Six takeaways from a Substack Live with Philip Hofmacher from Write • Build • Scale on building your publication, getting visible, finding your voice and why we’re challenging ourselves to go Live every weekday for Substack September.
When I arrived on Substack at the beginning of April, I really had no idea what I was walking into, because although several friends had told me that I needed to take a look and that it was where things were starting to happen, I had somehow formed the impression that Substack was primarily another email marketing platform, and it wasn’t until I actually started exploring it for myself that I realised just how much more there was here.
Within about 24 hours of joining, one of the first people to personally reach out to me was Philip, who sent me a private message welcoming me to Substack and politely asked what I was hoping to build, what I was doing at the moment and how I hoped Substack might eventually fit into my business and monetisation plans.
We went backwards and forwards, he told me about the Substack Accelerator, I did what I always do and disappeared off to do my own research, and within my first week on the platform I had joined.
I haven’t looked back since.
So there was something rather lovely about finding ourselves, just a few months later, sitting together on a Live talking about everything that’s unfolded since, opening the conversation to the people watching for “your questions, our answers.”
There was no heavily scripted interview and no perfectly prepared list of talking points, which was really the whole point, because we wanted to have the kind of conversation that could move wherever it needed to move, and the questions took us into everything from getting started on Substack and building a publication people actually want to spend time in, to Notes, design, niching, consistency, finding the confidence to go Live and what visibility really means when you are building a personal brand or authority platform.
It also led us into Substack September, something Philip, Sinem and Jari originally created when they joined the platform and decided to use September as a month to take Substack particularly seriously, experiment, show up and see what could happen.
Philip has decided to bring it back this year and, somewhere in the middle of watching his Live the day before our conversation, I rather spontaneously decided I was joining him.
Before I had enough time to overthink it, I published the Note and made myself publicly accountable. So here we are…
For Substack September, we’re challenging ourselves to go Live every weekday throughout September, and you are very welcome to join us.
More on that in a moment, because first I wanted to share six of the biggest things I took away from our conversation.
1. Build your Substack home before trying to do everything inside it
One of the questions we received during the Live came from someone who was trying to work out at what point she should really start promoting her Substack and inviting her existing audience over, because she wanted to make sure she had a good foundation first and wondered whether that meant having a certain number of posts published, podcast episodes available or other pieces of content ready before she began telling people about it.
It’s such a good question because one of the things that can feel overwhelming when you first arrive on Substack is the sheer amount that you could do.
You have long-form posts, Notes, Live, video, podcasts, Chat, recommendations, free subscriptions, paid subscriptions and all sorts of other possibilities sitting in front of you, and particularly if you’re somebody who loves ideas, it becomes very easy to think that you need to launch all of them at once.
You really don’t.
Philip talked about getting the publication itself right first and creating a strong home base before continually building new things on top of it, and that very much reflects the approach I took when I arrived here, because I knew I was starting from zero on this particular platform and therefore my first priority wasn’t to launch everything I possibly could, it was to understand the environment, begin building trust and become consistent.
For me, that started with Notes. I made a decision to show up consistently, learn what resonated, have conversations, discover other people and allow people to discover me, and only once that began to feel natural did I start layering in other parts of Substack.
There will always be another feature you could use or another idea you could launch, but I think there is something incredibly powerful about one thing before the next thing, because it allows your Substack to evolve naturally rather than turning it into another enormous list of things you feel you should be doing.
The Takeaway:
Build the foundation, choose the thing that matters most right now and give yourself permission to become good at that before adding everything else.
2. Your publication should feel like an experience, not a wall of information
There was a moment during our conversation when Philip completely caught me off guard by sharing my publication on screen and explaining that when prospective Substack Accelerator clients ask him what a great publication can look like, he actually shows them mine as an example.
I genuinely blushed.
He particularly highlighted my About page and the way I have used design and content together to guide someone through it, and that led us into a conversation about something that has always been incredibly important to me, which is that design isn’t simply about making something look pretty, it is about creating an experience and helping somebody understand where you want them to go.
My background spans professional photography, design, luxury branding and publishing, and I also create Intentional Living Magazine, so when I arrived on Substack it felt very natural to look at the publication through the same editorial lens I would use when creating a beautiful print magazine.
