Nuanced. - 97. Linda Lebrun: How to Succeed on Substack with Substack Employee

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Linda Lebrun, who works on writer partnerships at Substack, was interviewed by Aaron on the Bigger Than Me Podcast. During the interview, Aaron asked Linda about the founding of Substack, the services it provides, its uniqueness, and how people can get started.Linda shared her personal story and explained how Substack came into being. She emphasized the significance of using our voices and how Substack can help us increase our self-assurance and empower ourselves. Additionally, Linda offered valuable advice for individuals who aspire to initiate their own businesses and leverage their voice to make a positive impact in the world.Linda Lebrun is on the Writer Partnerships team at Substack, where she helps writers succeed and thrive. Her job is to cultivate Substack's relationships with experts who cover finance, investing, and economics topics. She helps them launch on Substack and develop successful publications so they can attain independence on their own terms. Prior to working at Substack, she worked in the investment industry, in traditional roles in portfolio management and the brokerage business.Substack is a platform that allows writers to create and publish newsletters, build an audience, and monetize their content through paid subscriptions. With a user-friendly interface, writers can distribute their content easily and use tools to grow their audience. The platform's subscription-based model allows writers to earn money directly from readers, while Substack takes a 10% fee on all subscription revenue. Substack also provides a range of services, including legal and financial advice, editorial support, and promotional tools. Overall, Substack provides a flexible and powerful platform for writers to build their brand, grow their audience, and monetize their content.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Linda, it is such a pleasure to sit down with you today. I am fascinated by the work that you're doing, the support you have for entrepreneurs. Would you mind giving a brief introduction of yourself, your name, and a little bit about the work you're doing? Yeah, absolutely, Aaron. And thank you so much for inviting me. It's so wonderful to be here and be able to talk to you. So I work at a substack. My name is Linda LeBron, and I work on the writer partnerships team. and we are the group that is writer-facing that talks to the writers who come on Substack. And part of my job is to go out and talk to anybody who might be a writer or creator in the whole internet ecosystem and tell them about Substack.

Another part of my job is writer development to cultivate and help people who are trying to succeed on the platform. And to describe Substack in a sentence or two, because people might not know what it is, substack is a platform that tries to be the full stack for writers and creators globally. Full stack just means we are one place where you can write, publish, you can have an archive of your posts online that's like a blog, you are sending it out an email to your subscribers, and maybe the most important thing, you can turn on payments. You can turn on subscription payments so that you can be supported for your writing. Part of our philosophy of substack is that good writing is worth paying for.

So it's anybody can go on substack and set up their own publication. It's very much self-serve and easy, super easy to use. But myself and my few colleagues who are the writer partnerships team, we try to just evangelize the message and encourage people to come check it out and try it and try to give people best practices to be as successful as possible when they use it. I think that this is really important because in a time where the idea of having your voice, freedom of expression is a topic, I think this leads into the idea that people can share their voice, they can have an interest in something and begin to share their opinions, cultivate ideas, share their best practices with other people. And that can be inspiring for people. I know individuals who work in government, they often feel stifle, like their creativity might be somewhat limited. And then they're able to develop a passion.

I have one person I'm close with who ended up starting a page on whiskey, and he makes whiskey videos on his favorite thing. And within his circle, within his circle of friends, they might not understand his interest. But as he goes out to a broader audience, there are whiskey connoisseurs. He is able to build relationships with people who are interested in the same topic he is. And then they're able to have more conversations that he's able to develop a following based on that. And I think that that's really valuable. Would you be able to start maybe with the origins of Substack? It's a relatively new organization.

Can you talk about how it came about? Yeah. And absolutely, I'd love to give a little bit about the, the history because I think it's a great origin story too. And what you mentioned about how it gives anybody a platform to write and create for the world, that has been what we have seen with Substac. If somebody can go and please a gatekeeper and have a perch at some large organization, they might not really need Substack, but we don't have to please a gatekeeper anymore. You can come and make what you want to make and do what you want to do. And it's the

internet, truly, that makes that possible. But Substack tries to be a platform to as simplified and and make it more approachable for more people. So the origin story of Substack was that six years ago, the three founders had, they had met at another tech company, and they had an idea that there was a problem in the media ecosystem. So the first idea was about journalists. And changes in media, the disruption of advertising everything from Craigslist to the internet, it was just damaging newspapers and the media so much that the existing model, were in breakdown, and as a result, journalists were getting laid off, and there was a lot of

economic instability for journalists and writers, book authors too. So they said, there's got to be a way for people to get paid consistently. There was a wonderful essay from 20 years ago by Kevin Kelly that talks about the concept of 1,000 true fans. This will be really familiar to a lot of people who create online. If you have 1,000 people who are willing to pay you $10 a month, that is a living. So how do you set that up? But at the time, you know, I have been, enjoying blogs and reading on the internet for a long long time. And for a long time, the only way to gather money for readers was something like a PayPal tip jar or you could try to have advertising, but advertising models don't work so great for one person who may not want to delve

into the technical aspects. What about somebody who just wants to write? What about somebody who just wants to charge subscription and doesn't want to learn to build a website? So they said, okay, we're going to try making something that makes it really, really easy to do that. And I'll tell you, I think they went up and down Sand Hill Road where everybody goes to raise BC money, and I think they got a lot of nose. I think they had a lot of people. You can imagine, are you nuts? Content on the internet is commoditized. You don't have to pay for anything on the internet. Forget it. Nobody is going to pay. But happily, they were able to find a handful of investors that did believe in this idea and that it would create something and be embraced my people.

And then just to fast forward to the end of the story. So I was mentioning that last week I was in San Francisco for a gathering of my colleagues and myself. I live in Toronto, but the headquarters of Substack is in San Francisco. And while I was there, we had a little champagne toast because we have just reached two million paid subscriptions on Substack for all of the publications put together. So it seems like it does work. And that sounds like I'm saying, okay, victory, you know, mission accomplished yet.

