The Influence Issue

Brands aren’t buying your follower count

Brielle Tamez — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:49:58 GMT

I run a talent agency, which means I sit on the side of the inbox most people never see. I watch brands look at creator pages and decide in about eleven seconds whether to reply.

Here’s what I’ve learned watching that happen over and over: nobody is counting your followers first. They’re scrolling your grid asking one question.

Can this woman sell a thing?

That’s it. That’s the whole evaluation. And most of the pages I send over answer it by accident, if at all.

The portfolio problem

Think about how any other paid creative gets hired. A photographer sends a portfolio. A copywriter sends samples. A designer sends a case study. Nobody hires them off a promise.

Content is the only field where people expect to be hired on potential. You send a media kit full of reach numbers and hope somebody imagines what you’d make for them.

Brands are terrible at imagining. They are busy, they are protecting a budget, and they need to walk into a meeting and show their boss a link. If your page is quote cards, carousels, and talking-head advice, there is nothing to link to. You might be excellent. They can’t tell.

If your page has products living inside a real life, being opened, used, poured, worn, and talked about, they have their answer without asking you a single question.

The content that gets you your first paid deal is content you make before anyone is paying you. That’s not working for free. That’s building the portfolio.

What actually makes a post brand ready

Three rules. They sound small. They’re the difference between content that gets you booked and content that just performs.

One. The product is in the first three seconds. Not the reveal at the end. Not the payoff after the story. Brands scroll exactly like everyone else, and half of them are watching on mute in a Slack thread.

Two. Show the use, not the item. A bottle on a shelf is a photo. Hands opening the bottle is an ad. Motion is what makes a person feel the product, and feeling is what makes them buy.

Three. One hero per post. You can have five things on the counter. One of them is the star. Brands need to see their product own the frame, not fight four other logos for it.

Bonus rule that has made my creators real money: shoot it like you’d want it on the brand’s page, not just yours. Vertical, a little wide so they can crop, logo readable in at least one clip, your voice over it instead of text on screen. That’s the difference between getting paid for a post and getting paid again when they license it for their own ads.

Four ideas to start with this week

You don’t need a shoot day. You need to point a camera at what you’re already doing.

Your morning, product by product. The first hour of your day, start to finish. This is the single most requested format brands ask for, because coffee, skincare, supplements, and small appliances all live in that hour naturally.

“I was doing this the hard way for years.” The old way, then the fix. Problem, then product. It’s the highest converting structure on the internet and you can write it about anything sitting in your kitchen.

The restock. What you rebought this month, and what you didn’t. Repurchase is the strongest possible signal, because it’s the one thing a brand can’t fake and can’t buy. A marketing manager can walk into a meeting with “she bought it twice” and win.

Your desk, but every item has a reason. If you run a business, your workspace is full of products you’ve never once shown. Tech, office supplies, and software brands are all sitting there unpitched. Software brands in particular pay well and get pitched by almost nobody.

Notice none of these require a brand to say yes first. That’s the point.

Then go get paid for it

Here’s the part people skip. You make the content, it does well, and you leave it there.

Post it organically. Let it sit a week. Then send it to the brand with the receipts attached.

What goes in that email: the link, three numbers (views, saves, and one comment that proves purchase intent, the “where is this from” kind), and one sentence about what you’d make for them next. No rates. Let them ask.

Steal this:

Hi [name], I posted about [product] last week and it did [number] views with [number] saves, plus a comment thread of people asking where to buy it. I’d love to make a paid version for your page. Here’s the post: [link]. Happy to send my media kit if you’re interested.

Short, specific, no begging. That email works because you’re not asking them to imagine anything. You already did the work and you’re showing them the result.

The free download

I put together the full list, 28 product-forward content ideas grouped by category, with a line on each explaining why brands actually buy that format. It also includes the shooting checklist that makes your footage licensable, the organic-to-paid email play, and a 30-day plan so you don’t try to do all 28 and do none of them.

It’s free. Grab it here

Make four of them this month. At the end of it you’ll have a portfolio, which is more than most people pitching for the same deal will have.

You don’t need a bigger audience. You need better proof.

I Let Claude Run My Meta Ads For a Month and It Outperformed Every Experts Advice (The System)

Brielle Tamez — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 23:12:44 GMT

I have lit money on fire with Meta ads. More than once.

