16:28Nicolas Cole · Interview
Helping A Student Create His Digital Product From Scratch
A live 16-minute coaching session that reverse-engineers a martial arts instructor's expertise into a step-by-step digital product framework.
June 17thThe argument in one line.
Commenting on other writers' posts on Substack is the fastest path to building an audience because comments are short-form content you can immediately recycle as notes on your own profile.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A Substack writer with less than 6 months on the platform who has published at least 5 posts but hasn't systematized audience-building beyond writing.
- A creator who writes regularly but feels stuck at low engagement and doesn't yet know that commenting can function as publishable content.
- Someone building a Substack audience who has 30 minutes daily available and wants a concrete, repeatable system to generate traffic without paid promotion.
SKIP IF…
- You already have 1,000+ paid subscribers — this is foundational audience-building advice, not growth strategy for mature publications.
- You're looking for algorithmic hacks or technical platform features — this is entirely about manual engagement and behavioral habit-stacking.
The full version, fast.
The fastest way to grow a Substack audience is to block thirty minutes every morning and comment on ten to twenty other writers' posts, because a comment is structurally identical to a short-form Note and lives inside the same discovery ecosystem. The method is simple: scroll your feed, leave a genuine quick response on each post, and any reply that lands well gets copy-pasted onto your own profile as a standalone Note. Stop overthinking which accounts to engage with or how polished each reply needs to be. The work you already did writing the long-form piece earns you the right to chop, remix, and republish it everywhere. Traction fails from non-execution, not lack of talent.
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Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:12
01 · Cold open
Question + tease of 'biggest missed opportunity on the platform'
00:12 – 01:01
02 · The reframe
Audience guesses 'engage with other people' — Cole reframes: a comment IS a short-form post. No difference.
01:01 – 01:50
03 · The 30-minute routine
Block 30 min every morning, comment on 20 people's posts. Miami 2022 WeWork origin story with Dickie.
01:50 – 01:50
04 · Permission frame
'Your laptop will not explode if you do this incorrectly.' Sets up the live demo.
01:50 – 02:38
05 · Live demo: Roman
Cole writes a real comment on Roman's post about content-as-repository, posts it, then copies it as a Note.
02:38 – 03:27
06 · Anti-overthinking beat
'Should we have sat here and thought about this for 90 minutes?' Repetition of the no-overthinking permission.
03:27 – 04:17
07 · Your content is yours
The repurpose mantra — copy, remix, combine, expand, compress, cross-post. 'How do I chop it apart in 100 different ways? That is the game.'
04:17 – 05:22
08 · Live demo: Jake
Second live demo — replies to Jake's intro post, posts it, 'did my laptop explode?'
05:22 – 05:50
09 · The permission ladder
'Is it okay if I? Yes. Should I? Yes. Can I? Yes.' Call-and-response sequence.
05:50 – 06:32
10 · The execution-gap closer
15,000 writers through Ship 30. 'Number one reason people don't see traction is not lack of talent — it's that they don't do it.'
06:32 – 07:13
11 · CTA: startwritingonline.com
Cut to solo couch set. Pitch for the free master class, lead-magnet popup overlays 'How To Start Writing Online.'
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Commenting on Substack is missed short-form distribution — a good comment is a standalone post that appears in front of an already-engaged audience.
- The 30-minute morning commenting routine targets 20 publications, producing 20 micro-posts before the workday starts.
- Copy-pasting your best Substack comments into Notes immediately repurposes them as standalone content without any rewriting.
- Substack's algorithm surfaces thoughtful comments to publication subscribers, giving commenters organic reach into audiences they did not build.
- Most creators optimize only for publishing output and ignore the comment inbox as a distribution channel.
- A comment that sparks a reply thread from the original author functions as a public endorsement visible to the author's entire subscriber base.
- The 20-publications-per-morning rule creates a minimum viable distribution habit that compounds over weeks without requiring new content ideas.
- Repurposing comments as Notes closes the loop between engagement effort and owned-audience growth.
- Commenting on publications slightly above your own subscriber count puts your name in front of readers who are the right amount ahead of you.
- The opportunity is disproportionate because most writers treat comments as a courtesy rather than a growth lever.
- Short-form output on Substack (Notes + comments) seeds long-form newsletter ideas by surfacing which angles generate the most replies.
- Consistency in the commenting routine matters more than the quality of any single comment — volume builds recognition faster than occasional brilliance.
A Comment Is a Short-Form Post — Write Thirty Per Day
Substack growth tactic
Nicolas Cole shows that commenting on Substack is mechanically identical to writing a short-form post — and that 30 minutes of comments every morning is the fastest path to platform growth.
