Today, I'm excited to dive into the world of substack
marketing, which is a platform that's not just about newsletters. There's a
lot of community building elements with a comment section with
resharing, with posting notes. And I have
amazing guests today that I read their substacks. I follow their
substacks. I love them, and I wanna learn more about how they're using
them to market their business. We're gonna dive into that after our
commercial break.
You're listening to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm Andrea
Jones.
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Riverside. All right. Welcome to the
show. I'm excited to kick things off. So I'm going to start with Kathleen,
Kathleen Oh, who I've known for years years years. Tell
us a little bit about you and your substack. Yes. Thank
you. And, Andrea, I it's so lovely to see you, and
it has been years years. I am
an integration coach. My, coaching has evolved through the
years. Mostly what I do now is work with
entrepreneurs or business owners in
their desire to be more
authentic in their life and in their business, and that those
two parts of themselves, line up.
I am a social media outcast
because of the nature of my work, with psychedelics.
I've wrestled with social social media over the last 4
to 5 years. I was not I was kind of a
latecomer for social media because my business was brick and mortar,
since 2007. But in 2019, when I
really embodied this, psychedelic work,
I brought myself back onto social media. But the fight
was long and hard, and eventually, they won. And
I have been banned off Instagram multiple times,
because of the talking about, drug use.
So I migrated over to Substack, and the purpose of
that was to be able to have open and honest conversations about,
safe drug use and the use of psychedelics for,
healing and growth. Yes. Awesome. I and I'm gonna dive
into that too because I kind of was creeping on your whole
journey with social media and then also the banning from social media.
So we'll talk about that as well. But next up on the show today, we
have Becky Mollenkamp, who is an accountability coach.
Becky, tell us a little bit about how you started, founded
feminist founders because I feel like I was at the beginning of that
journey as well, and then, how you, yeah, how you developed your
substack. Yeah. I started my email marketing on
ConvertKit. I'm one of the, I think, rarer few folks out
there who have abandoned traditional email marketing for
Substack entirely. I don't use another email marketing
platform anymore. And for me, it was because I had gotten to a
place of feeling this negative energy as I was
typing emails to my email list of like, why am I giving you all
of this stuff, and I'm paying to email you and you're not buying anything anyway,
because my clients come through referral. And I was like, this
isn't how you should feel when you're marketing your business. Like, you shouldn't feel
resentment towards the people you're trying to sell things to. And so when I learned
about substack, I was like, wait a minute. I could get paid to send
emails instead of paying to send emails. I like this idea. And
I don't want to send marketing emails. I don't
wanna send sales emails. It wasn't what I was doing anyway.
So with feminist founders, it started as a podcast. The sub stack kind of
came along with for the ride as a way to support for, hopefully,
for the 2 to support each other. And, eventually, I was enjoying
sub stack so much that I was like, I'm just ditching email marketing
and going all in on substack. And I'm getting to a
place like Kathleen, not because of being banned from social media, but
also feeling a similar level of frustration with social media
that I was with email marketing and enjoying notes so much on substack, which I'm
sure we can talk about that I'm getting I'm edging ever so much closer
to saying I may just leave social media too. I just really be all in
there. And but feminist founders was for, you know, business owners who are wanting
to do business in a more equity centered way. Awesome. Yes. Thank you,
Becky. Love that. I've been seeing your threads,
so I understand your feelings on social media. A lot of people feel this
way as well. Tara, I'd love to go to you.
I think you were the very first Hub Stack that I
followed and then also, like, upgraded. And so it
was, like, for me, the learning of, like, oh, this is what this platform is
about. But tell us about the transition to, like, taking What
Works over to Substack and what it looks like today.
Yeah. So, I switched about a year ago also from
ConvertKit and canceled my ConvertKit account, not
because they're not a wonderful company and with a great product,
but because I wanted to do something different, which
was just focus on my writing and podcasting as
I've been doing for the last couple of years.
