Is Substack the SECRET to Marketing Success?

Welcome to our Substack jam here in the Creative on Purpose Catalyst Club community. This is a bonus call that's open to all subscribers of my Substack, and I've invited my friend Seth Workenheiser to, uh, join as well. Seth is way better at Substacking than I am. Um, and, uh, we're just gonna have a, a kind of a loose jam session, uh, about how we are leveraging Substack. And really, because of the size of the group, I think we can just, you know, mostly make it available for your questions, concerns, problems, you know, and if you want to throw in a bad joke or two, that's fine too. Seth, I thought— oh, and Seth and I have been planning for this and organizing and structuring this thing for months now. It's going to be so super professional and polished.

Not a lot of PowerPoints, a lot of handouts.

But, uh, I think, you know, that's— for those of you that know me, you know this is the way I roll. I, I, I just show up in rooms and kind of look to see what the room needs and, and try my best to, um, to serve as generously as I can the needs of the people that, that are on the call. Um, but Seth, I thought it would be good for us to maybe just briefly introduce ourselves and, um, our Substack and, and maybe just a few thoughts about where it fits into your business growth strategy. And then, then I'll go and then we can jam for a moment or two and then turn it over to the questions. So why don't you go first?

Yeah, I am a couple of years ago. Well, around the time I met Scott Perry a number of years ago in a freelance— what was it called? Freelance Freelancer's Workshop. Freelancer's Workshop. Uh, get better clients. Uh, that was 2019 or 2020. And at the time I was doing a lot of work, uh, that I was just eager for the work and it was just like, okay, I'll do this. And then found out I really didn't like that work. Um, and started to lean more into work I wanted to do, which was more email marketing stuff. Uh, unfortunately, you know, the traditional routes of doing that, you know, of going on social media and just being like, I do this, I do this, uh, it's a crowded place these days. So instead I started a newsletter, and I was aiming in the music world at first, uh, trying to get musicians, bands, artists, uh, to use email lists. I called it Heavy Metal Email at the time. I started that in 2021. And it led to some work because people that read it would then recognize, "Oh, Seth does this." And that worked out pretty nicely. But then too, it also became like, this is all such a journey of finding out who we want to work with. And I found myself working a lot with people with wild expectations and, you know, there's, there's a lot I could, there a lot of suboptimal potential clients there. Uh, so I changed my newsletter to Social Media Skate Club to better, more focus on artists, illustrators, photographers, creative people that want, wanted to stop banging their head against the wall with social media and do something nice and calm with email newsletters. Uh, and that's what I've been doing. I've been doing that again since I changed the name of my newsletter in October of 2023. And since then, like, my newsletter has kind of rocketed, uh, because it's a, it's a lot broader now. It's specific towards, hey, I don't like spending all this time on social media. Is there another way? And that's kind of what I explore with my readers and clients.

So beautiful.

That's me.

Yeah. 20, 2019, the Freelancers Workshop.

Holy cow.

Seth and I both had more and darker hair back then. Um, a little bit.

A little bit.

Yeah, I appreciate that introduction and a little bit of that context. Um, you know, when I put this event out there for people to, you know, to see what the interest level was, uh, I led with to Substack or not to Substack. And I would just encourage you all to, like, actually, if you're not already using Substack, to answer that question for yourself first, because my, my assertion is that if you have been involved in some sort of endeavor, whether that's as a solopreneur or as a creative, you know, writer, musician, an artist, a freelancer, teacher, healer, consultant, whatever, you probably are already leveraging enough tools and tactics and platforms, uh, and really would probably benefit more from just optimizing things that you're already using, or, and considering which ones are not delivering a return on investment that justifies the time, attention, money, and effort you're putting into it. Um, Substack is just another, and, you know, one of the more recent tools that you can use. To give you a little bit of context as to why I chose to leap in, in August of last year, I remember when Substack first came along and it came along just at the time that I was considering getting out of social media altogether. And I looked at Substack and just said, here's just— this is just another thing. Another place for me to waste my time and try to promote content that I'm already promoting elsewhere. And I kind of ignored it for a while. And it wasn't until— Mikey is familiar with, and many other, other, others of you are familiar with Nick Peterson and the Guardian Academy. I saw what Nick was doing with it. And it made— and I saw, like, without even having him explain it, I saw how he was leveraging the tool to get closer to what he wanted. He wasn't just doing a another thing because it was out there and available. He, like, very strategically was leveraging it as part of his strategy to spread the word about what he is— was doing, uh, you know, as, as a, as a business person, but also through the Guardian Academy. And it really made sense because I— and I'll just put it out there, if this this sounds like maybe it sounds a little bit like you, you can, uh, raise your hand if you want to. But I'm one of those people that I have, I, I have tried almost everything and I'm still doing a lot of things, right? I'm on, um, I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook primarily, but I have an Instagram account, I have a, a Twitter account, uh, I I have a YouTube channel, I have a podcast, I have a blog, I have a website, I have all the things. And what I decided I needed to do and what Substack made available to me was if I'm going— if I'm already existing on all these other platforms, where can I drive people that are a good fit for the difference I can help them make, or the change I can help them make, the problem I can help them solve, the aspiration I can help them achieve. Where can I send them where I can have a deeper connection and a more meaningful conversation with them so that we have the opportunity to work together to make things better in whatever they're trying to make better? And Substack made the most sense because I could simply migrate my pod— existing podcast over there. I could repurpose all of my blog content over time. I could migrate my email list over there. And it just, it made sense to be, make Substack the, the center of my spider web. So just to give a little context about what I mean there, if you collide with me through my podcast, I want you to consume podcast content. As much as you can stand. If you collide with me on YouTube, I want you to consume my YouTube content. If you collide with me on social media, I want you to follow me on social media. And when you have reached a certain level of, um, you know, faith in my expertise or trust in my expertise, or, um, you know, are interested in learning more about me, I'd want you to up on my Substack because I had— now, now I have your email address. Now I have the opportunity to try to earn your, um, earn your attention and, uh, engagement in the paid Substack community calls. Um, so it's very strategic. So again, I share all that context because if you're not already on, on Substack, Don't just jump in because it's another place to promote yourself. See how— figure out how to make it work for, for you to achieve your priority. My priority is to grow my online community, uh, you know, where we meet for weekly calls and monthly, um, deep dives into things, you know, that will help— into content that will help the members further their enterprise and, and get closer to what they want in life and business. Um, and so it makes sense for me. It doesn't necessarily make sense for everybody and certain, and not every, not even everybody on this call. Um, just a quick show of hands. How many people already actually have an existing Substack publication?

Cool.

I appreciate that, Kat.

Yeah.

Uh, how many people are strong that don't have a Substack publication, um, are strongly considering?

Cool. Cool.