We're still very early days. Most people listening to this podcast, it'll probably be the first time they heard the name Substack. They may know it because you were on Substack. They may receive emails from you, but not even realize, no or care about the platform. So we still do have a, I think it's a first or second inning. We have a lot in front of us. But I think that the original concept the founders has, has been worn out just by writers

and creators coming and saying, yeah, I think this is going to work for me and giving it a try. One piece of a great company is that the founders, it's important that they have something that makes team members like yourself excited about the vision. That's where I think companies can get into trouble is when they don't have that person kind of leading the way. And you think of Apple with Steve Jobs, Tim Cook has done a really good job of stepping in and kind of keeping that life, keeping that excitement, keeping the team excited. Can you talk about the founders? of substack? What is your perspective? How do we think about the leaders in this organization? I think, you know, the story of the founders of a substack, I would love to hear it told in detail

someday because these are three men whose personalities could not be more different, but they are, I think they all do, are thoughtful in the way that you describe about being a leader is more than being a manager. You have to motivate people, particularly in a startup, because in a startup, up, there is a, you are, pivoting is such a cliche word, but you really are, every three months it might be like, okay, we were trying that thing and we're not satisfied with how it works, so we're going to go in this other direction. And you can't be too attached or committed or egoic about, well, that was my idea. I want to stick with that. You have to be very evidence-driven and data-driven, and then you have to motivate people. So I would say of the leaders of Substack,

Chris Best, anybody who reads an interview with him or sees what he's written will see. He's a highly evidence and data-driven person. He is constantly asking, why do we believe this? Why do we think this? And if I just make some, I would never simply make some random assertion to him just based on instinct unless I had something to back it up, some kind of way that I could explain. Here's why I think this. And then of the other leaders, so J. Raj Sethi is our chief technology officer. And he is, you have to have, I think, in every startup, somebody who has a real love and embrace for the technical side. He, you know, when you look at, if you were to look at the code base of a substack, it's his fingerprints all over it to this day. And I think he is very motivating

within the culture of engineers. And that has been his forte coming along the path. And then last is Hamish McKenzie. And a lot of people listening to this, might know Hamish McKenzie best of the three leaders of the company because he's on Twitter. He's very much interacting with the public. The three founders of substack, the first two I mentioned, technologists, but Hamish had the background of a journalist. And it's not very common for someone to go from journalism to being a startup founder. It gives a completely different perspective than somebody who came from, say, digital marketing, the advertising world, just much more grounded in an ethos of responsibility to the public, all these highfalutin ideas. But he really does buy into

them. And his title is chief writing officer. So he doesn't have a conventional corporate title. Well, it really was given that title both because that's what he does. He writes and writes about what we're trying to do. But it's also to say that we think writing is so centrally important to the organization that we're willing to have a chief writing officer. So if they ever listen to this, they'll probably be blushing with me describing them in these glowing terms. But I think it gives some sense that is not always examined of who are the people who may not be so public who are behind the way that the business unfolds. One piece that's really unique to Substack, I find, is this idea of freedom of expression. Can you talk about how that fits in?

Obviously, with many social media organizations right now, there's this conversation around controlling what is able to be said, pushing up an algorithm, pushing down an algorithm, whether or not certain types of speech are allowed, but maybe desensated, like, reduced on the algorithm. Sure. This seems like something Substack has kind of taken a different stance on. And I remember an interview with one of them where they kind of talk about how this is an important piece for substack. Would you mind explaining the ideology, the perspective the substack has on this? We view what we are as so separate and distinct from social media. The experience that you get on social media is you are being dumped an algorithmically driven stream. And you might not know why you're seeing it.

You might not want to see it. And that necessitates a certain leash to be put on it. where the social media platforms had had a certain moderation stance, what they have to, because they want to make sure that if you see something offensive, unfavorable, you might have never asked to see it in the first place. The flip side of that is, I might follow you on Twitter, you may follow me on Facebook, and we might never see whatever each other posts because, again, it's some mysterious algo that's deciding what gets stuffed, what gets elevated.

And it's, it clearly, it serves advertisers, which is the business model of those platforms. So nobody would disagree. That's what it is serving. It's not serving my ability to get my podcast seen by you or your ability to get your essay seen by me. So how did we do it differently? On substack, whatever, if somebody opts in to read your publication, they are via email, going to see everything or via the app, going to see everything that you produce.

There's not something so. Well, he can see that one and not this one. they're going to see everything. And again, the flip side of that is they will only see it if they have opted in. So this is very remote from the traditional way that it's been done, which is, well, I'll opt in to see one thing. And then all of a sudden, you might like, you might like, there are 10 other things competing for my attention. We, and again, going back to the attentions of the founders, they wanted to get away from the constant attention game that everybody feel. It's very entertaining for people doing writing. Talk to anybody who's a creator on YouTube. They're kind of by trying to chase this algo. So because we have facilitated that one-to-one relationship that is, okay, if you provide your email address, I will provide you with what I'm writing, then we don't have to have this excessive, heavy-handed content moderation where we decide who sees what when. To be sure, we still do have a content policy. You know, harassment is not allowed on substack plagiarism is not allowed. There's lots that's not allowed. It's just that we

don't moderate content based on us making a decision about what's correct or incorrect the way that social media platforms will. And it's really, it's the structure of substack itself, as well as the principles of the founder that determines that. I think that that's really important because in this time, as I said, in Canada, we're having conversations about new bills coming in, Bill C-11, Bill C-18, about how we're communicating about what's fair and what's not fair. And I think when you see an organization founded on certain principles, it can give you hope. for the future when you hear people saying that these are values that we're not going to kind of be flexible on. It gives you more confidence and it gives you a reason to not only maybe

