How We Grow

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The sun goes down over the water here at around half past six in October. I know this now the way I used to know the Q3 reporting deadline. I know it because most evenings we go and look at it. My husband carries the bag, I carry the baby, and we walk down to the sea and stand there like tourists in our own life until the orange goes out.

I want to tell you how strange that still feels, because the strangeness is the whole story.

Somewhere in my late twenties I learned to feel a small guilt about enjoying a weekday. Not a crisis, nothing dramatic. More like a background hum. Monday to Friday were for proving something, and the proof had to be visible, and if someone had seen me standing on a beach at half past six on a Tuesday they would have assumed either that I was on holiday or that I had been fired. There was no third category. Being happy on a weekday with nothing to show for it was not something a serious woman did.

I was a serious woman for fifteen years. I had the titles to prove it. In 2015 I was running a marketing function for a corporation and I could have told you the capacity of most airport lounges in Southeast Asia. I could not have told you what the light looked like in my own street at six in the evening, because I was never in it.

BTW, I am speaking at the first Substack Success Summit this November. Come join me, free pass below:

Then in 2017 the company came apart. It happened in the undignified way these things happen, with meetings about meetings, and when it was over I noticed that I had spent fifteen years of weekdays and the company had kept every one of them. The weekends I had spent recovering. The holidays I had spent planning the next holiday. The weekdays, which were most of my life by a factor of two and a half, had gone to a company that no longer existed.

That arithmetic is the thing I want to give you first, before the walks and the sunsets, because I think most people have never actually done it.

The week was designed by a man who made cars

The five-day week is not a law of nature. Henry Ford put his factories on it in 1926, and he did it for a reason that had nothing to do with your wellbeing. He wanted his workers to have enough time off to buy and drive the cars they were building. Two days of leisure was a marketing decision.

A hundred years later we still live inside that decision, and we have decorated it with a whole philosophy. Weekdays are for effort. Weekends are for life. A holiday is a very large weekend. Retirement is a holiday that lasts until you die.

Look at what that philosophy does to a year. Fifty-two Tuesdays, fifty-two Wednesdays, fifty-two Thursdays. Two hundred and sixty working days, and a culture that quietly agrees those are the days that don’t count. The days you get through. The days you spend so that you can have the other hundred.

Nobody signs up for that in writing. You just absorb it, usually from a report card, and then from a boss, and after a while it feels like weather.

The first thing I had to believe, really believe, not as a quote on a mug but as a thing I ran my calendar on, was that the two hundred and sixty are not the price of a life. They are the life. If Tuesday is bad, the year is bad, however good August is. You cannot save up presence for later and withdraw it at the weekend. Two days do not absorb five. If they could, nobody would need a holiday.

What my daughter taught me about tired

I had my daughter at an age when the doctors use a special word for you on the forms. She is one now. People who meet her say the same thing, in slightly different ways: she’s so calm, she’s so easy, you got a good one.

For a while I took the compliment. Then I started to notice when she was not calm.

She is not calm when I am on my phone and pretending not to be. She is not calm when I come back from a call with the call still in my face. She is not calm when the adults in the room are somewhere else. She is a very accurate instrument for one thing, which is whether anyone is actually here.

Most of the time, we are. That is not a personality trait of hers. It is the output of a house where nobody is spending Tuesday waiting for Saturday. She does not have to fight for attention because nothing is competing with her for it. A child who does not have to compete does not learn to scream for the prize.

I am not telling you this to make you feel bad about your phone. I am telling you because it took me forty years to understand that tired is not a private feeling. A tired parent is a different parent. The tiredness goes into your voice, into how fast you say “in a minute,” into the hour after dinner when you are in the room and somewhere else entirely. The child pays for the tiredness, and the child did not sign the contract.

For most of my career the one paying was me. I was the child of my own schedule. I would get to the weekend and have nothing left for the person I was supposed to be on it. Now there is someone smaller, and I have decided she is not paying.

The childhood we are building her is not made of trips. We take her places, sure. But the thing she will remember, if she remembers anything from this year, is not a destination. It is the general temperature of the house. Two people who were not rushing. Two people who were not resenting Tuesday. That is the only inheritance I am confident will arrive.

