Against this backdrop of AI, I believe everyone is a product manager. The biggest brand you will ever work on is yourself. I began applying product thinking to my Substack as well, and everything shifted. I gained 100 followers in a month and the momentum hasn’t stopped.
It turns out that when you treat your work like a product, your audience becomes a community, your voice becomes a differentiator, and your growth becomes repeatable.
This is such a brilliant reframe! "Everyone is a product manager for themselves" – that just clicked for me. I've been so focused on the content part, but thinking about my Substack (and myself) as a product with an audience and a differentiator changes everything. Congrats on the growth, and thanks for sharing this powerful mental model!
The interesting thing about Dan’s Substack is that I think it’s going to accomplish what I would’ve wanted something like Facebook or LinkedIn to do, start a nice micro community of people out here doing the thing, sharing a perspective, being useful to one another. Great article, it actually made me decide to stop putting off publishing. On a podcast, really good at interviewing others, but not telling my own story, now I have no excuse.
Learning remains incomplete without action. Books and advice provide frameworks, yet the real understanding forms only through the friction of personal mistakes. Projects become filters that turn scattered information into retained knowledge. Without real world application, most insights evaporate.
Interesting perspective and I deeply feel your structure across all your posts. It makes sense.
But why I subscribe to you is not for your lessons in advertising… I subscribe to you because of how you think about the complete picture of life. To me that is less about advertising and more about your lived experience which is a great and rich elder-level storytelling method. I guess I wish it didn’t have to be such a man made construct like “advertising” which implies ads and pitching and could actually be about magnetizing or using energetic connection.
It’s all perspective. The word advertising itself is neutral, it only means something because of what’s attached for us. I will always love imagination, but also recognize the paradox that I can drown an idealism if unregulated.
You're right, Dan. By sharpening your advertising skills, you can stay true to your creative self and make sure your unique voice gets the spotlight it deserves.
Dan... you remind me of a Marketing master I studied in the 90s... he said business is a combination/understanding of psychology and math. The two areas in business too many have no clue. Always interested in "other tricks up your sleeve"!
I am sure you are correct. And I might just pick up advertising to advertise a system where advertising is not needed. But then, the thought alone induces enough cognitive dissonance, way above my threshold, not to do it.
The point about survival mode matters, because scarcity pushes people toward tactics they later regret, while skill allows more restraint and honesty. The practical breakdown of problem, outcome, and mechanism is a useful way to make creative work legible to other people without turning it into hype. Using AI to study structure and practice intentionally also makes the learning curve feel far less mysterious.
Hi Dan, thank you for sharing this. I really like how you use AI to learn new skills. You make it very practical and simple. I completely agree with you - we need to be able to show our work and advertise what we can do to make our lives easier and better. I'm definitely going to give that AI prompt a go! Love your content as usual :) keep going!
Against this backdrop of AI, I believe everyone is a product manager. The biggest brand you will ever work on is yourself. I began applying product thinking to my Substack as well, and everything shifted. I gained 100 followers in a month and the momentum hasn’t stopped.
It turns out that when you treat your work like a product, your audience becomes a community, your voice becomes a differentiator, and your growth becomes repeatable.
This is such a brilliant reframe! "Everyone is a product manager for themselves" – that just clicked for me. I've been so focused on the content part, but thinking about my Substack (and myself) as a product with an audience and a differentiator changes everything. Congrats on the growth, and thanks for sharing this powerful mental model!
I am glad that you think it is helpful. 🤠🤠🤠
This is fantastic... for now. I wonder what happens when the "source newsletter" was generated by AI. A copy of a copy of a copy...
I spent 6 months copy-pasting AI content. Zero growth. Zero voice.
Then I gave myself permission to suck. Everything changed.
Here's what I learned:
https://open.substack.com/pub/theinnerself46/p/5-mistakes-that-keep-99-of-beginner?r=2kbdxu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The interesting thing about Dan’s Substack is that I think it’s going to accomplish what I would’ve wanted something like Facebook or LinkedIn to do, start a nice micro community of people out here doing the thing, sharing a perspective, being useful to one another. Great article, it actually made me decide to stop putting off publishing. On a podcast, really good at interviewing others, but not telling my own story, now I have no excuse.
That's great advice. The first million words I wrote all sucked. Now I think they suck slightly less.
Learning remains incomplete without action. Books and advice provide frameworks, yet the real understanding forms only through the friction of personal mistakes. Projects become filters that turn scattered information into retained knowledge. Without real world application, most insights evaporate.
Interesting perspective and I deeply feel your structure across all your posts. It makes sense.
But why I subscribe to you is not for your lessons in advertising… I subscribe to you because of how you think about the complete picture of life. To me that is less about advertising and more about your lived experience which is a great and rich elder-level storytelling method. I guess I wish it didn’t have to be such a man made construct like “advertising” which implies ads and pitching and could actually be about magnetizing or using energetic connection.
It’s all perspective. The word advertising itself is neutral, it only means something because of what’s attached for us. I will always love imagination, but also recognize the paradox that I can drown an idealism if unregulated.
You're right, Dan. By sharpening your advertising skills, you can stay true to your creative self and make sure your unique voice gets the spotlight it deserves.
I was hoping very much this article would change my mind about advertising.
Dan... you remind me of a Marketing master I studied in the 90s... he said business is a combination/understanding of psychology and math. The two areas in business too many have no clue. Always interested in "other tricks up your sleeve"!
I spent 6 months copy-pasting AI content. Zero growth. Zero voice.
Then I gave myself permission to suck. Everything changed.
Here's what I learned:
https://open.substack.com/pub/theinnerself46/p/5-mistakes-that-keep-99-of-beginner?r=2kbdxu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Great read! Very insightful and full of information and ideas for a budding writer ✍️ 💯💯💯💯💥💥💥💥
Are you using "advertising" as interchangeable with "marketing" here? or, what do you mean by these, definitionally in this case?
I am sure you are correct. And I might just pick up advertising to advertise a system where advertising is not needed. But then, the thought alone induces enough cognitive dissonance, way above my threshold, not to do it.
The only letter I didn’t know I needed.
Funny how I started Cashvertizing cos I work with people so I needed to understand them, but stopped half way.
I’d pick it up again. psychology, marketing and sales.
The point about survival mode matters, because scarcity pushes people toward tactics they later regret, while skill allows more restraint and honesty. The practical breakdown of problem, outcome, and mechanism is a useful way to make creative work legible to other people without turning it into hype. Using AI to study structure and practice intentionally also makes the learning curve feel far less mysterious.
i enjoy reading your posts so much. i can genuinely say i have learnt quite a few from you.
thank you for this great piece and the AI prompt you've shared freely, i'll definitely incorporate that and learn how to advertise better.
cheers!
Hi Dan, thank you for sharing this. I really like how you use AI to learn new skills. You make it very practical and simple. I completely agree with you - we need to be able to show our work and advertise what we can do to make our lives easier and better. I'm definitely going to give that AI prompt a go! Love your content as usual :) keep going!
Advertising isn’t the villain bad advertising is. The real power move is using psychology without losing your soul.
Great article thanks for sharing!