use the platform, but to be proud to be a user of it. Good. I'm really glad you feel that way because I think that we want people to feel pride and that they're glad to be on Substack. I can remember when I, I've been working at Substack for two years and I remember when I started, I would see comments saying, oh, eventually Substack will de-platform people. Eventually, they'll ban this or that person. It takes years of proving that you won't before people will believe and say, okay, because people have been disappointed by tech companies before. So I think we do have to keep proving it. And you know what? The creators and writers will discipline us and the market will discipline us because people have lots of options. Do you have any concerns about audience

capture? Is this a topic that goes into it? There's a lingering fear that people have that you develop an audience, maybe you have some controversial ideas, maybe you have some wrong ideas, and you build up an audience of people willing to subscribe to those ideas, and then you feed them the things that they want to hear, and you lose yourself. And that's a constant concern for me, is I never want to be looking for, I see, oh, this video did well, so I'm going to go find people who say the exact same thing, so I can keep getting videos that do well. You want to make sure that you're doing it for your passion on the topic and that you're flexible on your ideas. Do you have any concerns or is this a topic that you guys kind of go through about audience

capture? It's so interesting, Aaron, how you mention how you're conscious that it could have an effect on you. And from what I have observed with the writers and creators that I've been lucky to interact with and work with is it's when people are conscious that they're able to mitigate against it. It's when you are chasing an algorithm that you get skewed off into a separate direction of, oh, that worked, so I'll just do more of that. And I have, you know, heard stories of somebody will be a, I'm picking on YouTube again. I mean, they can take it. They're big enough. But you'll be, if you're on YouTube and what you're doing is really working well and you're a big star, and then sometimes people experience creative growth. And they say, oh, I'm not that

interested in doing that content anymore. My life has changed. I want to do something a little bit different. YouTube doesn't like that. The elbow is going to punish you. And suddenly you'll feel like, oh, no, I have to keep, I keep, despite being burnt out, I have to keep doing the same thing. So I think the, and truly this audience capture issue, I mean, it probably existed in AM talk radio in the 1980s and you could go as far back as people trying to build an audience. There's probably some opera singer in the 19th century who was like, I don't want to do Verity anymore. That's what they keep coming for. The issue is, do you let the audience control you, or do you as a creator, stay in control? What I would offer, what I would argue is that if you have

the audience is paying you directly, this does provide you with more control as a writer, as a creator, as a podcaster, because you call the shots and you can decide and you can have an engaged group that will come along with you and you can invite them, hey, if I'm going to slightly change what I'm doing, or if I'm going to do more of this content that might not be as sexy but is important for me, this advocacy content, they may be more likely to come along with you. Whereas if an algorithm is deciding who sees what, well, then you're just going to get buried the minute you change in any way. So I'm definitely, I'm not being dismissive of the concern. The concern affects everybody who creates anything for a broader audience, but I would, I guess

I would invite podcasters and writers to not only be cognizant that it can happen, but to think about how maybe being supported directly by the audience might be a way to not fall into the trap of having a sort of an algorithm. At least you are writing and creating for people rather than for some lines of code somewhere. I couldn't agree more. How did you get started in this? It's a big risk personally to go with a startup. You can go for a more traditional position that guarantees your income that you know where it's going to be in 10 years. You can try and take more of the safe row. How did you get started with Substack? So, and you know what? I've never told this story on a podcast before, but when I first started at Substack, it was March 2021.

And I remember I was chatting with a friend, and the friend said, you know, Twitter just bought a newsletter platform called Review. And doesn't substack get a lot of signups from people posting on Twitter? Aren't you worried that now review will just take that over? And I was sort of like, I didn't know. I didn't know if it would be fine. So the backstory of my career was, I was mid-care career change because I had always been in the investment business. I'd worked on Bay Street. I'd worked in portfolio management.

I was a CFA charter holder that is a credential that you would know. For the people listening, that's a credential that you get when you work in the investment business and you analyze stocks and be in capital markets. So that was my world. And I had the life-free evaluation experience in the pandemic that I think a lot of middle-aged people have. I'm a bit burnt out on what I'm doing. And I think I might like to try something different. And, you know, if you're not enjoying what you're doing, give the seat to somebody else who is enthused about it. And at the same time, I learned about the existence of Substack and thought, gosh, this might be a high potential thing because there have always been a lot of people writing and creating on the internet and they have not had good models, good economic models for them to turn it into living. You know, again, the Thousand True Fans idea and might that work. So that was

how one thing led to another, and I reached out to Hamish McKenzie, who of the three founders that I mentioned is the most public-facing one. And it has really been, you know, I recommend to anybody who is looking for a change if you get into something in the tech industry. The cliches about the tech industry are they skew young, you know, they're very online, they have their own slang, they have their own ways to doing things. But when you jump into something that's very different from the outside, it really does, it expands your horizons and it forces you to learn. That sounds kind of sardonic, but it authentically, in a good way, says, okay, you can't just do things the way you've always done them. You are going to learn something new every day now.

So, you know, to make a long story short, that was how it happened. And for anybody who's listening who kind of feels like, oh, no, I'm over 40, I can't change. It's a risk. And, you know, things sometimes don't work out. But if they do work out, it can be worth making the job. I really think that that's important for people to hear because you get into a lane and then it starts to feel comfortable. And I think that that can be really dangerous for people. The question shouldn't be like whether or not you're comfortable or not. It should be, is this fulfilling? Is this meaningful?

Am I living up to my potential? And I often feel like we stop telling people to live up to their potential when they turn 20, when they turn 25. All of a sudden, you are where you are. And I think that that's an error. I think you can be great at many different things. and you can develop yourself over time, and that's enriching for other people to see. It's enriching for yourself, and it can play a huge role in the development of a healthy society. What do you write about?