Something I only say behind the paywall: the calm is partly purchased, and I think you should know that before you compare yourself to it. The business pays for the hours I don’t cook. It pays for the people who make the small things disappear.

Nobody is a present parent and a solo everything at the same time, and the women who seem to manage both have help they are not mentioning in the caption.

I built the help into the business as a line item, not a confession. If you have been treating support as something you earn once you’re successful enough, turn it around. Support is how you get there. The 2-Hour Creator System in your vault has a section on what I pay for and what I stopped doing entirely. Read that section before you read the rest.

The belief that made the sunset feel illegal

So why did a sunset on a Tuesday feel like shoplifting?

I have thought about this a lot, usually on the walk down, and I think it is this. Somewhere early I absorbed the idea that a good life has to be paid for in advance, with discomfort, and that you are only allowed to enjoy it once the payment clears. Rest is earned. Joy is a reward. Being happy before the work is done is a kind of fraud.

The belief is not stupid. It kept me employed. It got me promoted. It is the operating system of almost every ambitious woman I know, and most of them would describe it as “having high standards.”

But look at what it does when you follow it to the end. You can never enjoy anything while it is happening, only after. And since there is always a next thing, “after” is a place you visit for about forty-eight hours and then leave. You spend your whole life in the queue for a room you only ever stand in on Saturday.

The sentence I had to replace it with sounds too simple to be useful, so I will say it anyway. The payment is the life. There is no later. Tuesday at half past six is not the reward for a good week. It is what a good week is made of.

I did not get there by deciding it. I got there by building something that made the decision possible, and that is the part I want to spend the rest of this article on, because belief without a structure is just a nicer way of being disappointed.

A business that needs you is a job with worse hours

When I got serious about building online in 2022, I did not start with a product. I started with a list of things I was not willing to give up, and I wrote it down because I knew I would be tempted.

Afternoons. Mornings with a baby, if the baby came. The ability to leave the house at six without telling anyone. No team to manage, because a team is just a calendar that belongs to other people. One thing I publish. One thing I sell.

Then I built a business that fit through those rules, and I threw out every idea that did not. I threw out a lot. Most of what people recommend to a new online business does not survive a filter like that. Daily video. A launch every month. A community that needs me in it. A funnel with nine steps. All of it assumes you are available, and I had decided I wasn’t.

What survived was small. Two hours a day, usually while she naps. One article a week. One offer at the bottom of it. That is close to the whole machine, and since September 2024 it has made $1.4 million.

I know how that sentence lands. It sounds like I am about to sell you something, and to be fair, I usually am. But the number is not the point here. The point is that it was made inside the edges. Not once has the business asked me to miss a nap. Not once has it needed me at six in the evening. That is not because I am disciplined. It is because the edges were built first and the business had to grow around them, like a plant in a pot.

Most people do it the other way. They build the business and then try to fit a life into whatever is left. It never works, because a business will take exactly as much of you as you offer it. It has no edges of its own. You have to supply them.

The filter I actually run, in case you want to steal it. Every idea gets four questions.

Does it need me at a fixed time?

Does it need more than one platform?

Does it add a thing to publish or a thing to sell, when I already have one of each?

Would it still work if I disappeared for ten days?

Three yeses and it’s dead, however good it looked on someone else’s Substack. This is the backbone of the 2-Hour Creator System, and the reason I tell paid subscribers to read it as a filter rather than a schedule. My schedule is mine. The filter works on any life, including one with a day job attached, because what it protects is not the hours. It is the edges.

Calm is not something that arrives

There is a phrase I hear constantly from the women I work with, and I used to say it myself. “When things calm down.”

When things calm down I’ll write the thing. When things calm down I’ll take the walk. When things calm down I’ll be the mother I keep meaning to be.

I want to say something about that phrase as gently as I can. Things do not calm down. Calm is not a weather system that passes through once the current project is over. It is manufactured, by removing things, and it has to be re-manufactured every week because new things are always arriving to fill the space.

