So You Want to Grow on Substack...

• • Paris today is cold AF, but lovely as always. I also wrote much of this article while walking and talking to my iPhone. Voice to text for the win!Every day, I see more and more people creating Substack accounts. Quite a few of them are moving from LinkedIn and similar platforms to Substack. I’m guessing many of these people want to grow their following and get more subscribers for their writing. Others might not want to be under the boot of a giant megacorp platform that’s undergoing some changes that aren’t beneficial to content creators. Optionality is always smart. Substack has the reputation of being “a newsletter platform,” but that description is already outdated. What’s emerging here is something closer to a long-form social network, where writing is the currency rather than the short dopamine hits of TikTok, X, IG Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Longform writing should be slower, more deliberate, and more honest. Longform rewards depth, not noise. And for all those reasons, it might feel like a fresh start for people who want to think deeply in public. Everyone starts from zero. When I moved to Substack a few years ago, I experienced the same shock most people do. I had a large following on other platforms and had a very popular book. But on Substack, I suddenly found myself starting over. I was a nobody. I remember watching the subscriber count crawl to 20 people and feeling genuinely excited. Yay for dopamine hits! But seriously, those 20 meant more to me than tens of thousands I had elsewhere. They were here for my writing, not the algorithm’s decision to feed it to them (that’s somewhat changed on Substack nowadays). The first hard truth about Substack is that your audience might not follow you. Plan to start from zero just like everyone else. Your “follower count” from elsewhere doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters here is whether you can write something people want to return to. And trust me, there will be many days when you’re literally writing for the void. But if you’re a writer, you keep writing. If that sounds humbling, good. It should be. Humility is a far better foundation for growth than entitlement. However, the sad thing is 90% of people will quit here. They’ll publish a post or two, get very little engagement, then move on. The second truth is that Substack is a long-form platform at its core, at least for now (https://2hourcreatorstack.substack.com/p/the-substack-shift-i-saw-coming-and). Guess what you get to do? Yes, write longform. People sometimes underestimate how different writing long-form can be. Writing long-form isn’t the same as firing off a snappy post on LinkedIn or a clever soundbite on Twitter. Longform requires structured thinking. It requires patience. It requires sitting with an idea long enough for it to turn into something worth reading. And you’ll probably go through many iterations on an idea before you publish it. Embrace the grind. This means you’re getting better at thinking about the concept you’re noodling on and writing about. Longform means that five hundred words is the smallest unit of meaning here. A thousand is better. Two thousand and more is where ideas begin to stretch their legs. Longform forces you to slow down, and slowing down forces clarity. It’s the difference between telling someone what you think and showing them how you feel. But longform is lonely, too. This part almost nobody tells you, back to writing for the void. Starting to write publicly on Substack often feels like talking into an empty room, especially at first. You’ll hit publish, wait, refresh your screen a few times, and see nothing. No comments. Maybe two likes if you’re lucky. Perhaps not even that. This is where most people quit. This is also where real writers separate from the tourists. And this is why I say that 90% of people quit. They probably quit too early. It is what it is. Writer’s block is a real thing. I suffer from it, despite consistently writing every day. After I hit the 300-word mark, things start flowing. It might take me a bit to get there, sort of like warming up for exercise on a day when all you wanna do is lie on the couch. A neat trick I found to overcome writer’s block is voice-to-text. Especially when writing your zero or first draft, the point is to get your ideas on the page. So whether you’re writing on a keyboard or writing by speaking to a page, this accomplishes the same goal. In fact, I am writing this article by speaking into my phone as I’m walking around Paris this morning. You talk way faster than you type, so consider this a valid way to do your writing. Of course, you will need to edit using a keyboard and screen, but if voice-to-text helps you get some traction, go for it. I love it and use it all the time. On a related note, you can use AI to generate your content. This is a tempting shortcut, but a dangerous one. While I find AI very useful as a sounding board and for editing my writing, I don’t use it to write my content wholesale. Writing is thinking, and if you’re not actively engaged in the writing process, you’re cheating yourself and your readers out of your true expression and voice. Again, AI is an absolutely fantastic assistant for brainstorming, ideation, editing, and other activities. But the active writing needs to come from you and your experience, not what some generic AI thinks you should write. Sadly, I expect Substack will be enshitified (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification#English) by AI-generated slop, which is disappointing. Ultimately, your readers and their engagement will be the ultimate test of whether you’re writing succeeds. Readers can see through AI slop. So, do yourself and your readers a favor and write something that truly expresses you, and only you. Closing out, I’m excited to see a number of my friends, taking up writing as a medium to think through their ideas and express them in public. In the end, you’re doing this for yourself. Building an audience and engagement are side effects of writing things people want to read and reading stuff they care about. You can’t control this as much as you think. But what you can control is bringing yourself to your writing. Keep at it. Good luck and happy writing! In other news, I’d like to give a shoutout to all of the participants in last weekend’s Practical Data Unhinged AI Vibe Coding Hackathon - November 2025. The goal was to use AI to build the app that absolutely nobody asked for. To the person, every submission was hilarious and on-brand. This hackathon was a lot of fun, and being our first hackathon, it went relatively smoothly. What was particularly awesome to see was how quickly people built apps with excellent UI and snappy, intricate functionality. And the crazy thing is, many of these apps only took an hour or two to make. The Winners are:

• Crowd Favorite - Greg Wilson and Carly Taylor/Drew Maring (tie) ⭐️

• Most Unhinged - Ctrl+Alt+Delusion (Mihika) and The Danes (Nicolai) (tie) 🤪

• How Is This Even Working? - Andrew Plewe 🚽

• Best Abuse of AI 🤢 - Greg Wilson

• Actually Useful™ 🛠️ - Jason Taylor

• Overall Wiener 🌭 - Greg Wilson

We’ll be doing another hackathon sometime in Spring 2026, so stay tuned. You can watch the unhinged and hilarious demos here. Also, in Paris for the Forward Data Conference. If you’re around, come say bonjour. Have a fun weekend, Joe Thanks for reading! Subscribe to receive new content, usually every week. Awesome Upcoming Events• • Bonjour! I’m back in Paris for part deux of the Forward Data Conference. Join me and my friends for an awesome day of talks, croissants, and coffee. Forward is rapidly becoming one of the best indie data events in the world, so show up if you can. See you there. Register here (https://www.forward-data-conference.com/en). Helping my friends out at Coactive.ai (https://www.coactive.ai/), who are doing a cool event in Colombia!

• Suppose you’re connected to AI, ML, or data engineering communities in Medellín or know local meetups, universities, or partner networks that might want to get involved. In that case, I’d love your help spreading the word.

• Also, if you can suggest anyone in particular to give a lightning talk, I would love to showcase them.

Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2025 Tentative Venue: WeWork Parque El Poblado, Medellín Time: 5:30 – 8:30 PM Description: Coactive is hosting a community event bringing together local engineers, data practitioners, and AI enthusiasts. The evening will include networking, lightning talks from local AI practitioners, a panel discussion on “What’s Next for AI Engineering in Colombia?”, and a raffle for a Meta Quest 3 and other great giveaways. Notes:

• Our goal is to strengthen Coactive’s connection with the Colombian AI and data community, spotlighting local talent, sharing real-world applied AI stories, and building bridges for future collaboration.

• We’ll share the registration link soon, but I wanted to get early word out so people can mark their calendars.

• Thanks so much for helping us grow the local AI ecosystem. Medellín has such incredible energy and talent, and we can’t wait to be part of it!

But wait, there’s more!• • My other upcoming events are posted here (https://joereis.notion.site/?v=2650bd0106038107b707000c744a165b&pvs=73). Cool ReadsHere are some things I read this week that you might enjoy. Common Ground between AI 2027 & AI as Normal Technology (https://asteriskmag.substack.com/p/common-ground-between-ai-2027-and) How Behavioral Science Can Improve the Return on AI Investments (https://hbr.org/2025/11/how-behavioral-science-can-improve-the-return-on-ai-investments) Buy now, pay later’ is expanding fast, and that should worry everyone | TechCrunch (https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/16/bnpl-is-expanding-fast-and-that-should-worry-everyone/) Application Software Is Dead, Again (https://www.akashbajwa.co/p/application-software-is-dead-again) Onboarding AI: Why the Semantic Layer Matters (https://thedatavist.substack.com/p/onboarding-ai-why-the-semantic-layer) Re-imagining the Corporation of the Future - by Alex McCann (https://thestillwandering.substack.com/p/re-imagining-the-corporation-of-the) How I Use Every Claude Code Feature - by Shrivu Shankar (https://blog.sshh.io/p/how-i-use-every-claude-code-feature) Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (https://blog.cloudflare.com/18-november-2025-outage/) Rill Data - Chat with Michael Driscoll and Joe Reis (https://datatalks.rilldata.com/) Flink Watermarks WTF (https://flink-watermarks.wtf/) The Epstein Emails Show That Conspiracy Theorists Are Right: ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Is Real (https://www.thewrap.com/epstein-emails-conspiracy/) Find My Other Content Here📺 YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@joereisdata) - Interviews, tutorials, product reviews, rants, and more. 🎙️ Podcasts (https://open.spotify.com/show/3mcKitYGS4VMG2eHd2PfDN?si=7bd8ffc4d5b840ce) - Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts 📝 Practical Data Modeling (https://practicaldatamodeling.substack.com/) - This is where I’m writing my upcoming book, Mixed Model Arts, mostly in public. Free and paid content. The Practical Data CommunityThe Practical Data Community is a place for candid, vendor-free conversations about all things tech, data, and AI. We host regular events such as book clubs, lunch-and-learns, Data Therapy, and more. 🤖 Join on Discord (https://discord.gg/gNfw5AKWSK)

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