What are some of the topics you cover if people are interested in connecting with you? Yeah. So I have a few substacks. So you can imagine. I think that if you work for a company that has a product that is for the public, you better use it yourself. It's going to let you know how to do it better. It's going to help you identify some bugs. and most important of all, you will have empathy for the people who are using it.

So we have empathy for the writers by doing a substack. So I have one called FAQ.substack.com where, I mean, it's rather dry. It's instructions on how to do for different things using substack. But what I often will say, okay, there's a question that I've gotten from writers a bunch of times. And we have a support site. We have it's support.substack.com. Recommend everybody, bookmark that. It really has all the answers.

But occasionally somebody will have a question about some niche thing. or it'll be a question specifically for writers of investing finance and business substacks, which is a lot of what I deal with because of my background. And so I'll write something on FAQ.substack.com. And then there's another substack called invest.substack.com. And it's a few of us at substack that contribute to that one. And we have published their interviews with substack writers. We want to do more of that.

I mean, it's just a matter of only so many hours in the day. I love these interviews with writers and with creators and with podcasters. it's the best thing because, you know, it's somebody who has walked the path and done it and grow in an audience. They could always give the best, best advice. So I'll ask, I'll recommend people check out one more. So this is not mine. This is the broader substack publication. But if they go to on n.substack.com, that is the sort of our big list. And that has a lot of writer interviews. It also has how-toes on a substack. But that's a really good one. If people are just like thinking about putting a toe into this and want to learn a bit.

more before they make the plunge. Those are a few good things. When it comes to my own writing, there's always a lot of writing at work, particularly if you are remote. If you're remote, you're on Slack all the time trying to make the case for things you want to happen, or you're trying to promote, hey, this is a project I'd like to do, who wants to be on side. So being able to convince with words, I think, and influence with words becomes like a really important career skill, the longer you go on. I'm interested your background is in investing. It seems like we've had a major shift in our culture around investing with apps like Quest

Trade, Wealth Simple, it seems particularly with the pandemic, it seems like there has been a reinvigoration of people being willing to enter markets and to have a certain level of confidence that this is a worthwhile investment. I think of individuals who kind of dropped out, we have like I think there's an explained video on Netflix, it talks about the middle class dropping out of the stock market. And now we're starting to see a change. Is that something you're seeing? What are your thoughts on where we're seeing investing going? I think that people want to, particularly younger people, so the millennial age group and the youngest millennials are 40 now, they have, I'm just going to speak

in vast generalizations, but in general, they have a more healthy skepticism of elites that want to tell them, or somebody who is sitting in a wood-paneled office wearing a three-piece suit saying, I know it's best. They're skeptical. They know that person is being paid to do a rule. They're thinking, what are the fees? They're thinking, are you behaving as a fiduciary with my best interest at heart? Or are you really just a salesperson? So I think that that skepticism helps then, because then, thanks to the internet, they can go out and do research on their own, say what, you know, who are some people who are giving advice who I think maybe I should follow them and they're worth paying attention to and just test things against their own knowledge, get more knowledge, and do their, in some cases, do their own. Now, when I say that, it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody should go out and start picking stocks for themselves, but some of the platforms you mentioned, like, well, simple, you can go on and you can say what your risk tolerances, what your ages, and they will give you an automated portfolio.

that is just as good as what you would 15 years ago be paying an individual quite a lot more money for, and they would be constructing it mechanically anyway. So I think the internet providing people with tools has created, it has reduced the amount of fear that people have of having a more DIY approach. And even if somebody does have somebody who is, you know, an advisor who is handholding them, there's still a sense of being proactive. But I want to know what's going on. So I think those have been some changes that have disrupted the industry in a positive way for the individual. And, you know, there are a lot of, how to put this politely, there might be a lot of rules that they weren't adding a ton of value and they were more just taking a cut. And

those roles have started to go by the wayside because automation and the internet means that they're not as relevance as they used to be. It's positive development. I'm curious as to your thoughts on whether or not we're starting to understand that money is also a form of voting. And I see my generation really struggle with this idea that going into a ballot and putting in your vote matters. But investing is one of the best ways, A, to try and have passive income, but B, also to make your viewpoints known whether you have concerns about climate, whether you have concerns about social equality. It's a way of getting your voice out there and taking a stance on supporting company A versus company B. What are your

thoughts on that? I truly think the best thing about the environment, social governance movement to try to have more pressure on both the investing industry specifically and corporate life in general to be more ethical and to adhere to a set of principles because that's what the people demand. The best thing about that is simply making the corporations behave better. And it's not to say everybody is behaving perfectly, ethically all the time, but shining a light, the same kind of light that investigative journalism shines on them, then shining the light on, well, if you are guilty of corporate misdeeds, or if you don't treat your employees well, there is going to be a price in terms of it could be your stock price or it could be in public perception

of you. So I think that it's a positive. We could, it's a whole separate discussion about what those ethical standards of what those, or what those ESG standards ought to be. And that is probably a discussion worth having because I don't think anybody, like, let's start with what we can all agree on. I don't think anybody would say there should be no standards whatsoever. I think people feel like, no, just like if I associate with someone in business, I want them to be of a decent character and reliable. If I invest my money in something, I want it to adhere to the same principle.