My Tuesdays are calm because of what is not in them, not because of what I achieved to deserve them. I don’t have a team meeting because I don’t have a team. I don’t have a content calendar for four platforms because I have one. I don’t have a launch this month because I decided one workshop a month is enough and the rest can wait for people to find it on their own. Every one of those is a thing I removed, and every removal felt, at the time, like giving up on growth.

It was the opposite. The removals are the growth. They are the reason the two hours produce more than the nine used to, because the two hours have nothing else in them.

The beliefs hide in sentences, which is why I built the key-words card for you. “When things calm down” is one of the eight. So is “I don’t have time,” which almost always means “I have not removed anything yet.” For this week, do the exercise the card is built for but only the first half of it: write down every one of the eight you hear yourself say, and count them. Do not swap them yet. Just count.

Most people find the number is between fifteen and thirty in a week, and the number is the thing that convinces them, not the swaps. The swaps come after, with the 24-hour action next to each one. The card is in your vault, and if you only use one thing from it this month, use it for that count.

The question I ask instead of “what’s the plan”

I used to plan in years. Five-year plans, three-year plans, the whole corporate ritual of pretending you know what the market does in 2028.

Now I plan in Tuesdays. The question I ask about any decision, any offer, any new idea, is not where it gets me by the end of the year. It is what it does to a Tuesday in March. Will a Tuesday in March have the walk in it? Will the sunset still be on the list? Will she still get a mother who is in the room?

If the answer is no, the idea does not get built, however much it would make.

This is the question I most want to leave you with, because I think it is the one that actually changes behaviour. Not “what do I want my life to look like,” which produces a mood board. But “what do I want a random Tuesday to look like,” which produces a design.

Pick one. A Tuesday in March. Walk through it hour by hour as if it were already true. Where are you at half past six? Who is with you? What is not in the day, that is in your Tuesdays now?

Then look at the distance between that Tuesday and last week’s, and ask what would have to be removed to close it. Not added. Removed.

Most people stall here, and I want to name the stall before you hit it. You do the March Tuesday. It is lovely. Then you look at your actual Tuesday and the gap is so wide that you shut the notebook and go back to “when things calm down.”

The gap is not closed by belief. It is closed by one hour, the first one that is yours, that builds something you keep. That hour has to be taken from somewhere and whatever it is taken from will complain.

The 7-Day Challenge to Your First $5K Offer in your vault exists for exactly that hour. One offer, seven days, one thing that pays you next Tuesday whether or not you are standing on a beach. And if you are the kind of person who does this better with other people watching, the workshop replays and the $59 off the 30-Day Challenge are the room for it. I built the ladder in the vault in this order on purpose. Belief, then one hour, then a filter, then company. Do it in that order and the Tuesday holds. Skip the belief and the hour gets taken back by Friday.

The sunset is free, which is the problem

The last thing. We went down to the water last night and the sky did the thing it does, and I thought about how many years that sky was doing it while I was in a lounge in Singapore looking at a slide.

It never cost anything. It was never gated. There was no course. It was right there, every single evening, for fifteen years, and I missed almost all of them because nobody had told me I was allowed.

That is the thing about Tuesday. It does not need to be earned and it cannot be saved. It is happening whether or not you are in it. The only question that has ever mattered is whether you were there, and the only honest answer, for most of my adult life, was no.

Your life is happening on Tuesdays too. It has been the whole time.

Come down to the water.

Ana

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

The rules have completely changed. If your perfectly planned content calendar isn’t converting subscribers into buyers, you’re not alone. Your analytics look good, open rates are decent, you’re consistent and providing value. And yet... crickets when you ask for money.

In this video, I reflect on my journey of growing my newsletter from 0 to over 70,000 subscribers in less than a year and discuss the shift from the how-to content era to what I call the story economy.

While AI can generate strategies, what people truly crave is story-driven transformation that connects on an emotional level.

I share my personal experiences that led to a significant revenue increase, demonstrating that storytelling is what drives subscriptions and sales.

And I invite you to rethink your content approach by focusing on stories from your life that illustrate your lessons, rather than just sharing strategies.