Um, I don't know, Seth, do you, do you wanna follow up with anything, any reflections on what I just said? Cause I'd love to have Ángel and, and Mikey, um, maybe share some context about what, you know, what, what they're looking for in, in Substack as a starting point. But I wanna hear your reflection. Any other reflections you have first?

Yeah, my, my only like follow-up or add-on to that would just be when you speak of the spider web and getting people to a place, like the benefit of a service like a Substack is when a person ends up there and they, they can see exactly what you're writing and that subscribe now button is right in there. So that speaks a lot just to like the lack of friction to get a person to sign up. Whereas, you know, when we guide people to a blog or our website, you know, everybody's website is different. Everybody's blog is different, but there's a lot of people now on Substack. And so like, and they're subscribed to other Substack newsletters. So when they end up on yours, there's their email addresses already in that subscribe button in the box. All they have to do is click the button. So that just, I'm just adding that on to the friction, the lack of friction or the easier amount of, of, of the way a person can subscribe when they end up on you, on the, on a Substack versus other things.

So I just wanted to add that. No, that's a great point. Jackie actually asked a question, um, that, that can build on that a little bit. So. In the beginning, it was really easy to get people to join your list. Um, you could just say, join my newsletter, and people would throw their email in to read your newsletter when, when list building and newsletters first became a thing. And then, as happens with any other tool or tactic, people started really doing that in a crappy transactional salesy slimy way and people got really protective of their email. So Seth's point about, you know, creating less friction, but it's also, um, Substack allows you to deliver value first, right? So people come, they read your post and if it resonates, then it becomes very easy easy for them to just click a button and sign up to get, to get some more. And then Jackie's question was, what is Substack? And are you driving people there versus your website? So again, I'd like Seth to fill in the missing holes, but I think of Substack primarily as, as a newsletter and blog. It has added podcasting. It has added video. It has added direct messaging. It may very soon be adding, um, live streaming and, and so forth. But for primarily, and, uh, certainly the way it began, as I remember first hearing about it, it was primarily a place for writers to share their writing, build community. And maybe get paid a little something along the way. So it was a place for writers to convene and share their work, to collide with other writers, to attract readers, for readers to learn about other writers and to connect with other readers and so forth. It's expanded somewhat since then. I do— so if you land, if you collide with me anywhere, other than Substack, and you want to find out more about me, the only place you will— the only link you will see is to my Substack. Substack is the center of my spider web. I don't give a shit if you go to my website, because there's all I— my website is just a billboard. And if you click on any of the blog content on my website, it's going to take you to the post on Substack. That's where I want you, because that's where I can have the best chance of capturing your email address and earning your permission and trust to have a deeper conversation and connection. So that's, that's the way that I think about it. I don't know if you have any other thoughts on just kind of what Substack is, Seth.

Yeah, no, I mean, I really think of it as a, like a— we talk about those in marketing language, but it's like a landing page. It's a place to, you know, every, every post that you have is, is now a landing page for people to sign up. Whereas driving people to a website— hold on, sorry, I live on Main Street in a busy college town, a little motorcycle action going on there. But, you know, driving everybody to a website I think no matter how optimized or good looking or whatever your website is, it's still, you know, there could be that bit of friction to capture that email. I just think that Substack is super duper optimized to capture that email. And maybe it works better to get people to your website to have them sign up there. But like I said, like having something on Substack, having the writing there, having, having the, the, the, the the showing instead of telling what you're doing. Like, this is what I write, this is what I cover. Maybe it's video, maybe it's whatever. Like, and to, to just make it as easy as possible to get someone's email. Because then down the road, you could point people from your newsletter, from your Substack, anywhere. So when you do have something on your website, which is great, we should all have websites, we could point them there. And they're, they're more likely to, to do that. Probably than from, you know, social media that someone might not see.

So Seth made a really good point that I want to make sure is amplified and that you take note of when that, that idea that every post is a landing page is super powerful because it helps you think about, you know, do I want to include a call to action on every post? You know, do I want to give people the opportunity to click through an offer, you know, for a free or paid service. I think about that strategically in every time I write something is, you know, what, what is the number one thing I want people to do after they derive some value from that content? So thinking about it in that way, I think is super powerful. So Mikey and Angel and Kat, because you're, you're halfway there, I'd love to start with just like, what, um, you know, what, what is it that you're thinking about in terms of Substack? What is it that you want? Like, where does Substack fit in your strategy? Um, and if you have any questions about that. And then for the rest of you that are on Substack, if you want to start thinking about like, well, what are the, the things that I would like to learn more about so that I can do them better with my existing Substack? Um, But yeah, Mikey, Ángel, Kat, like to kick us off.

Yeah, I'm happy to go. So I'm thinking about, yes, sort of really getting back into blogging a bit more as part of my strategy. But yeah, very much thinking, you know, is that sort of getting outdated? And exactly as you're saying, actually organizing it more. And I do, I like the idea of also the the paid option, not just for the pay, but also for that little bit more, you know, if it's content that's a little bit more sensitive, or again, you sort of want people that are a little bit more invested to, to look at that. So, and I, from what I can sort of see from my most accounts, they, you know, you publish some free and some paid depending obviously what people are using it for. So I think my question is a little bit around that as well, sort of how to how to work out. I probably, my main work wouldn't be on there. I'm building a, you know, a membership. Again, I've recently come out of a business, so I'm sort of restarting from scratch, but ultimately I'm, it will be, that's probably going to be my main sort of a community-based paid membership with some courses as sort of the front end into it. But a lot of that content I do, you know, repurpose. I'm not a huge fan of social media. I will continue to do some, some there. There's a lot of sort of my clients are there, but yeah, I would definitely rather do, yeah, my, my main post somewhere, but I didn't feel that a website or a blog is necessarily, and they get sort of outdated and things. So yeah, and I quite like the Substack accounts that I follow. So that's why I was curious.

Are you currently doing a lot of writing or blogging?

Not, not yet. No, no. And, and I'm also, I am a little bit, I will do things intensively for a while and then I'll probably wait for a while. So I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't sort of want, you know, subscribers expecting a constant, you know, like I wouldn't commit to a set amount. I'd probably do a fair bit that's their repurposed content. But at the moment, at this stage, it wouldn't be my main focus.