So I think it's a worthwhile and valid conversation. but I think there's, there has been a drive to, okay, somebody's going to set up one set of principles and that's going to be our ESG standards forever. And I don't think any one body has succeeded in doing that. And I think it will be, that's my little pessimistic comment. It will be a big challenge because if you have 10 people in a room, they're going to have 10 different ideas about what that ethical standard should be or should not be. What do you think about that? What do you think about this idea of ESG standards and where we are with it? it's really dangerous. I often talk about the idea of having like a leaf on your product

and feeling like you're a good person because there's a leaf on your product. It actually doesn't result in any better outcomes in results for the environment. And I think we can get lost in wanting our feelings justified and feeling like we're making a difference justified without any actual results. But I do think you can see certain companies, Apple being one of them, that tries to hold to certain standards, that tries to keep your information private and that can give you hope and they're not perfect. You can certainly look at the heavy metals they use in their phones and be frustrated with that, but at least they're trying to take steps. And then you can look at other companies and go, they're not

taking any steps at all. And I think as informed kind of consumer retail investors, you can start to take steps to vote. I think when you see GameStop was a big statement to me of people saying there are people, the elites are making a decision that I might not agree with and I'm going to vote against them and it was just a sign that the times are changing and there is opportunities for people's voice to be heard whether or not you like I watched the Netflix documentary on and thought it was very interesting the players within that might not have been as ethical as you would have liked the so-called heroes of that story might not have been as good as you want but it showed that an individual's voice can matter voting with your money and it

can have an impact on the markets and I think that that provides a catalyst of hope a catalyst of like an idea that you could be involved in your voice should matter and does matter in a democratic society. Yeah, what you said about the leaf and the box ticking and sort of the virtue signaling approach, to me, the iconic example of that is when you have the breast cancer pig ribbons and I saw a cement truck that was painted pink for breast cancer. And I was sort of like, what does one thing really have to do? They might have donated a lot of money, but it starts to make you think, are people just doing it for the brand and to look good or what is deeper underneath? And again, I think the consumer, especially the millennial

consumer, is candy, is suspicious about this, and we'll say, okay, approve it to me. You can't just throw on a ribbon or throw on something on the box. You have to show me that you actually have some deeper commitment. Going back to Substack, how do they differentiate themselves from other organizations that are doing something similar? You mentioned the one the Twitter bought out. How does Substack differentiate itself? I think that what we try to be, we're not all things to all people. We're not, for example, an email marketing platform. I'll start with what we're not, because sometimes that does help you focus a bit. So I had somebody who was a founder at a tech company, and they were trying to

build up a mailing list. They said, is Substack appropriate for this? I said, no, it really isn't. There are some other solutions, something like a constant contact or a mail or light or something like that that is designed for email marketing. What substack is designed to do, what we're completely 100% laser focused on, is to be a way for writers, podcasters, creators to put their message out into the world, to put their creations out into the world, and to be able to make a living from it, to be able to achieve financial independence and be able to have it be very easy so that they can just focus on writing, podcasting, or whatever they wish to do, and do not have to have the hassle of the

technical part, don't have to figure out, you know, plugins, integrations and all this. So if we, I think that what we are trying to do is saying we help you to grow because we are becoming more and more truly a network and people will, if you're on substack, they'll find you through search engine optimization because we do all that on the back end for you. you. They'll find you through platform features, like recommendations, leaderboards. So if we can help people grow, if we can help them make money and earn, and if we can be a place where it's very easy for them to do all this, they don't have to be sitting there with HTML for dummies open in their lap. I think that's where we're trying to be the best and do something that's different and special. Are we ever going to compete with MailChimp that really just wants to be what Banana Republic uses to send you emails about a sweater sale, though? And they're really good at that. I think be very hard for anybody to come in and out MailChimp, MailChimp. But I know for sure that there are people right now who are book authors and they're using MailChimp to send out their updates to their fans talking about what book I have coming out and having, you know, conversational chaty

emails and they're on Mailchip and there are way too many bells and whistles and it's too expensive. I mean, I would say to anybody like that, substack is probably going to be a better fit for you. So that gives you a sense of what we do and don't try to do in the market. You are not going to see Substack want to be the platform that Coca-Cola is using for its next email campaign. What you do see Substack doing and what we're very gratified is happening is, you know, for wonderful writers and creators that, you know, Margaret Atwood and Karim Abdul-Jabbar and Roxanne Gay are coming on Sub-Stack and using it as their place, their home on the internet.

I think you have a lot of giant names on Substack. And one area that I think is really interesting is having breaking news really. important news breaking through your platform, one of which is Matt Taibi and the Twitter files. Would you be able to talk about some of those larger names and the impact they're having not only getting maybe their message out, but being able to actually inform a society on what's going on and critical issues going on in our democracies? And it's again, it's so fantastic to see people be able to create news businesses on substack because this is something that there was skepticism about. The substack is probably not going to be,

like if you picture the Globe and Mail newsroom, that's dozens of people. There is nothing like that on substack. Substack tends to be individuals and small teams. But individuals and small teams can really accomplish a lot and do a lot. And there's a group of local publications on substack and people from all over the world. If people are interested in this, you can look, We had a program two years ago where we did some grant funding for a bunch of different local publications. And they were everywhere from the U.S. to Africa to, you know, somewhere in the U.K., just all over the world, South America. So it was really trans-global idea that if you can, and this is where the traditional media has struggled and a lot have shut down. So if you can focus on a specific place and time and keep people informed of what is going on there, that's really of tremendous value.

So you could have somebody like Matt Taibi who's breaking this, you know, massive stories, or you can also have somebody like the Manchester Mill that's just talking about what's going on locally in Manchester. In both cases, what are they doing? They're doing a service. They're fulfilling a job for the reader, and they're going to be successful with that. So, well, it's the people like Matt Teibi who get a huge amount of interest in readership, but there are sort of a long tale of many more people on Substack who, in a lot of cases are they're doing breaking news, they're looking for stories that are important to local people in local communities that might not get any coverage otherwise.

