First off, thank you Becky Hayward, Chief Absurdist Officer, Jeff Hoots, and many others for tuning into my live video with Shannon Bindler!
This live was different from my usual topic, however I hope you’ll find some usefulness in it 🙂 Enjoy!
Strategy vs. Intuition: The Crux of the Conversation
Earlier this week I went live with Shannon Bindler — psychologist, coach, and one of my earliest Substack friends — to talk about something a lot of us here, as well as entrepreneurs, wrestle with: strategy versus intuition. When do you trust your gut, and when do you actually look at the data?
The Live ran about thirty minutes, but if you don’t have the time, below is a breakdown of some of the ideas we talked through.
Year one runs on intuition. Year two is noticing what you were already doing.
Both Shannon and I spent our first year mostly writing on gut. Neither of us had followers or data and were just publishing what we cared about. Shannon said that when she sat down to write her two most popular pieces — one on the unwritten rules of Substack, one demystifying the paid tier — she realized how much strategy she’d been using all along without ever naming it.
Notes can build audiences, but articles can build commitment.
Roughly 75–80% of my audience has come from Notes. But Notes and articles do different jobs: Notes convert people into free subscribers, and articles convert people into paid ones. The reason is simple — someone who reads a full post is more invested than someone who liked a one-liner in the feed. If you’re trying to grow, Notes can be an engine for you, if that’s a path you’re interested in. If you’re trying to deepen, articles are where it happens.
Track only what you’ll actually act on.
I started logging every Note back in March, and I give each one about a month before I record its numbers. Then I export the whole thing to a CSV, hand it to Claude, and ask what structures have been working. But the discipline underneath it matters more than the tool: I only track data I’m going to take action on. Numbers you collect and never use will never be insightful. Instead, they’ll probably cause you more anxiety than needed. Just track what will help you take action.
Use AI to see your patterns, not to write your sentences.
Both of us use AI less and less in the actual writing, because it tends to kill the personality in our writing. Where AI is earning its place for us is analysis. I use Claude for spotting writing structures that work and I use Grammarly as a copy editor, so I don’t lose the personality that I bring to my writing.
A person on the live pushed back on me during the live, saying that one can’t critique patriarchy and wave away AI’s built-in biases in the same breath. I didn’t have a clean answer. I told her I’d sit with it, because she’s not wrong. I’ve mostly been thinking about what AI does for me, kind of using my ultimate goal as a cover for using AI. But, that’s the whole point of doing this in public.
I will eventually do a post on this because I think it’s a valid question, one I haven’t thought about deeply enough. Can one justify the use of AI given the goal of helping men self-reflect on and deconstruct their own sexism? I haven’t given it the time and thought it deserves.
Be the guy one step ahead — not the guru.
I’m not an expert, and I say so constantly. The way I think about it: I’m maybe one or two steps further down the path, turning around to say come with me, let’s go as a group. Shannon believes that people might actually want that more than the polished guru (we’ve all seen enough funnel bros tyvm 😂). Both of us show up as someone still doing the work, and for some people, that reads as more credible than pretending we’ve finished it.
At the end of the day, trust the gut that got you here, then get curious about why it worked.
The full live is worth a watch if you’ve got the half hour. But if you don’t — that’s the crux.
Take care,
Mike