No. So I think it's just to share a quick reflection that might be beneficial for everybody. Like, one of the things that I frequently find my clients, and some of you in the community have expressed this as well, You know, like, oh, I should be, I should be doing more blogging, or I should be doing, have an email newsletter, or I should be doing more video, or I, right? I, I'm a big believer, uh, and Bri and I were just talking about this, um, a couple days ago, or maybe it was yesterday, like, you should be doing what you like doing. If you show up best as a writer, show up and write. If you do best showing up on video, show up on video. If you do best showing up on audio, show up on audio, you know, podcasting or whatever. Um, if you show up best as a teacher, you know, show up as a teacher because even though Substack is optimized for writing, it is very e— it also includes audio and video options. And it's very easy to repurpose content. You know, Substack will transcribe your video or your audio for you, and now you have a blog post. Um, run it through ChatGPT and ask it to, you know, clean up the grammar and punctuation, and you, you, you can go from video or audio content to blog content very, very easily. I'm, I'm a huge fan of doing the things that you love to do and finding ways to make them more easy and effortless, because that's how you will become more effective, is by showing up the way in which you best show up. And then, you know, optimize all the platforms that you're on to show up in that way. So just a, just a quick reflection. On what you were saying, Mikey. How about Ángel or Cat? What are you thinking about in terms of, you know, optionality or what do you want to optimize through Substack? So I've heard two words that really catch my attention, which is Substack as the center of my spider web. And repurposing. And, and my thing is I feel scattered. I feel like I've got, you know, stuff on Facebook, stuff on LinkedIn. I have a website, um, and yet, um, I just don't feel like it's making an impact. There are some people who are sharing stuff, some people who will comment or, you know, do a like. Um, so for example, since I started posting Tuesday Tips on my LinkedIn account, I noticed that my account's been looked at a lot more. But it just seems to me like, um, it's not the most efficient use of my time in trying to get my message out there. And so what has appealed to me about considering Substack is just having that sort of one place where I can put it and then distribute it everywhere else, and that it will draw people who are, you know, not just the pat— you know, not just the people walking by and looking at in on the window of your shop, but the folks who are going to come in and are actually serious about possibly buying something. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that, Seth?

Yeah, I'll say one of the challenges of that, and I totally get it, like, oh, I'm going to post this on social media and drive that to my Substack. Very, very difficult. Like, Twitter actively like, whatever, they don't show that post as much if you have a Substack link in it. Like, that's a thing. Facebook is not the most link-friendly, you know, all these social media platforms, they don't benefit when they send you elsewhere. They want to keep you on their platform. So just be aware of the challenge of like, of trying, of, of And Scott, you know this too, of like posting something and getting anyone to do anything on social media is extremely difficult. So the— so because I've seen a lot of people like, oh, I have all these social media followers and now I'm going to try to drive them. And it's— it is an absolute challenge. It's a monster of a challenge. If you have 1,000 followers and you're trying to like get excited for getting 3 subscribers from a tweet or a Facebook post. Like, it's tough to get like, wow, 100 people signed up for my news. That's, that's like rare. That's amazing. It can happen, but like, don't bank on that. Like, be ready for that, that uphill challenge.

Yeah, I think that's great. Those are great reflections and great advice. I do, I do believe that strategically repurposing content can't— like, you know, thanks to Seth, I'm once again contemplating getting rid of Facebook. Like, I can't wait to get rid of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is so fucking ugly. Excuse my French.

Coming in.

Yeah. And, you know, I just don't even know why I'm on Twitter. I joined Twitter because it was something that the Guardian Academy, you know, leveraged and not as much anymore. So I'm probably ready to get rid of Twitter anyway. But the concept that I would encourage you to think about is function over form. Every, every platform has— is optimizing for a specific function. YouTube is optimizing for the function of video and search. Instagram is functioning to optimize imagery. Um, uh, LinkedIn, I don't know what LinkedIn is optimizing for. Um, you know, Facebook, but Facebook is optimizing for distraction and, you know, theoretically connection, but, you know, they, they make it impossible to do that, um, organically and, you know, but So putting stuff on Facebook, for instance, like Ángel is talking about, like doing a Facebook Live and hope— and trying to get people to come to your Substack probably will not be a very effective way to build your audience on Substack. But what I have found is, and what I would encourage you to test if you decide to start building on Substack, is You know, if you're getting some traction on with Tuesday Tips on Facebook Live, continue to do that because as people consume that content on Facebook and you make— you feed Facebook's desire to keep people on Facebook, when someone is ready, they will go to your bio to see where, where you want them to, to go next. And if your bio— if the only place in your bio to go is your Substack, The right people will eventually come to your Substack that way. And there's no good reason why you couldn't take your recording on Facebook and download the video and post it on Substack as well. 'Cause Substack will allow you to embed video there on Substack. It can, you can also put it on YouTube and then, you know, get, get more views on YouTube by embedding it, a YouTube video on Substack. The function of Substack is to, connect readers with writers. So turning your content, content into a place where people can, connect with your con— your written content. Any other content, but also, um, you know, communicate with you about that content could be a very effective way to grow your community of, of readers on Substack. I will also say, and you know, the people that are in the Creative on Purpose community see this all the time, I you know, I will post screenshots of a Zoom room like this and post on social media, hey, great conversation with the Catalyst Club community today about empathetic antagonism, and I'll tag you all in that. And it's a way that I can beat the algorithm a little bit, because if you all like the post and comment on the post or share a takeaway from the conversation, then it starts pushing that that social media content into your audience's feeds. And it's a way that I take the, the true function of Substack is to leverage the network effect. And I can optimize my social media account to op, uh, leverage the network effect by putting Substack content on social media. Tagging my readers and community members there and then pushing it out to their network as well. Go ahead, Cato.

Well, as you guys were talking too, I just started reevaluating my head. First of all, because I hate spiders. Like, I hate spiders. So every time you say spider web, I just think, oh my God. But I get what you mean by it. But they're kind of for me personally. So I was like, well, what can I do? And I was like, oh, you know what, maybe what I'm thinking of is it's actually like a trampoline. Like, so when I adjusted it to being a trampoline, because I'm all about vaulting anyway. And then when— then Seth started talking about platforming, came— I was like, oh, how flexible are the different platforms? What is the flexibility built into the platform that you can use to be your trampolining surface to get— but where are you vaulting to? Like, so that's the question. Like, where are you— where do you— and right now we're talking about Substack eventually, or what, what could those things be? But so as you guys were talking, it just— when I readjusted spider web to trampoline in my mind, it made me feel better. First of all, not so icky about spiders. And second, oh, because there could— there is power in it. Like, what is— and then how— in part because with my adjustment I've been making this year to go from playwriting into children's book writing, I was looking for what's going to vault me, what's going to actually create an accelerating effect. Around and which parts and what's going to take me longer and have to catch up. I was really looking at what my skills were and where could I invest my time to get that idea of a vault. Then when it happened, it was surprising to me how effective it was to think in that terms. Now I'm thinking, oh yeah, that trampolining. Anyway, I was just tossing that out there. For me, it's going to be trampolines instead of spiraling.

I love trampoline. I just envision standing in the center of a trampoline. Everything on the outside comes in then. Right? If there's toys or whatever like that on the trampoline, it's all going to come to you at the center of it. It's like gravity well. So I love that.

Yeah. And I appreciate you managing your own triggers, Kato, instead of demanding that I, that I rebrand spiderweb because it causes you distress.