That's the other thing. There could be a whole. So what I'm hoping to see is in coming years in Canada that there will be potentially more people who are, either they have a journalist background or they might even be entrepreneurs getting into saying that perhaps this is an opportunity to go and serve local communities where potentially local newspapers have shut down and had difficulty. There's a lot of talent out there and there's a lot of news to be covered. The problem is the business models. I've spoken to many people who come from the United States, a few professors, and they call Canada a monoculture

because we don't really differentiate ourselves. We like to kind of all fit in. You don't want to make too many waves. And that can be challenging. And I see this as like, imagine in 20 years how this is going to impact people. The idea that, yeah, you look at them at Taibi and you go, wow, this person's huge. They're the kind of the pinnacle of their game. And somebody can go under the same platform as them, no upfront cost and do the exact same type of work

and start to be a student of the game and work towards being more similar. and learning from the best and not having any barriers to entry. And that's just so exciting the idea that entrepreneurs can find their voice in that way. Yeah, I completely agree with you. A couple of wonderful Canadian publications have come on and they have just built from scratch and done so phenomenal. One I would point out, there is a journalist named Justin Ling and he's a wonderful freelance writer and he came on substack, I think about a year ago. And what he decided to focus on is something that he's always have a lot of expertise on, which is extremism and extremist movements online and the use of information to manipulate people online. And that has sort of been his beat.

And he really, I have really enjoyed reading his publication. And this is, it's so often you read something on Substack. And it's a kind of thing where if it were tried to be placed in, you know, in the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, they might think it's too niche. because they are very generalist broad publications. But on substack, it's fantastic because you can go as deep into your interest as you want. And guess what? This is the beauty of the internet. There's always going to be lots of people who share that deep interest with you. Another example, and this is on the entrepreneurial side, is the wonderful Canadian politics writer Paul Wells, who worked for McLean's for I think 17 years. Now he is on substack. And substack is his main place for

writing. And if you go and look at his substack, he has his substack. He has his section that's about Canadian politics, but then he also has a section where he talks about his cultural interests like jazz music and museums. And again, this is something where if you are a columnist, they're probably going to, if you're a Canadian politics columnist and you say, okay, next week I want to write about my musical interest, they're probably going to roll the rise and say, no, that's, it's not a go. But if you have your own substack, you can say, I have some of my audience that may also be interested in this and I am deeply interested in this and I'll write about it. So I just really treasure the.

Canadian examples. And I'd love to see more Canadian writers coming and using it so that they can really just build their media empire on their own. You've got the listeners all primed up. They're super excited about Substack. What tips and tricks do you have for people to find success? Maybe let's start it. Like, how do you get started on Substack? Yeah. Oh, such a terrific question. So honestly, the best thing to do is just set up and, you know, send yourself one post to try it and then tell a few friends. and family and get them to sign up. We have a lot of data that shows that people who have at least five subscribers are much more likely to keep on posting. And people who are listening are probably saying, well, five, that seems like nothing. But truly, the difference between having no subscribers

and five is night and day. So what I'd encourage people is everybody always shy or hides their letter to a bushel and feels like, oh, well, you know, I'll post a hundred times before I tell anybody. I would really encourage people will embrace what you have to say, particularly if they're already you're a friend and family and already like you, tell a few people, and it's going to be so encouraging, and that will help you grow. So the first thing is, do not be afraid to let people know of what you were doing. And the second thing, I'd say, probably like every creator on the internet in history has gotten the advice, be consistent. Be consistent is very boring advice. But I can tell you the data. The data says that people who are consistent really do much better.

I had a colleague who worked on the data team, and I said, how much does the number of Twitter followers influence how successful somebody is on Substack three months after they start? Of course, I expected to say, well, if they have 100,000 Twitter followers, they're guaranteed to be in success. But the data did not show that. It said that the correlation with how many followers you have is quite low. The most indicative thing about success was posting very consistently. That doesn't mean you have to post five times a week, although some people do. It more is if you make a commitment to the audience and say, hey, I'm going to be in your inbox every Thursday by 10 a.m. Then to just go about doing that. And the longer you do it, it becomes

like a muscle that you exercise. So I would say, and you know, this is me who works at Sub-Sac making all these suggestions of what creators would do. I always try to catch my comments and humbleness and say, look, there are people who have always done something quite different and been successful at it. But if people are looking for a couple of guidelines that have tended to work, I would say letting people know about what you're doing. Don't worry all of you. It's going to look like I'm self-promoting. At the beginning, don't worry about that. Just try to get yourself a base of people who at least feel like they're listening. It's going to be so motivating. And then just make a plan, not to post every day, but to do something that you're going to be able to keep up with

for a few months and then see how it feels. And often when people do that, they just fall in love with the experience of learning so much from it. I think that that's really good advice. I would also say, I started the podcast, the idea was, I'm not done until I hit my 1,000th episode. Wow. And in your mind, you kind of have to switch from, I'm going to do a few, see how it goes. You need to treat it like it's something serious. You're putting time in, and then other people are willing to either subscribe or listen or tune in.

And so you have to have that long-term vision because other people are willing to take that jump with you. They're willing to put the subscribe in on substack or listen. They're trusting you with their time. And so treat that with the same respect and take it serious. And so if it's a substack, plan to do at least 100 newsletters before you call it a day on what you're doing. Take it seriously. Take it.

Put your energy. You're all into it because you'll never know if you go, I'm going to try this once and do one article and see how it goes. You want to take it seriously and invest yourself into that. I couldn't agree more, Aaron. And I have seen firsthand that when people who have a big following start and they say, oh, I'll just post, but I won't promote it too much or tell anybody about it. it'll just see if they find it, almost like a soft launch. Maybe they'll discover it. It's a busy internet out there that doesn't work as well. And I've also seen people who do not have that big of an existing following, but they do just as you said. They make a plan and they just doggedly

say, I'm going to iterate 100 times here and we're just going to see what happens. In life, it truly is there are points that are step change points. It's rarely, if you were to be able to look at the graph of people's substack subscribers that we look at. every day. It's rarely that beautiful, easy, straight line path. It's much more often that things will be slow. And then they'll have a little break. Someone shares one other posts, and then things will be a little slow. Oh, and then they have a post that goes a little bit viral and they do well. And it's through that blocking and tackling that large audiences are built. So I say it to be encouraging to people. If anybody is listening to this and they're