01Cold open
- The biggest missed opportunity on the platform is a question the audience has to answer before they get the reframe
02The reframe
- Writing a comment is literally the same thing as writing a short-form post — the distinction is psychological, not mechanical
- Fastest path to traffic, audience, and platform attention is the same action most people already do for free and do not count as publishing
03The 30-minute routine
- Block 30 minutes every morning, comment on 20 posts — this was the daily routine behind the Miami 2022 results
- Consistency compounds — doing it every day is the entire method, there is no optimization layer
05Live demo: Roman
- Write the comment on someone's post, post it, then copy it as a Note — one action, two placements
- The live demo removes the abstract — seeing a real comment written and posted in real time is the permission slip
07Your content is yours — The repurpose mantra
- Copy, remix, combine, expand, compress, cross-post — every comment is raw material for every other format
- The game is not writing more, it is chopping the same material into 100 different forms
10The execution-gap closer
- The number one reason writers do not see traction is not talent — it is not doing it
- Fifteen thousand writers across Ship 30 confirmed this — the pattern holds regardless of niche or skill level
Terms worth knowing.
- Substack Notes
- A short-form social feed within Substack (similar to Twitter posts) where writers can share quick thoughts, links, and excerpts that get distributed to their subscribers and across the platform.
- Notes traffic
- Audience engagement and new subscriber growth driven specifically by activity in Substack's Notes feed, as opposed to traffic from email newsletters or external platforms.
- Permission ladder
- A content strategy concept where a creator builds trust incrementally through free value — comments, short posts, free newsletters — before asking the audience to take a bigger commitment like paying for a subscription.
- Cross-posting
- The practice of publishing the same piece of content on multiple platforms or formats simultaneously to maximize reach without creating entirely new material for each channel.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
00:07
“I wanna point out the single biggest missed opportunity on the entire platform.”
00:30
“Writing a comment is literally the same thing as writing a short form piece of content. A comment and a piece of content are the same exact thing.”
01:01
“You block thirty minutes in the morning, and you go comment on 20 people's posts.”
01:31
“Your laptop will not explode if you do this incorrectly.”
03:27
“On the Internet, your content is yours. You can copy paste it. You can remix it. You can combine it. You can expand it. You can compress it.”
04:16
“How do I chop it apart in a 100 different ways? That is the game.”
05:22
“Is it okay if I? Yes. It is. Should I? Yes. You should. Can I? Yes. You can.”
06:07
“The number one reason why people do not see traction is not because they lack talent. It is not because they don't know what to do. It is simply because they don't do it.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogystory
So what are some little things that you can do to get notes traffic going on Substack? I wanna point out on the entire platform.
Aside from you writing your own content, what do you think is the single best thing that you could do on the platform? We should probably engage with other people on the platform because the thing that a lot of a lot of times writers forget is that writing a comment is literally the same thing as writing a short form piece of content.
A comment and a piece of content are the same exact thing. So if you if you're like, what is my fastest path to generating traffic?
What is my fastest path to starting to build my audience? What is my fastest path to getting attention from Substack's ecosystem over to my newsletter?
The fastest path let me here's the secret, everyone. You block thirty minutes in the morning, and you go comment on 20 people's posts.
I'm gonna forget. Dickie, you remember? Doing those.
First month that Cole and I got together in person in Miami, 2022. We get to WeWork at, like, 07:45, 08:00, pull open our laptop, post our piece of short form content, and write twenty to thirty minutes of replies manually every day.
Yep.
Every day. And it crushed. Yeah.
And so you know what? I just wanna give everyone permission here, and I just wanna show you how if you do this incorrectly. Okay?
This is not worth overthinking. So we're gonna literally do this live right now. Okay?
Now watch how watch how this works. Roman, thanks for posting this. Totally agree.
I like to think of my library of content as one giant repository for stories, insights, templates, prompts, cheat sheets, etcetera.
The more I write online, the more training data I have to play with. Is there any difference between this comment and something that I would write as short form content?
There is no difference. There is no difference. And anyone wanna see something really cool?
K. Ready? Watch what watch what we're about to do.
I'm gonna copy paste this. I'm gonna post this as a comment to Roman's piece, and then I'm gonna go and create a new note, and I'm just gonna delete totally agree, and then I'm gonna post the same exact thing as a note on my profile.
What what do we think? Should we have sat here and thought about this for ninety minutes before we pressed enter? You think we should we we should do some overthinking?
No. This is this is what you should do every morning for thirty minutes. And you go find scroll through your feed, find 10 people that you can comment on, and then maybe as you're writing comments, you go, oh, that comment is actually that's that's a pretty good I like how I worded that.
Okay. Great. Copy paste the thing that you just wrote as a comment and go post it as a note.
The the big idea here is that on the Internet, your content is yours.
You can do whatever you want with it. You can copy paste it. You can remix it.
You can combine it. You can expand it. You can compress it.
You can cross post it. You can do whatever you want with it. And this is just one of those things that a lot of people don't even realize that they can do.
Your newsletter was you did all the hard work. You took the time to sit down and clarify your thinking. You took the time to write out the long form version.
Right? Which means everything else, it's not about, like, writing other things. It's about taking the thing you already wrote and going, ?
That is the game.
Make sense? Everyone here, permission? Do you feel like you you have permission?