Your action step is to write your next newsletter post starting with a personal story that makes your audience feel something.

00:00 Year of Growth Reflection

02:19 AI and Content Commoditization

04:12 Storytelling as a Revenue Driver

06:56 Psychology of Decision Making

11:18 Shifting to Story-First Approach

19:15 Embracing the Story Economy

Read the full story: https://open.substack.com/pub/howwegrowtoday/p/why-the-most-profitable-substack?r=4coz9x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

The Vulnerability Paradox

I’ve been struggling with the word “vulnerability” lately.

It’s become this gold standard in the online world. If you aren’t bleeding on the page, if you aren’t posting the crying selfie, if you aren’t giving a play-by-play of your burnout, are you even a creator? Just this morning I saw another “I almost quit” note, and two scrolls later the “3 months sober” one.

We seem to be obsessed with the idea of being “real,” but in our desperate sprint away from the polished, curated Instagram era, I think we’ve accidentally run into a different kind of ctrap.

We are now curating our disasters just as carefully as we used to curate our wins.

And to be honest, I don’t know where I fit in that spectrum anymore.

I sit here writing this with a newborn in my lap. My reality right now is objectively messy. There is a cold cup of coffee on a stack of unread mail. I am operating on fragmented sleep. There are days when I feel like I am holding my business together with duct tape and a prayer.

I could post about that every single day.

I could turn my sleep deprivation into content. I could package my anxiety into a hook. It would be “authentic.” It would be “relatable.” It would probably get a flood of comments telling me how brave I am.

But every time I go to write that post, my fingers freeze.

Not because I’m ashamed of the mess—I’m actually quite at peace with it—but because turning it into content feels like a betrayal of the moment.

It feels like a performance of imperfection.

And this is where the paradox begins for me.

The moment you share your struggle specifically to get a reaction, are you being vulnerable? Or are you just commoditizing your pain?

I realized that for a long time, I was confusing Processing with Leading.

Processing is when you are in the middle of the storm. You are wet, cold, and scared. When you scream for help in that moment, you are looking for validation. You are asking the audience to hold space for you.

Leading is when you have found the shelter. You dry off. You look back at the storm and you figure out how you survived it. Then, you walk back out to the edge of the rain to show others the way in.

One is a cry for help; the other is an act of service.

And I think we have confused the two.

We think that to be “authentic,” we have to invite 70,000 strangers into the storm with us. But I’m starting to believe that true authenticity—the kind that actually respects your audience—is doing the work in private so you can show up with clarity in public.

It’s the difference between sharing a wound and sharing a scar.

A wound is still bleeding. It needs attention. It triggers worry in the people watching you.A scar is healed. It’s proof of survival. It triggers trust.

I don’t want you to worry about me. I want you to trust that I can help you.

And perhaps that is why I have leaned so heavily into Systems this year.

It isn’t because I am a robot who loves spreadsheets.It is because the System is the only thing that allows me to be useful to you when I am a mess.

The system is my way of protecting you from my chaos.

It allows me to show up, deliver value, and help you build your own life, even when I am writing this with one hand and a baby on my chest.

To me, that is the quietest, most honest form of authenticity I can offer.

It isn’t about performing a perfect life, and it isn’t about performing a messy one.It is about Congruence.

It is about making sure that the person I am online is reliable enough to help the person you are offline.

I realized I don’t need to be “relatable” to be valuable.I don’t need to mirror your pain to validate it.

I just need to be steady.

So, if you’ve been feeling the pressure to bare your soul for the algorithm, or to perform a version of “messy” that feels just as exhausting as perfection... maybe you can just stop.

You don’t owe the internet your trauma.You just owe your audience your truth.

And sometimes, the truth is just: “I’m here. I’m working. And I figured out a way to make it easier. Here it is.”

I might do a Part 2 on the actual mechanics of this—how to technically distinguish between a “wound” post and a “scar” post when you are sitting at the keyboard drafting content.

But I felt like we needed to dismantle the pressure to perform first. This was the foundation.

Thanks for letting me think out loud.

Love,

Ana

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

The internet sold us a dream.