I did the thing you are probably doing. I boosted posts. I built these elaborate interest audiences stacked ten deep because a guru on YouTube said the money was in the targeting. I split my tiny budget across five ad sets so each “angle” had its own little home, then I sat there refreshing Ads Manager and turning things off the second they had a bad morning. I paid a lot to learn nothing, and I quietly decided ads just did not work for someone at my level.

Subscribe now

This time I did something different. I let Claude run them. I stopped arguing with it, I stopped “improving” things at midnight, and I did exactly what it told me to do for a month.

Here is what happened.

The receipt

I ran ads for my free live class, the one where we build your custom Claude business dashboard together on the call. I spent about $700.

That $700 brought in 335 registrations.

That is roughly two dollars a registration. Two dollars. Every “realistic” number I had ever seen put a webinar registration somewhere between six and nine dollars, and that is on a good day with a warm audience. I had no big list feeding this. It was cold traffic and a two dollar seat.

I am telling you the number first because I want you to know the rest of this actually worked, and it worked by doing less, not more. Let me walk you through the five things Claude had me do that go against almost everything the experts sell you.

1. It refused to let me target anyone

The experts want you buried in audience settings. Interests, behaviors, lookalikes stacked on lookalikes. It feels productive. It feels like the work.

Claude let me set two things: age and gender. That is it. Women, the age range that fits my buyer, my country. No interests. No behaviors. Nothing clever.

The reasoning is boring and correct. When you have no list and a small budget, the algorithm is a better targeter than you are. Meta already knows who books calls and who buys courses. Your job is not to guess who those people are. Your job is to hand the algorithm a good signal and get out of its way. Every interest I would have added would have made the pool smaller and the learning slower. So we skipped it, and the algorithm went and found my people for two dollars a head.

2. It tested creative cheap before spending a cent on conversions

This is the move I wish someone had shown me two years and several hundred wasted dollars ago.

Everyone tells you to optimize for the conversion from day one. Run your ads for registrations, right out of the gate. The problem is registrations are “expensive” events, so Meta spends slowly and carefully while it figures out your creative, and you burn a week of budget just learning which video people will even stop scrolling for.

Claude flipped the order. First campaign, we optimized for landing page views. Cheap, fast, tons of data. Within a few days it was obvious which creative was pulling people in and which was dead weight, and I had barely spent anything to find out. Only then did we take the winners into a second campaign optimized for the actual registration. So I was never paying premium conversion prices to test a hook. I tested the hook for pennies, then spent the real money only on the ads that had already proven they work.

Test creative on cheap traffic. Scale winners on the real objective. Two campaigns, in that order.

3. It used ad set budgets, not campaign budgets

Small technical thing, big consequence.

The default advice, and honestly the setting Meta nudges you toward, is to put your budget at the campaign level and let it decide how to split the money. It sounds smart. In practice, when you are testing, it means the algorithm quietly starves the ads you actually want data on and dumps everything into one early favorite that might not be your real winner.

Claude had me set the budget at the ad set level while testing, so I controlled exactly how much each thing got to spend. Every creative got a fair, equal shot to prove itself instead of getting choked out on day one. When a clear winner showed up, I could feed it deliberately instead of hoping the campaign math landed there on its own. You want your hand on the dial while you are still learning what works.

4. It scaled the winner slowly, on purpose

Once I had an ad that was printing two dollar registrations, every instinct in my body said pour the whole budget in right now.

That instinct is how you kill a good ad. Big budget jumps throw the ad back into the learning phase, and it comes out the other side more expensive and worse. So we scaled it the boring way: raise the budget about twenty percent every two or three days, and leave it alone in between. Slow enough that the algorithm never panics, steady enough that the thing keeps growing. The ad that started at two dollars stayed near two dollars while it scaled, because I did not spook it.

Patience is the actual skill here. Not cleverness. Patience.

5. It told me to skip retargeting, and it was right

This is the one that surprised me most, because retargeting is supposed to be the easy money. Warm people, cheap clicks, free sales, that is the whole pitch.

I ran it. It did nothing. My retargeting registrations were not cheaper than my cold ones in any way that justified the setup, the extra campaign, or the attention. On a small budget, retargeting splits your money one more way and asks a tiny warm audience to somehow produce enough volume to matter. It cannot.

So we turned it off. And here is the better move Claude pointed me to: retarget with email instead. The people who hit my page and did not sign up, the ones who registered and went quiet, those are follow up emails, not ad dollars. Email is free, it is warmer, and it does the exact job people are overpaying Meta to do. Keep your ad budget on cold traffic where it actually earns, and let your inbox do the chasing.