Yeah. So I switched, all of my folks over to
Substack when notes rolled out, and, it's
been great to just focus on writing and think
about writing and think about the podcast through a writer's
eyes. And, it's it's been
really great. So, you know, I have some
qualms. I have some questions still when I
think about how I use the platform platform's
about and who's there and all of those things. But by and large, it's been
a really good change. And I think probably
unlike, a lot of people, or at least a lot of
people who are gonna be listening to this, my substack is not
about marketing a business. I don't think about it as marketing
very similar to to what Becky said. It
is a newsletter that I write and that people
support, and that's what it is. And,
I know a lot about marketing, but at the same time, I
write about all sorts of different things and don't use it as marketing, so
that's that's my deal. Yeah. I I find it
fascinating that that, theme seems to echo in
everyone's answer, which is, like, this Substack
Marketing channel is really a communication tool with
your community members. It's a way to share with
them and maybe open conversations with them in a different
way. One of the things that I love about SubStack is the comment
section. I find that it's different than, you know, ConvertKit
where someone can reply to an email. But that
feels different somehow than the public comment
of, like, acknowledging something. And also, I love that I can
highlight something and then also just share it really quickly with the
people in my network to say, here's what I'm reading. I loved this piece of
it. Go read the whole thing. So it definitely has that community
vibe as well. I'll open this question up to
the floor. Was there a key moment where
you knew that Substack was working for you?
For me, the deliverability of Substack is pretty
substantial over anything that I've used before.
And the so the readership really
increased. And I would say the engagement increased with the
platform. And so I think that that was
definitely a turning point, and that has remained consistent for me
throughout the entire time that I've been with Substack. Yeah. K. So
building the community through readership. Becky or
Tara, any moments where you were like, ah, it's working.
I would say for me, I was very lucky when I
switched over. Actually, let me back up. I did a
Substack experiment, at the end
of 2022 where I hosted a pop up substack that
I sold as pay what you want actually through ConvertKit.
This was before, you know, I'd ditched all of that,
and I liked the community aspects. I liked
how it made me want to write and, like, just
the experience of the platform
was conducive to how I like to operate
online, so that was nice. And so from there,
I kept thinking and kept thinking about making the switch. And then when they
rolled out notes, and I was like, well,
this seems great because now I will have a social
media place that I can hang out, that
also just, like, completely ties in
to my goals and what I actually want to be doing.
And so that was when I decided to to make the move. And
in that process of getting What Works set up on Substack,
one of the partner success team, I think this is what they call
them, folks reached out to me who happened to have been an old
contact of mine from CreativeLive. And she was like, hey. I
don't know if you remember me. Of course, I remembered her. But, you know, do
you wanna hop on Zoom and and talk about Substack? I'm
happy to answer any questions you have. And so from there,
you know, I was lucky enough from that connection to get
featured, to have an article in Substack Reads over the over a
weekend. And so I can't say that it was any one moment,
but it was sort of everything that I
had hoped would happen as part of
moving to substack, the deliverability, the list
growth, the, back and forth, the quality
of kind of people and discourse that I now had
access to, all of that just fell into place with
in a few weeks, and and then people
started paying for it, and it was wonderful.
I love that. And I I have a follow-up question, Tara, because Yep.
In the midst of all of that, I believe you also did your book launch.
Was that at the same time as the Substack, or where did the book launch
fall into play with launching Substack, and how did that help or hurt?
Yeah. So the book launched in November 2022.
I moved to Substack in April 2020 3. So that
there there was actually a pretty, what
felt like a long period of time. I suppose it really isn't. But, there was
a pretty pretty big gap between those two things. What I'll
say about that, though, is that I had good momentum
coming off of the book launch. Right? Plenty of people who had
interviewed me on podcasts. I was you know, the book was being featured. I was
being featured, and it got renewed
attention in January of 2023 because it's a book about goal setting,
and that's what you do.
And so I was in a good position where I didn't
feel like I had to be promoting the book hardcore in this
new place. But at the same time, I had momentum from
that launch. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting how
everything plays together too. I'd be curious to see how, as your
subset grows, other areas of, well, you know, the work that you do
grow. Becky, I'd love to hear from you as well.
Was there a key moment where you were like, Substack
is working for me? Yeah. I was gonna point out a couple and first just
say that, I hope to be Tara someday when I grow up.
