3 years on Substack: how I built a six figure plus platform

Everything I know about building something real here.

Exactly three years ago I was burned out and exhausted. Every area of my work felt like it was on fire. Every task felt like it was The Most Important Thing. When the priority score of everything becomes that blurry (a problem of my own creation — as someone who runs fast and hot all the time), you know something has to give.

Side note: I was very hesitant to share dollar amounts (whether vaguely or exact) here because like many of you I’ve been taught polite women don’t discuss such things. But I think that perpetuates the narrative that women’s success is something to whisper about rather than learn from. I’d rather you have the number and know what’s possible than wonder in the dark.

Overwhelmed and unsure where to go next, I stepped back from work. I was fortunate to be able to take a true sabbatical. I put people and systems in place. I closed my computer. I slowed down. I narrowed my field of vision and continued to do all the mom / family things while waiting for the dust to settle and clarity to catch up with me. It eventually did.

One of the things that became clear was that I really missed writing. I’d written ten books. Lots of content. Thousands of captions. But I missed my 2008 blog. I missed the long form kind of writing that takes more than a minute to consume and stays with you afterward.

So I quietly opened a Substack, imported a modest email list I’d grown from book announcements over the years, and just started. No announcement right away. No real plan. I just needed a place for my writing… that felt like mine and only mine.

Three years later, that small decision has become a six figure plus platform, currently #1 in the parenting category, and a 2024 Featured Publication. I share those details not to brag, but because I think women transparently sharing the real numbers behind the work they do is important. And because I want you to know that it did not start with a fancy strategy. It started with burnout, which led to forced me into quiet, which led to clarity, which led to one small trust-your-gut decision that changed the trajectory of my career.

The Explosion of Substack (including this one)

I get asked about what I’ve learned from all of this a lot. Here is everything I know.

• Keep a loose schedule and write about what you actually care about. I don’t have an editorial calendar that tells me what to write each week. When I’m forcing a topic because I think I should cover it, readers sense it — there’s a flatness to that kind of writing I can’t hide no matter how much I work at it. When something is genuinely on my mind, that energy comes through, and people feel the difference. What I do keep is a loose weekly and monthly cadence: Sunday Scrolls (free), Tuesday Book Club (mix of paid and free), Thursday essays (paid), Emily’s Edit at the end of every month (paid). The rhythm is consistent even when the topics aren’t planned, and that’s the structure I’d recommend to anyone starting out. I’ve even helped create two other Substacks here: The Simplified Post from my team at Simplified, and In Leyman’s Terms (a finance Substack co-produced by myself and my husband, Bryan).

How I organize my work as a content creator

• Don’t be afraid of the paywall. I’ve been creating free content for nearly two decades so, yes, I did experience a bit of pushback when I first launched a paid platform. Free subscribers will get lots of value here, but the best, most valuable content is reserved for paid subscribers. I believe in people (women especially, as we’ve contributed millennia of unpaid labor to the world) should be compensated for their work… writing, editing, researching, designing, tending, and developing all takes real time and you too deserve to be compensated for it.

• Don’t treat Substack like Instagram. It’s different. (Thank God.) I’m not here to go viral. I’m not chasing trending topics or writing hooks optimized for shares. Substack is long form — it rewards depth and real writing, the kind of thing that sits with you after you’ve read it. That is completely different from every other platform most of us have been trained on, and the sooner you embrace that, the happier you’ll be here. Think of it this way: social media is like renting. The platform controls the algorithm, who sees your content, and what happens to your audience if it all goes sideways. Email lists and Substack are like owning. That shift in thinking changed how seriously I took this place.

• Treat your Substack like a magazine. Aesthetic matters.