Create a Substack: Start Writing Today

Starting a Substack could be one of the most important moments in your career. It can mark the moment you went from consuming information to creating information.

Creating information through writing is critical to building a signal to others about your interests and knowledge. Through creating on the internet, you can begin to create your credential.

Regardless of your career ambitions, in today’s world, it’s critical to have some way to show others what you care about and why. You can talk about your major and your previous job experiences, but what if these don’t capture your larger career goals and interests? You have unique knowledge and experience from your career and life, let the world know.

Writing online is an excellent way to start to build your own credential and Substack is the best place to start. It’s free, it takes 5 minutes to set up, and I will explain how.

After writing one post on Substack you will be able to:

• Publish it to your LinkedIn

• Send it to interviewers or potential employers

• Send it directly to your subscribers to stay in touch and maintain relationships

Let’s get started:

First, go to substack.com.

Next, click: Write on Substack.

Then, click: Start Publishing.

Next, Connect with Twitter or skip and make an account:

Then, set up your profile.

For the bio, write something that tells a little bit about your career background. Where are you working and what are your interests? What are the larger themes of your career?

Next, name your publication and say what it’s about. The important part of your publication and writing online in general is that you can determine your niche and hone your interests. Are you interested in the intersection of sustainability and supply chains? Maybe you’re focused on middle market private equity deals and have an interesting perspective. You can always change this, so put a placeholder if you don’t want to decide now.

You can import a mailing list if you have some names and emails. This is critical to Substack. Don’t write without letting people know. Start small with your family and work from there.

Congrats, you’re set up and ready to get started.

Some quick points around navigating Substack. First, the Dashboard button on the top right is key to getting around Substack.

Once you click Dashboard, you can see your posts, subscribers, stats, and settings.

Now, a critical point: add subscribers if you haven’t already (click Subscribers on the top right).

Take the next 15 minutes to add some low-risk people that you can start sending your material. Add your family and friends. This is essential to begin to get feedback on your next posts.

In the future, you can ask people you know if they’d be interested in subscribing to your newsletter to hear more about your thoughts on your career and interests.

Finally, create a new post.

Again, the best part of the internet and writing is that your writing can be distributed an infinite number of times with no additional effort or cost to you.

As such, taking the time to write one or two posts can yield benefits into the future. As always, start small and don’t worry about being perfect.

At MyMBA, we stress the importance of writing and Substack is a great tool for this.