I Turned My Substack Around in One Month and Made $2.4K in 10 Days

How shifting from paid subscriptions to working with committed creators turbo-chared my business

For a long time, I believed the way to grow my Substack and my income was simple.

Write consistently. Improve the quality of my posts. Attract free subscribers and eventually convert those free readers into paid subscribers. This was the model I was given by the Substack gurus, and that was the model I was following.

On paper, it made sense.

I wasn’t lazy. I wasn’t inconsistent. I wasn’t confused about what I was writing.
But despite all that effort, the growth felt fragile, and the income even more so. Some months I made $1100 - $1200, other months $200-$300 and then many months $0.

Paid subscriptions alone weren’t giving me momentum. They weren’t giving me leverage. And they certainly weren’t giving me clarity about where this was all leading.

I was doing everything I learned to grow my Substack. I was writing three posts a week, two notes a day, swapping recommendations and doing weekly Lives.

Still, growth and income eluded me. By the end of November 2025, I had to admit something uncomfortable:

The problem wasn’t my Substack. It was the way I was trying to build a business on top of it.

In December, I stopped trying to grow my newsletter.

And that’s when everything changed.

What finally clicked for me was this:

I wasn’t struggling because I needed to write more or better. I was struggling because I was trying to make one narrow model do all the heavy lifting.

Paid subscriptions work beautifully when you have scale. When you already have a large audience. When people are willing to pay month after month for access alone.

I had none of those conditions in my favour.

I was asking my Substack to be a publication, a product, a sales engine, and a business, all at once. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a newsletter.

The more I looked at it, the clearer it became:
I didn’t have a growth problem.
I had a positioning problem.

People enjoyed my writing. They trusted my experience. But they couldn’t clearly tell what I was meant to do for them beyond writing posts.

And if your readers don’t know where you’re leading them, they won’t follow no matter how good your content is.

That was the moment I stopped asking how to sell more subscriptions…

…and started asking a very different question:

What do I want to be known for?

That question made me shift my focus.

From Growth to Authority

Once I saw the problem clearly, the decision became obvious.

I stopped trying to optimise my Substack. And I started designing my authority. Instead of asking how to grow faster, I asked something far more uncomfortable:

If someone found me for the first time today, what would I want them to recognise me for?

The answer wasn’t “a consistent writer.” It was a book strategist.

Someone who understands how a short, strategic book can anchor a message, position an expert, and quietly do the heavy lifting in a business.

That’s when I decided to write One Book To $100K: The Proven Book-Led Path to Six-Figure Income.

Not as a passion project.
Not as a someday idea.
And not as something I’d hide away until it was perfect.

The book is still in draft form.

But the thinking inside it was ready.

So instead of polishing chapters in isolation, I chose to do something different.

I started testing the ideas publicly, using my writing not to fill space, but to create direction.

That was the real shift.

I wasn’t writing to be seen anymore.
I was writing to be understood.

I Tested the Idea Publicaly

I didn’t announce a big pivot. I didn’t redesign my Substack. I didn’t build a funnel or plan a launch.

I wrote one article.

Why Your Scattered Offers Are a Problem (And How One Book Can Fix It)

That was it. No lead magnets. No countdown timers. No daily selling disguised as “value posts.”

I simply laid out what I now believed to be true, clearly, calmly, and without hedging.

That article mattered more than I realised at the time.

It clarified my thinking before it persuaded anyone else.
It forced me to articulate the real problem I’d been circling for months: that many creators don’t fail because they lack ideas, but because they lack an anchor.

It named something people already felt but hadn’t put into words, the exhaustion of juggling scattered offers, unclear positioning, and content that doesn’t quite add up to anything meaningful.

And most importantly, it changed how people saw me.

I wasn’t showing up as someone producing content anymore.
I was showing up as someone offering direction.

Not “here’s another post,”
but “here’s a way to think about what you’re building.”

That single shift did more than months of optimisation ever had.

Here is what happened.

What happened next wasn’t dramatic.

There was no spike in followers. No sudden flood of comments. No viral moment. But something far more important shifted. The article itself gave me 27 free subscribers and one paid subscriber. But there was more.

People reached out with clarity.

Within ten days, eight writers joined the cohort I had quietly introduced.
Not because of urgency or persuasion, but because they recognised themselves in the problem I had described.

The book they were responding to isn’t even published yet.
It’s still in draft form.

And the cohort itself didn’t start as a big launch.
It started yesterday.

The $2.4K that came in wasn’t the result of better copy or smarter tactics.
It was the result of alignment. For the first time, the writing, the offer, and the outcome were pointing in the same direction.

Nothing about my workload increased.
I didn’t post more articles. I didn’t chase attention. I just kept the same rhythm. ButI simply stopped being vague about what I help people do, and let the right people step forward.

But there was a deeper lesson.

What surprised me most wasn’t the revenue.

It was the relief.

For the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel the low-grade pressure to keep proving my value through output.

I wasn’t wondering what to post next or how to keep people engaged. I realised I had stopped selling access to my writing and started offering direction.

That shift changes everything.

When you’re selling content, you feel replaceable. There are always other people providing more information. There is always someone louder. More charismatic. With more hacks.

But when you’re offering clarity, when you’re helping people make sense of their ideas, their positioning, and their next move, you’re no longer competing on volume. You’re trusted because you’ve gone first.

I didn’t become more confident overnight.
I didn’t suddenly feel “ready.”
I simply became clearer about what I stand for and who I’m here to help.

And that clarity did something unexpected.
It made the work feel lighter, not heavier.

Where I stand now.

Right now, the cohort is running.

Eight writers have committed to writing their books, clarifying their authority, and building something deliberate instead of scattered. We started yesterday.

I’m working closely with them, reading drafts, challenging assumptions, helping them make decisions they’ve been postponing for months.

And I’m doing this with intention.

I’m no longer trying to work with everyone.
I’m working only with committed creators, people who are ready to finish what they start.

At the moment, I have two 1:1 seats open for writers who want to:

– Write a book that anchors their authority
– Stop guessing what their content and offers should lead to
– Build toward a consistent $10K/month using a clear, book-led system

This isn’t about scaling endlessly or filling seats.

It’s about doing focused work with people who are ready to take their writing seriously, and build something solid around it.

If any part of this resonates—

If you’ve been writing consistently but still feel unclear about what it’s all leading to,
If a book keeps sitting quietly on your list, and
If you’re ready to stop experimenting and start building with intention—

You’re welcome to join us.

Not later.
Not when things calm down.
Not when you feel more confident.

Now.

👉 Enroll in Write Your Book in 30 Days

With clarity.
With authority.
And with something solid at the centre

As always, thanks for reading.