I've seen what she's doing and, you know, she's one of those folks that you
look at and say, like, oh, that's the kind of success I hope to get
to on some stack, which I know for Tara. She's probably like, no, I wanna
get to another place. But, like, I would love to get just to that place.
But for me, the first place of success felt like when I started it
and the immediate relief I felt. So, like, the internal
success was right away of feeling like this just feels better.
I it feels easier. The the lift feels lower. The
reward feels greater. I'm getting feedback from people. And I just could
feel such a difference from when I was in And, again,
nothing bad about ConvertKit. I loved it. I used it for a really long time.
But I it was a different mindset when I was inside of that tool. That
tool felt like I was there to sell things because it's what it was designed
for. And just something about being in the Substack platform felt
different. I didn't feel that, like, oh my gosh. If they don't buy anything,
then I've failed. It just felt more like if I'm putting this out and people
are receptive to it, then I've done what I wanted to do. And I could
feel that relief immediately. And then about 6 months
later, about halfway to where I'm at in the journey, because I'm coming up on
a year, I joined, I think, while I had some success
on threads. And as much as I said, I can't stand social media, there was
another sort of turning point there where I was getting a real influx of new
subscribers from my efforts through threads only because it was the only link I
have in my bio on threads and people were finding their way. And it started
to become this first real influx of new subscribers were new to
me, new to my world and finding me, and that felt like, okay. I can
get new traffic to this thing and have it work. And then I would say
most recently has been using notes. It's been around, I just haven't used it
until recently. And I've started to discover like, oh, this actually feels a
whole lot better than threads or x, because I can show up and
so far the community inside of threads, I've not had a single rude
or hateful comment or anything inside of
notes. And I cannot say the same for threads, which is, like, daily.
I'm getting negative stuff. Now it's a smaller audience. That's part of it. But also
just think it's a better audience. So I've had multiple checkpoints where I've been
like, internally, it's feeling better, externally, it's feeling better. And now
I'm actually starting to see like, oh, the the platform itself
is gonna help me with my business. Yeah. That's beautiful. I
love to see it. And I I love being like the fly on the wall
to all of you and going, oh, look what they're doing. I love it. So
thank you for allowing me to pick your brain. We're gonna take a quick break.
And when we come back, I have specific questions for each of you about
your sub stack success when we get back.
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and I'll see you there. Alright. And
we're back. So, Kathleen, I wanna start with you because
I find your approach to subsect interesting. Out of our
panelists here, you're the only one who doesn't have a, like, a
subscription model the on the on your Substack.
However, it is very closely tied to the work that you do. It's
so deeply personal, the work that you do. And, also, it's
it's your kind of in reading your your newsletters,
it feels like a nod to what you do without going too deep into the
weeds of, like, here's specifically what you do with psychedelics, which is
different from your approach to social media.
So that very long question is all about, I wanna just dig
deeper into how you approach Substack and how it ties into
your business model. Give us all the details.
That's a good question. So,
you know, I think substack is just a place for me to be
myself, and that what I
know about working, with clients in this
realm, often people it's a really big trust building,
experience because I think that there's a lot of stuff that goes on
that is quite shady. And people are there's a
tendency to, I would say be
disingenuous about, processes and people's
healing and, that, you know, I
think I can display my work as
part of who I am. And that that really
what Subtech has done for me is allow
me to speak openly about that. And it's not a
great marketing model. I have to be honest, it's not like sexy. I
get, you know, a vulnerability hangover
often with this some of the things that I share. But
what I do know is that the work that people are
looking for is at that depth. What
they want for themselves, I feel I have to offer within
myself for them to see as a
model of growth and opportunity. And, you know,
I think with what I learned in all of the years
with Instagram, and it was that people just
didn't they had a lot of opinions about it, and they weren't kind,
when people are being honest. And so what I've done with
Substack is just shown parts of myself that I feel
people can relate to. And it feels like a safe place
for that. I don't have a paid tier, but people can
voluntarily pay. And they do. I I get,
like, pledges. It feels like I don't like, I wish I
could have a conversation with the people that pay me. I don't I there's
nothing other than just their kindness and their
generosity that shows up in my Stripe account.
