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

00;00;05;29 - 00;00;17;13
Aaron Pete
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?

00;00;17;20 - 00;00;35;19
Linda Lebrun
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 LeBrun, 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.

00;00;35;24 - 00;00;53;11
Linda Lebrun
And part of my job is to go out and talk to anybody who might be a writer or a 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.

00;00;53;16 - 00;01;13;27
Linda Lebrun
Substack is a platform that tries to be the full stack for writers and creators globally. Fullstack just means we are one place where you can write, publish. You can have a 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.

00;01;13;27 - 00;01;44;19
Linda Lebrun
You could turn off to 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 in 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 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.

00;01;45;06 - 00;02;05;14
Aaron Pete
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.

00;02;05;15 - 00;02;28;06
Aaron Pete
I know individuals who work in government, they often feel stifled, 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 up a page on Whiskey and he makes whiskey videos on his favorite thing. And within his circle, within his circle of friends, they may not understand his interest, but as he goes out to a broader audience, there are whiskey connoisseurs.

00;02;28;06 - 00;02;45;03
Aaron Pete
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 conversation 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?

00;02;45;14 - 00;03;09;22
Linda Lebrun
Yeah, and absolutely, I'd love to give a little bit about 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 Substack. 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.

00;03;09;22 - 00;03;34;11
Linda Lebrun
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 simplify it and make it more approachable for more people. So the 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.

00;03;34;11 - 00;03;56;21
Linda Lebrun
So the first idea was about journalists and changes in media, the disruption of advertising, everything from Craigslist to the Internet. It was it was just damaging newspapers and the media so much that the existing models 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.

00;03;57;01 - 00;04;14;02
Linda Lebrun
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 thousand true fans. This will be really familiar to a lot of people who create online. If you have a thousand people who are willing to pay you $10 a month, that is a living.

00;04;14;02 - 00;04;38;15
Linda Lebrun
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 from 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 it.

00;04;38;27 - 00;04;57;26
Linda Lebrun
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 Sandhill Road where everybody goes to raise VC money, and I think they got a lot of no's.

00;04;57;26 - 00;05;18;19
Linda Lebrun
I think they had a lot of people you could imagine, Are you nuts? Content on the Internet is commoditized. You 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 by people and then just have fast forward to the end of the story.

00;05;18;20 - 00;05;39;01
Linda Lebrun
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 2 million paid subscriptions on Substack for all of the publications put together.

00;05;39;08 - 00;05;59;21
Linda Lebrun
So it seems like it does work and that sounds like I'm saying, okay, victory. You know, Bishop, a comma is not 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, know or cared about the platform.

00;05;59;28 - 00;06;15;09
Linda Lebrun
So we still do have a I think it's the first or second inning. We have a lot in front of us, but I think that the original concept the founders has has been borne out just by writers and creators coming and saying, Yeah, I think this is going to work for me. And giving it a try.

00;06;16;12 - 00;06;40;22
Aaron Pete
One piece of a great company is that the founders, it's important that they have something that makes it team members like yourself excited about the vision. That's where I think a company's 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 exciting and keeping the team excited.

00;06;40;23 - 00;06;46;18
Aaron Pete
Can you talk about the founders of Substack? What what is your perspective? How do we think about the leaders in this organization?

00;06;47;00 - 00;07;15;03
Linda Lebrun
I think, you know the story of the founders of Substack. I would love to hear it told in detail someday because it's 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 there is a you are pivoting is such a cliché word, but you really are.

00;07;15;03 - 00;07;30;29
Linda Lebrun
Every three months it might be like, okay, we were trying that saying and we're not satisfied with how it works. We're going to go in the 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.

00;07;31;03 - 00;07;56;03
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;07;56;05 - 00;08;16;26
Linda Lebrun
Here's why I think this. And then of the other leaders. So Josh says he 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.

00;08;17;03 - 00;08;39;15
Linda Lebrun
And I think he is very motivated within the culture of engineers and that has been his forte coming on the path. And then last is Hamish Mackenzie and a lot of people listening to this might know. Hamish Mackenzie, 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 were technologists.

00;08;39;15 - 00;09;00;10
Linda Lebrun
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 me 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.