Why this beat the experts

Here is the thing nobody wants to say out loud. Claude did not beat the experts because it knew some secret setting. It beat them because it would not let me do the expensive, complicated, impressive looking things that make you feel like a real marketer and quietly drain your account.

No fancy audiences. No day one conversion tax. No budget setting that steals from your own test. No scaling too fast. No retargeting a crowd too small to matter. It kept the whole thing consolidated and calm and let one good structure learn. That is it. That is the secret the million dollar accounts are actually running, sized down to a budget you and I can afford.

You do not need an agency. You do not need to be smarter. You need the structure, and the discipline to stop touching it.

Get the playbook

I put all of it into one thing: The Small-Budget Meta Ads Playbook. The exact campaign structure, the honest math, the numbers that tell you when to scale and when to kill an ad, and the three week runway I ran, all in a few pages you can follow start to finish.

It is free. Download it here.

Go get your seats filled.

x, Brielle

The Content Repurposer. The skill that turns one piece into seven in 60 seconds.

Brielle Tamez — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 12:02:06 GMT

This is the skill that completes the content workflow.

After 5 weeks of Claude drops, your AI Content Manager has Hook Generator, Carousel Writer, Script Writer, Caption Editor, and now the Repurposer. Together they handle the full production cycle from idea to distribution.

The Repurposer takes one piece of content and outputs platform-native versions for 7 channels in 60 seconds. Reel script. Carousel structure. Substack post outline. TikTok adaptation. LinkedIn post. Pinterest pin description. Threads post.

This is the leverage we've been building toward.

Repurposing content isn't lazy. It's leverage.

Brielle Tamez — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:00:13 GMT

Most solopreneurs feel guilty about repurposing.

They've absorbed a message somewhere that says "real" content creators make new content all the time. That repurposing is what people do when they've run out of ideas. That it's lower-effort and somehow lazy.

This belief is destroying small businesses.

The data on content reach says the opposite of the guilt. Your audience doesn't see most of what you post the first time. They didn't see it on Instagram because the algorithm only shows your post to a fraction of your followers. They didn't see it on Substack because they didn't open the email. They didn't see it on Threads because they weren't scrolling that minute.

The first time you post a piece of content, maybe 15 percent of your audience sees it. The other 85 percent never saw it. If you don't repurpose, you're choosing to let them not see it.

Repurposing isn't lazy. It's the only way most of your audience ever sees the content you spent hours making.

Free preview: two of the four repurposing principles I'd run every week.

Principle 1: Repurpose vertically before horizontally.

Vertical repurposing means the same content in different formats on the same platform. Reel becomes carousel becomes Story sequence becomes Notes posts.

Horizontal means moving to other platforms. Reel becomes TikTok becomes YouTube Short.

Vertical comes first because it earns saturation with your existing audience. Horizontal comes second because it reaches new audiences.

Most creators try to go horizontal first. The math doesn't work because they don't have enough audience on those other platforms yet.

Principle 2: Same idea, different angle each time.

The mistake is reposting verbatim. The fix is keeping the central insight but changing the angle.

If your reel was "here are the three reasons your reels die," your repurposed Substack post is "the one I see most often." The carousel is the framework. The Threads post is the hot take. Same idea. Four different angles. Each one reads as a new piece of content even though the source is the same.

The Substack post you should write once a month (and almost nobody does)

Brielle Tamez — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:01:16 GMT

There's a specific Substack post that doubles conversion rates and almost nobody writes it.

The conversion-conversation post.

It's a free post specifically about your paid tier. Not a sales pitch. A real explanation of what's inside, who it's for, who it's not for.

I've watched this post drive 20%+ conversion to paid on multiple clients' Substacks. It's the most leveraged free post you can write. And almost nobody writes it because it feels weird.

Subscribe now

Here's the format that works.

Step 1: Open with "I'm going to do something I rarely do today and talk about the paid tier."

This frame matters. You're not pitching. You're letting your audience in on something they're curious about. Reader trust goes UP, not down.

Step 2: Show your paid post titles from the last month.

List them with one-sentence descriptions. Free readers see the volume and the depth of what they've been missing.

Step 3: Explain who paid is for.

Be specific. "Small business owners producing reels weekly." "Coaches launching offers quarterly." "Marketers managing multiple accounts." The more specific the audience, the more the right reader self-selects.

Step 4: Explain who paid is NOT for.

This is the converting move. Tell people who shouldn't pay you. "Don't subscribe if you're not actively posting." "Don't subscribe if you want passive content." This honest framing builds enormous trust and dramatically increases conversion among the right audience.

