So many people are excited by the promise of Substack — and they should be. It is not just another social media platform. Yes, it has a social element in the form of Notes. But it is so much more. It is a platform to publish your content that can be used everywhere. It is a huge email marketing strategy. It is a podcasting strategy. It is so many things wrapped into one, and it still blows my mind.

Here is the mistake. People think they really need to understand how to use Substack — instead of understanding how to bring their unique personal perspective, their convictions, and their content in a way that is completely different than content creation on any other platform.

There is an opportunity right now to create something foundational to your business, your brand, and the legacy work you are here to do in the world. But if you get swept up in the how and the tactical, you will miss the most important part — building strategically and in alignment with you.

You are the unique factor you are bringing to Substack.

9/23 LIVE Workshop - Architect Your Publication by Your Human Design

Join the 9.23 Workshop!

This is not content pillars. This is your own show.

We have moved beyond content pillars and content calendars and all of those things.

On Substack, this is about creating your soapbox. This is about having your own personal show. Your publication is the ultimate reflection of you — what you are here to say, what you care about. I almost want you to look at your publication as its own newspaper, its own radio show, its own TV show, its own magazine.

It is not like Instagram. It is not like LinkedIn. It is not Facebook. It is none of those things. This is an opportunity to re-establish your brand in a way that is so authentic to you.

And I believe that understanding your Human Design more deeply — not regular Human Design, but Human Design the way we teach it in the IGNITE Her® Frequencies — is what helps you architect your presence and your publication. Architect really is the best word for this.

Your publication is your body of work.

Your publication on Substack is your body of work. My publication on Substack is now my website.

You cannot go to any other platform and see your body of work. You do this incredible reel, you do this post — and it is gone forever in two days. It is a black sinkhole of content.

That is not what Substack is. Substack becomes a curated body of work that can be leveraged over and over and over again. It is completely different.

So if that is the case, you want to make sure you are thinking strategically about your publication. And what is happening is that people are so down in the weeds on the how.

How do I use Notes? How do I create an article? How do I get other publications to recommend me? How do I do collaborations? How do I go live? What is the best Notes strategy? How do I set up my paid tiers? How do I do subscriber perks? How, how, how.

What is missing is deep work on the what.

What is your publication? What is the content you are putting out there? What are your angles? What are your convictions? Who are you creating this for?

It is the what and the who.

The how is the easy part.

I am sure you are getting a lot of help and support on the how of Substack. In fact, inside our Soapbox, I give you all the how.

The how is the easy part, quite frankly. Especially now that you can literally connect your Claude up to your Substack — the how is not a problem anymore.

What is a problem — and what I am witnessing — is this. People are learning the how, they are putting their stuff out there, and then they say, “But nothing’s happening.”

I am following this Notes strategy and no one is joining my paid tier.

I created a paid tier and no one is buying it.

I created a paid tier, people are opting in, and then they unsubscribe.

I am putting an article out every single day and nothing is happening.

I am going live and nothing is happening.

Listen. The how is not the biggest thing here, even though I know our mind thinks it is. Our mind thinks there must be a Notes strategy, an article strategy, a collaboration strategy that is going to open everything up. I am not saying those things aren’t helpful — they completely are. But they cannot be helpful if you do not have the what and the who and the why really dialed in. And not just dialed in — aligned with the energetic blueprint of your design.

You are here for a very specific reason, for a very specific sliver of humanity. If you are not developing content in the way you were specifically designed to bring your message into the world — what that message is, your brand, your persona, who you are meant to be seen as — and if you are not bringing it to the right people in the way they need to hear it, consume it, and experience you, it is going to be a miss. And it is going to be a bummer when you spend all this time developing on a platform and it does not work.

I know, because I did exactly this.

The $5,000 quiz that made zero dollars.

In 2022, before I understood my Human Design, before I understood any of this, I spent about $5,000 and six months of my time on a quiz strategy.

Quiz strategies had become the thing. Everyone was doing a quiz. It was the funnel. So I invested in the how. I put the whole thing together — the content, the flow, all of it. So much time. Then I put ad spend behind it.

And guess what? The ads did fantastic. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people completed that quiz.

Guess how much money I made off that quiz funnel?

Zero.

No one converted at the other end of that funnel into what I was selling. I got the how down. I got it out. It was actually beautiful, and people wanted to take it. But because I did not understand my design, it was never going to work — and I had no idea.