You've given yourself permission to go do this? Because what I don't want is I don't want you to open up your laptop tomorrow morning and then go, okay. Cole said I gotta go comment on 10 people's posts.
And then you open up one post and you sit there and you're trying to write . That's not what we're talking about. You you pick something, you quickly give a response, and then you move on and you do it again.
You do it again. You do it again. Yeah.
Irene, how do you choose the people to comment on number of followers? Don't overthink it. Like, literally, I'm just I'm gonna scroll through.
We're gonna do it again. I have no idea how big Jake's following is. I've been on Substack for over a year now.
If you're new, I would love to support you. Let's grow together. Nice.
Thanks, Jake, and great to see fellow writers becoming friends here. Post.
Did did my laptop explode? Did anything bad happen? Nope.
I have no I have no idea who Jake is, and I have no idea how big his audience is. But you know what? Now I have another piece of writing.
I have another comment living on the platform, living within Substack's ecosystem. I I wanna, like, harp on this for everyone.
Okay? If you're sitting there and you're asking, is it okay if I?
Yes. It is. Should I?
Yes. You should. Can I?
Yes. You can. After running however many cohorts we did of ship 30, Dickey, like 22, 21, something like that.
And we've, I mean, we've walked north of 15,000 writers through frameworks like this.
I will tell you overwhelmingly, the number one reason why people do not see traction is not because they lack talent.
It is not because they don't know what to do. It is simply because they don't do it.
That is fundamentally it. It would be very hard for you to not see something happen if you prioritized doing this every morning for thirty minutes a day.
It it would be very hard for for, like, nothing to happen as the result of that. Real quick, if you wanna write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com. This is a free master class I put together sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners, like proven hooks to capture your target reader's attention, where to write online to get the most distribution on your work, and little growth hacking tips to build your social audience and email list faster.
Over a 100,000 writers have gone through this free master class, and many even send us emails afterwards thanking us for sharing such valuable information for free. So click the link below this video to check it out and make this year the year you start seeing success from your writing online.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Nicolas Cole opens with a tease, not an answer — 'the single biggest missed opportunity on the entire platform' — then makes the audience guess before he delivers the line that powers the rest of the video: a comment is literally the same thing as a short-form post. From there it's seven minutes of one idea, repeated five ways, demonstrated twice live.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:30concept
Comment = Note Equivalence
A comment on someone else's Substack post and a short-form Note on your own profile are the same artifact — same length, same audience surface, same value. Therefore every comment is one round-trip away from being a Note on your feed.
Steal forany platform with comments AND a native short-form surface (Substack Notes, X replies → tweets, LinkedIn comments → posts, YouTube comments → community tab)
01:01list
The 30-Minute Morning Routine
- Block 30 minutes every morning
- Scroll your feed
- Find 10 people you can comment on
- Write a quick reply on each one
- If a comment lands well, copy-paste it as a Note on your own profile
Cole's exact daily ritual from his Miami 2022 WeWork month with Dickie Bush — 30 minutes, 20-30 manual replies a day, every day.
Steal forany habit-stack lesson about a daily creator routine — 30 min is the magic number because it's small enough to commit to and big enough to compound
05:22list
The Permission Ladder
- Is it okay if I? — Yes. It is.
- Should I? — Yes. You should.
- Can I? — Yes. You can.
Three-rung call-and-response rhetorical pattern. Cole answers each of the three questions a creator-in-paralysis is silently asking, in order.
Steal forany 'permission' content — the moment your audience is afraid to act
04:05concept
Chop It Apart 100 Ways
Your newsletter is the hard work; everything else is repurposing the same idea in 100 different containers. 'It's not about writing other things. It's about taking the thing you already wrote.'
Steal forany content-system frame — the long-form piece is the substrate, not the deliverable
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
06:32link
“If you wanna write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com. This is a free master class I put together sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners.”
Hard set-change signals the shift from teaching to selling. Cole goes from desk + Perrier to a totally different couch set in a ball cap — the set tells the viewer 'we're done teaching, here's the ask.' Lead-magnet popup overlays at 6:43 reinforces the verbal CTA visually. Social proof: '100,000 writers have gone through this free master class.'
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
- 📚 To shop my library of print, eBooks, and audiobooks, visit my bookstore ↗
- 10 Lessons Selling $10M Of Digital Products ↗
- How To Build A $200k/yr Paid Newsletter On Substack ↗
- This 20-Email Sequence Made Me Millions of Dollars ↗
- 🚢 Ready to build your daily writing habit and accelerate your trajectory as a Digital Writer? Join Ship 30 for 30 ↗
- 👻 Want to enter the lucrative world of ghostwriting? Here’s a free guide to get you started ↗
- writewithai.substack.com ↗
- 💻 Want an endless supply of proven, viral-worthy digital writing templates? Check out our software platform, Typeshare ↗
- ghostbase.com ↗
- nicolascolefiction.substack.com ↗
- 📕 For more information on my books, businesses, and other writings, visit my website ↗
Visual structure at a glance.