Step 5: Soft pitch with the price.

End with the price and the link. No urgency. No pressure. Just clarity.

The conversion-conversation post should run once a month. Quarterly minimum. Almost nobody does this and the math is wildly in your favor when you do.

Saturday is Skill 05, the Content Repurposer. Goes into your AI Content Manager. The AI Content Manager becomes complete this week.

See you Saturday.

x, Brielle

One reel, 7 posts. The repurposing matrix. [PDF Download]

Brielle Tamez — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:03:15 GMT

You don't have a content problem. You have a repurposing problem.

The content you've already made is doing far less work than it could. One reel is one post. One Substack is one email. One podcast episode is one Spotify upload. The content shows up once. Then it dies.

Repurposing is the math fix. Every piece of content you make becomes seven pieces of distribution. Same effort. Way more reach.

This week's drop is the matrix. One reel becomes a carousel, a Substack post, a TikTok, a LinkedIn post, a Pinterest pin, a Threads post, and an email. With templates for each.

The Caption Editor. The skill that fixes the four algorithm signals automatically. [Claude Skill 04]

Brielle Tamez — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 12:01:14 GMT

If you saw Thursday’s post, you know the four signals Instagram reads when it scans a caption. Length. AI patterns. Hashtag use. Edit history.

The Caption Editor skill audits your caption for all four before you post. It catches the AI tells. It cuts hashtag bloat. It flags length issues. It tells you what to tighten.

This isn’t a caption WRITER. The Editor doesn’t write your captions for you. It edits the ones you wrote so they actually land with the algorithm and with your audience.

Why your captions are tanking your reach (even when the reel is strong)

Brielle Tamez — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:02:53 GMT

Captions are doing more algorithmic work than most creators realize.

The Instagram algorithm reads captions. It analyzes them. It looks at length, language patterns, hashtag use, link presence, edit history. Then it uses what it finds to make decisions about distribution.

A great reel can be tanked by a bad caption. I see this in client accounts constantly.

The fix is understanding what the algorithm is reading for. There are four signals.

Free preview: two of them.

Signal 1: Caption length.

Instagram is currently favoring captions between 125 and 400 characters. Too short and the algorithm reads "low effort." Too long and the algorithm reads "trying to game the system." The sweet spot has shifted from the old "long captions win" advice to a tighter range.

If your captions are 30 words, lengthen them. If they're 300 words, cut them.

Signal 2: AI patterns.

Meta's classifiers are flagging AI-written captions. If your caption uses "in today's fast-paced world" or "let's dive into" or any of the AI tells most creators don't realize they're using, the algorithm reads it as inauthentic content and reduces reach.

If you've been using AI for captions, this is part of why your reach has dropped.

Your Substack first paragraph is doing 80% of the work

Brielle Tamez — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:03:45 GMT

You spent an hour writing your Substack post. You're proud of it. You send it. The open rate is fine. The actual read-through is in the toilet.

The reason almost always lives in the first paragraph.

Substack readers decide whether to keep reading within 8 to 12 words of the first paragraph. That's it. If those 12 words don't earn the keep-reading, the rest of your post might as well not exist.

Same dynamic as a reel hook. Same dynamic as a TikTok opener. Same dynamic as a subject line. The opening is doing all the work.

Subscribe now

Three rules for Substack first paragraphs.

Rule 1: Lead with a sentence that creates curiosity or names a problem.

Bad: "Hi everyone, I wanted to share some thoughts about Substack growth today."
Good: "There's a point in every Substack's life cycle where it dies, and it's not where you'd think."

The first version is throat-clearing. The second sets the tone.

Rule 2: One short sentence first.

Long first sentences kill reading momentum. The reader is scanning. A short first sentence gives them an easy on-ramp into the post.

Rule 3: The reader should feel seen, not lectured.

The best Substack openings are observations that make the reader say "yes that's me." Not statements that make the reader say "thanks for telling me."

If your first paragraph leads with "Here's why X matters," you're lecturing. If it leads with "If you've ever Y," you're seeing them.

Bonus rule that's not really a rule.

Read your first paragraph out loud. If it sounds like a magazine article opening, rewrite it. Substack should sound like a smart friend, not a journalist.

Saturday is Skill 04, the Caption Editor. Goes into your AI Content Manager.

See you Saturday.

x, Brielle

15 caption templates that actually convert [PDF Download]

Brielle Tamez — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:02:26 GMT

Caption work is the underrated half of Instagram. Most creators spend an hour filming a reel and then write the caption in 90 seconds. The math is upside down.