Now I know. I would never do something like that again, because now I understand how people are meant to experience me. They are not meant to experience me in a quiz funnel — or a quiz funnel alone. There are other elements that are so required for my design in order for people to experience the belief and the trust to then be able to buy, even something lower ticket.

That is why I am watching so many people go down the rabbit hole of time and money on the how of Substack — and I do not want you getting to the other end without the result, like I did with the quiz.

9/23 LIVE Workshop - Architect Your Publication by Your Human Design

Become a paid member to attend!

Your profile is your public role.

This is where your Human Design comes in.

Your profile — not your profile on Substack, although it is tied to it — your profile in Human Design is also called your public role. It gives you so much insight into how others are meant to see and experience you. Which is exactly how they experience you through your Substack. And when we are off the mark on that, it falls flat.

This one aspect of your design can tell you so much about the what and the who for your publication. I have rewritten the language so it is super applicable — very different, very unique from how Human Design is taught anywhere else.

You have to understand your design so that you create your publication, pull together the right strategy that works for your design, and reach who you are here to serve.

That is what we are going to go deep on together.

The Publication That Pays — September 23 at 11am Eastern

I am running a live workshop on September 23rd at 11 Eastern, and I am going to be teaching — very strategically, based on your unique design — how you want to be thinking about your content, your publication, your body of work, and how you are making the offer into your paid tiers.

We are going to look at your profile, your public role, and what it says about how you are meant to be seen and experienced. And we are going to look at Substack completely differently than any other platform.

You are going to get such clarity on where you need to focus and dial in — so that all the how you are learning on Substack can actually work.

If you are already a paid member or a founding member - you are IN - the workshop is on your calendar.

If you are not a paid member, join us! Let’s focus on the WHAT & WHY of your publication, not just the HOW.

Join us!

I cannot wait. It is going to be epic.

— Julie

We are all approaching Substack the way we approached every platform before it. Instagram. LinkedIn. Same instinct, new logo. We show up, we make a piece of content, we post it, and we hope someone sees it before the feed buries it forever.

That’s an island. A desert island of content.

Right now I’m recording a video. If I dropped it as a Substack live and just hoped it surfaced in someone’s feed — that’s Instagram behavior. I’d be posting and praying, watching it sink down the feed until it’s gone. We’ve done that on every platform since the day we started building online. And we keep doing it because nobody told us there was another way.

There is another way. It’s the whole reason I moved my business here.

Substack is a publishing house, not a feed

Substack is a publishing platform and a media company. You are the creator and the distributor both. And it runs on a hub-and-spoke model — one piece of content sitting at the center, spokes going out in every direction.

This video doesn’t live on an island. The audio becomes a podcast episode that pushes out to every RSS feed — Spotify, Apple, all of it. The transcript becomes an article, and that article can go straight to LinkedIn. The video itself uploads to YouTube automatically the moment I publish on Substack — and if it’s long enough, YouTube chops it into shorts for me. When I finish recording, Substack hands me clips and reels I can drop onto whatever other platform I’m already on.

One recording. Six or seven places. None of it by hand.

If you’re already building on LinkedIn or Instagram — good. Feed those places from here. You cut an enormous amount of the work the second you make Substack the hub instead of one more island to maintain.

Is part of Substack like the old platforms? Yes — the Notes feed. Notes works like every feed you’ve ever posted to. And right now there’s still real organic reach there, even on older posts and notes, which is wonderful. I’m not counting on it lasting, though, and I won’t build a business on posting to Notes and praying. We’ve all lived that movie. The hub-and-spoke is what makes this different.

And then it sells for you

Here’s the part almost nobody understands.

Substack is also your sales team.

It’s the only tool I’ve found where you publish a piece of content and choose exactly who it goes to — the public, your free subscribers, your paid members, or your highest founding-member tier. You pick the audience. But everyone can still see that it exists.

Say I build a full audio training on using the podcast side of Substack to grow your business — I’m planning to — and I set it to paid only. The people who aren’t paid still see the tile. It says: paid episode, upgrade to access. If the title is strong and the subtitle is clear and the thing sounds juicy, people upgrade right then, on the spot, to hear it. The content sells the upgrade. I don’t have to.

