your actual IP, thought leadership, go directly to their inbox, skip past all the algorithm junk, and get monetized for it. Like the ultimate win-win-win-win that I feel like we have been craving as entrepreneurs. So just know first that You can put all of your thought leadership into all of your Substack articles. You can charge for it, you cannot, you'll have a free tier, you'll have a paid tier. Know that you're going to build trust. These are going to be your best buyers, just like podcast listeners are your best buyers, because they're actually searching for knowledge, not just a trending reel. They're looking for deeper content. Know that this is going to be a leveraged income stream for you as well. So you're going to be naturally putting out your thought leadership and you're going to be rewarded for it. So this is the perfect strategy for so many reasons. I could go on and on and on, but if you're a therapist, which you probably are listening to this podcast, you need to be on Substack. You are a clinical thinker. You are trained in human psyche in depth, and you need to put your intellectual, thoughtful, deeply human approach into Substack articles or going live on Substack or dropping audios on Substack. So let's not overcomplicate it. If you need more help on Substack, I do have a founding guide on how you can get started on Substack. You can find that in my founding members tier on Substack. I'm going to link my Substack below in the show notes because you're definitely going to want to go lurk it, check it out. Read all of my Claude tutorials and look at my different tiers. And if you wanna know how exactly I'm growing and monetizing on Substack, then join my founding members tier because I'm dropping all of the details of how exactly I have been growing and monetizing my very own Substack. So get to it. I'll see you in the next episode.