Captions do three jobs. They give context the reel can't. They drive the algorithm signal (saves, shares, comments). They give your reader the next step.

When the caption is weak, the reel can't carry the post alone. When the caption is strong, even a mediocre reel performs.

This week's drop is 15 caption templates organized by goal. Save-driving. Share-driving. Comment-driving. Profile-visit-driving. Click-driving.

[Download: 15 Caption Templates PDF]

Inside, each template includes:

The structure. Word count guidance. What goal it serves (saves, shares, comments, etc). A live example. The CTA that works for that template.

How to use this template this week.

Pick the goal you want the post to drive. Find the template that serves that goal. Fill in your specifics. Match the caption to the reel, not the topic.

The thing I see most often with captions is creators picking the wrong goal for the post. They have a save-worthy reel and write a comment-driving caption. The algorithm signals get mixed and the post underperforms even though both pieces are strong.

Match the caption to the reel's goal. The whole post gets stronger.

Thursday I'm going deep on why most captions are tanking reach even when the reel is strong.

See you Thursday.

x, Brielle

The Reel + TikTok Script Writer. The skill that writes scripts in your spoken voice. [Claude Skill 03]

Brielle Tamez — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 18:46:32 GMT

After last week’s Carousel Writer, this one is the natural next step. The Reel + TikTok Script Writer.

The skill takes your content idea and outputs a script in the format we covered on Thursday. Spoken-voice language. Short breathable sentences. Intentional filler. Actually films well.

If you’ve been writing scripts that sound like essays, this skill solves it permanently.

The Substack subject line that gets opened (and the one that doesn't)

Brielle Tamez — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:03:48 GMT

Your Substack open rate is the single most important metric you're not paying attention to.

Industry average open rate for Substack is between 35 and 55 percent. If yours is under 30, you don't have a content problem. You have a subject line problem. The reader never opens the post. They never see the writing. The conversion never happens.

The subject line is doing 80% of the work.

Three rules for Substack subject lines that actually get opened.

Subscribe now

Rule 1: Curiosity beats cleverness. Every time.

A clever subject line gets ignored because the reader doesn't know what they're getting. A curious subject line gets opened because the reader needs to know what's inside.

Bad: "Some thoughts on Substack growth"
Good: "Why most Substacks die at 100 subscribers (and the 3 things that fix it)"

Rule 2: Specificity beats generic.

"3 things" beats "some things." "100 subscribers" beats "early-stage." Numbers in subject lines outperform vague descriptors every time.

Rule 3: Open with a question only your audience would ask.

"Are your reels getting impressions but no saves?" pulls in the people who have that specific problem. It's a self-selection filter. The right reader opens. The wrong reader doesn't. Both outcomes are good.

The bad subject lines I see most often.

"Quick thought" gives the reader no reason to open.
"Update from [your name]" is about you, not them.
"[Day of week] musings" is cute but doesn't promise anything.

If your open rate is stuck, audit the last 10 subject lines you used. Did each one promise something specific? If not, you found the problem.

Saturday is Skill 03 of the Claude drops. The Reel + TikTok Script Writer. Goes into your AI Content Manager.

See you Saturday.

x, Brielle

The lead magnet funnel that actually converts on social [PDF Download]

Brielle Tamez — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:02:11 GMT

Tuesday morning. Coffee. Template incoming.

You've got followers. The follower count grows every week. The bank account doesn't.

This is the most common pattern I see with small business owners on social. They build an audience and never build a funnel. The content does its job. The conversion never happens because there's nothing in place to catch it.

The fix is the lead magnet funnel.

A free thing pulls someone off social and onto your email list. From there, a nurture sequence turns them into a customer. Build it once. It runs forever.

There are four steps. The Magnet, the Hook, the Capture, the Nurture. Most creators have one or two of these built and wonder why nothing converts. The funnel doesn't work in pieces. It works as a chain.

The Instagram Carousel Writer Claude Skill. 10 slides in 60 seconds. [Claude Drop]

Brielle Tamez — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 12:01:04 GMT

I used to spend an hour on every Instagram carousel. The structure. The headlines per slide. The pacing. The hook. The close.

Now I spend 8 minutes. The Carousel Writer skill does 80% of the work. I do the edit pass.

Today it's yours.

If you're an SBO who's been avoiding carousels because they take too long, this is the skill that changes everything about your content workflow.

Installation prompt and usage guide are attached below.