And it goes further. When someone lands on my publication — I set mine as my actual website, julieciardi.com — Substack knows who they are. My old WordPress and Kajabi sites never could. They had no idea if the person looking was a brand-new visitor, a free subscriber, or already a paying client. Substack knows the difference. And it changes the call to action and the message based on that person.

A paid subscriber lands on my site and gets teed up to upgrade into the Red Rebelle Room — our founding tier. A founding member lands and gets welcomed home, because the platform actually recognizes her.

I have never seen another platform do that. That’s gold. That’s people upgrading continuously and quietly, while the rest of my day happens. We make sales every single day here without selling — because the platform is doing the work for us.

Don’t stop at “post and pray”

One more thing before I let you go.

I don’t want you hoping and praying on any platform — including this one. Even when you run the hub-and-spoke, don’t just post and wait for someone to respond. Bake the connective tissue into the back end so the next step with you is always obvious.

Then go wider. Substack has a brand-new referral reward system. Other writers can recommend you. You can do joint lives that land in both audiences at once. You can guest-write or guest-speak on other people’s publications. The room to grow inside this one platform is enormous.

And none of the old work goes away. Get on podcasts. Speak in other people’s groups. Put yourself in front of other people’s audiences. We’re not putting every egg in the Substack basket — we’re making Substack the place it all comes home to.

This is what I mean when I say owned platform over rented algorithm. Substack isn’t another island to feed. It’s a publishing house, a media company, and a sales team you don’t pay — built into one place that finally fits the way women like us actually want to work.

Stop building islands. Build a hub.

— Julie

Subscribe now

Get more from Julie Ciardi-50 Not Finished📕 in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

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Yes, you need to do 3 things no matter what - marketing, sales and delivery. But the how, the who, the where changes all the time.

Yet, the same strategies from 2018 are being taught. We have so many clients so frustrated that they have purchased so many courses and programs to learn Instagram, Youtube and LinkedIn. And nothing is working. It is a time suck.

And you and I never wanted to do the Instagram thing anyway, right?

The reels, the little dances, pointing at words floating over your head, performing your life in 15 seconds for an algorithm that smacks your hand the second you try to say something longer than 3 minutes.

Some part of you looked at all of that and went, yeah, no. This isn’t me. And then because everybody and their mother said it was the only way, you either made yourself do it and felt like a total fraud — or you didn’t, and you felt like you were getting left in the dust.

And I know this for sure. That was your intuition talking. That was your design telling you something true, and you were right to listen.

Because the exhaustion & frustration you’ve been feeling isn’t about doing the work on your business. You love the work. It’s the chasing. It’s the pushing. You were out there trying to force something that was always, always meant to come to you. So of course you’re frustrated.

So let me give you some real context here, because I have watched this whole thing from the inside.

I’ve been in business since I was 18. I’m 51 now. I’ve got my master’s in business, I started out at a consulting firm, and then I went to IBM. And at IBM, I was actually hired into their emerging markets group, which is basically the entrepreneurial arm of this giant, giant company. I am really good at seeing the strategic big picture.

There is a big opportunity happening right now. And you and I are perfectly positioned to capitalize on it. It is like it was made for us.

For over a decade now, we’ve all been told the same exact thing.

Build your personal brand.

Build your personal brand.

Build your personal brand.

And listen — it worked. The personal brand model worked really, really well, for a long time. But things are changing.

The new era is just not about sitting around watching somebody’s personal brand. Watching some guru, studying her life, consuming whatever she’s performing for the camera that day. I’m not interested in that anymore. And honestly? I don’t think you are either.

I want content that actually creates value in my real life — my family, my health, my money, my mission, all of it. Not somebody’s highlight reel.

So instead of building a personal brand, I want you to build a personal publishing house.

A personal brand is content about you.

A personal publishing house is content for your tribe.

And there is a huge difference.

A personal brand is content you make for an algorithm. Think about it. On Instagram, I am not even really allowed to make content for my own people. I mean, I’m being a little facetious — but barely.

My tribe wants to hear from me. They want long form. They want to actually learn something. And the second I post a video longer than three minutes, Instagram throws up all these warnings — this won’t perform, this won’t get shown to anybody who doesn’t already follow you. T

he platform decides what’s good. So everybody stops making things for their tribe and starts making things for the algorithm.

That I am not interested in. And I don’t think you are either.