So it is there. And I do I I do know people see the
value in it, even though I don't promote it in that way.
And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the opportunity to
speak, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be heard and that people
do value it. Yes.
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that, Kathleen. Do you find
that, there's a different
energetic experience with Subsack versus you know, I
saw I saw your work on TikTok, for instance. There's moments where
you had, like, really viral videos and then
also the, like, vitriol in the comments that comes with that.
How does that experience compare to what
your experience has been like on Substack so far?
Oh, they are not comparable, honestly.
TikTok, I felt like I was slaying dragons
every day. And, you know, in some ways,
I've I I enjoyed it. Other days, I was completely
burnt out. And the having
I had several viral videos on TikTok. The one
that went most viral had 9,000,000,000 9,000,000 views.
And, like, I can't even I don't even know how
many comments. But it wasn't so much about the comments. It was about the
other Tik Tok producers that were, like, coming after
me. And so it's not it was
a friendly place until there was, like, these
divisive, opinions, which is fine. I'm I
can handle those conversations. But it's all free
labor. And it's a place where my,
like, energetically and emotionally and intellectually, I can be
challenged, but only to a certain point. And that does not happen on
Substack. That is, there are people that challenge me and I
am fine with it. I actually welcome it and want it. I
don't wanna be speaking into an echo chamber. But
with TikTok, it was a lot of keyboard warriors. It was a lot
of people that just actually wanted
to be divisive and opinionated and unclear
on what they were talking about. And to be honest, it
made me much more clear on what I was talking about because,
there were things that I was questioning because I was being
questioned. And I thankfully learned
that there's more than one way to read science.
And I don't I'm not a scientist. So the things that
I shared sometimes were, you know, with a with a very
skewed lens. And I had my hands slapped a couple times,
and I, I was able to be a better practitioner,
and a better person in on social media. And I was able
to take responsibility. And so, you know, I don't think that that
would have happened had I not had those opportunities, those growth
opportunities with the viral experience. And
it is kind of fun to say it went viral and I also
got burnt out and, you know, laid down, like, my wound
for wounds for a few years while I recovered.
Awesome. Thank you. It froze a little bit, but I feel like I got most
of what you said. The interesting
thing about your reflections is that they're not
new, not even to this podcast. About 5 episodes
before this one, I interviewed, Meg Griffith, who had a
very similar experience on TikTok, where
it was good until it wasn't. And there is this
culture on some of the social platforms, many of them,
where conversation becomes very
divisive very quickly and people, frankly, argue for the
sake of arguing instead of having conversations for the sake of
clarity. And I do think that substack offers
something different there. Maybe that's just my bubble and the
Substacks that I subscribe to, but I do see a
very marked difference in how, the community
on Substack wants to have conversation and wants to have
conversation for clarity and not conversation just to argue with people. So thank you
for sharing that. I love the the work that you're doing there.
I wanna go over to Becky Nacks. Becky, one of the
interesting things that I find about feminist founders is that,
yes, you have the podcast on there, but you also have other people
contributing work to the to the
feminist founders. It's a collective experience. So talk to
me about that decision and how that has added how the
various voices has added to the work that you're doing.
Yeah. It was it's twofold. One in
that trying to keep up with the cadence while also being
a mom and a business owner because I still, you know, have to coach
to make income have to want to get to. But coaching is still a
part of my the main bread and butter for my business. Right? Substack,
I'm making money on Substack, but like, not a lot of money on
Substack right now. I hope that will change. So one, it was just
I I can't carry the weight of it and deliver the amount of
content I wanna be putting out. I know I could put out a small post
a month or something, but that's just not how I wanted it to show up.
That wasn't the cadence I wanted. And so I couldn't do it alone.
And it's also really reflective of my values around community. And so I
like that, that I'm getting to introduce people to other voices. I'm getting to be
in collaboration with other people who share values. So it felt really
good, and it also selfishly lifts a weight for me. And it's also
in service of a bigger vision I'm holding for feminist founders.
