My powerful (painful) 'Must Do' list for 2026

... fighting with my inner rebel

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Hey Substacker! Hope you’re doing well.

Today’s post is a lil bit embarrassing because it shows how my inner rebel succeeded in hijacking my business for literally years.

Because it shows I was just too stubborn to do the work that needed to be done. Because I didn’t feel like it.

Because when you have your own business, you can do whatever you feel like, right? Right?????

How I got here

I’m a girl who likes to get things done.

I’m not one to poke around in the data for hours on end, trying to figure out arcane internet-y stuff like ranking 45 traffic sources or viewing the stats for every step of a funnel.

But I’m smart enough to know you have to pay attention sometimes - pop your head above the surface, take a good look around and notice if storm clouds are gathering on the horizon.

And in 2024, I took a look at the dashboard of my food safety publication and noticed a lovely new tilt on my Substack revenue chart: faster growth in paid subscriptions. Thousands of extra dollars in my bank account month after month, without doing more work: beautiful.

I thought this was my new normal.

I was wrong.

What the stats said

Six months later, when conversions stalled, I revisited that sweet spot on the chart and tried to figure out why more people were converting to paid subscriptions during those blissful months of triple-figure growth.

There was no obvious reason. Annoying. No extra offers, no major blip in free sign-ups, no new benefits for paying subscribers…. maybe a couple of little things here and there, but no one big magical reason that I could replicate.

Except…. except. There was one thing happening at that time. And it had nothing to do with Substack.

I was posting daily on LinkedIn.

Could that have something to do with it? Surely not. I wasn’t overtly promoting my newsletter. I didn’t have a Premium account, so there was no “View My Newsletter” button on my profile.

I wasn’t doing anything particularly special on LinkedIn. Except showing up every day.

What I did next

I had discovered that my best revenue growth coincided with one of those rare periods that I could be bothered to post on LinkedIn daily.

I couldn’t figure out how that daily posting could have increased my paid subscribers, since free subscriber growth had remained steady. In fact I couldn’t be sure it had anything whatsoever to do with the growth.

It was probably all just a coincidence, I told myself.

So I did nothing. For more than a year.

Not nothing, exactly: I was still doing all the usual work: creating top-quality posts for my food safety publication every week, crafting special supplements for paying subscribers, occasionally poking around on LinkedIn if I could stomach it. But nothing different.

And - surprise, surprise - nothing changed.

Lightbulb moment

I still have no idea why the months that I post daily on LinkedIn are higher revenue with more new paying subscribers.

Maybe it’s a top-of-mind thing for certain readers who see me on LinkedIn a lot and are more inclined to upgrade. Maybe it’s because I find interesting stories on LinkedIn, and what I write about subtly changes without me realising it. Maybe it’s something to do with my energy when I commit to posting daily.

But these days I don’t care. And I no longer use the fact that I don’t know as an excuse not to do the work.

Towards the end of last year, I had a lightbulb moment:

I don’t need to know why it works. Just that it does work.

The ‘Must Do’ list was born

I made a commitment to post daily on LinkedIn for my food safety audience and post daily on Substack Notes for you guys here at Pubstack Success.

That’s my ‘Must Do’ list for every day: Two tasks. Two check boxes. One powerful result.

Does it work?

Yes. Can you guess when I started posting on Notes daily?

Do I know why it works?

I do not.

Powerful (and Painful)

My ‘Must Do’ list is powerful: Paid subscriber growth has really picked up in both of my publications since I started checking off my ‘Must Do’ list daily.

It’s also painful. I still don’t know how it works, since my rate of free subscriber growth has stayed constant. It could all just be an illusion, a coincidence: my revenue growth could be completely unrelated to my ‘Must Do’ list. That’s annoying.

Even more painful is that I didn’t do it sooner. Because I was too busy being a rebel.

Because I wanted to “work on my own terms”.

Because I wanted to do social media “when I feel like it”.

Because my inner rebel insisted I shouldn’t follow the gurus who insist that constant hustle is a requirement for success.

I’ve learned my lesson. Showing up daily does make a difference. Even if it’s just by signalling to the algorithm that you’re making an effort, that your words are worthy of being distributed, that you give a damn about their dumb platform.

If that makes a difference to my business’s bottom line, I’m up for it. Rebel be damned.

—

Karen

P.S. Want to ‘pick my brains’ about LinkedIn strategies that increase your impressions, grow your (LinkedIn) follower count and complement a professional expertise Substack? Jump on a one-hour call with me.

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