A publishing house flips the whole thing.

Now you are the founder. You’re the creative director. You’re the producer of original work made for your people — built on your design, and built on theirs. This was never really about Instagram versus Substack, you know? It’s a mindset.

The soapbox, not the stage

Instagram is a stage. It’s you, up high, with a microphone, doing a monologue down at an audience.

But a publishing house?

That’s a soapbox. And a soapbox isn’t very high, right? You step up just enough that your people can hear you over all the noise — but you are standing with them. Not above them. With them. You’re in a conversation, not a monologue.

The women I work with, we came from boardrooms and classrooms and operating rooms and courtrooms. We were never meant to go perform in a 15-second clip.

We’ve got depth — we’ve got decades of it — and finally, finally there is a place built for exactly that. A place where your real, original work gets to stand out from all the AI slop instead of drowning in it.

So here’s your permission slip

If you’ve been sitting around waiting for somebody to hand you one — this is it.

You were right. That path you already knew was yours — the long form, the depth, the real conversation, the work that’s actually about something — that was never you being difficult or behind. That was you being EARLY.

You don’t need to learn how to perform.

You need to start publishing.

We are done building these personal brands that are all about us.

We’re building publishing houses for our people. And that, my friend, is how you serve, how you monetize, and how you prosper in this new era. ❤️

If you’re ready to actually start — the most powerful place to build your publishing house right now is podcasting on Substack.

And almost nobody is teaching this yet, which kills me, because it is so good. Learn how to publish your podcast on Substack!

So I broke the whole thing down inside my paid tier, the Substack Soapbox — the training, plus the playbook and the template so you can actually go do it.

It’s $79 for the whole year, and the link is right below. Come build yours with me.

— Julie

Watch the training, get the playbook & the podcast artwork Canva template!

Upgrade now

12 days delivering in a free masterclass. 7,200 registrants. Heart fully spent. And then I hibernated. I didn’t post, no notes, no Instagram, no Facebook.

And even with a little break, my Substack kept growing.

I am going to share why in this episode.

Everyone is about to try and sell you a Substack playbook. Post three to five notes a day, the note-stacking formula, the same content hamster wheel that burned you out on Instagram dressed up in a new outfit. Don’t take the bait.

Substack is not social media. It is a multimedia publishing platform. This distinction is everything and it is what I cover in this episode.

In this episode:

— Why your Substack strategy is actually your business strategy meeting your human design

— Why “Substack gurus” don’t exist (and why they never really can)

— Why notes is ONE feature on the platform, not the whole platform

— What I’m doing differently now that the masterclass is closed

— And the new way I’ve reorganized my paid tiers (including the brand new founding member room I just opened)

A line from the episode I want you to sit with:

“You are the guru. You’re the only one who can really understand how to best leverage Substack for yourself.”

The platforms have always told us how to show up. Substack is finally a place where you get to decide. Lead with audio. Or video. Or writing. Be on for a week and rest the next. Whatever runs in alignment with YOUR design — not someone else’s three-notes-a-day template.

That’s what we’re building here.

xo, Julie

P.S. The Red Rebelle Room on Substack is now open. Join us.

Join the Red Rebelle Room

REGISTER HERE!

I keep finding myself saying this out loud, over and over, to the women who ask me about Substack:

I’m not a writer. I don’t have a newsletter.

I speak. I record. I go on video. I do podcasts. I even voice recorded my books! I do exactly what I’m doing right now — I open a voice memo and I talk.

And Substack is currently the most powerful platform in my business.

Let me tell you why.

The numbers that stopped me cold

Substack just sent me my April month-in-review, and I had to sit down with it.

• 697 new subscribers in 30 days

• 6% conversion to paid — the industry average for an email list is 1%; a webinar is around 2.5%

• 56% of those new subscribers came from Substack itself — not from ads, not from my email list, not from social. From the platform’s own discovery network.

• 29 other publications on Substack recommended me to their readers

• $47,000 in annualized revenue in 90 days, with 500 paid subscribers at $79/year

And here is the part I want you to really sit with:

No funnel. No webinar. No automated launch sequence.

Well actually, Substack did the funnel for me.

My ads are running, but the ads aren’t doing the work. The platform is doing the work — because I’m showing up in depth, with my actual voice, and Substack is putting me in front of more of the right people every single day.