00;09;00;10 - 00;09;19;20
Linda Lebrun
So and his title is Chief Writing Officer, so he doesn't have a conventional corporate title. 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 going to have a chief writing officer.

00;09;19;24 - 00;09;33;00
Linda Lebrun
So that's 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 is not always examined of who are the people who may not be so public, who are behind the way that the business unfolds.

00;09;33;26 - 00;10;01;29
Aaron Pete
One piece that's really unique to Substack, I find is this idea of freedom of expression. And you talk about how that fits in. Obviously with many social media organizations right now, there is 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 censored like reduced on the algorithm or this seems like something Substack has kind of taken a different stance on.

00;10;02;13 - 00;10;12;04
Aaron Pete
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?

00;10;13;02 - 00;10;45;06
Linda Lebrun
We give you 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 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.

00;10;45;14 - 00;11;06;24
Linda Lebrun
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 the again, it's some mysterious algo that's that's deciding what what gets stopped, what gets elevated. And it it clearly it serves advertisers, which is the business model of those platforms. Nobody would disagree.

00;11;06;24 - 00;11;27;18
Linda Lebrun
That's what it is serving. It's not serving my ability to get my podcasting by you or your ability to get your essays seen by me. So how did we do it differently on Substack? Whatever. If somebody's option to read your publication, they are via email going to see everything or by the app go to see everything that you produce.

00;11;27;18 - 00;11;45;28
Linda Lebrun
There's not something. So he could see that one or not this one. They're going to see everything. And the 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, opt in to see one thing and then all of a sudden you might like you might like there are ten other things competing for my attention.

00;11;46;07 - 00;12;10;14
Linda Lebrun
We can't go back to the attention of the founders. They wanted to get away from the the constant attention game that everybody feel. It's very enervating for people doing right and talk to anybody who is a creator on YouTube. They're kind of exhausted 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.

00;12;10;23 - 00;12;32;06
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;12;32;13 - 00;12;39;17
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;12;40;06 - 00;13;08;17
Aaron Pete
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 setting 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.

00;13;08;25 - 00;13;27;03
Linda Lebrun
Good. I'm really glad. Do 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've been working at Substack for two years and I remember when I started, I would see comments saying, Oh, eventually Substack will deplatformed people, eventually they'll ban this or that person.

00;13;27;12 - 00;13;43;27
Linda Lebrun
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 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.

00;13;44;19 - 00;14;06;22
Aaron Pete
Do you have any concerns about audience capture? Is this a topic that goes into it? There's a 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.

00;14;06;22 - 00;14;21;27
Aaron Pete
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 to do well. You want to make sure that you're doing it for your passion on the topic and then you're flexible on your ideas.

00;14;22;01 - 00;14;28;11
Aaron Pete
Do you have any concerns or is this a topic that you guys kind of go through about audience capture that?

00;14;28;16 - 00;14;51;21
Linda Lebrun
It's so interesting, Erin, how you mentioned how your 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 works.

00;14;51;21 - 00;15;09;13
Linda Lebrun
So we'll just do more of that. And I have, you know, heard stories of somebody will be picking up on YouTube again. I mean, they could they could take it. They're big enough. 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, but interested in doing that?

00;15;09;13 - 00;15;37;17
Linda Lebrun
Content anymore? My life is 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 kept 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 L.M. talk radio in the 1980s and you could, you could go as far back as people trying to build an audience there probably some opera singer in the 19th century who was like, I don't want to do Verdi anymore, but that's what they keep coming for.

00;15;38;00 - 00;16;14;09
Linda Lebrun
The issue is do you let the audience control you or do you as a creator stay in control? What I would, 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 as a writer, as a creator, as a podcaster, because you call the shots and you can decide and you can have a 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

00;16;14;09 - 00;16;44;06
Linda Lebrun
be more likely to come along with you. Whereas if an algorithm is deciding who sees what while, 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.

00;16;44;06 - 00;16;49;21
Linda Lebrun
At least you are writing and creating for people rather than for some lines of code somewhere.

00;16;50;09 - 00;17;05;08
Aaron Pete
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 ten years. You can try and take more of the safer. How did you get started with Substack?

