A few days back I chatted with new Substack #Science Bestseller (109 paid subscribers!) Rémi from Feed your Mind and I’m still buzzing!
SO many lessons, learnings, and thoughts from a small young guy living in Paris who went from the ground to $10,000/year that I need to get out of my brain.
One sentence stuck with me:
“For me Substack is like a raft on which all the other people from all the other social networks came, where all people want to escape the matrix”
If you’ve been following me for a while you know I’m a tastemaker. I curate, and selectively choose who I interview and the stories I tell to show what’s possible.
Today’s podcast episode is a great reminder about the power of showing up as a small guy and building online for FREE FREE FREE to then finally get paid at some point.
I didn’t dare to go paid for more than 52 weeks as I always said:
❌Write 52 newsletter episodes in a row and watch it change your life.
As today someone asked me on LinkedIn again, I can only tell you:
✅Go paid from day 1!
Getting paid on Substack is strongly connected with Substack Notes!
A few hours back, I officially launched this year’s Substack Notes Kickstarter Bootcamp - Get More Reach + Paid Subscribers From Your Newsletter.
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On Day 4 of the LIVE Bootcamp (all session are recorded, lifetime access) you can meet 6 Paid Substack Bestsellers. Rockstars like Rémi from categories ranging from #Science to #Food & Drinks.
The goal? To help beginners better understand how small guys are building paid newsletters from the ground up with Notes.
What’s worrying me
What’s worrying me right now is that we only see the success stories of the suuuuuuuuuuper big and at massive scale.
But we don’t know all the stories of the small guys who have built five-figure, six-figure revenue doing simple things…. doing what they love, being nerdy, starting super niche as today’s podcast guest and rockstar Rémi.
That’s what’s really exciting because I think the average human just wants to know:
“Can I do what I love and make money?”
You know what unites all rockstars I bring to you in my podcast and Bootcamp?
An entrepreneurial, builder mentality.
This is something I also discovered during my chat with Rémi from Paris (yeah, not Emily in Paris) who can now afford buying his groceries with the money he makes on Substack:
He understands inherently that building an audience and having distribution will help him move whatever ventures he want to pursue.
He wants to do more than just play small. You want to have a good living, do something you love, and you know it's possible to build that.
Maybe you feel the same?
3 Lessons Going from Zero to 100 Paid Subscribers in #Science on Substack
3 thoughts that I need to get out of my head after talking with the small guy Rémi about how he went from rock bottom to Substack Bestseller earning $10,000/year.
#1 It’s fine to talk about what you love for free for a long time
The pattern I see with Rèmi is:
talk about what you love online → build an email list → become a prolific writer → continuously create content → draw an audience → offer them to pay you at some point → turn your free audience into a paid audience
It's as simple of an arc as that.
Ask yourself: how do I differentiate myself? How do I give away so much value that people want to stick around?
For Rémi it all started with a personal pain point as he was suffering from depression and anxiety when he was a young adult. These are very prevalent conditions that few people want to talk about.
He found out:
Chronic anxiety isn’t always psychological.
It can be biochemical.
Low:
Magnesium
GABA
Zinc
#2 Capitalize on social media to drive to your high-quality, long form assets
Over the years, Rémi done the hard work of sharing long form science stories. He built a huge high quality library of long form content through posting in Facebook groups, answering questions and translating a science book.
He got those long-form assets right first, put them on his newsletter, and then use social media to drive back to them.
So when he blows up on Notes, he knows casual readers will check his long form posts out and will subscribe.
He told me he’d enjoy writing on Notes and shared:
“For me Substack is like a raft on which all the other people from all the other social networks came, (…) where all people want to escape the matrix”
#3 It’s fine to build fandom based on what you love
In the saturated Subsatck newsletter category #Science where for instance also evolutionary biologist Dr. Colin Wright
or Phd Nick Norwith
…writes in, Rémi doesn’t have a degree.
However, 20 doctors and 20 students in biochemistry are following him and he’s winning news subsrcibers fro inside Substack’s network and Notes every day!
Why? Because from a patient’s perspecitve he’s reading everything he can about his passion topic and he has a clear mission: helping every single subscriber on his list.
These are human beings with pain points. They might “go to a psychiatrist and take medication, which often works. But in the long term, people no longer feel like “themselves”; their emotions are flattened by this chemical straitjacket. Even worse, they may experience long-term side effects. Faced with this, people are looking for effective and inexpensive alternatives.”
So even if you’re not a MD or PhD, your audience feels if you really burn for a topic, care and can save them lots of time by curating information and translating the latest studies in a way everyone in his audience understands so they become raving fans who open their wallets.
🙏🏻Thanks so much for being on this amazing journey with me. 🙏🏻
I get so much energy from helping the small guys, beginners and every (part-time) solo creator who knows how important audience building is and want to learn from my Online Writing Club Show that I’m excited to keep building with 100,000 downloads.
New to writing on Substack or only hearing crickets?
Want my NEW digital course From Beginner to Substack Bestseller (value $129) based on my interviews, BTS of the beginners I coach and my own experience?
Get it for FREE when you join the Notes Kickstarter Bootcamp 2026 with
bootcamp grad and psychotherapist Ellen Scherr (zero to 21,000 subscribers and bestseller) and
bestselling autor and visual storyteller Karen Salmansohn (zero to bestseller in just a few months).
To become a prolific Notes writer that gets discoevred, finds his people and gets paid.
You can do what you love and make money!
