The $1M Experiment I’m Running in Public (on Substack)
I set a big goal for myself, which is to grow HobbyScool into a $1M sellable brand by the end of 2027. Not $1M a year in revenue. A business somebody would pay $1M to own.
HobbyScool started as nothing more than a domain name I liked. Over the years it's become a brand running online creative summits and selling digital products, with close to 40,000 email subscribers. The next chapter is turning it into something that runs and scales without me, which is a very different job from growing it.
Instead of keeping that process buried in a Google Doc, I decided to document it in public on Substack. Here's why I picked that platform, what I learned about it, and what I'd tell you if you're wondering whether to move your own newsletter there.
The experiment has since moved onto infrastructure I control, with Substack still carrying the public reflections. Everything below is what I learned about the platform along the way, and it all still holds.
Two Experiments Running at Once
This project was always two things happening at the same time, and it helps to separate them.
The first was testing Substack as a platform. Inside my Newsletter Profit Club membership I teach creators how to monetize newsletters, and I get asked about Substack constantly. Should I move from Kit? Is it worth it? Rather than guess, I wanted to run it myself and find out how it actually behaves.
The second was documenting HobbyScool's road to $1M. I'd wanted a real behind-the-scenes record of building a brand toward a sale, and I originally assumed that would live in a doc nobody would ever read. When I started researching Substack it clicked that this was a better home for it.
So Substack became the lab, HobbyScool became the story, and the exit goal became the experiment.
What Substack Actually Is
If you haven't used it, here's the quick version. Substack is four things bundled together, and most people only think about the first one.
- A newsletter platform, where every post gets emailed to your subscribers.
- A blog, where those posts also live on the web, searchable and shareable.
- A social network, where readers comment and share and other writers recommend you.
- An optional paid subscription platform, with monthly, annual, and founding-member plans if that fits your brand.
Which means Substack isn't really about hitting send. It's about discovery, visibility, and conversation, and that's a genuinely different job from what your email platform does.
Why I Chose It Over the Alternatives
I looked at a few options before landing here, and each one failed for a specific reason.
A Google Doc is invisible. You could pay for access to my private notes, but it's clunky and there's no way for anyone new to ever find it.
LinkedIn is noisy and algorithm-driven. Posts vanish within a day or two, and building a story that accumulates across dozens of entries is close to impossible there.
And email platforms like Kit, ActiveCampaign, and Flodesk are built for funnels and sales. They're excellent at that. They're not built for public storytelling with discovery attached.
Substack sits in the gap. It's conversational, searchable, and social, and it keeps everything in one place where new people can stumble into it.
What I Actually Share There
The part that resonates isn't the polished stuff. What people respond to is the revenue snapshots and the pivots, the decisions you normally only hear about years later once they worked, and the messy middle where a launch flops or a community gets shut down or I change direction entirely.
That's the material most creators never publish, which is exactly why it's worth publishing.
The Features That Surprised Me
After a few months in it, I realized Substack behaves more like a social platform than a newsletter tool. Four things stood out.
Notes Is a Real Discovery Engine
Notes is a mini social feed, closer to Twitter or LinkedIn than to email. What makes it matter is that Notes can reach people who don't subscribe to you and have never heard of you, which is not something your email platform will ever do.
Free and Paid Posts Can Mix
You can publish to everyone or lock a post for paid subscribers, and you can tease a paid post with a free preview so people see what they'd be getting. That flexibility means you don't have to decide your whole model up front.
You Control the Conversation
Comments can be open to everyone, limited to subscribers, or limited to paid members. That last setting is more useful than it sounds when you're publishing candid numbers and decisions rather than general advice.
Monetization Is Genuinely Simple
Monthly, annual, and founding-member plans, plus gifts and referrals, all switch on without a funnel or a checkout build. Simple to turn on isn't the same as certain to work, but the cost of testing it is close to nothing.
Substack Is Not a Replacement for Your ESP
This is the part I want to be completely clear about, because it's the mistake I see most.
Your email platform is the business engine. It runs your funnels, your automations, your tagging and segmentation, your product sales, and your affiliate campaigns. Substack does discovery, visibility, conversation, and a paid newsletter if that fits you.
Don't ditch your ESP. You need it to actually sell and automate anything, and no amount of Substack growth changes that.
"Substack is where people find you. Your email platform is where you build a business with them."
Dr. Destini Copp, Creator's MBARead the Terms Before You Build There
This part matters more than most people realize. Substack's content guidelines don't permit publications whose primary purpose is advertising external products, driving traffic to third-party sites, or publishing SEO content.
That doesn't mean you can never link out. But a publication that's mostly promotions and affiliate offers is at real risk of being flagged, which is a big part of why I'd never run my main list there.
I treat it as a discovery layer instead. Readers can always find my main newsletter, my podcast, and my site from my Substack profile, and the publication itself stays focused on the writing.
What I'd Tell You If You're Considering It
Four things, and they're the same four I give Newsletter Profit Club members when this comes up.
Don't move your core newsletter. Keep your ESP for the funnels, automations, and sales, because that's work Substack isn't built to do.
Do use Substack for discovery. Notes and recommendations put your writing in front of people who'd never have found you otherwise, and that's the genuine advantage.
Test a paid tier only if it fits what you're writing. It's simple to switch on, but simple isn't the same as suited to your audience, and some kinds of writing people follow closely without ever paying for.
And treat it as building in public rather than publishing. Document the journey with the decisions and the reversals intact, because the polished version is the one nobody needs from you.
HobbyScool is the story. The $1M is the experiment. And the platform was only ever the place I chose to run it.
Before You Add Another Platform
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No, and this is the question I get most. Your ESP runs your funnels, automations, tagging, and product sales, and Substack isn't built to do any of that. Use Substack as a discovery layer alongside your main list rather than as a replacement for it.
Discovery and conversation. Posts get emailed and also live on the web where they're searchable, readers comment and share, other writers recommend you, and Notes puts your writing in front of people who have never heard of you. That reach is the real product.
Occasionally, yes. Substack's content guidelines don't permit publications whose primary purpose is advertising external products, driving traffic to third-party sites, or publishing SEO content. Linking out sometimes is fine, but a publication that is mostly promos or affiliate offers risks being flagged.
It's simple to turn on, which makes it cheap to test, but it isn't automatically a fit. A paid tier works when readers want ongoing access to your thinking on a specific subject. Build-in-public documentation, in my experience, is something people follow with interest and rarely pay for.
It's my public documentation of building HobbyScool into a business worth selling by the end of 2027. The $1M is the target sale price for the brand, not annual revenue, and the point is showing how the decisions and systems accumulate over time.