00;17;05;22 - 00;17;24;18
Linda Lebrun
So and you know what? I've never told a story on a podcast before, but when I first started at Substack it was March 20, 21 and I remember I was chatting with a friend and the friend said, You know, Twitter just bought a newsletter platform called Review and does it Substack get a lot of signups from people posting on Twitter?

00;17;24;18 - 00;17;46;29
Linda Lebrun
Aren't you worried that now Review will just take that over? And I was sort of like, Oh, I don't know. I don't know for sure if it would be fine. So the back story of my career was I was mid-career career change because I had always been in the investment business. I'd worked on a Bay Street, I'd worked in polio management I was a CFA charterholder.

00;17;47;04 - 00;18;06;15
Linda Lebrun
That is a credential that that people you would deal with for the people listing. 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 that was my world. And I had the life reevaluation experience of the pandemic that I think a lot of middle aged people have.

00;18;07;05 - 00;18;35;01
Linda Lebrun
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 to be good economic models for them to turn it into linear.

00;18;35;01 - 00;18;58;25
Linda Lebrun
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 Mackenzie 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 it change if you get into something in the tech industry, the cliches about the tech industry are the they skew young.

00;18;58;25 - 00;19;17;29
Linda Lebrun
You know they're they're very online. They have their own slang. They have their own ways of 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 that sounds kind of sardonic, but it like it authentically in a good way says, okay, you can't just do things the way you've always done that.

00;19;18;00 - 00;19;33;26
Linda Lebrun
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's 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 jump.

00;19;34;27 - 00;19;51;19
Aaron Pete
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?

00;19;51;19 - 00;20;07;16
Aaron Pete
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're you are where you are. And I think that that's an error. I think you can be great in many different things and you can develop yourself over time, and that's enriching for other people to see.

00;20;07;16 - 00;20;17;17
Aaron Pete
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?

00;20;17;26 - 00;20;36;25
Linda Lebrun
Yeah, so I have a few sub stacks 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.

00;20;36;25 - 00;20;58;06
Linda Lebrun
So we have empathy for the writers by doing a Substack. So I have I have one called Fake You, Doc Substack dot com where I mean it's rather dry. It's instructions on how to do four different things using Substack. Well, what I often I'll say, okay, there's a question that I've gotten from writers a bunch of times and we have a support site, we have support that's Overstock.com recommend everybody bookmark that.

00;20;58;06 - 00;21;20;08
Linda Lebrun
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 Substack, which is a lot of what I deal with because of my background and so I'll write something on Epic you don't Substack Icon. And then there's another Substack called Invest Dot Substack dot com, and it's a few of us at Substack that contribute to that one.

00;21;20;13 - 00;21;37;25
Linda Lebrun
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. But 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 grown an audience.

00;21;37;25 - 00;21;57;16
Linda Lebrun
They could always get the best, best advice. So I'll ask, I recommend people check out one more. So this is not mine. This is the broader Substack publication, but if they go to own Dot Substack dot com, that is the sort of ah big list and that has a lot of writer interviews. It also has how tos on Substack, but that's a really good one.

00;21;57;16 - 00;22;21;19
Linda Lebrun
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, if 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?

00;22;21;26 - 00;22;30;05
Linda Lebrun
So being able to convince with words, I think an influencer with words becomes like a really important career skill. The longer you go on.

00;22;31;00 - 00;22;54;06
Aaron Pete
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's seen particularly with the pandemic, and it seems like there has been a reinvigoration of people being willing to enter markets and to to have a certain level of confidence that this is a worthwhile investment.

00;22;54;06 - 00;23;09;03
Aaron Pete
I think of individuals who tend to drop out. We have like I think there's an explainer video on Netflix that talks about the middle class dropping out of love of the stock market, and now we're starting to see a change. Is that something you're seeing? What are your thoughts on on where we're seeing investing going?

00;23;10;03 - 00;23;36;00
Linda Lebrun
I think that people want to, particularly the younger people. So the millennial age group and the youngest millennials are 40 now they have I'm 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.

00;23;36;05 - 00;24;13;02
Linda Lebrun
They're skeptical. They know that person is being paid to do a role. They're thinking, what are the fees? They're thinking, are you behaving as a fiduciary with my best interests 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.