When you open a great magazine, you aren’t immediately confronted by twenty things shouting for your attention at exactly the same volume, because there is a hierarchy to the page, with a headline that stops you, perhaps a smaller subtitle that draws you further in, an image or piece of typography that gives your eye somewhere to rest, and then enough space around everything for you to actually enjoy reading it.
That is how I wanted my Substack to feel.
Rather than asking how much information I could squeeze onto a page, I started thinking about it almost like chapters in a book, asking what somebody should see first, where I wanted them to go next and how I could guide them through my world without making them feel as though they had landed on another internet sales page shouting at them from every direction.
Substack gives us far more creative freedom than I think we sometimes realise, whether that comes through photography, video, typography, Canva graphics or simply the way we structure our words, and I have always believed in finding those little opportunities to zig while everybody else is zagging.
The Takeaway:
Don’t simply fill your Substack with information. Think about the journey somebody takes from the moment they arrive and create an experience that makes them want to stay.
3. Create things that people are proud to share
We also talked about one of the biggest surprises from my August on Substack, which came from a very simple typography-based Note I published on August 7.
By the time Philip and I were having this conversation, that Note had generated more than 8,100 likes and around 700 restacks, which is extraordinary in itself, but what interested me most wasn’t actually the number.
I have a habit of looking at the people who like and restack something I create because I’m genuinely interested in who is connecting with it, and as I started visiting some of those publications, I noticed something that changed the way I thought about shareable content.
The Note looked beautiful on their publication too.
It wasn’t simply helping me become more visible; it was adding something to their page, expressing something they believed and giving them a piece of content that they were happy to put in front of their own audience.
That made me think about a slightly different question we could ask when we create.
Rather than always thinking, How do I create something that performs well for me?, what if we also asked, How can I create something somebody else would be proud to share?
Because when someone restacks your work, they are effectively putting their name alongside yours and saying to their audience, this is worth your attention, which means the content we create needs to serve the person sharing it as much as it serves us.
There is something I really love about that idea because it takes us away from creating purely for our own success and towards creating things that help other people start conversations, express ideas and become more visible too.
The Takeaway:
Create beyond your own visibility. Make something useful, beautiful, thoughtful or meaningful enough that somebody else wants it to become part of their world too.
4. Consistency creates the compounding effect
Towards the end of the Live, Philip asked me to give one piece of advice for Substack, one for business and one for life, and when it came to Substack my answer was very simple: consistency.
I know consistency is one of those words we hear all the time, but I don’t think we always appreciate what it actually means when you allow it enough time to compound.
One Note is unlikely to transform your business.
One article probably won’t either.
One Live may lead to something wonderful, but it may also simply be one good conversation.
The interesting part begins when you keep showing up, because every Note, article, Live, comment and conversation becomes another opportunity for somebody to discover you, understand what you stand for and decide whether they want to stay in your world.
That was something I saw very clearly when I challenged myself to create my own Substack Live Series in August and went Live across eight days, because when I compared my subscriber numbers from July to August, the difference was genuinely eye-opening.
It gave me enough evidence to think that there was something here worth exploring further.
Which brings us rather neatly to Substack September.
5. Substack September: what could happen if you went Live every weekday for a month?
This whole challenge began rather spontaneously.
Philip went Live and talked about bringing back Substack September, something he, Sinem and Yari originally created as a way of taking the platform seriously for one month, showing up, experimenting and seeing what could happen when they gave Substack their focused attention.
This year, Philip decided that his experiment would centre around Live.
I was watching.
I had already seen what happened when I pushed myself with my eight-day Live Series in August.
And before the sensible part of my brain could start producing all the reasons why September was already busy enough, I thought:
I’m in.
I published the Note while Philip was still Live, invited my community to join us and suddenly there was no quietly backing out of it the following morning.
So our challenge for Substack September is to go Live every weekday throughout the month.
That doesn’t mean every Live needs to be an elaborate production, because part of the experiment is discovering what Live can actually become.
There might be guest conversations.
There might be solo Lives.
There might be Q&As.
There might be coaching.
There might be something completely spontaneous because somebody asks a great question that deserves more than a written answer.
What I love about approaching it this way is that it removes some of the pressure, because instead of treating visibility as another hustle or another obligation we have to squeeze into the day, we can treat it as an experiment.
What happens if we do this?
Who might we meet?
What conversations might happen?
What will we learn about our audience?
What will we learn about ourselves?
What ideas might emerge simply because we created the space for them?
