Behind the Pitch: How I turned a viral Substack into an essay for Business Insider

*annotated screenshots included!*

Welcome to the first issue of Behind the Pitch, where I take you through my pitching process—from concept to publishing—so you can learn how to pitch, too.

In this issue, you’ll see:

• How I turned this viral Substack Note into this essay for Business Insider¹

• Screenshot of the pitch I sent to Business Insider with annotations breaking down each section

• How to write a subject line that editors will actually open

How It Started: Substack Notes

Maalvika

shared this brilliant Dear Abby excerpt where she encourages her readers to pursue their dreams at any age. This post resonated with me for two reasons:

1. My mom began her college career at 55.

2. I, too, was a non-traditional college student who dropped out on and off for a decade, graduating at 28.

I channeled those feelings into a “restack” of Maalvika’s original post. As countless writing teachers have shared with me, social media is an excellent place to test out material. This “testing out” approach resembles how comedians perform bits or monologues in local comedy clubs before a big gig. I like to test out ideas on social media and on podcasts. Depending on how people engage with said ideas, I might turn them into a long-form essay or podcast episode or marketing campaign or just let it be a fun post that drifts away into the algorithm.

---

Then It Went Mini-Viral

My restack got dozens of restacks, nearly 1,000 likes, and 57 comments. The comment section filled with non-traditional college students’ stories as my heart filled with joy. It felt good to be part of an inspiring conversation during such a deeply depressing time.

If you need a pick-me-up, I highly recommend reading through those comments here.

---

The Pitch

Let’s start by saying that pitching is fucking hard. It’s exhausting. It’s emotional. It’s hella confusing.

One way to ease some of those overwhelming feelings is to pitch something with “legs,” meaning pitch something that people are already into, which you can learn by “testing it out” on social media first.

Editors want to publish interesting pieces that generate clicks, contributing to the site's ad dollars.

By pitching my viral Substack Note, I showed an editor (A) my proof of concept and (B) that people reacted in real time to said concept which means it can possibly lead to lots of clicks for the site.

The Screenshot

Below you’ll find:

• An annotated screenshot of the pitch I sent to Business Insider, breaking down each section so you can pitch, too.

• A confidence-boosting exercise (with texting template!) because pitching requires some courage, y’all.