Note: This post was originally an email to my list. I decided to shape it into a welcome post. The audio gives more background. The audio is longer than the article, by a lot. I tried to be perfect when recording, and it came across stilted. I decided to go off the cuff, it has mistakes, me sipping coffee, but it’s real. I’ll get better at audio, but I plan to keep real and not polished astroturf readings.
The move has happened.
I’m still navigating the workings of Substack but I’m here.
It took awhile since I last messaged you for two reasons.
1) I'm working on an article influenced by the The Iliad. It's on the Homeric Traditional Masculine Virtues. Like all my articles, I expected it to be four thousand words or so. I finished the first draft, and right now, it’s sixteen thousand words and some change. It took me a while to write, I’m letting it sit before I edit, and it will take time to edit. I also plan to break it up into parts, and to do some videos on the topic of The Traditional Masculine Virtues.
2) Since my Wordpress site was custom with a lot of bells and whistles, I thought moving my site to Substack was going to be excruciating and that I would end up hiring someone for it. That made me drag my feet.
When I finished the Traditional Masculine Virtues draft, I sat down, ready to endure the pain of moving my site to Substack.
I looked up the steps, asked Grok for help, searched Youtube, and opened up a legion of Substack support articles. I stared at the screen hopelessly for two hours.
My wife saw me staring at the screen.
She asked if she could help.
I said sure.
She completed the whole transfer and archived my old site in twenty minutes. Ten minutes of which was me looking for passwords for hosting sites. She has an extensive background in building websites and moving companies from one hosting platform to another. I lucked out.
I'm still figuring Substack out, I still need to do some site copy, welcome emails, and all that, but the site transfer is complete.
What's New For Paid Subscribers
If you were already a paid subscriber of mine per Stripe as of 05/07/25, I have imported you over and comped you with 3 free months.
My pricing has changed.
I was $9 a month on Wordpress.
I'm now $5 a month over here on Substack.
And there is now a yearly option available at $50.
But wait, there's more.
A Founders level (that's Substack's name, I may change it) where you can pay $100 for a year. I'm also doing a flexible plan where you can pay more than $50 but less than $100. This is if you want to give me more money, which I'm ok with.
As for what you're getting:
Paywalled articles
Chatroom (I'm hoping this gets lively)
Video group calls (This might only be for Founders members, and the frequency of those calls will take shape in the future)
Direct messaging
And I'm still navigating the new features and what perks I can offer to paid subscribers.
Right now my free articles, all of them, are available. But in time I might archive them and after a certain period, say three months, I might make them only available to paid subscribers.
I’m debating whether to allow only paid subscribers to comment on articles, I will tinker with that feature as I go.
And I believe there are perks for paid subscribers who recommend or share my articles. Again I’m figuring out the perks. But the key aim with paid subscribers is conversation and engagement.
My Vision for Substack & Youtube
My goal is to be more active on Substack.
A Substack feature I find intriguing is Notes. This feature is little like X. I enjoy X. Most of you who know me are from X. But X gets crazy. It gets exhausting. Notes looks like I can share more from what I’m reading, I can “restack” other writers on here, along with my own articles, and it looks like I can throw something out there without having to deal with some cynic with a conspiracy theory. We’ll see how Notes shapes out.
I plan to write more articles. Both paid and free. Most of my articles take a while. Yet the nature of Substack, to my intuition, engenders more writing. And since my old Deep Read Series tackles various topics, like American Decline or Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I hope to write a few ruminations as I’m tackling new topics.
I’ve gotten nudges from people to open up more about me. I’m not some mighty figure, but my About Me gets a lot of questions and people want me to expand on parts. And I’m humbled when people ask me about the sale of Clair Motors, what that meant before and after, and what I learned from it since, and what I learned going into Hustle Culture, a move I regret yet appreciate for the perspective it delivered. Others, naturally, want to know more about the professional confidence artist who turned my life upside down. I might delve into memoir type pieces, we’ll see.
I’ve gotten other nudges from people to give perspective and critiques on various parts of culture or bizarre online cultures, like the Manosphere. In the end, I know reading deeper on topics will open up a lot of doors, and will make me write on a variety of themes.
Yes, I will still talk Hustle Culture, Digital Marketing, and Sciolism. As for Copywriting, I’m long out of that harbor. That seems like a lifetime ago. But the spiritual emptiness I found myself in when I was at the peak of my copywriting days, the pathways that led to that emptiness and identity ambiguity, writing about those pathways is something I will likely do.
I plan to shape my Recommends (tentatively named) into something original. Most book recommendations are astroturfed summaries or listicle nonsense. I want to not only give a good summary, but offer perspective on who would benefit and enjoy the book I just finished, if it’s worth reading, and perhaps insight on how to approach the book if it’s a more difficult read.
The core engine of my writing is still reading. I will write on reading, I’m sitting on some old non-published emails about better reading, I will release those, and I still hope to inspire better reading. My direction is trending towards a one man review of books. When people ask what I do, I say I’m somewhat a one man review of books, a little similar to Claremont Review of Books or The New York Review of Books. That style, or my style I suppose, will wade into a variety of themes, takes, ideas, and so on.
As I've mentioned, I'm soon going live with a Youtube channel. And many videos will be handled through Substack and the audio will load to a podcast.
Video is a wild new step for me.
I used to work on the other side of videos when formulating and shaping Video Sales Letters. I also did a fair amount of consulting on talking head video pitches back in the day. But now I’m the one talking, and I’m not even comfortable being photographed. I know it will take reps, I’ll get better at it, but it’s a new journey, and it will take time. I’m going to discuss the same topics I’m writing about. I’ll discuss books, and I’ll discuss themes of an article, and maybe I’ll delve deep into particular themes.
Oh, and I plan on doing some livestreams on Substack. That I’ll figure out when I try one.
The scary thing about the move is my background in email marketing.
Substack isn't an email platform. I'm used to emails. Even though I've been out of the email marketing game a long time, I have familiarity with emails. And I enjoyed writing emails to my subscribers. I might have to keep a kind of free conversation like this that I had with my emails going on Substack, we'll see.
I know I’m going to lose a few of you with this move. But many of you I will connect with and I’m looking forward to it. And do check out the Substack App, check out Substack on the whole as a ton of great writers and personalities are on here, and I hope you enjoy my Substack.
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