And most importantly, you are invited to join us.
You don’t have to go Live every weekday.
You don’t have to do exactly what we are doing.
Your version of Substack September might mean one Live every week, publishing your first Live ever, committing to Notes consistently, finally launching the publication you have been quietly perfecting or simply choosing one area of Substack that you know you haven’t properly explored yet.
The point isn’t perfection and it certainly isn’t adding another thirty things to your to-do list.
The point is to choose something that stretches you slightly beyond what you were doing yesterday and give yourself a month to see what becomes possible when you actually commit to it.
The takeaway: Treat September as an experiment. Choose your thing, make the commitment and then give it enough time and consistency to show you what might be possible.
6. We’re moving from the influencer economy into the trust economy
Perhaps the biggest conversation Philip and I had, and the one I have continued thinking about since we finished, was about why Live feels so relevant right now.
For years, we have lived through the rise of the influencer economy, where so much of what we consumed online was polished, edited and curated, from the perfect photograph and beautifully edited video to the highlight reel that made somebody’s business, home or life appear almost impossibly seamless.
Now we are entering another enormous shift because AI can help us write, edit, design, create images, produce videos and polish almost anything we put onto the internet, and I think something very interesting is going to happen as a result.
The more polished the internet becomes, the more valuable real human connection is going to feel.
That is why I think we are moving into what I would call the trust economy.
When you go Live, particularly when you are having a genuinely unscripted conversation, there isn’t anywhere to hide.
You lose your train of thought occasionally.
You laugh.
You change your mind.
You answer something you didn’t know was going to be asked.
You have to rely on your actual knowledge, experience, wisdom and perspective rather than spending three hours crafting the perfect response.
And that gives people something increasingly valuable.
It gives them an opportunity to experience you.
For anyone building a personal brand, a business or an authority platform, I think that matters enormously because people are no longer simply deciding whether they enjoy your content, they are deciding whether they trust you, whether they want to learn from you, whether they would work with you, whether they would recommend you and whether they want to stay connected to your world.
Live accelerates that process in a way that polished content sometimes can’t.
And then there is what happens after the Live.
A single conversation can become a replay, a series of clips, Notes, quotes, YouTube Shorts, social content, another conversation, a workshop or a long-form article exactly like the one you’re reading now.
One conversation becomes many opportunities to be discovered.
One idea becomes more…
That is why I’m increasingly convinced that Live isn’t simply another content feature on Substack.
It can become an authority-building asset.
The Takeaway:
In an increasingly AI-polished internet, don’t underestimate the competitive advantage of simply being human.
So, are you joining us for Substack September?
One of the things I said during our Live was that Substack is beginning to feel less like another social platform to me and much more like a neighbourhood.
There are people you see regularly.
People who stop by.
People who share something you’ve created.
People who introduce you to somebody else.
People who answer questions, encourage you, challenge your thinking or simply show up when you press the Live button and wonder whether anybody is actually going to be there.
And like any good neighbourhood, I think we all have some responsibility for the kind of place it becomes.
We can be generous with what we know.
We can share other people’s work.
We can ask good questions.
We can answer them.
We can introduce people.
We can encourage the person who is going Live for the first time and looks slightly terrified, because some of us remember exactly what that feels like.
And we can build our own success while helping the people around us build theirs too.
That, more than follower counts or algorithms, is what has made Substack so interesting to me.
So throughout September, Philip and I will be testing this properly and going Live every weekday as part of Substack September, experimenting with different conversations, different formats and different ways of showing up, and seeing where it takes us.
And I’d genuinely love you to get involved.
You can join us on the Lives, ask questions, bring us the things you’re struggling with and become part of the conversation, but I’d also love you to create your own version of Substack September.
It doesn’t need to look like ours.
It just needs to be something you’re willing to commit to.
Maybe this is the month you publish consistently.
Maybe it’s the month you finally start using Notes.
Maybe you invite your first guest onto a Live.
Maybe you stop waiting until your publication is perfect and start telling people it exists.
Or perhaps you decide to join us, press that Live button and discover what happens when you allow people to hear your actual voice.
Because one of the biggest things Substack has taught me so far is that you really don’t know what will happen until you try.
And sometimes the best thing you can do is make the commitment publicly before you have enough time to talk yourself out of it.
So tell me in the comments: what are you committing to for Substack September?
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