Trigger warning: arachnids.

Yeah, trigger warning. Just to highlight like the underlying message of what Cato's saying. It's, it's again, it's like the function, like what's the function that you're trying to optimize for, right? So if, um, and, and when I talk about optimizing for the function over the form, the problem with You know, that all comes from— it actually is something that comes from ancient Roman architecture. Function ever, or form ever follows function is the way it's actually intended. Like, what's, what's it for is defined first, and then you can make it pretty, or then you can make it, you know, look how you want it to look. But what we have turned that into is form over function, right? So it like, we get really more concerned about how it looks than what it does. And that's what social media does very well because you can create a persona, a look, you can create a false front. Very easily on social media. You can make the form look really good and the function can become obscured. And so if you put function first, then it becomes much easier to decide which platforms you want to engage with and, and try to, to employ and which ones are maybe better left for the future, if at all. Um, and that sort of thing. Um, I'm just gonna— I am so— because we have a couple people that, that, um, are here for the first time or for the first time in a while. I, we— I always schedule these things to go 30 or 60 minutes depending.

Uh, I'm—

those of you that know me know that I mostly do these things on Saturday to keep myself out of trouble because my wife is helping a neighbor, an elderly neighbor, take care of the things she needs to take care of until 2 o'clock. So I'm going to hang out longer than noon if anybody wants to hang out longer than noon. It just helps me not get into any trouble. But if anyone here really needs to hop off sooner rather than later, I'm going to invite you to go ahead and raise your hand and go next. And Kat, I don't know if you wanted to weigh in on, since you're kind of using Substack, if, if you had any questions or shares that you wanted to weave in.

I don't have any special questions because I had played around with it quite a bit already just to get the sense of whether that was where I wanted to go or not. And I've also been, you know, doing the stealth thing, watching you and watching Guardian Academy and this and that. For a while just to, you know, get the idea of how I want to format and so on. And for the most part, you know, well, well, I don't, I'm not totally like skeeved out by arachnids as Cato said. I was thinking of it more as the hub of a wheel because my, my why is everything I'm doing is trying to consolidate, trying to, trying to centralize, trying to simplify. I've actually been interested in Substack since November of 2020, uh, November of 2020. And it just wasn't something I did. And then it was at the end of the year, 2023, coming into this year that I started to play with it a little bit, you know, and just think about, but for me at this point, it's just wading through everything because I've got 10 years of content, some of which I can just repurpose as it stands. Some of it needs some updating, some tweaking, that sort of thing. But what I've already been doing is pulling in old videos, letting it transcribe it. I'm pulling— I'm deleting the post. I'm not even publishing that post, but I'm pulling the transcript out so I can go in and tweak what I need to tweak. And I'm letting it work in reverse for me. So it's that centralizing, that becoming the hub of the wheel, you know, or the center of the spider web, as, as you put it. Um, it's just a matter of doing the work for me right now. I'm getting it.

I would say, because a recurring theme I always hear is like, I want to consolidate, I want to like spend less time over here on Facebook or making content for this platform and stuff. Um, I mean, the name of my newsletter is Social Media Escape Club because I wanted to escape social media. Like, I had a Twitter account for 17 years. I was user, one of the first 3,000 users of Twitter. Like, I loved it. That was my platform. But I deleted my account last year. I deleted Instagram earlier this year on the first. Facebook, I don't use. I have an account to help manage some clients' stuff. I'm on LinkedIn, but some of you have seen, I upload weather reports and like videos of creeks on LinkedIn. But one of the huge benefits too that we haven't really talked about was, sure, there's this network effect that if you're on, if you're on Substack, like you could find other newsletters, but recommendations, the recommendation engine on Substack is ginormous. Think of it because it's this platform, it's an ecosystem. But if you get one or two, like if you write great stuff, which everyone in here will write great stuff, one or two people like recommending them your newsletter. So someone else on Substack recommending you. So whenever someone signs up for their newsletter, they get a thing of like, oh, you should sign up for these newsletters. Like I got over half of my subscribers from that, like almost 1,000 subscribers from that. So like the power that network effect on there is amazing. And there's the biggest one I have on there was like a music industry guy that I've known for like a decade, saw my newsletter one day when recommendations started out and then like, so I'm just waking up. And like have 12 new subscribers, not from posting anything on Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever like that, but just on his recommendation. And now I, I don't even know how many, I have a lot of sites recommending me now, which is amazing. So like that allowed me then to, cause I saw the traffic from that, the, the signups from that, and then looking at Twitter and all that, like it was like, what am I wasting my time here for? Like, it is an absolute, you know, fist fight to get 3 people from Twitter to come subscribe to my newsletter. When I wake up every day from Substack, like sometimes with a dozen new subscribers, but from a recommendation from an already established newsletter. So that's something to consider and like the network effect of it because this newsletter on Substack is not like sign up for my newsletter on MailChimp. But this Substack is like setting up an Etsy store where there's a whole bunch of other people selling stuff and the likelihood of people finding you from that network is, is a lot bigger.

And the social media piece is exactly— I, I left Twitter last year as well. I freaking hate Facebook. I've always hated Facebook. The The only reason I've ever been on Facebook is because I've been in the virtual world for the last 10 years. I have a Facebook group with a few hundred people in it. The algorithm is not at all friendly to Facebook groups any more than it is friendly to, you know, a business page or whatever. So one of the things, you know, with my established email list and my Facebook group, I'll be able to grease the wheels because, you know, a portion of those people will just come to Substack when I say, hey, this is where I'm going, and that'll at least, you know, get that front piece of it done. But I just— I don't— I really don't want to be on social media. I frickin' hate social media and it's getting worse all the time, you know, and the game is rigged and blah, blah, blah.

And so, yeah, to Scott's point of like, don't do things you don't want to do. And like, if we can build leverage, figure a way out to not have to I mean, a lot of the artists I talk to bang their head against the wall, like they are in pain from social media. Like, I do all this work, I do all this art, I make this great stuff, and it gets 4 likes. And this is the only way I can reach an audience. And it's like, no, no, there's other way. Like, so like even just the mental aspect, I, there, there is mental anguish to it of like, I'm creating all this stuff. For another platform in hopes that 8 people see it. Uh, and that's exhausting. So if you can write one newsletter a week and then wake up every day and have 10 new subscribers somehow, you know, even if it's 10 a week, not a day, that'd be amazing.

So I had played on Medium back before the pandemic, you know, and that was pretty cool because, you know, that, that same whole idea of it is, it's you know, it's designed for people to go and read and find writers and, you know, the interconnection and all of that. But of course it doesn't have the tools that Substack does. And I was so excited when Substack rolled out the DMs, whatever that was, 2 or 3, 4 months ago, whatever it was, because that to me was almost the clincher. Because I do, you know, I do subscribe to the idea of, as you know, as Laura Portier says, you know, the fastest Path to Cash's conversations and the DM feature being added to Substack was like, yeah baby, this is the clincher for centralizing because, you know, not only can you publish content and have people engage with that and put the links in like we've been talking about and the subscribe buttons and this and that and the CTAs, as Scott said, you can, can have the two-way conversation with them now.

