This is really helpful for someone just starting out as a coach and new to Substack. I have 35 years of leading and mentoring to lean on. Just needed a platform. Do you build your email list through subscriptions?
I want to build an email list, partly for coaching and partly for a book I’m working on. I wasn’t sure if you gather emails through subscriptions or if there is another way.
I spent 35 years leading before I ever thought about writing publicly. When I finally started, I leaned hard into LinkedIn. And honestly, it worked. I converted there. But the ROI never felt right. Every result required constant pursuit. Show up today, get seen today. Stop showing up, disappear tomorrow.
Substack felt different from the first post.
The visibility versus relationship distinction isn't just a platform strategy. It's a posture shift. Mid-career leaders and coaches carry decades of hard-won experience. We don't need more reach. We need a place that actually rewards depth. Substack is that place.
The permission piece you named at the end is where most experienced practitioners get stuck. Not the platform. Not the writing. The permission. Permission to go long. Permission to teach without selling. Permission to believe that 47 subscribers who trust you are worth more than 4,700 who scroll past you.
I'm still building. Still learning. Thanks in large part to what Write Build Scale has put out there. The compounding is real in a way LinkedIn never was for me.
What makes this useful is the framing on owned-vs-rented channels, and the 9,000-subs-via-recommendations number under it makes the point harder to argue with. The mistake most coaches make on the way in is treating Substack as a longer-form Twitter, then quietly burning out three months later when the post-a-week cadence breaks.
I write about AI for non-technical leaders, and the same channel-discipline question shows up downstream of every tooling rollout my readers describe.
The version that's different for new creators: the 5 client-magnet features matter less than which one you commit to using consistently for the first 90 days. Pick one (Chat, or Recommendations, or Notes) and skip the other four entirely until that one is real.
The protective metric here is replies-per-week, not subscriber count. Subscribers can stall for two months while replies climb; that's the relationship layer Sinem points at. Subscribers can also climb while replies flatline; that's a leakier funnel than it looks.
Curious whether any coaches here are tracking a non-subscriber number this way.
This is great. I'm sharing this with my wife who has a business offering skills for coaches in a particular niche. Thanks!
I'm glad this was useful, Kevin. Thanks for sharing the piece with your wife. I hope that it will be valuable for her as well! :)
This is really helpful for someone just starting out as a coach and new to Substack. I have 35 years of leading and mentoring to lean on. Just needed a platform. Do you build your email list through subscriptions?
Hi Joseph! :)
I am really glad this was useful. What exactly do you mean with your question about building your email list through subscriptions? :)
I want to build an email list, partly for coaching and partly for a book I’m working on. I wasn’t sure if you gather emails through subscriptions or if there is another way.
Yes, exactly! A subscription on Substack is an email subscriber, so you're building your list! :)
I spent 35 years leading before I ever thought about writing publicly. When I finally started, I leaned hard into LinkedIn. And honestly, it worked. I converted there. But the ROI never felt right. Every result required constant pursuit. Show up today, get seen today. Stop showing up, disappear tomorrow.
Substack felt different from the first post.
The visibility versus relationship distinction isn't just a platform strategy. It's a posture shift. Mid-career leaders and coaches carry decades of hard-won experience. We don't need more reach. We need a place that actually rewards depth. Substack is that place.
The permission piece you named at the end is where most experienced practitioners get stuck. Not the platform. Not the writing. The permission. Permission to go long. Permission to teach without selling. Permission to believe that 47 subscribers who trust you are worth more than 4,700 who scroll past you.
I'm still building. Still learning. Thanks in large part to what Write Build Scale has put out there. The compounding is real in a way LinkedIn never was for me.
What makes this useful is the framing on owned-vs-rented channels, and the 9,000-subs-via-recommendations number under it makes the point harder to argue with. The mistake most coaches make on the way in is treating Substack as a longer-form Twitter, then quietly burning out three months later when the post-a-week cadence breaks.
I write about AI for non-technical leaders, and the same channel-discipline question shows up downstream of every tooling rollout my readers describe.
The version that's different for new creators: the 5 client-magnet features matter less than which one you commit to using consistently for the first 90 days. Pick one (Chat, or Recommendations, or Notes) and skip the other four entirely until that one is real.
The protective metric here is replies-per-week, not subscriber count. Subscribers can stall for two months while replies climb; that's the relationship layer Sinem points at. Subscribers can also climb while replies flatline; that's a leakier funnel than it looks.
Curious whether any coaches here are tracking a non-subscriber number this way.