Why this matters for you

For years, women in this industry have been handed one path: build the funnel. Run the ads. Do the launch. Post the reel. Repeat next month. Burn out. Start over.

That path is breaking.

And in its place, something quieter and far more powerful is emerging: a platform built for depth, voice, and tribe.

Instagram is where people go to be entertained. Substack is where people go to be moved.

You don’t go viral on Substack. You go deep. And depth is what converts. Depth is what builds trust. Depth is what turns a stranger into a subscriber, a subscriber into a paying member, and a paying member into someone who stays for years.

This isn’t social media. It’s email + payments + discovery + tribe + multimedia publishing — all in one place. Video. Audio. Writing. All of it.

You do not need to be a writer. You do not need a newsletter. You need a voice and a mission.

The shift I want you to make

If you’ve been frustrated with social media, drained by tech, exhausted by the launch model — I want you to consider that you are not failing.

The model is failing.

The women paying attention right now — the ones willing to build on a platform that rewards voice over volume, mission over metrics, and depth over dopamine — are the ones who will define the next era of this industry.

I’m one of them.

I want you to be one too.

— Julie

P.S. I’m teaching a free masterclass this week on exactly how I’m doing this — the simple business plan for the new era, a deep dive on Substack, and how I’m weaving in the IGNITE Her® Frequencies (my rewrite of human design for women, by a woman). 7,000 women have already registered. Doors close tomorrow. The link is below.

Join us by May 5th!

In this training, I walk you through everything you need to know to get your podcast up and running on Substack — whether you’re starting fresh or moving an existing show over.

I cover why Substack is so much more than a newsletter platform and how its built-in podcast features eliminate the …

Read more

In This Episode:

• Why podcasting is the ultimate trust-based, off-social-media marketing channel

• The stat that proves your dream client is already bingeing podcasts (and what to do about it)

• How one episode can become 5–6 pieces of content without creating from scratch

• Why video podcasting just became non-negotiable

• The next big idea: Substack for podcasting

Key Stats Mentioned:

• 584M global podcast listeners (projected 619M by end of 2026)

• 55% of Americans now listen to podcasts monthly

• Podcast hosts rank just below friends & family in trust

• 45% of U.S. women listen monthly — up 15% year over year

• Women average 9.5 episodes per week vs. 7.2 for men

Ready to Learn Why Substack is the place for podcasting? Join Julie this Friday for The Podcast Playbook — a live training on how to launch, structure, and grow a podcast that builds your business.

Join us Friday!

In this episode I share some of those ideas and strategies and invite you to join my paid subscribers on April 10th at 10:00 am eastern where I will be teaching and providing the Substack Podcast Playbook!

You will hear how I even saw another possibility of how to use the Substack podcast feature while I was talking to you LOL. This is about to change the podcasting game.

xo, Julie

Join us here

WELCOME to Substack by Design!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

WELCOME to Substack by Design!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

• The Miracle Hour Exclusive Training with Kelly Roach on March 23rd

• Learn the system that Kelly used to build a 7 figure business while working full time as an executive

• One hour a day could be the quantum leap you desire in your business & life

• Human Design Eras & the New Era Series starting March 18th

• Study Human Design by looking at the themes of the past 5 eras & the New Era of 2027

• Learn your specific role in the new era & how it could shape your marketing, offers and thought leadership

• Authority of One™ Live Intensive April 9th 11-3pm eastern

• Get the new 150+ page Human Design report

• Learn Julie’s new method for personal branding & messaging using your report

• Create your Designed to Tribe™ Brand Brief - your movement maker manifesto

• Create your Soapbox GPT for ongoing copywriting

• 12 months access to Human Design Marketing School

• Weekly live Human Design training & coworking

• Access to the Human Design training vault

• Julie’s simple marketing plan - no social media required

• Global community of women in a private mobile app & desktop

• The Daily Frequency with Julie - daily private podcast with Julie (M-F) to start your day - background frequency in Human Design + business strategies & inspiration/motivation

WELCOME to Substack by Design!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!

Be sure to grab your free resources here! Substack 101 Workshop, Workbook and more!

Join the Substack Soapbox Membership - Just $79 for the year!!!

Subscribe to Julie on Substack

Get your free 50 Not Finished Human Design Report

Join us in IGNITE Her® LAB!