That's a long way out, I'm sure. But I tell people I wanna make, like,
the, you know, Forbes meets bell hooks. I wanna create like a media
space for people who care about doing business differently. That kind of is that place
that you go to where you care about equity and social justice as a business
owner. And the first step towards that to me felt like how do I
decenter myself from this? Because I don't want it to be,
you know, Huffington Post and it's I'm Arianna Huffington. I want it to be,
like, a space that is feminist founders, and I happen to be the editor
of the space, but it's not just my voice. And so the first step towards
like the baby step that I could do now felt like how can I bring
other voices into this experience? And so I have a lot of I have
guest writers, and they're all doing it because they want to amplify their own voices
because they care about me, they care about the mission. And so they're doing it
for free because I'm not making a lot of money. And I guess the
side benefit of it ends up becoming some of these folks also have Substacks.
So I you know, there's that cross promotion piece. A good friend of mine, Dacey
Gillespie, I'll call her out since we're talking about substack, and she has a really
nice size substack called unflattering. And we happen to be very old friends. We
live in the same city, and we were mastermind partners. So she did a substack
for me. And, you know, she carries weight in the same way, Tara,
like, you have weight in that space that many of us don't have and that
we're trying to build. And being able to collaborate with other folks on the space
who have a bigger following is a huge opportunity
that inside of substack that you don't get, like, when you're using
ConvertKit. There's this, although I know that they're now trying to compete in the same
way, but you know, that you get this opportunity to say, look look,
there's this other audience, and I want you to learn about this person. I
mean, Daisy just recently commented
on a post that someone shared on my Substack 2 months ago,
And her comment has brought in a giant influx of new
subscribers. And I think it's really interesting for the people who have that kind of
weight to think about how to use that weight. And it's really a wonderful
opportunity for some of us who don't yet have that weight to begin to get
maximize our reach. So there's a lot of reasons that I use guest writers.
Some of them are, well, I think, ultimately, they're all kind of selfish. But other
than I do really wanna amplify the voices of other folks and be in community
with people, and this allows me to do that. Yeah. So how do
you decide what's going behind the paywall
when you have guest writers? Are all of their submissions kind
of, like, the public facing ones? Or how do how do you make that decision?
Yeah. This is still an ever like, it's always a work in progress trying to
figure this piece out because I don't have a lot of paid subscribers
yet. So that audience is so much smaller. And the last thing I would wanna
do is say, hey, come put give me your free labor, and then I'm gonna
show it to the tiniest fraction of people that I have in this audience.
So everything I do for that other people write absolutely goes
to the entire subscriber base because it just feels
fair. I'm not paying you, so the least I can do is allow you to
have maximum reach. And what goes behind the paywall
right now is primarily community stuff, anything that's happening outside
of substack. So I host a monthly forum where I have
panelists come in. It was actually right before this call, and it was beautiful. It's
like the space where we get together and have really intimate, wonderful conversations about
things that are at that intersection of business and social justice. Today, we
were talking about what does collaboration look like when you are looking at
it through this more equitable lens, which felt really wonderful
as I was going into this collaborative experience. So anything like that that I'm
doing off of substack is for paid subscribers. I
also host co working sessions. So and I'm always thinking about how else do
I add to that. The writing piece so far anyway,
I just feel like I want everyone to have I want everyone to see these
amazing things that if I'm writing it, I want everyone to see it because I
feel proud of it. If I am sharing other people's voice, I want everyone to
see it because they did this labor and people should get to see it. So,
yeah, paywall is always a it's an interesting thing trying to navigate that.
Mhmm. Yeah. I I think it's always a interesting choice too, the ones
that I subscribe to, because I do feel like a
kid who's, like, gotten to go into the candy jar. Because I can
see, you know, oh, if you're a free subscriber, your content ends here.
But the paid people, here's all the rest of the stuff. And I'm like, oh,
I get more stuff. You know? So as a as a community
member, it does feel good as well to see that. So I'm always curious how
that works behind the scenes. So thank you for sharing that.
Tara, I'd like to go to you, next. You also have
a paid tier. You also host workshops
and things, I believe, for the paid tier. What else is include and
you have cuss like, we have special articles for us, like,
2. Am I missing anything in the paid tier?
So I have free workshops that happen every quarter, and I have,
premium articles slash podcast episodes. And then
folks also get a discount on any premium workshops I offer.