00;24;13;07 - 00;24;36;14
Linda Lebrun
Now, I want to say that it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody should go out and start picking stocks for themselves. But some of the platforms you've mentioned, like Wealthsimple, you could go on and you can say what your risk tolerances, which are ages and they will give you an automated portfolio that is just as good as what you would 15 years ago, will be paying an individual quite a lot more money for and they would be constructing it mechanically anyway.

00;24;36;20 - 00;25;03;05
Linda Lebrun
So I think the internet, providing people with tools has created it has reduced the amount of fear that people have, having a more DIY approach and even if somebody does have somebody who is, you know, an advisor who is hand-holding 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.

00;25;03;05 - 00;25;19;29
Linda Lebrun
And, you know, there are a lot of how do 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 they're not as relevant as they used to be.

00;25;19;29 - 00;25;21;00
Linda Lebrun
It's positive development.

00;25;21;18 - 00;25;50;27
Aaron Pete
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 to try and have passive income, but be also to make your viewpoints known, whether you have concerns about climate, whether you have concerns about social equality.

00;25;51;07 - 00;25;57;15
Aaron Pete
It's a way of getting your voice out there and taking a stance on supporting company versus company. What are your thoughts on that?

00;25;58;01 - 00;26;39;22
Linda Lebrun
I truly think the best thing about the environment is 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 light on, well, if you are guilty of corporate misdeeds or who don't treat your employees well, there is going to be a price in terms of it could be your

00;26;39;25 - 00;26;58;18
Linda Lebrun
stock price or it could be in public perception of you. So I think that it's it's a positive. We could it's a whole separate discussion about what those ethical standards of what 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.

00;26;58;21 - 00;27;17;12
Linda Lebrun
I don't think anybody would say there should be no standards whatsoever. I think people feel like not just like if I associate with someone in business, I want them to be of 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 it's a worthwhile and valid conversation.

00;27;17;28 - 00;27;41;05
Linda Lebrun
But I think there's there has been a drive to, okay, somebody is 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 ten people in a room, they're going to have ten different ideas about what that ethical standard should be or should not be.

00;27;41;12 - 00;27;46;14
Linda Lebrun
What do you what do you think about that? What do you think about this idea of ESG standards and where we are with it?

00;27;46;24 - 00;28;08;07
Aaron Pete
I think 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 that actually doesn't result in any better outcomes in results for the environment. And I think we can get lost in wanting our our feelings justified and feeling like we're making a difference justified without any actual results.

00;28;08;13 - 00;28;29;03
Aaron Pete
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 you can look at other companies, and so they're not taking any steps at all.

00;28;29;09 - 00;28;50;12
Aaron Pete
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 the there are people, the elites are making a decision that I may 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.

00;28;50;16 - 00;29;08;10
Aaron Pete
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. You might move in 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.

00;29;08;10 - 00;29;17;14
Aaron Pete
And I think that that provides my 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.

00;29;18;13 - 00;29;36;29
Linda Lebrun
Yeah, that what you said about the the leaf and the box ticking and sort of the virtue signaling approach that to me, the iconic example of that is when you have the breast cancer pink 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?

00;29;37;00 - 00;29;57;03
Linda Lebrun
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 is Kanae is suspicious about this and will say, okay, prove it to me. You can't just throw on a ribbon or throw on something on the box.

00;29;57;17 - 00;30;00;19
Linda Lebrun
You have to to show me that you actually have some deeper commitment.

00;30;01;14 - 00;30;11;18
Aaron Pete
Going back to Substack, how do they differentiate themselves from other organizations that are doing something similar? You mentioned the one, the Twitter board. How does Substack differentiate itself?

00;30;12;27 - 00;30;30;00
Linda Lebrun
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 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.

00;30;30;00 - 00;30;59;22
Linda Lebrun
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 Miller Lite or something like that that is designed for email marketing. What Substack is designed to 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.

00;30;59;22 - 00;31;24;19
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;31;24;19 - 00;31;45;26
Linda Lebrun
And people will if you're on Substack, they'll find you through search engine optimization because we do all that on the backend for 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 to do all this, they don't have to be sitting there with each HTML for dummies open in their lap.

