October 1, 2026

It's October! And I know as you were ordering your pumpkin spice latte this morning, you were standing in line thinking: should I ditch LinkedIn for Substack?

That's a big question for a Thursday morning, and it's one of the things I like most about you. You're never afraid to start the day with a big question. But don't worry, I got you.

Substack has been on my mind a lot lately, and I've been getting more and more questions from clients about how to use it.

It makes sense. It's growing fast. Substack now has more than 5 million paid subscriptions, and investors valued the company at $1.1 billion in 2025.

I'm seeing some of my favorite people I used to follow on Twitter show up here. Longtime columnists from NYT, WaPo, veteran correspondents... they're building their own audiences here instead of playing the algorithm game that social media platforms require.

Even Scott Galloway announced earlier this year that he's moving his podcast and newsletter over to Substack.

Substack is becoming a home for deep thinkers to explore topics that may or may not always fit neatly in their wheelhouse. It has this living room vibe to it. A modern-day French salon from the Enlightenment, if you will.

It's a place to build authority and explore ideas that are difficult to fit in a 200-word post.

I've caught myself doomscrolling on Substack more than once, but I don't feel all that guilty about it because of how much I learn. One minute I'm reading about neuroscience, the next it's architecture or parenting research or someone's very serious opinions about sourdough.

It's also where I recently started publishing my newsletter. I've been testing everything we teach clients on my own account first. The first step was just getting a presence there. Now, I'm diving in even more.

So I asked our Substack strategist, Alex Piscatelli, to co-host a private call for our clients to share our approach and answer their questions. We began supporting clients with Substack last year, and now it's become a core part of our Authority Flywheel.

The short answer: don't ditch anything. The two platforms have different jobs, and they work best when you let each one do its own thing.

Here's how we broke it down:

Which one should be your home base?

It depends on what you need most right now.

• If you need business to come in the door, meaning clients, speaking invitations, partners or new hires, make LinkedIn your home base. That's where decision-makers are scrolling, and where a good post turns into a DM. Use Substack as the place your ideas go deeper and weave in more of your creativity and personality.
• If you want to be known as the go-to thinker on a topic, make Substack your home base. That's where you build a body of work people subscribe to, cite and forward. Keep LinkedIn active as the front door, with short posts that introduce people to your thinking and point them to your Substack.

What this looks like in practice

This summer, one of our CEO clients, who has spent more than a decade in tech safety, published a guest essay on a Substack account with more than 195,000 subscribers. It led to a handful of new subscribers to her Substack account.

Two months later, we published a LinkedIn post for her that went viral. It was about her own challenges as a parent making decisions about tech in her home, and it ended with a link to her Substack.

That one post brought her more new subscribers on Substack than anything else so far, including the guest essay.

It validated our strategy of using LinkedIn as the front door. New audiences found her from the LinkedIn post and stayed for everything else she had to say on Substack.

You don't have to start from scratch

You probably have way more Substack material than you realize:

1. Republish an existing article as a Substack post.
2. Adapt your LinkedIn posts into Substack Notes.
3. Break one long article into three or four Notes.
4. As your audience grows, try interviews, podcasts, video, or livestreams.

The goal isn't to become an influencer on two platforms instead of one. It's to make your expertise easier for the right people to find, understand, and trust.

If you're wondering whether Substack fits your strategy, hit reply. Happy to think it through with you.

Enjoy that latte,

Brynne

p.s. We're thinking about doing a free webinar on Substack and LinkedIn this month. Would that be something you'd like to join?

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