Build an audience. Post valuable content. Grow to 10,000 followers. Then monetize. Launch a course. Build a membership. Scale to six figures. Hire a team. Become a thought leader.

I bought into this dream too. It left me exhausted and broke.

These online gurus set you up to completely misunderstand how creator businesses actually work. It’s hard to escape because everyone around you has been fed the same playbook. I spent three years building newsletters, launching programs, and working with 3,000+ creators.

I figured out how creator businesses really work by watching who actually makes money. Here’s the brutal truth about the creator economy that nobody wants you to know...

The disgusting lie hidden in plain sight

The traditional path teaches us to build an audience first, monetize later.

This is financial suicide.

So you spend 12-24 months posting content, growing followers, “providing value” — all without making a dollar. You’re told this is “planting seeds” and “building trust.”

It’s b*s. and you know it.

What’s really happening is you’re working for free while social media platforms extract value from your content. They get ad revenue. You get likes and comments.

Every time a creator guru tells you “focus on audience growth first,” they’re keeping you broke. Why? Because they make money selling you courses on how to grow your audience. They don’t make money from their audience — they make it from YOU.

Let’s go deeper down the rabbit hole.

All the advice you consume about building a creator business comes from people who built their business in 2015-2019. Back then, social media algorithms were different. Competition was lower. People hadn’t heard this advice 10,000 times yet.

That world doesn’t exist anymore.

Yet no one questions whether 2015 strategies work in 2025. It’s odd when you think about it because creators work their entire lives following outdated playbooks.

Now we get to the math problem.

Most creators are told they need 10,000 followers before they can make real money. Some say 50,000. The magic number keeps moving.

But here’s what nobody tells you: Audience size doesn’t determine income.

I’ve seen creators with 500 subscribers making $5K/month. I’ve seen creators with 50,000 followers making $200/month.

The difference isn’t audience size. It’s business model.

But the creator economy Industrial Complex doesn’t want you to know that. If you knew you could monetize with 200 people, you wouldn’t buy their $2,000 “Scale to 100K Followers” course.

You’d just build an offer and sell it.

Maybe you’re reading this thinking “But Ana, I only have 1,000 followers. I need to grow first.”

The lie continues.

You don’t need more followers. You need more revenue per follower. A creator with 1,000 followers making $10 per follower per year earns $10,000. A creator with 10,000 followers making $1 per follower earns the same.

Except the first creator spent 3 months building their business. The second spent 3 years.

The average creator doesn’t know that. So they keep posting. They keep hoping. They keep waiting for the day they’re “big enough” to monetize.

That day never comes.

Now we get to the good bit.

Successful creators do the opposite of what you’re told. They don’t build audiences. They build offers. They don’t wait until they’re “ready.” They launch immediately. They don’t scale. They stay small and charge premium prices.

It’s why you’re seeing creators with tiny audiences making $10K-$30K months. While influencers with millions of followers are broke.

The next question is why...

The bigger picture that’s easy to misunderstand

None of this is a conspiracy. Creator coaches and social media gurus aren’t trying to screw you. They’re just repeating what worked for them in 2017.

But here’s what billionaire investor Naval Ravikant said: “Play long-term games with long-term people.”

This tiny statement changed everything for me.

Here’s what it means: The creator economy rewards depth, not breadth.

One client who pays you $5K and stays for two years is worth more than 100 people who buy your $97 course once.

But the entire creator advice industry is built on selling you courses. So they teach you to build $97 products. Then they tell you that you need 10,000 followers to sell enough of them to make real money.

It must be this way. Their business model depends on it.

These short-term tactics create the hamster wheel. Post content → grow audience → launch cheap product → make $3K → do it all again next month.

Tax on your time. Tax on your energy. Tax on your mental health.

When you need more money, you need more followers. You can’t scale your income without scaling your audience. This game of chasing followers is happening to every creator.

It’s a deadly trap. And history shows it won’t stop.

It gets worse.

As you grow your audience, engagement goes down. Algorithms change. Platforms die. What worked on Twitter doesn’t work on LinkedIn. It definitely won’t work on Substack. What worked in 2023 doesn’t work in 2025.