00;31;46;02 - 00;32;03;17
Linda Lebrun
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. Well, you know, I would I think it'd be very hard for anybody to come in and out MailChimp, MailChimp.

00;32;03;24 - 00;32;24;10
Linda Lebrun
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 trading emails, and they're on MailChimp 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.

00;32;24;14 - 00;32;50;11
Linda Lebrun
So that gives you a sense of what we do and don't try to do in the market. You're 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 we're very gratified it's happening is, you know, for wonderful writers and creators that, you know, Margaret Atwood and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Roxane Gay are coming on Substack and using it as their place, their their home on the Internet.

00;32;51;22 - 00;33;18;14
Aaron Pete
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 Taibbi. 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 their message out, but being able to actually inform a society on what's going on and critical issues going on in our democracies?

00;33;18;24 - 00;33;19;09
Aaron Pete
Mm hmm.

00;33;19;20 - 00;33;45;16
Linda Lebrun
It's 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 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.

00;33;45;23 - 00;34;09;25
Linda Lebrun
And there's a group of local publications on Substack and people from all over the world. 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 UK. They were just all over the world, South America.

00;34;09;29 - 00;34;41;00
Linda Lebrun
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 a tremendous value. So you could have somebody like a Matt Taibbi 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.

00;34;41;09 - 00;35;01;27
Linda Lebrun
In both cases, what are they doing there? They're doing a service, fulfilling a job for the reader, and they're going to be successful with that. So. Well, it's the people like Matt Taibbi who who get a huge amount of interest and readership. But there are there are sort of a long tail of many more people on Substack, who in a lot of cases are they're doing breaking news.

00;35;02;03 - 00;35;33;02
Linda Lebrun
They're, you know, 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 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.

00;35;33;02 - 00;35;37;26
Linda Lebrun
There's a lot of talent out there and there's a lot of news to be covered. The problem is the business models.

00;35;38;15 - 00;35;57;21
Aaron Pete
I've spoken to many people who come from the United States, a few professors and they call Canada are 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.

00;35;57;21 - 00;36;18;02
Aaron Pete
The idea that, yeah, you look in a Matt Taibbi and you go, Wow, this person's huge. They're kind of the pinnacle of their game and somebody can go under the same platform as them know upfront cost and do the exact same type of work and start to be a steward like a student of the game and work towards being more similar and learning from the best and not having any barriers to entry.

00;36;18;02 - 00;36;22;02
Aaron Pete
And that's just, that's so exciting, the idea that entrepreneurs can find their voice in that way.

00;36;22;12 - 00;36;54;22
Linda Lebrun
Yeah, I completely agree with you. There's 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 Lin 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 expertize on, which is extremism and extremist movements online and the use of information to manipulate people online.

00;36;54;26 - 00;37;15;10
Linda Lebrun
And that has sort of been his beats. And he really I have really enjoyed reading his publication. And this is so often you read something on Substack and it's the 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.

00;37;15;10 - 00;37;39;10
Linda Lebrun
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 Maclean's for I think 17 years now he is on Substack and Substack is his his main place for writing.

00;37;39;12 - 00;38;01;06
Linda Lebrun
And if you go and look at his Substack, he has his section that's about Canadian politics, but then he also has a section where he talks about his cultural interest. Like jazz music and museums. And again, this is something where if you are a columnist, they're probably going to educate you to politics columnist and you say, Okay, next week I want to write about my musical interest, are probably going to roll their eyes and say, No, that's that's not a go.

00;38;01;12 - 00;38;19;14
Linda Lebrun
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 these 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.

00;38;19;29 - 00;38;30;06
Aaron Pete
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? How? Maybe let's start it. Like, how do you get started on Substack?

00;38;30;08 - 00;38;50;15
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;38;51;02 - 00;39;11;27
Linda Lebrun
People who are listening are probably saying Well, five, that seems like nothing but 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 100 times before I tell anybody. I would really encourage people will embrace what you have to say, particularly if they're already your friend or family.

00;39;11;27 - 00;39;35;26
Linda Lebrun
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, I probably like every creator on the Internet of All in history has gotten the advice be consistent, be consistent is very boring advice, but I can tell you the data had the data says that people who are consistent really do much better.