sort of like, I'm hacking away. I'm halfway through my first 100 posts and I still haven't achieved that much traction. The other suggestion is talk to your readers, ask your readers what they want to see more from you, what they're enjoying, and not to say you're going to do, like audience capture that we were talking about, not to say you're going to do whatever succeeds, but more to say you're not simply broadcasting, but in a two-way discussion with the audience, with the reader, with the listener, and that's going to help you grow and develop as a creator too. Beautiful. One of the pieces that I read on Substack that made sense once I heard it, but didn't really clue in prior was that don't put paywalls between your best work and your

audience, put your best work out there into the world. And for other things, for smaller pieces, put a paywall there, but don't hide your best work. And that was like, after you kind of think about it, it sort of makes sense. You don't want, if it's something really good, you want that to be the thing that goes viral and reaches a lot of people. And for smaller pieces, you want to put a paywall in between that to help grow. what advice do you have for people going, okay, I'm starting to build an audience here, I'm ready to start putting paywalls up and start trying to get compensated for this. What advice do you have for

them? I would say, and what you said about Keep Your Best Work Free, that is, it's resonating my ears because ever since I started at Substack, that's what Hamish McKenzie always said. And the most successful writers on Substack, they lived by that practice of making sure that their best stuff could get circulated, could get forwarded by email, could get retweeted so that they could just get more subscribers in the top of their funnel to use a marketing term about it. I would say when people are starting to decide about paywalling, think about the interaction with the reader as not a transaction where they're paying for a specific thing that's behind the paywall, but rather as they're supporting in general everything you do because they relate to everything you do and they like

everything you do. What we've found with Substack is, think about getting an email. You can get an email from a substack you're subscribed to. It's in your inbox. It's sandwiched between emails from a good friend inviting you to a party and your mother. It's a very intimate space, you know. They truly feel you're writing just to them. So take advantage of that. Most substack publications are not a, in fact, very few are a eight person or a 12 person organization. They tend by and large to be an individual or a team of two or three. So it's quite personal. It's the person that when I pay for a substack, I feel like I'm supporting them in general, everything they do. So this can feed into the way the language you use to promote yourself.

You can, I've seen writers say things like, I really appreciate your support. There's no advertising. I'm not being funded by any organization. It's through you guys supporting me that I'm able to do what I do. Really, and then the call to action for people who are not paying is I'd really appreciate it. And you'll be able to see everything that I do and totally participate, participate in the comments. section. I love to hear from you guys. And just that appreciation and that connection with the reader, that more is what creates the bond, as opposed to, oh, this person has one particular

thing behind a paywall and I want access to that. All that said, still the once in a while, the post that's like, on SubSAC, you can send out a post to your paid subscribers and post then a preview to your non-paying people. Those always convert very well. I feel like because if people have a warm liking feeling towards the writer. in the first place, then that becomes the moment of like, all right, today is the day that I actually pay for this person. So I guess I would encourage people to think of it less transactional and more relational. What advice do you have for people who are trying to find their voice, who are trying to say, okay, maybe I am interested in whiskey or hockey or bowling or something,

and they're like, how do I take that next? Like, what advice do you have for those people? Yeah. And it's a question that resonates because often when in the, the course of my work, I'll be talking to somebody who has been a writer or has maybe their book author. They may have a number of ideas. I've had people say, well, I could do a sub-stack about subject A or subject B. I'm equally interested. And sometimes their question will be, what is there a gap on substack or what's more popular out of these topics on substack? And I always take a step back from the question and I say, truly, you're not writing for some substack audience. You're writing for the potential audience of everybody who could

read your work on the internet. So your audience is not this limited constrained audience where you're trying to fit your peg into some size of hole. What's much better is for the creator to ask him or herself, what can I stay excited about and engaged in? That's the thing that will allow them to be consistent. And the consistency is what will allow it to be a success. So I would say action creates excitement. So it would be better. to, rather than, you know, all of us fall prey to this, you know, with like, I want to get better at making videos to train people about how to do things on Subststack. So I'm sitting watching a bunch of YouTube videos about how to make videos. Well, what should I really do? Make a bunch of

not very good videos and then try to get better because I would learn from doing it, I would do it better. And I'd say it's the same with writing. It's the same with publishing on Substack. The best thing is to just give it a try and start. And I read some of the other, somebody the other day who said if you look back at the videos you made a year ago, you should be cringing because you should improve. I say the same thing for writing. Sometimes I look back at essays that I wrote a year or two years ago, I would have changed some things. But the way that I learned is by doing them. So those would be my main tips would be do what you feel that you are truly engaged and excited about, even if it might not have the biggest audience. And, you know,

just try to figure out how you can just start, how you can just start, how you can. can take some initial action, even if it's a small step. And that's going to motivate you to continue and be consistent. Linda, you are a wealth of knowledge. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Would you mind telling people how they can connect with you on Twitter and on Yeah. Well, for sure. Well, the first thing I would say is if anybody is listening to this and is all jazzed up and would like to start a substack, you can go to substack.com forward slash Linda. and if you start a, and it's just going to give you the normal, you know, here's the form to start a substack. But if you go to substack.com forward slash L-I-N-D-A, I will actually get a message that you started a substack through that link, and then I can sign up for your substack.

And I'll know that, you know, it was because of me being on this podcast. So do that. But in general, you could just go to substack.com. There's a big orange button that says start writing. And if, you know, a handful of people who get the opportunity to listen to this, go and try doing that, I think, that's just the message that we're trying to send is to just start. If there's one theme of our conversations, it's just start. And if people would like to go ahead and follow me on Twitter, it's Substack Linda is my handle.