So at any rate, this, this is great. There's like 3 quick things I wanna highlight based on these comments. The first is to underline what Seth just underlined around, like, you've got to decide the game that you want to play. And social media is designed to have you play their game. And you can't win a game you don't want to play. If you're trying, if you're using social media, because you think it's the only way that you can win and, you know, by building your business or building your audience or getting the connections or whatever, you're not going to ever feel like you win because deep down inside, you know, you're playing a game that you actually don't want to be in. The point that, um, Seth was making around, you know, the recommendations feature and, and so forth, that speaks to this idea of authority loops. And that's, you know, along with the network effect, that's a really important idea baked into Substack. When someone subscribes to your Substack, it will recommend to that subscriber other Substacks that you follow or subscribe to. You can list other Substacks as recommend other Substacks on your homepage of your Substack. And To Seth's point, you cannot— like, the, the value of the authority loops on Substack is, is huge. My Substack, I imported about 700 subscribers when I started my Substack in August. A month ago, I deleted 200 of them because they were not opening my emails. So I reduced it to 600. It took me— I've been, I've been building a list on Kajabi since Kajabi existed. So I don't even know how many years that is, but like over a decade to get 800 people to sign up for a newsletter. I deleted 200 or I'm sorry, to get 700 people. I deleted 200 of them, so I reduced my list to 600. In 30 days, I recaptured 100 subscribers who are opening my emails, who have— are joining my community, who are becoming subscribers and paid subscribers. And I have— there's Nick Peterson has featured my Substack in his newsletter and publications. Just yesterday, I don't know if anybody here knows who Howard Getson is, but he is probably— he's been— he's, he's had an AI company for 30 years. Nobody knows more about what's going on in AI than Howard Getson. And I just, I get his Friday newsletter where he recommends publications and There's Scott Perry, you know, holy cow, you know, and so you cannot foresee and, and I'm not advocating that you get on just in the hopes that someone more famous than you is gonna recommend you, but if you are publishing great content, uh, or good content, above average content, You are going to be, uh, you know, people that you cannot even anticipate are going to notice and are going to help promote that content on Substack. The last thing that I wanna say, and I'll get to you in a second, Cato, is like the DM feature was a really interesting one to me cuz like every time Substack rolls out a feature, the old guard goes berserk, you know, oh no. Video, now we're just another YouTube. Stop it, Substack. Um, and it, and, you know, to a certain extent, you, you know, as soon as video rolls out, lots of people start putting up crappy videos or using the video feature in a way that's really not in the spirit of anything. Um, but some people do a really good job with it. The DM feature was really interesting because people, like, I remember seeing I can't remember his name. There's one person I follow who's a comedian and he was like kind of ranting against the DM and showing all these stupid DMs he got on the first day of rollout. I recognized 5 people in that, that were DMing this poor guy. And I was like, yep. You know, the people that just, you know, get a new tool and they just gotta, they gotta use it and they use it in the most unethical, inconvenient, unhelpful way possible. But if you— anytime you employ a tool with, for, and on purpose, with intention, with integrity, you are leveraging the network effect and the authority loops that are inherent in the Substack platform. So, um, Jackie had a question that I'm going to get to, but first, um, Kato.

Well, and I just wanted to say too, one of the things that I've noticed about Substack is that it rewards solid writing and artistic assembly of what you're putting together, or creative assembly, as opposed to clickbait, which it seems to like In part just because I had, I mean, I literally got one post that I wrote that I got some real compliments on my writing. And then also I posted a haiku with a picture of a door that I wrote, and I took a picture of this door picture. I thought it'd be cool. Based on that, not only did I all of a sudden get this big pop in subscribers, I think, I think you helped because you restacked, but But I got a lot of likes and comments and things. Other people also restacked it. And then I had 2 people pledge money for if I ever get to the point where I have a paid thing. And I was just like noodling around. But I was really surprised at how little. But I posted something interesting and not meant to sell in a way, but just to tell a story. Or work on that. So anyway, that how it rewards creative and interesting work is really nice, at least right now about how it's working.

Yeah. We haven't even got to notes and chat and restacking, which is like also really important. I wanna stick a pin in that cuz Jackie asked a great question and, um, Seth, I'm gonna ask you to riff on it first, but I definitely have. A riff that will very quickly turn to a rant on this topic. So Jackie said, can you only post content about one topic or can you post content about different topics to see which resonate? I don't know if you have thoughts on that, Seth.

Oh my goodness. I show up as you, all the stuff that resonates and like that's going to be, I think the most appealing thing for anyone to read is if you're showing up as your complete itself. And me, when I first started out, yes, I was all email marketing because I was looking, I need more email marketing clients. But that, but now, I mean, and Scott Perry and Cato probably seen this over the last couple months, like, like I used to have a nice graphical header on my newsletters, but now I take pictures of myself in the woods, like gazing at the landscape., as my lead photo. Well, Seth, what, what the heck's that got to do with email marketing? Well, it's me, like, and, and, and I talk a bit about photography now too, because I've gotten a little bit more into that. And like, I sometimes I'll put pictures, uh, my pictures in, in the posts and which then gets conversations going from photographers who also want to get off social media and this and that. So now it's a little bit of like common ground. So I think as much as you can show up as yourself, is, is, would be huge. Like whatever topics that you want to, to cover, I don't think you need to go into it of like, I'm going to cover this one, like in my case, email marketing. I think whatever topics you put into it are what make you, you and not someone else that someone might want to subscribe to or write. I think whatever you can do to be uniquely you and write to that. Or however you want to convey that, like, I, I think you should absolutely lean into that.

Yeah.