00;39;36;03 - 00;39;57;00
Linda Lebrun
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 a success. But the data did not show that. It said that the correlation with how many followers you have is quite low.

00;39;57;04 - 00;40;18;09
Linda Lebrun
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 you just go about doing that. And the longer you do it, it becomes like a muscle that you exercised.

00;40;18;16 - 00;40;41;28
Linda Lebrun
So I would say and you know, it's just me who works at Substack making all these suggestions of what creators would do. I always couch my 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, you know, it's going to look like I'm self-promoting at the beginning.

00;40;42;10 - 00;40;55;06
Linda Lebrun
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 to something that you're going to be able to keep up with for a few months and then see how it feels.

00;40;55;13 - 00;40;59;28
Linda Lebrun
And often when people do that, they just fall in love with the experience. I've learned so much from it.

00;41;00;28 - 00;41;21;13
Aaron Pete
I think that that's really good advice. I would also say when I started the podcast, the idea was, I'm not done until I had my thousandth episode. What on 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.

00;41;21;18 - 00;41;49;02
Aaron Pete
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 them with the same respect and take it seriously. 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.

00;41;49;07 - 00;41;52;05
Aaron Pete
You want to take it seriously and invest yourself into that.

00;41;52;28 - 00;42;12;02
Linda Lebrun
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, I'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 that doesn't work as well.

00;42;12;02 - 00;42;34;13
Linda Lebrun
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 a graph of People's Substack subscribers that we look at every day.

00;42;34;19 - 00;42;54;20
Linda Lebrun
It's rarely that a beautiful, easy, straight line path. It's much more often that things will be slow and then they'll have a little break. Someone shows one of their 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.

00;42;54;20 - 00;43;23;10
Linda Lebrun
So I say it to be encouraging to people. If anybody is listening to this and they're sort of like, you know, I'm, I'm hacking live halfway through my first hundred 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.

00;43;23;15 - 00;43;26;10
Linda Lebrun
And that's going to help you grow and develop as a creator to.

00;43;26;28 - 00;43;48;04
Aaron Pete
Beautiful one of the pieces that I read on Substack that made sense once I'd heard it but didn't really clue in Prior was the 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.

00;43;48;04 - 00;44;04;24
Aaron Pete
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.

00;44;04;24 - 00;44;09;23
Aaron Pete
I'm ready to start putting paywalls up and start trying to get compensated for this. What advice do you have for them?

00;44;10;12 - 00;44;33;08
Linda Lebrun
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 Damian 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. It 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.

00;44;33;20 - 00;44;59;16
Linda Lebrun
I would say the the when people are starting to decide about paywall and 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.

00;44;59;17 - 00;45;21;11
Linda Lebrun
You 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 very intimate space. You know, you they truly feel you're writing just to them. So take advantage of that. Most Substack publications are not. In fact, very few are a eight person or a 12 person organization.

00;45;21;16 - 00;45;41;02
Linda Lebrun
They tend by and large to be an individual or a team of two or three so it's is 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.

00;45;41;19 - 00;46;10;02
Linda Lebrun
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 comment section. I'd love to hear from you guys and just that appreciation in 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.

00;46;10;10 - 00;46;29;20
Linda Lebrun
All that said, still in the once in a while, the post that's like on Substack, you can send out a post to your paid subscribers and post then a preview to your nonpaying 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 a moment of like, All right.

00;46;29;21 - 00;46;37;07
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;46;37;27 - 00;46;52;11
Aaron Pete
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?

00;46;52;15 - 00;47;17;05
Linda Lebrun
Yeah, and it's, it's a question that resonates because often when in the course of my work, I'll be talking to somebody who has been a writer or has maybe their book author, or they may have a number of ideas. I've had people say, Well, I could do Substack about subject or subject B I'm equally interested. And sometimes their their question will be, what is there a gap on Substack or what's more popular out of these topics on Substack?

00;47;17;10 - 00;47;43;25
Linda Lebrun
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 the your audiences is not this limited, constrained audience where you're trying to fit your peg into some size up hole. What's much better is for the, the creator to ask him or herself, what can I stay excited about and engaged in?

