The Two Substack Note-Types That Make People Hit Subscribe (They're Not What You Think)

The emotional operating system behind Notes that convert.

Substack Notes have brought in 125 subscribers for me in just the last 2 weeks.

That’s worth paying attention to.

Because if Notes are doing most of the heavy-lifting for my subscriber numbers, I need to figure out why.

Not just “Notes are hot right now” — I already know that. Everyone knows that, right? 😅 (I immediately thought of the movie Zoolander while writing this 😂 )

Since I write a lot about how to write (not just what to write, because anyone can copy-paste or prompt AI), this post is about Note types.

The vibes.

The emotional frequency underneath the words — so you can figure out what yours should sound like, no matter what your Substack is about.

---

Here’s what I found when I looked at the data

I went back through every Note I’ve written over the past few months. Some got likes. Some got shares. Some brought in actual subscribers. And when I sorted them by what actually moved the needle — not vanity metrics, but real people hitting “subscribe” — they fell into just two categories.

It wasn’t the tactical tips and it wasn’t the “here’s how I did it” breakdowns.

The Notes that brought in the most subscribers — and kept performing for weeks, sometimes months — were the ones that made people feel something they’d been carrying around alone.

---

Category 1: “The thing you’re fed up with but have no one to rant to”

These are your common enemy Notes.

A common enemy of mine? Guru BS.

I’ve even made some “could translate to real life” friends in the DMs because of this shared enemy.

A lot of what I share about gurus is shocking, irritating, eye-roll and fire-up energy.

Guru energy can be annoying at worst, super toxic at best.

Literally just read a heart-breaking and upsetting post about a guru in another space who is being “found out”. It’s not just maddening, the other part is that the other gurus in the same space are stone-cold silent.

Reading this today while writing this post and realizing that I left a world that had tons of guru energy but packaged up differently. When there’s power over others and money, the guru evil can come out and it can be super ugly. When I have posted about it in my previous niche, the posts usually went viral and there was something cathartic about sharing it. It’s almost like when you stand up and say something, by doing it, you give permission to others to do the same.

This is a topic that runs deep and could cover a lot of different type of industry BS involving abuse of power.

And guaranteed, if you have the courage and say it, you’ll become known as someone who said something about it.

So whether your category of guru stuff leans “annoying and eye-roll” territory, or straight up calling out serious stuff, this is one way to position yourself as a a recognizable name and be doing the good work in the process (and your notes will catch fire, too)

Another post in the “shared enemy” category is more of a practice or industry.

When I wrote about realizing by looking at the data that Facebook and Instagram no longer deserve my audience-building time? SO MANY PEOPLE piped up. People are tired of trying to hard to get no where when building their audience and their business. They’re genuinely sick of it.

But there’s a nagging feeling you should “be everywhere” (don’t the gurus say that??)

This was both “shared enemy” and “permission” (which I’ll get into in a second)

It clearly resonated.

(I wrote a whole post about how your Notes should bring in your people, like these have for me. You can read that post here)

How To Write Substack Notes That Bring In Your People

But what if your audience isn’t writers on Substack?

The principle works everywhere. The question is always the same: what is your specific audience fed up with?

If you write for corporate professionals, it’s not “meetings are too long.” It’s the person who responds to every Slack message with “let’s take this offline” and then never, ever does.

It’s the company values poster in the breakroom that says INTEGRITY while they’re conducting layoffs over Zoom.

If you write for parents, it’s not “parenting is hard.” It’s the other mom at pickup whose house is somehow spotless while she’s making sourdough with her toddler and posting it to Instagram.

It’s the stranger in the grocery store who tells you screen time is rotting your kid’s brain while your child is mid-meltdown and the iPad is the only thing standing between you and a complete public unraveling.

If you write for people navigating dating, it’s not “dating apps are bad.” It’s the bio that says “fluent in sarcasm” for the eleven-thousandth time. (There’s literally a guy who writes original songs based on unhinged Tinder messages. That’s an entire content engine built from one specific (and funny!) frustration.)

Whatever your niche: there’s something your people are thinking about constantly that nobody is saying.

Name it with the most absurdly specific detail you can. That’s the Note.

---

Category 2: “The thing you’re beating yourself up about that you can stop”

These are your permission Notes. And they’re just as powerful as the rant ones — sometimes more.

My audience is full of smart, capable people who are secretly convinced they’re behind.

They haven’t started yet, or they started and it’s not working, or they’re comparing themselves to someone with 50,000 subscribers and feeling like imposters.

The shame is constant and low-level, like background noise they’ve stopped noticing.

The permission Notes work because you’re not teaching anything. You’re unburdening.

You’re saying the thing your reader needs to hear but can’t say to themselves. Because if they said it to themselves, it would feel like making excuses. Coming from you — someone who’s been where they are and came out the other side — it feels like permission.

Permission posts can look a whole lot of ways. Dial in who your posts are for, and you can quickly discover what they struggle with. (and if that’s hard, write to yourself 2, 5, or even 10 years ago. What do you wish someone would have given you permission for?)

---

Why these two categories dominate everything else

Here’s what both of these Note types have in common, and it’s the thing that actually matters:

You can’t fake them.

You can’t sit down with a content calendar and manufacture “the thing everyone’s fed up with but nobody’s saying.”

You have to actually be fed up.

You have to have noticed the specific, absurd detail that makes it real like the gel nails. That comes from living in your niche, not from brainstorming.

Same with permission Notes. You can’t write “you’re allowed to still be figuring it out” if you haven’t shared the part where you felt like a fraud for still figuring it out.

The reader can tell.

The difference between a permission Note that gets shared and one that gets scrolled past is whether the writer actually felt it before they typed it.

If I go and really look, my best-performing Notes all have one thing in common: I wrote them when something in me was genuinely fired up or genuinely moved. The feeling came first, and the words followed.

If you can tap into that, and start posting more raw and real? You’ll actually start thinking in Notes and your writing process for them becomes easy.

Before you write your next Note, ask yourself this: Am I writing this because I think I should, or because something in me actually needs to say it?

If the answer is “I should” — save it for later.

If something is buzzing — a rant, a relief, a realization you had in the shower, a frustration you’ve been swallowing for months — that’s your material. Write it while it’s hot. Don’t clean it up too much. Let people feel the heat.

---

Where to go from here

If you want the formulas and frameworks for writing Notes that position you as someone worth following, start with my post on why your Notes should be Worldview Manifestos, or Positioning Statements.

But the real work happens before you open the app. It happens when you’re annoyed by something and think “someone should say this.” When you’re being too hard on yourself and catch it. When you notice the exact, specific, ridiculous detail that everyone recognizes but nobody’s named.

That’s your next Note. Write it.

And… If this was helpful, would you consider restacking it or sharing it with a friend? I really appreciate it!

---

P.S. Note writing is something I’m going deep on in my paid tier — where I share paid subscriber posts on writing with AI prompts and other helpful tools.

I’m planning some awesome stuff for my paid tier upgrade, coming early next month. I’m going to be hosting a monthly live Q&A call for paid subscribers where we talk specifics and you can ask any question that pertains to your Substack journey.

AND for Founding Members, you get a 1:1 call with me to jump-start your topics and whatever you want help with to make your Substack awesome.

Stay tuned for the upcoming updates (early March!) and get in NOW and lock in the current pricing!

If you want to make sure you don’t miss it, make sure you’re subscribed.