An Open Letter to the Substack Community

A note to my readers:

I stopped writing this newsletter to focus on building Tuesdays with Doctor G. That work continues and provides a platform for me to share my new spirituality of life. However, TWDG is also my way of participating in the digital economy. As such, I bring a different philosophy of marketing which directly challenges the prevailing model of the online business world.

So, I’m reviving this newsletter as a podcast. The original intention still remains.

I’d like to help you think differently about marketing your craft, so that you can make an impact in this world, without losing your soul.

This is the initial post of the relaunch where I talk about a different metaphor for approaching a platform like Substack. The principles are platform or business neutral.

This is an open letter to the Substack community.

I write to you as a fellow creator and digital entrepreneur. Like many of you, I came to Subtack because it was a different kind of creator platform: slower, more thoughtful, a place that rewarded deep thinking. While those values still exist, they are now overshadowed by the same unhealthy dynamics of other platforms. The Notes feed is the most visible example.

In this open letter, I’d like to explore the reason for this shift and offer an alternative metaphor for how to inhabit Substack.

In its early days, Substack was a newsletter platform where craft, expertise and thoughtful writing were celebrated. The focus was on the relationship between authors and readers. A few years back, Substack pivoted to attract bigger accounts and increase its subscriber base. The platform shifted to become a content creation suite. More importantly, it connected itself to the deeply flawed structure of modern direct response marketing.

Instead of being able to focus on your craft or your audience, you now had to compete for attention, engagement, and clicks. You also had to turn your robust expertise into bite-sized nuggets for algorithmic consumption. It’s what I call the twitterization of domain mastery and it pains the heart of a true creative. This digital competition drives the growth hacks, noise, and the relentless focus on numbers. It’s also what leads to AI-produced content since greater output leads to greater discoverability.

Quantity now matters more than quality, if you want to be seen.

However, the biggest tragedy of optimizing for attention is that it turns complex and noble human beings into statistics. I call it soulless marketing. AOVs, CTRs, open rates, numbers of subscribers. Scarcity and urgency become critical copywriting elements that support a metric-driven funnel. The sale is the most important part of the equation, and it has to happen in 7.2 seconds!

Ultimately, modern digital marketing is a dehumanizing system.

And I want to be careful here. The critique is against the culture which forces certain behaviors in order to win. Many creators work around the structural faults and showcase their craft in ethical ways. This is why many have broken through the noise and have succeeded beautifully on this platform. So this is not a rant against competition, making money, or even Substack. I am merely pointing out the warped incentives that drive the game and create the harmful conditions we all dislike.

So here’s my proposal.

What if instead of looking at Substack through this unhealthy marketing lens, we began to treat it as the world’s largest digital bazaar of talent and expertise ever assembled.

Gotta a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

If you’ve ever been to the Medina in Fez—it would be that kind of spirit: artisans galore, a delight for the senses in all directions, and life pulsing through every stone.(Yes. The em dash is intentional. No this letter was not produced by AI. It feels dystopian even having to say this, but that’s the extent of my AI policy.)

The metaphor of a bazaar changes everything.

A bazaar is one interconnected ecosystem. And it’s much more than its merchants, though they are important. It’s also the buyers, suppliers, infrastructure, comm lines, and even the roads that bring the visitors.

Every part is integral. And here’s the clincher.

In an ecosystem, when one part prospers, the entire system prospers. When one part is harmed, the entire system is harmed.

Take AI detection.

Using it to call out writers creates a ripple of mistrust across the entire platform. It poisons the lake in which we all swim. To return to the bazaar metaphor. It tarnishes the reputation of the entire digital Medina (and you might be destroying a beloved shop that took years to build).

When one part is harmed, we are all harmed.

In a bazaar, you wander and discover colorful places on your own. You stop and have coffee or a treat. You strike up conversations naturally. Shopkeepers or other visitors recommend their favorite booths, restaurants, or hidden worlds. The fuel of a bazaar is relationships built on trust. It’s not the merchants shouting the loudest in the central square.