00;47;44;10 - 00;48;05;18
Linda Lebrun
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 Substack.

00;48;05;18 - 00;48;19;08
Linda Lebrun
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 how to do it better. And I'd say it's the same with writing. It's the same with publishing on Substack.

00;48;19;26 - 00;48;33;28
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;48;34;16 - 00;48;56;25
Linda Lebrun
I would have changed some things, but the way that I learned is by doing them. So those would be my, my, 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 take some initial action, even if it's a small step.

00;48;57;12 - 00;49;01;26
Linda Lebrun
And that's going to motivate you to to continue and be consistent.

00;49;02;16 - 00;49;10;07
Aaron Pete
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 Facebook?

00;49;10;10 - 00;49;24;12
Linda Lebrun
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 dot com forward slash Linda. And if you start us and it's just going to give you the normal, you know, here's the forum to start a Substack.

00;49;24;12 - 00;49;41;20
Linda Lebrun
But if you go to Substack dot com forward slash Linda, I will actually get a message that you started as 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 can just go to Source Techonomy.

00;49;41;20 - 00;50;01;21
Linda Lebrun
There's a big push 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 that we're trying to send is to just start if there's one theme of our conversations that is just start. And if people would like to go ahead and follow me on Twitter, it's Substack.

00;50;01;21 - 00;50;21;24
Linda Lebrun
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, and celebrated and seen.

00;50;22;00 - 00;50;38;27
Linda Lebrun
And I'm kind of by re-Tweeting 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, ah, just got 20 subscribers as I am somebody who says, hey, I've just, you know, hit $1,000,000 of recurring revenue. So yeah, so there's a couple of things that people can do.

00;50;39;14 - 00;50;56;05
Aaron Pete
I really find all of your posts on Twitter really valuable that insightful to me because I enjoy learning about how to improve and how to grow and, and being excited about the idea that you're progressing even if it gets no views or a ton of use. You're progressing and improving. And I think that that's really inspirational for people to follow.

00;50;56;05 - 00;51;07;15
Aaron Pete
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.

00;51;07;26 - 00;51;16;13
Linda Lebrun
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.

00;51;16;22 - 00;51;20;14
Aaron Pete
My pleasure. Tim, how did we do we did great.

00;51;21;08 - 00;51;22;09
Linda Lebrun
Oh, I.

00;51;22;09 - 00;51;26;17
Aaron Pete
Pressed the right buttons and recorded and enjoyed the conversation so well.

00;51;26;17 - 00;51;42;10
Linda Lebrun
Well done. Awesome. Aaron those questions were so, so good. I think that you're your audience will really enjoy hearing some of like the the advice stuff, but also like a little bit about what's, 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.

00;51;42;23 - 00;51;49;27
Aaron Pete
I couldn't agree more. I was very excited to have you on. I had William Johnson on previously. Who did Vancouver Tech Journal.

00;51;50;08 - 00;51;51;01
Linda Lebrun
Oh, so cool.

00;51;51;07 - 00;51;54;02
Aaron Pete
And we talked a ton about Substack and how that impacted him.

00;51;54;13 - 00;51;59;15
Linda Lebrun
Oh, good. Excellent. Actually, yeah. He's a great Internet entrepreneur. Too, so. Good. Good content.

00;52;00;02 - 00;52;08;01
Aaron Pete
Awesome. Well, this should release next week. It will. I will send it out to you. And again, I just appreciate you being willing to take the time Well.

00;52;08;19 - 00;52;31;00
Linda Lebrun
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 let's also let you know, stay in touch. You know? You know, a friend who works at Substack. And so if you have in general questions, interact with me or if there's anybody else you want to send my way it 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.

00;52;31;00 - 00;52;37;17
Linda Lebrun
We're trying to be in expansion mode, in evangelism mode. So just happy for any opportunity to do that. And we're glad to make your acquaintance.

00;52;37;25 - 00;52;41;14
Aaron Pete
Yes. I can't wait to send this out and I look forward to staying in touch.

00;52;41;24 - 00;52;49;13
Linda Lebrun
Doing a podcast is a good way to meet somebody. You have like a good there's I feel like we had coffee, but it got recorded so that's really good. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

00;52;49;17 - 00;52;50;29
Aaron Pete
No problem. Enjoy the rest of your day.