So, like, last week, I did a big workshop on world building for business
owners, and my premium subscribers got
25% off the registration for that. So
that's another perk. Oh, and comments. So
the other the other perk for paying subscribers is that they're
the only ones who can leave comments because while I do value,
dialogue on my work. I'm also
very, rejection sensitive, and,
I think that for me and
my emotional, psychological, neurological
makeup, it makes the most sense to have that space open for
people who are invested at some level in
that work. And so I figure, you know,
free subscribers can always find me on notes. It's not like I'm unreachable,
but I only have my comments open for paid subscribers and
only have my email replies open for paid subscribers.
And I know there are varying opinions on
both of those things, but I think
that it's a it's a safety feature. It's
a psychological safety feature, and I think it's a
really, for those who need it or
want it, it's a it's a really powerful move to say,
this is my boundary.
Yeah. Oh, I think it would be interesting for social platforms to
adopt that as well. Because platforms like Instagram, for instance,
also have, like, a paid, section. And there
is, like, a separate comment section, but everyone can still comment on your
own, like, your public posts and in your direct messages. And so I I do
find that interesting, especially as social media
and community online shifts. The smaller
pockets of people, I think we're we're all gonna find a lot more nourishment
from those conversations versus the randoms,
which I know randoms can come into the community, but sometimes being open to
everyone just feels I feel so exposed personally all the time when
I do that. So I feel you there. Yeah. One of the
questions I have for you is how you approach your work. And this
is this is a larger question because it goes beyond just
Substack. But a lot of the work that you do
analyzes the norms of being in the online business space,
while also being a person in the online business space
as a thought leader. I'm always curious when I read your work,
because you so beautifully balance the 2 calling out and
also saying, well, here's what I'm observing and
and, exposing this, and here's how we can make
this better. Or here's my thought process on how I'm making this
better. What is your process to your work and how
you balance the push and pull of not not skewing to
negative and complaining about the online space, but also
being helpful and adding rich insight to the conversation.
Yeah. I think that the last few years for me
have been a real existential
search for who I am in this space in
general. And where I've kind of
ended up or and certainly where my substack, the premise
of my substack is sort of the future of work.
Because I think the future of the work the future of work looks a
lot more like what we think of as online business than what
we think of as the traditional 9 to 5. I mean, with all of the
layoffs that we've seen in media and tech over the
last few years, a lot of those people have just
been scooped right back up into contractor
jobs. And even if they're just working from home now and don't
think of themselves as business owners or entrepreneurs. They're very much
working in the same containers that we all are.
And so that's one way that I make that balance
is it's not, you know, online business this or online
business that, but instead, like, how are we moving
forward into this strange new world of work?
And what are the systems and structures that we can
question as we make that journey together. So that's one
piece. Another piece is that I really don't think
of myself as being in the online business world anymore.
It is something that I'm very familiar with after
15 plus years. It's something that, you know, all
of our podcasting clients in my other company are
involved with in one way or another, but I don't think of
myself as a thought leader in the online business space.
I'm way more interested in being an analyst,
being a critic. And I kind of think
about my mode of critique and analysis
as sense making. And so one of the things that I'm always trying
to do, especially when I am in a critique mode,
is to think, where are the confusing bits
here, and what do I know that can help people make sense of
this? What's my framework for thinking about this?
What's, a philosophical or sociological or political
or economic, idea that I can
bring in to help people feel like
you're not crazy. You're not imagining things.
This is hard, or this shouldn't be like this, or this should
be like this, and really put that all out
on paper as coherently as possible or not
paper, digital paper, I guess, and
use that as my sort of
North Star toward navigating that space where,
no, I don't want to be insulting people's businesses. I don't wanna
be calling people out for whatever practices they have.
And I also always want to be acknowledging
that doing business work in
general in this economy is always a compromise.