Somebody said to me the other day, you're always be closing on your Twitter because I always kind of only talk about Substack. But I figure, well, I do two things. I talk about how to use the product and features in the product, but I also retweet people who are on Substack because I want them to both be, you know, surfaced and celebrated and seen. And I'm kind of by retweeting them, I'm saying, hey, I see you. You're making an effort. And I'm just as likely to retweet somebody who says, hey, I just got 20 followers, I just got 20 subscribers as I am somebody who says, hey, I just, you know, hit a million dollars of recurring revenue. So, yeah, so there's a couple of things that people can do. I really find all of your posts on Twitter really valuable. They're insightful to me because I

enjoy learning about how to improve and how to grow and being excited about the idea that your progressing, even if it gets no views or a ton of views, you're progressing and improving. And I think that that's really inspirational for people to follow. So again, I recommend people go follow you, go sign up for substack, follow some people, and start to learn about how to get your voice out there. So I appreciate you being willing to come on today. I've learned so much. Thank you so much, Aaron. It really was a lot of fun. And I appreciate the opportunity to just talk about all this stuff and phenomenal questions. So really appreciate your time too. My pleasure. Tim, how did we do? We did great.

I pressed the right buttons and recorded and enjoyed the conversation. So well, well done. Awesome. Aaron, those questions were so, so good. I think that your audience will really enjoy hearing some of, like, the advice stuff, but also like a little bit about what's, what is this thing called substack? What's the philosophy of it? So I thought it was a really cool set of questions, too.

I couldn't agree more. I was very excited to have you on. I had William Johnson on previously who did Vancouver. tech journal. Oh, so cool. Great. And we talked a ton about Substack and how that impacted him. Oh, good. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. He's a great intranet entrepreneur too. So good, good content. Awesome. Well, this should release next week. I will send it out to you. And again, I just appreciate you being willing to take the time. Well, just that's great. Let me know because I want to retweet it. I want to promote it. Tell my colleagues and everything like that. But also, let's you and I stay in touch.

You know, you now have a friend who works at Substack. So if you have, in general, questions interact with me or if there's anybody else you want to send my way. Like, if you know somebody in your broader ecosystem who's interested in substack, just feel free to send them my way. Because you can tell by the way I'm talking. We're trying to be in expansion mode and evangelism mode. So just happy for any opportunity to do that. I'm really glad to make your acquaintance. Yes.

I can't wait to send this out and I look forward to staying in touch. Doing a podcast is a good way to meet somebody. I feel like we had copy, but it got recorded. So that's really good. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. No problem. Enjoy the rest of your day.

You too. Thanks to him. Bye-bye. Again. Are you going to start a sub-stack? That's a good question. I'm intrigued, but I also know that my plate is super, super full. Okay.

What did you think? How did we do? Excellent. I'm curious, what's your experience been so far? with Substack. I really appreciate the platform. It's super user-friendly. It turns like the podcast links into a more clear, cohesive, like just hit the button

and it plays rather than I have a link tree and then it kind of connects you. But this seems like the most clear way. My challenge has always been how do I, if you use Spotify, how am I supposed to know you use Spotify? And so trying to figure out how to get you all three links, YouTube, Spotify and Apple podcasts out to people, was super confusing. And so when I started substack, again, looking at my first post in comparison to now, it's just a completely different kind of style.

And now, to be honest, Rebecca, writes my substacks for me. I appreciate your honesty. Yeah. I'm just, it's hard for me to, like, verbalize because once I've done the interview, I have a different perspective than what I went into the conversation wanting or desiring out of like the conversation. And so Rebecca is good at being like, oh, this is like the starting place. And then this is how the interview went and kind of like covering the,

the journey, and I'm not very good at that. I kind of put down like what my thoughts were, but she puts it much more eloquently. And she actually just had a professor say that she should go into communications because she's so good at communicating. That's awesome. Well done. This is what I'm good at, asking people questions.

That's my skill. I'm not writing. So how have you found you did your first 80 plus episodes from home, on your home? You've been doing a few here and being able to reach out to a broader audience. How are you finding it? where I don't have a broader audience as much as a broader set of potential guests. This has kept the love of it going in a way that I was starting to fade because I felt like I had tapped into the people that I was excited to speak to.

And I do have a lot of people reach out and go, oh, you should interview this person in Abbotsford or this person in Langley. And it's like, I'm not, they see the conversation. I don't see what I would have as questions or I wouldn't be that excited. And then you're asking people to drive all the way out and sit down. And if you're not excited about the conversation, I think that's a little disrespectful. And so this has kept my like, oh, my gosh, I can sit down with this person. And as you saw with the Vin-J interview, like, I was just off the wall, like, I was having trouble sitting in my seat.

Because I got to interview someone I was so excited to talk to. And even just trying to schedule people has been a different process and forced me to grow a bit. And then doing it this way has forced me to up my game because there's a disconnect between sitting down and giving them a cup of coffee or some water. and settling in, and I don't have that nattering noise in the back of my head anymore around is a recording, because the Daryl Plekis, the second time I had him on, I didn't record on his screen, so I had to have released it as just a podcast because I forgot. And that was the first time in 80 episodes that I forgot to hit the record button. But that was always a stress in the back of my head.

I am remembering to hit the record button, but I can further report that it took me 22 two minutes to start the timer for Aaron. I did notice that, and then I noticed you put it on, and then I could see you laughing. Yeah. You seem to have, I'm turning this into the Bigger Than Me podcast right now in interviewing Aaron, but it's been interesting to see your varied areas of interest. And so you're marrying law, First Nations issues, MMA, hip-hop and rap

um what oh journalism there's at least five key threads to to what you're doing that have nothing to do with each other my question was what do they have to do with each other

they don't and like the advice that you can when you're starting a YouTube channel or a podcast or a substack is find your niche and I could not be worse at taking that advice well that concludes our podcast today there we go thank you so much for listening and uh tune in for the next one all right over it out