There's a, and I know a little bit about where Jackie is kind of at. So it's, you know, it's a great question. Because I think it, there are probably people on here who have a Substack that are feeling like, oh, I should really stick to this one topic or, you know, I'm trying to get people to into this one offer. And so therefore I should be really, you know, I should dial in on my, you know, on my niche, my niche, my niche. There are basically two ways that you can go about building a business that you are proud of. What every digital marketer and online business guru will tell you is you have to find a niche, you have to have a high-ticket offer, or you have to have a Facebook group, or you have to, you have to, you have to. And I will say, as someone that has, has marketed power offers, if you need to make cash more quickly, power offers can be a really effective way to like to do that. It's also a way that you can quickly burn through an audience and any goodwill that you may or may not have. Earned with that audience, which means in the long term, it can be, um, not very helpful. The alternative to power offers is positioning. Who are you? What are you good at? Where do you belong? I post content that's helpful to coaches and freelancers and so forth. I post content that's helpful to people in the second half of life trying to figure out what they're going to be when they grow up after their tour of duty and career or child raising is done. I post content about Stoic philosophy, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching. And people tell me all the time, I don't know what you do. And I say, great, then it's probably not for you. And I But the people that, that do resonate with my content are always looking for more. And I get— I probably get emails on every single post. Um, and what I am positioning for is I am, again, if you wanna, if you wanna make money, be super tool-oriented, be super tactical, and be super strategic. If you want to not make money quickly, but, um, have fun being you and put out content that helps build a solid foundation for how you can help a broader audience, then post more from that kind of philosophy principles point of view. And so my posts largely are, here's what I believe, here's what I know to be true. Here's some ideas for how this might work for you. And when someone says, comes to me and says, can you help me figure out what I want to be after I retire? I say, yes. Can you help me figure out what to do with myself? Because I just exited, had a multimillion-dollar exit from my entrepreneurial enterprise? Yes, I can. When someone says, can you help me grow my coaching business? Yes, I can. Well, how can I— how can you do all that? Because I'm operating always from fundamental principles, philosophical and principle, value-based principles that have been time-tested, by, uh, you know, ancient philosophical and spiritual tradition and validated by scientific investigation and, and vetting. And so I don't have to be an expert in anything because the things that I'm talking about can apply to anybody that just wants to lead a more meaningful, fulfilling life that might be remembered for half a second after they get planted in the ground. So that was a much longer-winded, um, riff, but I'm saying exactly what Seth is saying. You know, the best way to succeed is you be you. Like, decide the game that you want to play and play that game, and reserve the right to change your mind if and when your experience, evidence, or whatever suggests, or your instincts tell you it's time to, to make a pivot or to reinvent, or whatever word you want to use. I'm not big on reinvention, but yeah, you should— you, anytime you spend trying to be something that you don't really want to be is profoundly wasted time that you can never get back. And, and don't ever do what the gurus tell you to do.

Or test briefly what the gurus and learn. I, you know, I've done a handful of that, learning, trying out this new tool and that tool. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's really— but then also find people that I mean, which is easy through Substack or through groups like this is, is you find people that you gravitate towards and then you, when they present ideas or people in the group, what are the chances that today somehow, you know, Cato's trampoline thing came out? Like, that's profound. That's like huge. And that just happened from this happens. So again, I, I think that's all created from Scott Perry created a place where people like this gather and say stuff like that. I'm afraid of spiders. Like, there's trust built, like, from, from, from the top down, from Scott's Facebook post to a Substack to here. Like, and that's not by accident. That's by Scott showing up fully as himself. And that's why we're all here.

And Hal, I saw your note that you have to get going. Yeah, you'll— I'll post to the subscriber community how to get to the replay. And Kat, you said you had a question related to this, so go ahead.

So I completely recognize the validity of the statement that you just made about, you know, if you want to genuinely be yourself and talk about philosophy and principles and all of that, you know, it's a longer game and it's not necessarily an immediate cash cash generator, and the strategies, tactics, da da da da, is the, you know, quicker path to cash. So I'm in the middle of those two things because I'm in a place where I need to quickly, you know, be generating some cash if I'm going to be able to play my long game. And my long game, you know, part of coming to Substack I recognize is my long game. So is it reasonable, specifically speaking within utilizing Substack, that, you know, as I said, I'll be repurposing a lot of content that I already have, which will be more the philosophy, the principles, the teaching, that kind of thing. And I'm leaning toward posting on Substack at least twice a week and probably 3 times because I, I'll be putting my energy all there. So if, if I did something like the, you know, the one big one each week is the philosophies, principles, you know, the long game, who I am, my vibe. One was very much more strategic action taking that's more designed, you know, to, to, to the path of generating cash more quickly. And then maybe a third piece that is kind of like Seth was saying, you know, just the vibe. This is who I am. This is me out on the trail with a dog. This is me out at the lake, this is me out at the river. And so it's kind of a hybrid between both. Yeah, just, just thoughts, just feedback, just what you got.

I think the biggest thing to that is you're gonna have to figure that out. Is, is, I don't think a panel of 10 people, or I'm not speaking to this panel, but like, is going to be like, yes, do that. I think you're gonna have to like put up one post, put up two, put up two for four months and see if what actually resonates with your audience, because your audience is totally different than my audience, totally different than Scott's audience. So I, you know, off the top of my head, I think like if you do, I'm, I would go, go against maybe like, here's this silo one, here's this style of post on a Tuesday, and here's I would put them all together in a way, like find a way to make them work somehow like that, because you never know which one people are going to see. You know what I mean? What person is going to land on. So if all of a sudden, and again, not to be super specific niche down, but like if they end up on your hyper-strategic one, that's not my vibe. But if, if each post is a landing page, each page is you know, here's me showing up fully as myself. That might be, that might lead to a subscriber or two. Yeah.

I want to clarify something I said that speaks to this, Kat. You know, when I, when I say things like don't do what the digital marketers tell you to do, I'm being intentionally provocative in part because I would, I would at least caution you to strongly consider before you do. What any digital marketer tells you to do, because what digital marketers are truly selling is some— I mean, if they have any integrity at all, and I think most do actually, but they are selling you something that worked for them and it worked for them in the past. And that's cool. Like, that's what most of us do. We help people solve a problem we first solve for ourselves. The problem with selling something that worked for you and worked in the past is not everybody else is you. And it's no longer the path— past. So, you know, I had a, a call with a woman recently that came in through the Purple Community that wanted to bounce some ideas off me. It was— were her exact words. And it was like— and what she wanted was for me to validate this idea that she had that she was going to do this high-ticket LinkedIn program. I've done high-ticket LinkedIn programs. I did them at the very beginning. And you know what? It worked because nobody else was doing it at that time. What has since happened is everybody has jumped on the LinkedIn direct message bandwagon, and most, almost 99% of them do it really badly, and nobody opens up their LinkedIn messages anymore, or they definitely don't respond to any, anybody that's not in their network or, or, you know, that clearly has something to sell them. You know, so my response was that that ship has sailed, like you missed it. You know, there are better ways. Not what she wanted to hear. So we're not working together, and that's fine. But it all— what I'm circling back to really is, you know, you have to define what works for you. Anything that I say, Seth says, anybody else says is not is not worth more than the evidence of your experience, which is why I'm a big advocate on, like, you know, you're going to put forth your assertion, you're going to test it with the smallest viable step that you can imagine, with the smallest viable audience that you can imagine, with the smallest viable offer that you can imagine, to test for resonance. To validate the idea. You know, are people even interested in this? And then you can test it for sustainability. Will they pay for it? And we can— I mean, what I know from having worked for years at the Akimbo workshops and from my own experience and from working with, at this point, hundreds if not thousands of clients is Most of the time we don't know what's gonna work. And, and it will often be the post that you're most embarrassed about pushing the publish button on that gets the biggest and most replies and the best replies and draws in the best people. So we're not always, it's, Like, I get the whole idea of set your goal and then reverse engineer a process that gets you there. Like, I get it. What happens, what we forget is that we can never, we never are going to know about all the unforeseen obstacles and opportunities that we are going to come across. And every obstacle is an opportunity in disguise, and every opportunity is an obstacle in disguise. So you have to be, you have to navigate, wayfind with that reserve clause. You know, when presented with information that I never could have anticipated, I reserve the right to change my mind, to change direction, to change path, to course correct, what have you. But you can't know any of that until you're actually doing something. So, you know, when in doubt, publish some stuff because the, the whole point of small steps is tight feedback loops. When you put something out there and it's ignored, you just got some really useful information. When you put something out there that you thought people were going to hate and people like it, you just got some really useful information. And you should be collecting that data, analyzing that data, and using it to strategize and execute your way forward into what it is that you are actually optimize it for to get closer to what you want to get.