On Substack, this would mean the algorithm would behave not as a broker of scarce attention but more like an intermediary between your intellectual DNA and other creators. It would surface those accounts that most closely match the entire spectrum of your interests. It would also mean that we would heartily give our recommendations and genuine engagement to creators we appreciate. We wouldn’t do this to game the system. And this begs the questions.

What would a Notes feed sprinkled generously with the work of other Substackers do for the platform?

What would it do for you?

Let’s talk about the shopkeepers in this alternate world of which I speak. You will find artisans with years of experience: glass blowers, jewelry makers, weavers of tapestries, and the like. They move us. They inspire us. Which is why we are mesmerized when we witness an expert in their craft.

This is how I think of Substack. It is truly the world’s largest gathering of talent and expertise. Many of you have decades of accumulated experience in multiple domains. You possess what I call superpower skills. You can do things that mere mortals cannot because you have put in the time to understand your craft at the deepest levels.

You know the terrain with its dangers and shortcuts. You also know where the gold is hidden. That’s what your audiences really want. Thus, what people really need from you is not 5 Notes per day. Instead, they need a trusted guide who can help them navigate the domain(s) you have already mapped.

I’d like to finish this open letter by including a few shoutouts to some of the amazing creators on this platform, all of whom have contributed to my thinking, writing, and business. They are in no particular order and I could list many more names.

Michael Dean with Essay Architecture. Michael is elevating the craft of essay writing. In his own words, an essay fuses the soul of a memoirist, the rigor of an academic, and the pen of a poet. It’s aim is to elicit a change in the reader. And for $100, you get Michael’s entire framework for using this special form of the written word. It’s superpower information (for the price of your monthly Starbucks budget).

Annecy Báez at Inksite is creating a place of reflection for the inner life. It combines dream work, expressive writing, and relational healing. Annecy is also an artist who produces stunning visuals for her newsletters. Go check out Grief House and you’ll see what I mean.

Paul Musso, PhD with The Micro-Philosopher. Paul is offering a college-level philosophy curriculum for peanuts inside his Micro University. It’s not a degree, but it’s also not $90,000 a year. I’m thinking this is the future of education. And again, next level expertise.

Gabriel Lovemore with Change Your Story, Change Your World. Gabriel is one of the most beautiful souls I have ever met, a true human, if you are familiar with Samantha Sweetwater’s work. Gabriel brings decades of field experience plus philosophical wisdom to his writing and work as a coach. His ultimate goal is to move the human project forward. I became a fan of Gabriel’s after reading his post, The Secret the Earth Whispers When We Leave. Very challenging.

Ana Calin with How We Grow. Ana spent fifteen years in the corporate world. She is now helping career professionals understand their true worth in this new digital age. When you have mad skills, you don’t start with $27 ebooks but with the true value of that knowledge. $100 will put you inside her community where she generously gives of her knowledge and practical expertise.

I began my digital marketing journey in 2016 listening to a marketing guru telling me I could quit my job selling affiliate products. And for the next seven years, I was the mascot for “shiny object syndrome.” I tried it all—affiliate marketing and digital products, workshops, webinars, paid ads, building websites and funnels, and even doing agency work—always chasing the dream. Now I would say, I’m neurodivergent and I paid $30K for a diverse education in direct response marketing. :)

In that timeframe, I saw how traditional marketing was not a people-centered or life-giving system. I found many of its tactics to be coercive. They just never felt right. And I believe this is what many creators now feel on Substack without being able to name it.

This open letter is to the entire Substack community: creators, professionals, writers, artists, subject matter experts, subscribers, readers, editors, suppliers, and even the owners of Subtack.

What if we changed our approach to this amazing platform?

What if we started to treat Substack as the world’s largest digital bazaar of talent and expertise ever assembled in one place?

What if we began to treat it as one interconnected ecosystem?

Love you Substackers!