Brian Lund shares how building a community helped convert 10% of subscribers

Brian Lund’s The Lund Loop, has grown into a community of hundreds of traders and investors who learn market watch skills together. 

 

In this conversation, Brian offers sharp insights on leaning into your voice and understanding your community of readers. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we don’t have a recording this week. So, in today’s recap post, Linda Lebrun and Shaiyan Khan from the Substack team share a quick reflection on their conversation with Brian. 

Linda’s reflection

Wow, I couldn’t believe it: Brian pointed out our conversation occurred on the 35th anniversary of Black Monday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 22.6% in one day—a dark anniversary, and a stark reminder of how violent market gyrations can be. Brian explained that situational awareness and risk assessment are the core of how he approaches trading, which I think demonstrates how having a philosophical underpinning to your approach is key to a differentiated offering in trading and investing content.

Shaiyan’s reflection

The words “authentic” and “community” came up over and over in our conversation with Brian, but it didn’t really click for me until he reminded us that he “has real, life-long friendships with some of these readers.” It makes sense that Brian runs his Substack the way that he does—no get-rich-quick schemes, no repurposing one piece of work across twenty different social media accounts, no ads—and that’s because this whole machine wouldn’t work if it wasn’t unapologetically him.  

On understanding who makes up his community

There's a wide variety [of people] in the community. There are people trading on minute charts—that means they’re going to be in and out of a stock or a crypto asset or a commodity within minutes. There are other people that are long term investors, they're buying hold. I think what unites everybody is they're trying to take a strategic approach.

On video and podcasting

It’s easy to hide behind writing. I was very reticent to jump into video and podcasting because I think a lot of people see those as a mirror reflection of themselves and nobody really likes to look in the mirror. I said, well maybe I’ll try this a little bit. The bottom line is I can convey more information [in these mediums] and my Substack is all about information that changes by the minute.

On converting 10% of free subscribers to paid

I think a lot of writers have this problem—we’re creative or we like to think we’re creative. We’re using one side of our brain and maybe we’re not using the entrepreneurial side or exercising that side is a little bit weaker. We think, I’ll just write stuff and people will find me. But as you know, you have to get in front of free subscribers, let them know there’s an opportunity to convert and get more.[...] I know it’s going to sound super arrogant to say this, but I do think that a lot of the conversion is just the personality and the voice that I put out there. 

This conversation first took place as part of Investing Happy Hour. Join our next one this coming Wednesday at 2 pm PT / 5pm ET with Caleb Franzen.