If you have values for social justice, if you're a
radical feminist, if you are, a
leftist like me, you're making a compromise
just by living. You have to. There is
no perfect way to do anything. And so that's also something that I
really hold, in terms of navigating the space is,
you know, everyone's gonna make a slightly different decision, and that's
great. We don't all need to be doing the same thing. I don't need to
tell you what I think is stupid or dumb or wrong. What I
need to do is make sense of it for you. Yeah.
It's always a a beautiful thing too when I read your work. My
my little mastermind group, we share your articles and have, like,
conversations in our Voxer channel about them. Because we're always like, oh,
here's an interesting thought. Like, we were all thinking this, but, like, the way
that Tara said it made it clearer to why we feel the way that we
feel about certain things, about the work that we do.
Especially since my mastermind group, we've also
kind of I'm still in the online space, but they kinda spun out
into doing work that could be defined as online business, but
it's not in the online business space. And so it's so
interesting that you called that out as well. And, I love that you
said you consider yourself a critic because I definitely see that as well
in the work that you do. With
the 2 kind of businesses that you
have, with the What Works side of things and
the work that you're doing in Substack and the workshops, where do you
see the future of Substack looking like for you as you
grow the platform? Yeah. I mean, this is,
like, literally a daily question of mine.
I am super duper grateful for the
way Substack is built, for
the you know, my list has doubled in the last year, which is
pretty incredible. I'm really grateful for
that. And there's also some problems with
the platform, not just the, you know, justice and political
problems with the platform, but also, like, some things I would
like to be able to do that I can't currently do. Like,
I'd love to be able to have a pay what you want
premium subscription tier. I can't have that. I'd like to
be able to offer completely integrated, you know,
send me a tip, or, you know, a monetary
tip, not a journalistic tip, although I always take those as well.
And so those are the kinds of things that
make me question what the future is for me with
Substack. They're also clearly moving much
more in the direction of
creating more social media like
features, direct messages. I mean, obviously, notes,
which ironically is what got me on the platform. And now it's
like, wait a second. Is this really working for me? I'm not
sure. So those kinds of things make me
wonder, like, wait a second. Are you going to build the features that would
actually want to make me stay? Or are you building the features
that you think will help you compete with other platforms? Because
as we've all said, I'm not there because it's like
other platforms. I'm there because it's not like other platforms. And
every feature that they build that makes them more like a Facebook
or an Instagram or a TikTok means that
the culture may shift a little bit further in that direction
as well. And I I'm not interested in
that. I'm just not interested in that at all.
So for me, I think on a on a
higher level, what I do in terms of how I
spend my, you know, 35 hours a week that are devoted
to to what works, the newsletter, the podcast. It's more than
that. It's more than 35. Yellow House is just sort of
off to the side. But I am doing the
kind of work today that I have wanted to do my
whole life. I'm doing the kind of work that I know my college
adviser was jealous that he thought I was doing, like,
12 years ago. And now I wanna be like, Jeff,
Jeff, look. Look at what I'm doing now.
Anyhow, so in that way, all I want
is more of this, please. I want to make a
reasonable living writing on the Internet, talking
about the things that I find right and
wrong and in between with the way we work and the way the
world is functions, and, spend a lot of time
reading so that I can write those things, and I would be a
very, very happy person.
Yeah. I agree. I love that. Beautifully, beautifully said. And if if,
if Substack has, like, a TikTok like vertical video moment, I
don't know if I I would stay there anymore. Please please no more
vertical videos, that can stay up that can stay on the other platforms. That's what
they're for. Thank you, Tara. I
wanna put the same question over to you, Becky. What
does the future of Substack look like for you?
I mean, I could just say ditto because I feel the same
way. I mean, as much as I'm enjoying notes as it exists now,
one of the things I like about it is that people aren't posting every 2
seconds like they do on threads or x. And I
love that I can integrate video and audio into
my sub stacks and all of that. I think I think that's wonderful. But do
I want it to become yet another video forward
plus platform where I have like, you I don't want it to be YouTube, I
would be on I would just do YouTube. Alright. Like, I absolutely agree. I don't
want it to be all of those things. I want them to continue to think
about ways that maybe I could customize my my little piece of
substack and make it feel more me. That would be nice. More ways for
people to support me, that would sure be nice. Like, I think that
the tiers are great, but they're not enough.