Why nobody is watching your reels (the 3-second rule that explains everything)

Brielle Tamez — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:02:36 GMT

Real talk for a minute.

If your reels are getting impressions but the watch time is in the toilet, your content isn’t broken. It’s unseen. And that’s actually good news, because the fix is way smaller than you think.

Here’s what’s happening on Instagram right now. The algorithm makes a decision about your reel within the first three seconds of someone landing on it. It’s binary. Keep showing this to more people, or quietly bury it. The signal the algorithm reads? Whether the viewer stayed.

If your first three seconds aren’t earning the stay, the algorithm never gets to second twelve. Doesn’t matter how good the back half is. Doesn’t matter how clever the punchline is. The audience never made it there.

This is the 3-Second Rule, and once you see it you cannot unsee it. I watch this happen constantly with clients. They have great content. Brilliant points. Genuinely useful insight. And they bury it under a soft, polite, generic three seconds that nobody is stopping for.

The good news: the fix is just learning to recognize the failure patterns. There are four of them.

I’ll give you two for free here. The other two and the actual test you should run on every reel before you hit post are below for paid subscribers.

Failure 1: The slow build

This is when your first three seconds are setup. You’re orienting the viewer to the topic, easing into the point, framing what you’re about to say. Conversational logic, not social media logic.

In a real conversation, that’s polite. On a feed, it’s how you lose 80% of your audience before you’ve made a single point.

The fix: lead with the conclusion. Say the controversial line first, then explain. Show the result first, then walk back to how you got there.

Failure 2: The generic hook

This is “Hey guys, today I want to talk about...” or “If you’ve ever wondered...” or any phrasing that could open literally any post on the internet.

Generic openers signal generic content. Viewers don’t decide to scroll based on logic, they decide based on pattern recognition. If your hook pattern matches the 47 hooks they’ve scrolled past today, you’re done before you started.

The fix: read your hook against the last ten reels in your feed. If yours blends in, rewrite it.

Why your free Substack subscribers aren't upgrading (and the one thing that converts them)

Brielle Tamez — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:03:40 GMT

Most Substacks have a free-to-paid conversion problem.

You have 800 free subscribers. 22 of them are paid. That’s a 2.75% conversion rate. Industry average is between 5% and 10%. So you should have between 40 and 80 paid subscribers. You have 22.

Where are the other 18 to 58?

They’re still on your free list, watching from the sidelines, never feeling like there’s enough reason to upgrade. They like your free content. They don’t see why they’d pay.

The reason is almost always one thing. You’re not showing them the gap.

Most creators paywall their best content and then forget to TELL their free subscribers what’s behind the paywall. Free subscribers don’t know what they’re missing because they literally can’t see what they’re missing.

The fix is counterintuitive. You need to show free subscribers exactly what’s locked, even though they can’t read it. And you need to give them enough free value that they trust the gap is worth crossing.

Today I’m walking you through everything I run on THIS Substack to drive conversion. Not just the three biggest moves. All of them. The full system.

If your conversion has been stuck, you’ll find your gap in here.

Subscribe now

1. Weekly themes with a monthly through-line

Every week on this Substack has a theme. Week 1: Hooks. Week 2: Repurposing. Week 3: Reel retention. Week 4: Funnels. Week 5: Captions. Week 6: Content repurposing systems.

Each week ladders into the next. The themes aren’t random. They build on each other. By month three, a subscriber has a complete content production system.

This matters because it gives readers a reason to stick around. They’re not subscribing for one good post. They’re subscribing for the through-line. Each week makes the previous week more valuable.

If your Substack is a collection of one-off posts with no theme, readers don’t see the compounding value. They cancel after a month because nothing built on anything.

Pick a monthly theme. Make every weekly post serve that theme. Tell your audience the theme exists.

2. Templates and PDFs every week

Every Tuesday on my paid tier I drop a downloadable template. Caption packs. Hook libraries. Reel script frameworks. Content calendars. Lead magnet funnels.

The templates are why people pay $8 a month. The teaching is the bonus. The templates are the product.

Free subscribers see the Template Tuesday post titles in their inbox preview and know there’s a downloadable PDF behind the paywall. The PDF is the visible gap.

Most creators don’t include downloadable assets in their paid tier. The paid tier is just more writing. The writing is good but it doesn’t feel like a product. Templates feel like a product. People upgrade for products.

3. Notes about what’s coming

I post Substack Notes 4 to 5 times a week. A meaningful percentage of them are about what’s coming on this Substack.