First of all, thank you, Seth, for the statement that weaving, figuring out a way to weave them together, because as soon as you said it, I realized you're absolutely right. And, you know, and I know that's what Scott Perry does when he does 30-minute, like, you know, be a blessing marketing. He talks about philosophy and principles and then goes into, and if you want to do this, here are strategies, tools, tactics you can utilize for that. So that, you know, just really snapped that switch on. So thank you, Seth. And oh, nice big bumblebee came in the door.

At least it's not a spider.

Uh, no, it's a bumblebee. Um, and then thank you, Scott, because yes, just hit publish and do it. Absolutely. Which is where I'm going in the next few days. One thing I have, and it made me mindful of is I've the last 2 months, I've already been testing and validating in my existing email list and with my Facebook group. And I already know where I'm getting, I'm getting over 50% open rates in my, my current email list, which thing, you know, which, which topics, which, which, you know, which blends all of that. And I have a validated offer at this point because I've got, had a couple of takers. Just through my existing network. So I'm, you know, not that that's any kind of guarantee, but I've at least got a starting point of validation and, you know, some clarity around that. And so taking that path forward and bringing the blend. So thank you both.

Yeah, of course. I have to say, Mikey, I'm just— my heart is going out to you because I know now it's like after midnight there. And I just can't even imagine how you're hanging on. So I'm going to—

I'm sleeping in tomorrow.

I hope so. Is there any— do you have any other questions that are burning before we begin to wrap things up?

No, it's been really helpful. Thank you. It's definitely a few things to digest, and I'm sort of, yeah, very much really working out how I want to work. That's why I'm not jumping into anything at the moment yet to Yeah, as simple as possible that I can really just leverage what and how I want to show up. So it's been really good. Thank you.

Yeah, you're very welcome. Bri, you're making me nervous with your quietness over there. I'm going to invite you to, if there's any reflections or questions that you have.

Yes, my brain was exploding with ideas as you all were talking. I've been dragging my feet with putting out a workbook and I was building it in Canva, but I kept getting lost on where I was because it's not optimized for writing. And I had the idea to put it on Substack on the paid-for side. So that was an aha. And I guess my other questions, I was just writing down some More questions. Well, I think you all kind of answered it and I just answered it with the workbook. How do I decide what is paid versus not? I think that's kind of answered. How do I get new signups? I am having a little difficulty, but I've only been on what, like a couple of weeks. So, you know, and I already had an email list, but I need new people, so I'm a little stuck there. Um, if anyone has any thoughts, which you talked about, but additional thoughts.

Well, I, I definitely have additional thoughts, but I'm gonna kick it to Seth first.

Oh boy. Substack Notes. Here we go. Yeah.

Yeah. I was, I was hoping we were gonna get there real quick.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, from one social media thing into another, huh? But, uh, no, I think yes, there's similarities of Substack Notes to social media, but I think the biggest part of that is posting on social media is for the platforms because they love when we post because that's how they exist. Whereas when we do anything on Substack Notes, it's to our benefit because it can lead to subscribers, new subscribers. So really, like, there's no, like, I haven't seen any try, like, because it's based on an algorithm, like Substack Notes, if you go on there and post, like, hey, here's my new thing. Chances are like Substack Notes is not gonna like push that out to everybody because, ah, because, because there's a gajillion people on there posting stuff. So what I found most beneficial was just replying to other people's notes. And I know it's very growth hacky and LinkedIn hacky.

I get it.

Yeah.

But like finding people on Substack Notes that are doing good work. And like not going the lowest common denominator and being just like, I like that too. Like finding people that like you resonate with and you like their vibes and stuff and reply to them of like, I appreciate that or that thought or that. Go read some, or if you read someone's newsletter, leave a comment, not just on like great post, but like take a line from what they wrote and like this piece, this part really resonated with me. And like, again, that, again, that sounds really gross. Both hacky, but like, eh, but like, if you find something like that and, and bounce that back to the author, they're gonna appreciate that. And like, yes, that can lead to a subscriber that they could check you out. They could check out your newsletter and subscribe to that. Other people in the comments can see, like, if you add some insight to what they're, they're writing. My, I, I said recently, like, be the person that like people are excited about when you show up in someone's comments, in, in their comment section, or in, in the replies to someone's post on Substack Notes because of your insight or your humor or your observations, your wisdom. Like, be that person. And like, I've done that when Substack was doing office hours before, like when they started on Thursdays, they would do open office hours where people would just post questions to, to the people that worked at Substack. And I took that as, I'm gonna dive in and answer those questions. How do I do this thing? How do I do this thing? And I would go in there and answer like 5 or 6 of them. And then like an hour or 2 later, I like, my inbox would be like, free subscriber, free subscriber, free subscriber. I was like, okay. So I kept doing that and not by, well, you should check out my, my newsletter. Because I write about— no, I answered it right there. I was helpful right there. And whatever you're writing in or however, what field you're talking about, like, just be helpful right there. Scott Perry, that's totally your thing. Be a blessing. Like, be a blessing right there. Show up in someone's comments, be helpful. Chances are they might check you out.

Yeah, that's really, really helpful. Sorry.