So I agree. Like, I just as long as it continues
to be what it is now and amplified,
great. The more that it becomes yet another social media platform
that I have to deal with, and as soon as I start getting all the
same level of vitriol and that nonsense there,
I mean, the less likely I'm gonna be interested in sticking around. And I've had
people when I when I made that leap from ConvertKit to Substack, the
marketing folks were very much like, oh, that's a bad idea.
You know, it's one more platform that could evolve, and then it's not what you
want it to be anymore. And I'm I see that that that can happen. I
would just say that what makes it different to me than TikTok or any of
the other places is I still have an email list there. I
can download my CSV file today. And I do frequently download my
CSV file just to be safe, of my subscribers. And I
can take them and I can move and so I may move like I'm not
as much as I'm going all in. That's all in right now. And I reserve
the right to move if it doesn't feel right. And I like that
I can, unlike all the other social media platforms.
But let me tell you, if Substack decides that, hey, you no longer own
your list, I'm out the door. Yeah. That that's a big
one. I've heard a lot of people say that about Substack is,
the reason that they initially made the the transition
over there is because they still felt ownership
over the the folks that are on their list. And they feel like they
don't feel like they're locked in. Whereas, you know, traditional
social platforms, you can't decide to
go from, you know, Instagram to Facebook and just pull those people from that
platform over to this one. It's a very, very tough transition to make. So,
I like that. Do you have anything in the future for feminist founders?
Any fun future projects? Well,
I am currently right here, but soon to go from my
head actually out into some planning mode. My 1 year
anniversary on Substack will have the launch. I I sat on
Substack for a year waiting to actually take action. But a year from the
launch and the launch of the podcast, I'm gonna be doing a celebration. I this
will be something that'll be only for paid subscribers, and I'm planning a little,
sort of mini summit sort of thing that will exist
inside of substack. So video interviews, but it will be
only for paid subscribers. So that'll be coming up towards the fall depending on
when this airs that maybe sooner or later. Yeah. Love it. I can't wait
to see it. Thank you, Becky. Kathleen, same question.
What does the future of substack look like for you?
Yeah. So I feel like I'm at a different place
in my work, and things are winding down, to be
honest, with the one to one coaching, as
well as sort of finding my way. I'm,
I'm in a bit of flux with transitioning. I
think I'll probably move towards consent education in the
ways that I have learned it and learned, for my own
for my work and for my life. What I've also
learned in with social it it
happened with Instagram, that I
found myself as a writer in a way that I never
knew. And the kind of the
heartbreak of part of my story with Instagram
is when I got really honest about what, you
know, addiction recovery and drug use and all of
those really, really intimate parts of me that I was sharing on social media
is ultimately what got me shut down.
I unfortunately lost all that content.
And so the future of subtech looks like, for
me, it's a bit of, I think, sort of like
a coffee table book, a memoir.
I I really I have beautiful graphics. I feel
like it's a place where there's a soft landing.
You know, I love and appreciate words so deeply.
And the art of that feels like home to me. And
so the sub sec, I think will become much more personal,
and less about my work and less about the journey
and more just kind of the expression of who I am and who I
became through this work. And
like I said, I I think I'm getting to the point where
19 years of coaching has kind of gotten me to the place where I can
put it down and, pick up some other passions.
Yes. Beautifully said. I love that. And thank you all for
hanging out with me today and letting me dig into the behind the
scenes of your substacks. I will continue to be a fan, and I
hope all of you listening and watching this episode will be a
fan. So head on over to the show notes, onlinedraya.com/311
for episode 311, and check out
everyone's Substack. Please, please, please go and look at these Substack's.
Get inspiration if you're thinking about starting a Substack, if you're on Substack,
if you're a marketer and you're looking for ways how you can bring
Substack to your clients, I think these are all really great examples of
what's possible on the platform. So thank you all for joining me
today. Also make sure you head on over to Apple
Podcasts or Spotify. Leave us a 5 star rating. Helps keep us in the top
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I'll see you next week with another beautiful episode. Thanks so
much. Bye for now.