How I Sold Out a 100-Person Founder Cohort in 12 Days, Became a Substack Bestseller, and How You Can Too
Operating Essay — Operating by John Brewton
127 articles. 5,000+ subscribers.
Zero ads. Zero funnels.
I launched my founder offer as four 1:1 (60 minute) strategy sessions for $99.
Sold 100 seats in 12 days.
Became a Substack Bestseller (Brought in $10K+ ARR)
Then expanded to weekly live cohort Zoom sessions for the next 100 Founders.
Nobody handed or hacked me an audience. I posted and wrote for two years straight until the audience handed me their trust.
And trust, it turns out, is the only currency that converts.
Here are the FIVE things that actually mattered.
1. Articles. Notes. Lives. They do different jobs. Use all three.
Your long-form articles are where the depth lives, gets restacked, and brings people in from across Substack. Write pieces that are genuinely useful. Not thought leadership cosplay. Actual tools, frameworks, and perspectives people can use that day.
Notes are your daily pulse. Excerpt your articles. Drop quick takes. Stay visible. Think of Notes as the hallway conversation that makes people walk into the room for the main event.
And Lives?
Lives are everything right now. Here’s why:
In an AI-first world, everything is assumed to be fake. Every polished essay might be a prompt. Every carousel might be ChatGPT in a trench coat.
Live video is proof of life.
You being uniquely you is what sells the newsletter.
Not sounding smart.
Not performative expertise.
Being the person behind the work.
That’s brand. Everything else is decoration.
2. Publish relentlessly.
Every article on Substack is a permanent, searchable, shareable asset that works for you while you sleep.
There is no shortcut around volume. None.
As my newsletter grew, my 30 day views have expanded to almost 130,000, distributed evenly across 20 to 30 different articles.
The writers who win on Substack publish like it’s their job, because it is.
3. Build series, not a feed.
One undifferentiated stream of content is one path to growth. Multiple series — each attacking a different angle of your expertise, serving a different reader need — is compounding leverage.
Some readers want the deep Saturday essay. Others want the curated weekly briefing. Others want the step-by-step series with a downloadable tracker they can use today.
Give them all a door. The architecture is the strategy.
4. The answer to collaboration is always yes.
Swap recommendations? Yes.
Co-author an article? Yes.
Go live together? Yes.
5. BE SOCIAL ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Restack writers you admire. Comment on their Notes. Build real relationships, not transactional ones where you DM someone “love your work!” and immediately ask for a favor.
Make friends. Find collaborators. Engage generously.
The community you build around your work will outperform every algorithm hack, growth tactic, and engagement pod you’ll ever hear about.
That’s the foundation.
The full playbook TO HELP YOU MAKE THE RESULTS HAPPEN IS BELOW.
What paid subscribers get with this essay:
📥 Content Architecture Planner (Word) — design your series and how they work together
📥 Article Archive Audit (Excel) — find the offer hiding in your existing content
📥 Offer Design Worksheet (Word) — pricing, phasing, and your one-sentence pitch
📥 12-Day Launch Execution Tracker (Excel) — the exact sequence I used, customizable to yours
Plus the complete breakdown of my content architecture, two-phase offer structure, 12-day launch mechanics, and seven tactical lessons I didn’t cover above.
Two ways to go deeper:
Become a paid subscriber ($7.99/mo)
Become an Operating Founder ($99/yr) if you want direct access and to join our weekly one-hour Zoom sessions for the next year.
The Operating Founder Cohort is an extraordinary group of diverse, highly successful professionals and creators. The opportunities for collaboration might ve the best part.
(Access the entire library of articles and resources for $7.99 per month)
