Former GQ editor shares what you should know before starting a SubStack

When Chris Gayomali got laid off by Conde Nast in 2024, he started spending more time at the gym. "I was working out all of the time because I didn't have anything else to do," said Gayomali, who'd worked as an editor for GQ for nine years. Within a few months, Gayomali's intensified interest in fitness parlayed into what's now his SubStack newsletter called "Heavies." The publication aims to put a progressive lens on wellness and fitness - a space that can seem dominated by "the Joe Rogans of the world," he said, but doesn't need to be.

"I thought, 'This will be a fun thing to do. We'll see what happens,'" Gayomali recalled. Here's what happened: Heavies - named with a wink toward the weightiest kettlebells at the gym - has grown to about 5,300 subscribers, including several hundred who pay for access to more of his posts. The SubStack has become a creative outlet, a fraction of income and a door into a community of other journalists for Gayomali. It's even landed him freelance assignments.

I talked to the Brooklyn-based writer, who recently took a day job at the fashion design site SSENSE, about how and why he started the newsletter, and what other freelancers should know about SubStack. While he's not eligible for professional AHCJ membership since less than 50% of his work these days is for journalism outlets, Gayomali's experiences shed light on how some writers with high-impact bylines (like his recent New York magazine feature on protein) live, work and connect with editors and readers in an ever-changing media landscape.

Why did you want to start a newsletter?

Within a month or two of leaving GQ, I was already getting the feeling that freelancing alone wasn't going to be sustainable - mostly because a lot of editors from other publications were getting laid off too.

I wanted a place to plant some ideas and take risks because I feel like a lot of publishing right now is so risk averse. The teams are very small, and what editors do remain are underwater. I was already feeling that when I was at GQ.

So I thought: Maybe on SubStack I can bet on myself and not ask a total stranger who's beholden to the interest of their employer to pay me. I thought, if I could take those risks on my own and put those ideas out there, maybe they'd find an audience. And very quickly, they did, which was very lucky on my part.

Where did that audience come from?

When I launched Heavies, I think the value proposition was obvious right away to a lot of people, and I got picked up by a couple of other SubStacks that had far larger audiences already.

Some of them, like Emily Sundberg and Hunter Harris, I had edited at GQ. They said to their followers: "There's this new SubStack, Chris Gayomali launched it, he's really good at watching this space." Those shoutouts were really useful for building up my audience.

How do you think about responsibly covering trends that lack a strong evidence base?

I have a small background in traditional Chinese medicine, and it's a little bit outside of traditional health journalism.

My thinking is you're not going to get a lot of studies underlining the efficacy of acupuncture underwritten by Big Pharma. They have a real stake in complementary medicine not working.

Plus, these trends move so fast now, if you wait until sufficient research comes out, you miss reaching the people who are trying these practices now.

So my approach with Heavies is: There's a lot we don't understand, but let me put these ideas out there and let you decide.

Do you worry that posting an idea on SubStack "gives it away," preventing you from covering it - and getting paid - as a freelancer?

I see those things as living in tandem. And actually, if anything, the newsletter is additive to my freelance work. I find when I write about something, it broadcasts what I'm interested in to this wider network of editors.

For example, I wrote a newsletter post about drinking less during the holidays and about a lot of the non-alcoholic beverages that are coming out. From there, I got hit up by maybe three different editors who were working on non-alcoholic content for upcoming issues. They said, "Do you want to do a story that's related to what you wrote about on SubStack?"

So I got a nice print assignment from Bloomberg off of that small newsletter post. If I hadn't published that, there was no way I would have gotten that assignment.

How does SubStack actually work?

It's a pretty intuitive blogging interface. I think it's better than platforms like WordPress.

The thing about it that I really like - in addition to the email component, where it sends your posts out to people's inboxes - is that there's a whole backend that is very reminiscent of 2015 Twitter. A lot of journalists are sharing notes and stories and interacting with each other in a way that I've found to be really lively. SubStack seems to be where that energy that everyone was hoping would show up on BlueSky or Threads lives right now.

SubStack owns the means of distribution for a lot of these stories, and I get a lot of subscribers through the SubStack app now. It's a pretty smart ecosystem. It's not enough to be a main source of income for me now, but maybe if it keeps building, one day it could be the main thing.

Do you worry that an exodus from mainstream outlets to independent SubStacks will silo readers' newsfeeds even more?

I definitely see the limitations of SubStack, but I also see it as a place where a lot of conversation is actively happening. There are a lot of people who are breaking news and reacting to news, and I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon.

I think it's going to live in parallel to traditional publishing in a lot of ways. For example, in my day job, I'm already finding a lot of fashion writers on SubStack who are otherwise unproven, who don't have clips anywhere else. But on SubStack I can see the spark of talent there.

I also do a lot of my sourcing there, and use it like a reporter's notebook. So if I'm reporting a big story for a New York mag, I can put some of my notes that didn't make it into the story on SubStack. Then it all cycles back around.

What helps make a SubStack successful?

It really has to have a distinct point of view. If you put something that's sort of squishy and uninformed out there, or it's just a stray thought, that's very hard to build upon unless you already have a built-in readership who really follows your work.

The people who make clear exactly what they're going to be writing about are going to be the most successful. Maybe just like all of publishing, readers want to know what they're getting.

What's your daily routine like?

I wake up, get everything ready in the house for my wife, walk the dog, and then I'll be out the door by 6:30 a.m. to go to the gym. I go into the office three or four days a week. If I need to take a call for my SubStack or some freelance work, I'll do it in the afternoon. If I need to work on a SubStack post, I'll do that at night. I'll tweak away at that for a couple of days to make sure it's in good shape, and publish it whenever I feel like it's ready.

Do you face any conflicts of interest with your day job and your outside writing?

Sometimes, story ideas can come from people I'm talking to for the day job, but I've never run into a situation where there was a conflict of interest.

The job is nice because I have the stability elsewhere in the pie chart of income to take the freelance assignments that are more tempting and fun versus the ones that are going to be a big payday and a lot of work. So I get to be a little bit choosier.

I love getting a massage about once a week. I feel like a lot of my ideas really flow on the massage table. Not having the phone there, and having someone else digging their elbows into your back, jostles some ideas loose. And if I'm already working on a piece, it'll help me think through structure and what I actually want to say. That's my big tool: massage.