“Tomorrow’s drop is the hook generator I use every day in my agency.”

“Saturday’s Claude skill drops the Caption Editor. After this week your AI Content Manager has all five production skills.”

“Two days until Strategy Thursday. The post explains why 80% of small business owners are pricing their services 40% below market.”

These Notes serve three jobs at once. They drive Notes engagement (which drives subscriber growth). They build anticipation for the paid post. They give free subscribers a peek at the paid content without spoiling it.

You should be telling your audience what’s coming. Most creators are mysterious about their content calendar and then wonder why their open rate is low. Tell people what they’re about to get. They’ll show up.

4. A private podcast for founding members

Once a month, founding members get access to a private podcast episode. 30 to 45 minutes. Strategy walkthroughs that don’t get written up. Behind-the-scenes of how my agency runs.

The private podcast is a major upgrade lever from monthly paid ($8) to founding ($120/year). Most paid subscribers don’t realize the founding tier exists until they hear about the private podcast.

If you have a paid tier and a founding tier, you need one exclusive thing for founding. It can’t be more content. It has to be a different KIND of content. Private podcast. Monthly Zoom AMA. Hot seat sessions. The format matters more than the volume.

5. The Tuesday preview

This is the simplest move and almost nobody uses it.

Every paid Tuesday post sends to ALL subscribers. Free subscribers see the first 200 words. Paid subscribers see the whole thing.

The 200-word preview is the strongest opening of the post. Curiosity. Promise. Specific tease. Just enough to make the free reader want the rest.

This is a Substack platform feature. You don’t have to build anything. Just write the first 200 words to convert.

6. The monthly recap

Once a month, I write a free post that lists the best paid posts from the last 30 days. Each one gets a one-sentence description and a pull-quote.

The recap is the most leveraged free post you can write. Free subscribers scroll through and see a month of paid value they missed. The gap becomes visible in 30 seconds.

If your free subscribers have been on your list for three months and never seen a recap, they have no concept of what’s behind your paywall. The gap is invisible to them.

7. The conversion conversation

Once a quarter, do a free post specifically about your paid tier. Not a sales pitch. A real explanation of what’s inside, who it’s for, who it’s not for.

The format that works.

Open with “I’m going to do something I rarely do today and talk about the paid tier.”

Show actual screenshots of paid posts (blurred so the content is gated but the visual is real).

List the topics paid subscribers got in the last 4 weeks.

Explain who paid is for. Be specific.

Explain who paid is NOT for. This is the converting move. Telling people who shouldn’t pay you is what makes the right people pay you.

Soft pitch with the price at the end.

Posts that follow this format convert at 15-25% of the free list. I’ve watched this happen across the agency’s roster repeatedly.

The honest math

If you implemented all seven of these moves, your conversion rate would likely double within 90 days. The increase isn’t from working harder. It’s from making the gap visible.

Most creators are doing one or two of these. You’re now equipped to do seven.

Want help building this?

If you read this and felt overwhelmed instead of inspired, that’s information.

The seven moves work. The execution is the hard part. Most small business owners I work with have the vision and the brand but don’t have the bandwidth to run a system this layered while also running their actual business.

That’s why I built content packages.

Three tiers depending on where you are. Done-for-you Substack systems for the SBO who wants the strategy installed once and run by my team. Weekly content production for the founder who wants the writing and design handled. Full-service agency partnerships for the brand ready to scale content across every channel at once.

The content packages exist because most of you have everything you need to grow except the time to execute. I’ll execute. You stay in your zone of genius.

Learn more about custom content packages here

Saturday is the next Claude drop. If you’ve been building your AI Employee framework, the next skill installs into your AI Content Manager. If you haven’t started yet, last Saturday’s Implementation Guide is still in your paid inbox.

See you Saturday.

x, Brielle

A Step-By-Step Guide To Making Your Substack Website Aesthetic + Optimized (with screenshots)

Brielle Tamez — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 02:45:43 GMT

Hi everyone! I have gotten a few DMs asking me how I created my Substack profile, so I thought why not give you guys a full step by step breakdown of exactly what I did and all the settings I used to make my profile!

Let’s get into it!

If you substack profile still looks like this ^ and you want it to look like this…

Step 1: Change the theme from profile > custom. This will allow you to create the new look that everyone is using!

If you want the first section of your Substack website to look like this ^

Step 2: Set your HERO section to media feature and your body to grid.