00;52;51;05 - 00;52;52;16
Linda Lebrun
You too. Thanks Tim. Bye bye.

00;52;52;25 - 00;52;53;09
Aaron Pete
You bet.

00;52;55;27 - 00;52;57;21
Aaron Pete
Are you going to start a Substack?

00;52;57;21 - 00;53;06;20
Tim McAlpine
That's a good question. Hey, I'm intrigued, but I also know that my plate is super, super full. So

00;53;07;18 - 00;53;09;08
Aaron Pete
what did you think? How did we do?

00;53;09;08 - 00;53;15;13
Tim McAlpine
Excellent. I'm curious what your experience been so far with Substack.

00;53;15;13 - 00;53;29;00
Aaron Pete
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 linktree and then it kind of connects you.

00;53;29;06 - 00;53;49;19
Aaron Pete
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. So when I started Substack again looking at my first post in comparison to now, it's just a completely different kind of style.

00;53;49;24 - 00;53;53;29
Aaron Pete
And now, to be honest, Rebekah reads my substack for me.

00;53;53;29 - 00;53;55;18
Tim McAlpine
I appreciate your honesty.

00;53;55;18 - 00;54;09;28
Aaron Pete
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 the conversation. And so Rebekah's good at being like, Oh, this is like the starting place.

00;54;09;28 - 00;54;24;24
Aaron Pete
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, 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.

00;54;24;24 - 00;54;26;06
Aaron Pete
So that's awesome.

00;54;26;06 - 00;54;27;06
Tim McAlpine
Well done,

00;54;27;06 - 00;54;31;28
Aaron Pete
this is what I'm good at asking people questions - that's my skills, not writing.

00;54;31;28 - 00;54;47;19
Tim McAlpine
So how have you found you did your first 80 plus episodes from home on your home. They've been doing a few here and being able to reach out to a broader audience. How are you finding it? We're a broader audience as much as a broader set of potential guests.

00;54;48;17 - 00;55;04;01
Aaron Pete
This has kept the love of it going in a way that I was starting to 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 and go, Oh, you should interview this person in Abbotsford or this person in Langley. And it's like, I'm not you.

00;55;04;01 - 00;55;19;11
Aaron Pete
They they see the conversation. I don't see what I would have as questioned 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.

00;55;19;11 - 00;55;46;03
Aaron Pete
And and as you saw with the Vin Jay 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, it's been a different process and forced me to grow a bit. And then doing it this way, it's 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 they don't have that nattering noise in the back of my head anymore.

00;55;46;09 - 00;56;04;15
Aaron Pete
Around is a recording because I did the Daryl podcast the second time I had them on. I didn't record on his his screen, so I had to release 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.

00;56;05;04 - 00;56;14;03
Tim McAlpine
I am remembering to hit the record button but I can further report that it took me 22 minutes to start the timer for aaron ,

00;56;14;03 - 00;56;20;02
Aaron Pete
and then I did notice that, and then I noticed you put it on and I could see you laughing.

00;56;20;02 - 00;56;47;23
Tim McAlpine
Yeah, no, you seem to have I'm turning this into the Bigger Than Me podcast right now and interviewing Aaron about uh for it's been interesting to see your varied areas of interest and so you're marrying law, First Nations issues, MMA, haha, hip hop and rap and oh, journalism.

00;56;47;25 - 00;56;53;11
Tim McAlpine
There's at least five key threads to to what you're doing.

00;56;53;11 - 00;56;56;21
Aaron Pete
That have nothing to do with each other.

00;56;56;21 - 00;57;00;20
Tim McAlpine
But my question was what do they have to do with each other

00;57;00;20 - 00;57;11;07
Aaron Pete
They don't and like the advice that you get when you start a YouTube channel or a podcast or a substack is find your niche. And I could not be worse at taking that advice.

00;57;11;21 - 00;57;15;03
Tim McAlpine
Well, that concludes our podcast today.

00;57;15;03 - 00;57;19;10
Aaron Pete
There we go. Thank you so much for listening and tune in for the next one.

00;57;19;10 - 00;57;21;03
Tim McAlpine
All right. Over and out.