823 paid subscribers.
My first $20K month in May. $19K last month.
All on the side of my 9-5.
I built it from scratch. No external audience or social media following (like most big newsletters here).
I made this happen with just 3 income streams, and they’re all simple: paid subscriptions, courses, coaching.
Today I figured out the one thing that made all of it work.
It’s probably the opposite of what you’d expect.
The one thing that made this work
I started all of this out of curiosity.
Yes, that’s it!
I had one question in my mind. All of the time.
Can I actually build my own business?
I wasn’t chasing income. I wasn’t planning my escape from my corporate job. I just wanted to know if I could pull it off.
Because I was chasing money and fast results for more than 15 years before I came to Substack. I’ve tried everything you can think of to make money online.
Nothing ever worked. And it never will if you approach it with the wrong mindset.
So with Substack I changed my approach.
I ran it as a series of tiny experiments.
Experiment 1:
I started a paid newsletter to see if I could become a bestseller fast.
I did. It took about 3 months. I wrote how I did it here:
Back then I was getting 30 paid subscribers per month.
Today I get 100+ and I kept pretty much everything the same. Just built on top of the foundations I’ve build when I launched it.
And it works because people achieve great results with my strategies and my AI tools, here’s proof.
Experiment 2:
Then I built my courses to see if I could design a format that actually helps people, not one that just fills a curriculum.
Not another mega course that no one touches after purchase.
I wanted something different.
And so I did. I poured all of my 15+ years of experience building and selling subscriptions in my 9-5 into something I called the SUBSTACK QUEST.
That’s what I used to grow my newsletter, but I wasn’t sure if people can replicate it to other niches.
They could.
People love the QUEST.
I’ve watched it work for wellness writers, finance writers, people writing about parenting and productivity and grief.
Having someone finish it and change how they run their whole newsletter is still my favorite part of this.
Here’s where to start your QUEST if you haven’t already:
Experiment 3:
Then I started coaching to see if I could help people who needed to skip the learning curve replicate my model.
I didn’t want to just talk to people on meetings. I didn’t want to sell “access” to me. I didn’t want a “cohort” that scales my money, but people feel lost and unseen because half of what they get is not relevant to them.
This is not helpful enough, not for my standards.
I wanted to actually help people get results faster.
And so I did.
I created a program that focuses on results. And it worked.
Every “a-ha” moment I see during these meetings brings me infinite joy. Every milestone brings me proof.
Here’s where you can book me for a free call to talk about my program:
The part nobody screenshots
People think it was easy for me to build because I already knew how from my 9-5. That’s true, but it wasn’t easy, it was simple.
Building this on the side of a demanding corporate job?
I felt exhausted. I still do some weeks.
I wanted to quit more than once, and there was one point where I almost did.
Because it’s f*cking hard.
Even though I built a system in with QUEST and my AI tools and automations, which you can support in just 2 hours a day.
My curiosity and probably my ambition carried me through those weeks in a way money never would have.
I’m writing this in my early morning, because I felt exhausted to write it yesterday. but it doesn’t matter. The point is that I write it.
If I’d been doing this only for the income, I’d have burned out and blamed everything.
And I still see people give up because they see no results.
So I write this to tell you I see you. I was there too. It won’t work immediately, but it will work if you just do the work that needs to be done.
The only competitor that ever mattered
There’s one more thing I most want you to take with you.
The whole time, I thought I was competing in a crowded space. Thousands of newsletters. Bigger names. Better numbers. Faster growers.
Truth is I wasn’t. The only person I was ever competing with was me. The version of me who almost quit. The one who was tired and wanted to stop refreshing the stats. Every month, the job was simply to beat her. Not the big accounts. Her.
And I’m confident it’ll be like that going forward too.
So if you’re just starting out on Substack and you’re scanning the leaderboard feeling small: look in the mirror instead. That’s your competition.
Yana
P.S. If you want to skip the Substack learning curve, this is where to start.
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Congrats on all your success, Yana! You are an inspiration. I'm always amazed by the things you are able to accomplish.
Yana you continue to amaze me. Whenever I wonder what to do next, I I circle back to your writing and read it again. You remind me to stop trying to complicate it. I so appreciate that