So you’re on a treadmill. You must keep running just to stay in place.

You may not care.

But when your income depends on platforms you don’t control, algorithms you can’t predict, and audiences that expect free content forever... you don’t have a business. You have a hobby that occasionally pays.

This entire process also creates burnout. Given that most creators start because they want freedom and flexibility, ending up more stressed than their corporate job is a cruel irony.

“I quit my job to be a creator. Now I work 12-hour days and make less money.”

A normal person would see this as failure. A successful creator would think to themselves, “Did I build a bad business or did I follow bad advice?”

Can you now start to see the illusion?

People work for years building audiences without understanding what they’re really building. You could even call this modern sharecropping. It’s so sophisticated most creators will never work it out.

And unless you understand how creator businesses work, you’ll be enslaved by them.

No matter how great your content is, how engaged your audience is, or how many followers you have... you cannot outrun this systematic flaw.

The flow-on effects nobody is paying attention to

We’re living in two separate creator economies.

One economy is the 2015-2019 playbook: massive audiences, cheap products, scale through volume, constant content, social media dependence.

The other economy is emerging now: small audiences, premium pricing, depth over breadth, systemized launches, platform independence.

These two economies are diverging. And most creators haven’t figured it out.

The limitations of the old model are becoming obvious. Creators are burning out. Platforms are changing rules. Ad revenue is collapsing. Audiences are exhausted.

This is why we’re seeing mass creator exodus right now. People going back to corporate jobs. It’s a sign the old creator economy playbook is broken.

The old world assumed infinite attention and infinite energy. The incentives made no sense for the creator or the audience.

As more creators opt out, things will keep breaking. What’s really happening is the market is quietly rearranging itself.

The way people build businesses, the way they monetize, the way they define success — it’s all fracturing.

In the meantime, the guru Industrial Complex will continue selling the old playbook. They’ll tell you that you need more followers, more content, more products. Eventually more creators will wake up to the fact that this path leads nowhere.

This isn’t a reality to be afraid of. It’s a huge opportunity. But it starts with understanding why the old model is broken, and why most creators’ understanding of how business works is backwards.

What I’m doing

I am not a multi millionaire.

And I don’t know everything there is to know about business. I’m nowhere near as successful as some of the creators on social media. I’m writing about this in my 40s because I’m dealing with it right now.

I built a newsletter to $50K/month in 14 months. I work 2 hours a day. I started with 0 subscribers, not 50,000. I am mostly active on 1 platform, not on 10.

I’ve been forced to figure out how creator businesses really work. If I followed the traditional advice, I’d still be “building my audience” and making $500/month.

So I’m never going back to the old playbook.

I’m focusing on premium pricing, small audiences, and depth. Every day I learn more about what actually makes money (versus what gurus say makes money), so I can prepare for the next phase of the creator economy.

I study business models. I learn from people making real money, not people teaching how to make money. I stay curious. I don’t fear going against the grain.

What this really means for you

Understanding the lie — that’s been planted in your mind by the creator guru Industrial Complex — is the first step.

The next part is to rethink what success looks like. That’ll likely lead you to stop chasing followers and start building offers. You’ll probably realize you don’t need a massive audience to make real money.

The old creator dream is to hit 100K followers and monetize with ads, sponsorships, and $97 courses. In most niches this is now unprofitable. It forces you to be a content machine, forever at the mercy of algorithms.

Plus, the exhaustion of posting daily causes enormous stress and limits your options.

You’ll need to look at alternative business models. Small audiences. Premium pricing. High-ticket offers. Depth over breadth.

The final part is freedom. The whole myth is you build a creator business to have freedom. But if you’re posting 3X a day, launching every other week, and constantly chasing growth... you’re less free than you were in your 9-to-5.

Harsh truth: Most creators will never be free.

There’s a good and a bad side. For people like me, I love what I do because I built it to fit my life. For creators who followed the traditional playbook, the freedom they thought they’d have isn’t coming.

It’s time for all of us to stop following outdated advice and learn what actually works.