Oh no, no, it is really helpful. I just, you know, I was actually just so funny that you mentioned Growth Hacker because, um, I was engaged in a conversation with someone that, um, was fanboying all over Ryan Holiday and, and saying that he's unfairly picked upon, uh, you know, and it's like, well, he did write a book about how to use clickbait to get people to follow a misogynist. Like, there's some elements of, of his past that have not been spoken to that are very un-Stoic. Um, and the Growth Hacker thing is like, that's one of the things, like, I imagine everybody in this room has like, you know, if you attended the, the Be a Blessing marketing workshop, it was because that idea resonates over what we see most people doing in terms of clickbait. I mean, LinkedIn, that's one of the reasons I hate click— LinkedIn is everybody's figured out that if I optimize those first two lines, I can get them to click to read more. Um, but growth hack, growth is a naturally occurring side effect of being generous and delivering real value. So don't look at Notes as Substack's version of social media. Look at Notes as another place where you can engage in authentic connection and deliver generous value or express honest gratitude. For someone else's insight. And if you occasionally, you know, push out that you just, you know, release something that you're proud of. The other thing that I'm finding, and Seth, you can speak to this too, is, um, you know, sometimes instead of creating a new note, just like restacking something that has since got, you know, some attention from other people is a great way to put that, you know, put that into the feed of people that would actually benefit from colliding with that content. I do want to quickly just say one thing about paid versus free, because it's been something that I've really been thinking a lot about because, you know, my newsletter was delivering a ton of free value every 3 days a week. You got something of You got my best effort at delivering value every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So when I moved to Substack and, and people just without even really thinking about what, what's gonna be gated and what's not gonna be gated, and people started subscribing with a paid subscription, I was like, holy cow, I could actually, like, you know, in my first month I was like, I just made enough to take my wife out to dinner. This is awesome. Um, and then as I began to really dial in, like, what does, what does my community of readers mean to me? Like, what is free? What, what, what's the benefit of becoming a paid member? I'm actually optimizing for something that Substack's not really built for. I'm optimizing for this. I want in-person virtual, soon to be in person, in person community dialogue, conversation. Um, you know, the people that are really killing it on Substack are doing that in their paid community chats, you know, and I get that, like, that's a whole nother way that you can go. Um, but being really strategic about like If so, initially everything was free when I moved to Substack, and then I put the Wednesday— gated the Wednesday contact. I saw and, and made that longer form. I immediately saw an increase in the number of paid subscribers. And, you know, whether you all have noticed or not, the Friday content is now, um, gated. So everyone gets a preview on Wednesday and Friday, but the only free content anymore is is on Monday. Monday's still some of my very best insights and inspiration. But, and if that's enough, cool. But I am, you know, I'm getting ready to, you know, just because some people aren't familiar with my story, my wife and I, my whole online business is built around being a grandpa. We provide full-time daycare for my grandson, uh, 10 months of the year. We're getting ready to have our summer vacation. My daughter-in-law is a school teacher. She has Jasper for the next 2 months. There you're— for those of you that are in the paid community, you're going to see a huge uptick in the value that you're getting because for the next 2, right, we, we talk about natural deadlines, you know, what's, what's the because? Because I got time on my hands. And I better— since I don't get to take 2 naps a day with my grandson, I have to figure out what I'm going to do with this time that will not get me into more trouble. And so what I will do is I will do more, offer more to the people that pay me for the privilege of spending some time with me. And, you know, you, you have to— I think with the free and paid, it— Bri, be really strategic about it. Like, let people know. I'm big on— you'll see this in some of my posts— like, most of you won't pay for this, and that's okay. Take what you need, leave the rest, right? But for those of you that want to take a bolder step into possibility, for, you know, if you give up one cup of coffee from your coffee shop, a week, you can have a whole month of something that's going to provide a lot more energy. And, uh, it's not going to be a diuretic. There you go. So, um, you know, there's, there's just really strategic ways to think about gating your content, like what content gets gated, really strategic ways to think about DMs, really strategic way to think about notes, really strategic way to think about chats. Really strategic is about how you can build community outside the platform that are really worth thinking about. Because again, speaking, circling back to what I was saying to Jackie's question, it's how are you positioning yourself? If you want to have meaningful chats with people, with authors on Substack, I'm not your person. If you want to sit in a room and jam on some big ideas that might give you one insight that changes everything in your life or business, then I might be your, you know, I might be that person for you. So just be really thoughtful and deliberate about it. Test, try, when in doubt, do. Pay attention to what happens and then iterate and improve from there.

Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of different ways to go with paid and I've seen so many people like they'll paywall this or paywall that or they'll try this and It's almost too like a person's audience. Every person's audience is different and what they might pay for and what they won't pay for. So, uh, me, I'm still somewhat figuring that out and I'm taking Scott's route of doing more of kind of these for my audience, for subscribers. I haven't gone full only paid, but I'll send the invite link to paid subscribers first and I'll keep the room small. So then a couple days later when I send the invite link out to the free subscribers, well, there's only a few spots left kind of a thing. Like there's a lot of neat fun ways to play with it. I've seen people do the paid to have virtual coworking sessions. So you just sit around, not sit around, but like for an hour, you know, you get to cowork virtually with people because you're a paid subscriber. There's a lot of neat different ways you can do that. But I think the, the community aspect of it is like, really fun for me. 'Cause like, I didn't wanna write for, when I first started paywalling Post, it was like, I don't wanna write for 4 people. This, this is no fun. Like, I, I realized that those people invested and stuff, but like, I was like, I wanna write for everybody. And so I found a way to kind of still keep writing for everybody. So something to think about.

Yeah, it is really worth thinking about. I'm, I'm I'm going all in on building the community of paid subscribers because it's a way that I can— my solvable problem is how can I, how do I fund a year of traveling with my wife when my grandson goes to school in a couple years? It'll actually be 2 years to the day from now. And recurring, you know, monthly recurring income from Substack is a way that I can You know, is a way that I can do that. Um, so I, I feel like we have to show Mikey some mercy and just go ahead and wrap this thing up so she can go to bed. Otherwise she's just going to keep hanging out and I, I don't want to take responsibility for her.

You guys could go.

I might, I might head off now. So yeah, don't, don't get off because of me. Yeah, yeah.

Um, I will post the replay on YouTube and share it um, in a— probably in a note, uh, to all the subscribers. Um, Seth, if you want, uh, to the raw footage for your own evil purposes, you're welcome to it. Um, and then, you know, we can continue conversation and question in chat notes and so forth. But, um, I hope this, you know, I hope this was helpful. And just a humongous thank you to, uh, Seth for lending his time and expertise when he could be out recording creeks gurgling and posting weather reports on LinkedIn. Any, any final words before we head out, Seth?

No, I really just, just try stuff. Just try, throw stuff against— not throw stuff against the wall, but like, you got to test it for yourself. See what resonates with your audience and just keep at it. And the beautiful part is it's an email list. When you send stuff, people can see it. Unlike social media and, you know, living the dream of trying to be off of social media. And that's— that this is part of the journey. Substack's been part of the journey, so they can do some neat stuff.

Well said. All right, everyone, enjoy. Uh, for those of us in the US, enjoy your holiday weekend. And if you're not in the US, congratulations, you're not in the US. It's a mess over here. And, uh, we'll see— we'll see you next time. Take care, everyone.

Bye.

Thank you.

See ya.