Seven Reasons to Upgrade 🙏 Support My Work and My Dream

Celebrating a Certain Milestone

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

That’s one of the fundraising axioms I learned in the nonprofit development world, where I worked for the better part of a decade before pivoting to a career in hospitality. So in the spirit of best practices, I’m asking. I’m asking you to become a paid subscriber to Certain Thoughts.

As I have written previously, this is a labor of love, but your support motivates me to keep writing and aim higher. I have been blown away by the response to Certain Thoughts. After six months of writing, this publication grew to 468 subscribers—but in the last six weeks that group has more than doubled. Today I crossed a publishing milestone and am proud to report that Certain Thoughts just picked up its 1,000 subscription!

I am deeply grateful for every moment you spend reading Certain Thoughts. Attention is our most precious resource, so your focus here truly means the world to me. To those who have generously supported my work with your paid subscriptions, I hope you feel that your money is well spent. And to those contemplating a premium subscription going forward, let me offer seven good reasons to upgrade!

Such an exciting milestone!

The top seven reasons to upgrade to a paid subscription for Certain Thoughts:

• You’ll access the full archive. Free subscribers get everything from the past six months, but all content prior to that is paywalled on a rolling basis. Treat yourself to the full archive.

• You nourish the Substack ecosystem. I spend a significant portion of Substack income on other writers’ subscriptions. You fund me, I fund them, everybody wins.

• You’ll help me level up on Substack. I cherish hospitality work and don’t wish to stop, but if I could do it a little less I would publish here more frequently while developing new Substack publication concepts. (Stay tuned!) Your support makes it all possible.

• You’ll take more from Certain Thoughts. By investing financially, you are much more likely to appreciate, read, share, listen to, and give away content you bought.

• You believe in Substack as a social network. I’m all in on Substack. From the social to the professional to the cultural, I could not be more excited about the impact and the prospects of this platform. They get a small cut of your paid subscription, as they should.

• You’ll underwrite my investments in new writers and contributors. In addition to my own work, I support, collaborate with, and amplify new and aspiring writers. You can help me do it.

• It just feels good. Consider it retail therapy. It feels great to buy things, and with a recurring monthly subscription you’re buying yourself a little treat every month.

If you can afford it, in honor of this 1,000 subscriber milestone please become a premium supporter now or some time in the future.

As I shared on my six month Substackaversary, everyone who participates in the creative exercise of this publication is a part of something deeply important and rewarding to me, so I want to thank you all again for giving me a few minutes of your time each week and tuning into Certain Thoughts.

-Evan

If you would like premium Certain Thoughts content but cannot afford a paid subscription, please contact me so I can grant you full access for free. Thank you.