It's... The Chance Of A Lifetime

I'm not being dramatic.

One of my favorite movies of all time is It’s A Wonderful Life.

I know. Cheesy.

And every time I watch it, I yell at the TV, “NO, UNCLE BILLY! Careful with that MONEYYYYYY!!!”

But as I was thinking about this post, this scene popped into my head…

George and Mary are talking to their good ol’ pal Sam Wainwright, the guy Mary’s mom really wants her to marry. And Sam is telling them both, they gotta get in NOW, on the ground FLOOR… because it’s the chance of a lifetime.

I know Sam was talking about something else 😂 but right now I’m talking about SUBSTACK.

Substack is truly the chance of a lifetime right now, for coaches, creators, freelancers, consultants, copywriters and ghostwriters… anyone who wants to grow a business with their expertise, experience and personality.

It’s literally a little ecosystem that favors writing, let’s you build an email list and a social media following and eventually monetize, all in a place where the users are accustomed to upgrading to paid to get to your inner circle or read something they really want to read beyond the paywall.

How cool is that?

And writing is the thing that most of us grew up doing on social media before all the platforms turned into broadcasting channels and we all suddenly had to decide we were reality TV stars. 🙄

Substack is primarily for writing. I’m so glad about that.

The short-form Notes are for discovery, getting to know people, finding friends and people to follow. This builds trust and gets people to the next level:

Your long form posts. This is where you go deeper, longer, more details, more nuance. More you and your personality (because you have more time). But there are so many variations you can do!

Some people use it like a newsletter. Some use it more like intimate letters. Some people create entire online magazines, complete with images, design features, curated cool stuff.

The world is your oyster here.

And now there’s also video and podcasting. The layers just keep getting better.

Let me tell you…

I got my start in 2016 as a newbie writer/content creator/podcaster. I chose podcasting because I had no confidence in that people would give a shit about what I think about stuff.

What I know now is, people don’t start by caring about you.

They follow you for the conversation you’re leading, the stories you’re telling, how you say things in your topic.

But we all understand that a lot better now that content creation is more normalized.

Back then, I chose podcasting because it was a way for me to host a conversation with people who I thought had really great stories of stuff they did that I thought more people should consider doing: be more entrepreneurial, use their unique skills and talents and expertise to create their own thing.

Back then, I was talking to musicians. But today, I’m talking to anyone in their 40s and 50s and beyond who want to do exactly that.

And Substack is the best place to do it. Especially if you’re just starting out.

Why am I bringing up podcasting here?

Well… it’s because that’s the way I started.

I built a podcast on a separate platform that hosted the episodes, and it got sent out to Apple Music and other podcast players (Spotify wasn’t really a thing yet.)

I had to talk about what I was doing “over there” on Instagram and Facebook and “send” people to another app to listen.

Well… now that Substack exists, you can host your podcast FOR FREE (I paid $15-$20/mo. for 6 years!) and the natural discovery exists right here at home. You post Notes, posts, audios and videos and it lives over here and gets distributed.

And you can build your business right alongside it when you decide to turn on your paid tier.

SEE WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT??
CHANCE OF A FREAKIN’ LIFETIME!

Ok, I’ll stop yelling now.

Mostly I’m probably preaching to the choir if you’re finding this and you’re already on the platform. But if you came hear from another avenue and you’ve been hearing the typical misunderstandings I’ve been seeing about Substack? I’m glad you found this one.

In the last few months as I’ve searched for what people are saying out there (especially in the American market)… the discussion has been:

• Substack is too expensive (because it takes 10% of your earnings) — (advice from an email marketing guru)

• Substack is not a good replacement for a blog (advice from a pro blogger)

• Substack isn’t a good replacement for email marketing software (from another email marketing guru)

Each one of these arguments is not debating the right thing. Substack has become a lot of things over the last few years and some people are still arguing something outdated about Substack.

But let me still handle each of these objections:

For the money one: it’s FREE unless you’re earning.

You can write as much as you want, upload as many videos and audios as you want, there’s no limit. It’s free.

You could literally grow a list to 15K and not pay a dime (unlike other email software.) Now — if you turn on your paid tier and 10% of those people join your paid tier? Yes, Substack takes a 10% cut. Just part of the game here.

For free you got the visibility and the traffic to get those subscribers. That 10% is just part of the exchange for that… and if you decide you want to monetize those people off platform, of course you can. And if you want to leave Substack, you can take the list with you.

Is Substack a good replacement for blogging? Well… the gal that made this post had a lot of great points. But then a couple weeks later she made a post about how her SEO from Google was going to be changing drastically with AI search taking the place of blogs and articles as search results. Now that tune might be changing.

As email marketing software?? I agree. It’s not a replacement for email marketing software in my opinion. You don’t get any automations or welcome sequences (besides your welcome email) that you can set up. You don’t have the abilities that platforms like Kit have. Experienced marketers wouldn’t move their whole list to Substack. It’s more of an and question, not an or question (and I advise to build an email list off platform too for a variety of reasons) BUT as a new creator? This isn’t a thing you should worry about right now. Other email marketing softwares might have free plans to start, but then you need to add a way to be discovered (like another social media channel.) With Substack, you don’t necessarily need that.

All that to say, Substack is still largely misunderstood, largely underused, largely NEW. Even though it’s been pretty popular for the last several years.

If you’re reading this right now, you’re still early.

And it is the chance of a lifetime. Don’t miss it.

(if you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil it, but the thing Sam was talking about on that phone call? The thing that was “the chance of a lifetime”?? It was PLASTIC. 😂

And yes, I feel that strongly about how important Substack is right now and how you’re really getting in on the ground floor if you start now.

So now I’d love to hear from you: do you feel the same? Are you busy on Substack or still not really active?

I’d love to know what you think. Share below in the comments.

P.S. if you know anyone who is talking about Substack who’s not on this platform right now that needs to read this, will you hit the share button below and text it to them? You might very well be letting them in on the chance of a lifetime. 😉