To add new sections to your website like Subscriber blocks and new sections hover inbetween blocks and then click click to add block

Step 3: Add a new section for Subscriber Block and edit the headlines that show for your different subscriber levels

Step 4: Add a new section for Posts & Modules and add your recent posts with a grid layout! I like to do 2 rows for this one.

Step 5: To add specific section like your paid content: Add a new block and select feature block. Select Focused center, grid if you want it to look like mine or play around with it!

Under posts select your premium content section! Or you can do it based on tags you selected when publishing your articles!

Now let’s talk about optimizing the different pages on your navigation bar! I have three pages on my navigation bar that I’ve optimized! Look on the left under content:

If you have a podcast you can make your podcast page look like this with these settings!

If you have different sections like a premium content section you can make it look like this instead of a list with these settings!

The 5-beat reel framework. How to structure every reel for retention. [PDF Download]

Brielle Tamez — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:02:43 GMT

Tuesday morning. Coffee in hand. Template drop incoming.

If you've ever filmed a 30-second reel that felt great when you recorded it and then watched the analytics show 11% completion, you know what's wrong already.

It's not the lighting. It's not the audio. It's the structure.

Every reel that holds attention follows the same 5-beat structure. Not a rigid script. A rhythm. Once you internalize it, you stop guessing.

The 5 beats:

Beat 1: The Hook (0:00-0:03). The line that earns the watch.

Beat 2: The Promise (0:03-0:07). What the viewer will get if they stay.

Beat 3: The Setup (0:07-0:15). Quick context. The why.

Beat 4: The Payoff (0:15-0:25). The actual value. The thing you came to say.

Beat 5: The Loop (0:25-0:30). A closing line that makes the viewer rewatch from the top, or comment, or save.

This is the structure. Internalize it and you'll never look at a reel the same way.

The full PDF breakdown is below.

The Hook Generator. The Claude skill that handles every reel hook in 30 seconds. [Claude Drop]

Brielle Tamez — Sat, 30 May 2026 12:01:40 GMT

Last Monday you installed the foundation. Six AI Employee Projects sitting in your Cowork sidebar, waiting for skills.

This week, the first skill drops. YAYYY.

It's the one I use every single day in my agency. Before any of my creators films a reel, before any client writes a caption, before any team member sits down to plan content, we run the topic through the Hook Generator.

In 30 seconds we have 10 hook options. Two from each of five categories. Curiosity. Authority. Pattern Interrupt. Result-Driven. Story-Led. We pick the best one. We move on.

This used to take 20 minutes per piece of content. Now it takes 2.

Today the skill is yours. Let’s get to IT!

Why your Substack is the most underused asset you own (and what to do about it)

Brielle Tamez — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:03:34 GMT

For two years I was an Instagram-first creator.

Substack was the side project. I’d publish a post when I felt like it, maybe twice a month, sometimes once. Instagram got everything. The hooks, the carousels, the reels, the daily posting energy. Substack got whatever was leftover.

Then last spring something clicked.

I was looking at my conversion numbers across platforms and noticed something that should have been obvious for months. My Instagram audience was massive. My Substack list was a fraction of the size. And yet a Substack subscriber was converting to a paying customer at a dramatically higher rate than an Instagram follower. Not a little better. Multiples better.

The exact ratio depends on the offer and the season, but the pattern was so consistent across the year that I couldn’t unsee it. A subscriber is worth more than a follower. By a lot.

That was the moment I stopped treating Substack like a side project. And the reason your Substack is probably the most underused asset you own right now is because nobody walked you through the math.

The reason this is happening.

Every social platform’s audience is rented. You don’t own it. The algorithm decides who sees your content. Instagram could change its recommendations tomorrow and your reach could drop by 70% overnight (this has happened to friends of mine more than once). TikTok could ban your account. LinkedIn could shadow-suppress your topic.

You have zero recourse. The relationship between you and your audience is mediated entirely by a third party that has no obligation to keep showing you to them.

Substack is structurally different. When someone subscribes, they’re giving you their email address. That email address sits in your database. If Substack disappeared tomorrow, you could export your list and import it to ConvertKit or Beehiiv or anywhere else. The audience is yours.

That distinction is the entire reason a Substack subscriber converts dramatically better than a follower. They’ve already done the harder thing. They’ve handed over their inbox.

What I should have done sooner.

If I could go back two years, I’d do three things differently.

Below the paywall, I’m walking through the three shifts I made the day I went Substack-first, the actual workflow that came out of it, and the compounding effect that nobody talks about.

If you’re an SBO or marketer treating your Substack like a side project, this is the read.