Month: February 2026

I was asked this question at this Live by Ana Calin 🐝

Here was my response:

Before you think about a topic for your book, I ask my students to my students answer two questions:

1️⃣ What kind of business do I want to build?
2️⃣ Who do I want to serve, and what problem do I want to solve?

Once those two things are clear, everything else becomes obvious.

• The right book topic reveals itself
• The book naturally supports the business
• The business doesn’t feel forced or stitched on later

This is why Week 1 in my cohort, has nothing to do with writing.

We spend the entire week:
– Clarifying the business they want to build
– Identifying the audience they want to serve
– Pinpointing the problem they want to solve

Only then do we shape the book.

Listen to the full talk here:

I didn’t anticipate what was going to happen when I pivoted mid-December.

All through 2025, my focus was clear:
Help Substack writers grow their audience.
Then help them monetise.

Growth first. Money later.
That’s the model most of us are taught.

But as I worked more closely with writers,
a pattern became impossible to ignore.

Most weren’t stuck because they lacked consistency, intelligence, or effort.
They were missing two foundational ingredients:
– Authority.
– Strategy.

They were doing everything “right”:
– Publishing regularly
– Experimenting with formats
– Posting Notes
– Hosting Lives
– Collaborating
And yet…

Growth felt elusive.
Monetisation awkward.

Ideas were scattered across posts, offers, and experiments that didn’t connect.

That’s when it clicked.

You can’t sustainably grow or monetise a newsletter if you don’t know:
• what you want to be known for
• and where all this effort is actually leading

Without that, content becomes noise.
Offers feel forced.
And progress stays accidental.

So in 2026, I decided to address that gap head-on.

I stopped teaching growth tactics in isolation.
And started helping writers build one clear authority asset that anchors everything else.

If you’re writing consistently but still feel unclear about positioning, direction, or monetisation, that’s not a motivation problem.

It’s an authority problem.
Build authority first and then grow and monetise from a place of clarity.