Otherwise, the hours of our lives will be quietly stolen by algorithms we don’t control.

The deeper you get into premium offers and small audiences, the more likely you are to escape the creator hamster wheel.

Choose wisely.

Ready to build differently?

Most creators are preparing to launch cheap offers in December.

I’m teaching the opposite in The Business Accelerator: premium pricing, small audiences, systems that run in 2 hours a day.

I only have 7 spots left. This is not fir everyone. We start December 2nd.

Email me: [email protected]

Subject: “Accelerator”

Ana

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

If you missed our live conversation today, you missed some serious gold – but don't worry, the recording is right here!

Justin Welsh and I unpacked exactly how we went from 0 to a combined 60,000+ subscribers in record time (him hitting 13K in under a month, me reaching 50K in 6 months).

What I loved most about this conversation was the raw honesty. No fluff, no "just post consistently" generic advice – just actionable strategies that are working RIGHT NOW on Substack.

Some highlights:

• Why Substack isn't just "the future" but the present opportunity for creators

• The counter-intuitive growth strategy that's working better than any algorithm hack

• How to monetize authentically without turning into a "bro marketer"

• The exact struggles a 1 million followers creators actually goes through (yeah, they are human too)

Oh, not to mention the humanity underneath it all.

And if you watch until the end, you'll witness a master class in adaptability.

When my cafe WiFi unexpectedly died, Justin seamlessly transformed what could have been an awkward moment into an impromptu 1:1 coaching session with 500+ live viewers. That's a pro move worth studying!

The most important takeaway? There's room for EVERYONE to grow here. The Substack ecosystem is expanding, not contracting – and the list of top-tier creators joining grows daily.

This is good news for all of us – writers, readers, and anyone tired of feeding the algorithm monster.

Enjoy the conversation, and make sure to follow How We Grow and Unsubscribe for more wisdom gems here on Substack.

What was your biggest takeaway from our conversation? Drop it in the comments!

Oh, and if you want to dig deeper into how to make a move from LinkedIn to Substack the right way, I am hosting my next workshop on this on May 29th.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

One week after joining my Money Map Bootcamp, Marni:

✅ Doubled interest in her own coaching &

✅ Revamped her offer

✅ Got 5 paying members immediately

✅ And best of all — she’s just getting started.

In this live, she shares exactly what changed, why the 30-day support made the difference, and how the Money Map Bootcamp gave her clarity and momentum.

Marni also shares the details of her own bootcamp happening this May (and yes, I’m cheering for her every step of the way).

Check it out here:

Watch the replay. Then join us for the next round of Money Map Bootcamp.

🚀 We don’t just talk strategy. We implement it — together.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

(BTW, we just reached 50,000 beautiful souls on How We Grow and to celebrate, my annual subscription is at 50% off - only until April 24 EOD. If you wanted in, this is your chance now)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe

Your Path to Multiple Income Streams Starts April 15th – Don’t Miss Out!

The bootcamp starts April 15th, and special pricing ends Wednesday, April 10th:

Regular price: $297 Special offer: $147 (50% off, ends April 10th)

Paid members: Just $97 (my thank you for supporting How We Grow) - check your access at the bottom of this email.

And if you're on the fence about becoming a paid member...

My annual membership is also 40% off until April 10th (just $106 instead of $177). Sign up for an annual membership and you'll get the bootcamp almost for free - just $97 instead of $297!

Is this really for you?

This bootcamp is perfect for you if:

* You've been putting off monetization because you're unsure when or how to start

* You want to build multiple income streams, not just rely on subscriptions

* You're tired of publishing great content that doesn't convert to income

* You want to shortcut your growth journey with proven strategies

* You're ready to transform your newsletter from hobby to business

If any of those sound like you, I'd love to see you in the bootcamp.

Time investment:

* 1.5 hours for 3 days - April 15-17

* Schedule: 10:30 am EST / 15:30 GMT every day. Here’s a time converter for you.

* You cannot make it live? No problem. All sessions will be recorded and you get access to replays + all toolkits shared

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit howwegrowtoday.substack.com/subscribe