The Substack Writer's Masterclass
Two hours. A textbook. Everything you need to build a newsletter that lasts.
Two hours is enough time to understand what you're doing wrong. It is also enough time to fix it.
The Substack Writer's Masterclass is a two-hour live class paired with a complete textbook you keep. Ten modules. Forty-seven lessons. Ten study-as-you-go assignments designed to produce real work product, not worksheets. By the time the class ends, you won't just understand how Substack works. You'll have done the work.
The format.
The class and the textbook run in parallel. Every module covered in the session has a corresponding chapter. You read, you apply, you move forward. The assignments are not optional. They are the course. A writer who completes all ten will leave with a defined niche, a positioning statement, a reader avatar, a formatted issue, a 90-day growth plan, a paid launch email, a publish schedule, a promotion checklist, and a six-month analytics audit. That is not a list of concepts. That is a portfolio.
What two hours covers.
The landscape: what Substack actually is, why the creator economy in 2025 rewards specificity over volume, who is succeeding and why, and what honest growth looks like. (Slow at first. Then not.)
Niche and voice: the hardest and most important module in the curriculum. Most newsletters fail not because the writing is bad but because the writer never got clear on what they were making and for whom. This module fixes that. It takes time. The class makes space for it.
Format, structure, craft: how to build an issue that holds readers, how to write for the inbox rather than the page, how to edit your own work without precious-ing it to death, how to end a piece so the reader feels something other than abandoned.
Growth, money, consistency: the mechanics of building a list from zero, when and how to charge, how to price without undercutting yourself out of embarrassment, how to publish consistently when you are tired and busy and not in the mood.
The textbook.
The textbook is a complete curriculum. It goes home with you. The class is the accelerant. The book is the infrastructure. Writers who do not finish everything in the session finish it in the weeks after, with the reference material in hand and the framework already in their head.
The author.
Josh Powell has 35 years of experience as a writer. Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Politico, and Hachette Book Group. Former healthcare CEO. Founder of The Powell House Press. He has spent his career doing the thing this course teaches.