She asked: have you set any goals for your Substack? Both monetary and not.

I loved this question. We talk about what we are building but not why. And the why is honestly the most important part.

So here is the honest answer.

the money goal

I want to make $10,000 a month. Recurring and expected.

I want to be specific about that phrase. There is a real difference between making $10k once and making $10k every single month in a way you can actually count on and plan around. One is a good month. The other is freedom.

That $10k is going to come from two places: Substack and YouTube Adsense. Not from constantly pushing products. Not from taking every brand deal that lands in my inbox. Not from saying things in a way that does not sound like me because a company paid me to.

I will do some brand deals. I already have one I genuinely love. But I want to be in a position where I can say no. Where a partnership is something I choose, not something I need. That only happens when the income I own is strong enough to carry me on its own.

Substack is a huge part of how I get there. And so is YouTube. Those two things together, built consistently over time, are the plan.

why this compounds over time

Here is something I did not fully understand until I started building this.

Most of my subscribers are choosing the annual plan. Which means they pay once upfront for the full year. At first that felt like a one-time sale, not recurring revenue.

But here is what actually happens. In year one I am collecting from new people joining. In year two I have new people joining AND people from year one renewing. In year three I have new people, year two renewals, and year one people who are still here. The income stacks on top of itself.

That is what I mean by recurring and expected. Not that every month looks the same, but that over time the floor keeps rising. You keep adding while also holding onto what you built.

I think of it like a slow compounding investment. Month one does not feel like much. Year three feels like everything.

I want to do this full time one day

I am a teacher. I genuinely love it. But I have been carrying two full lives for a while now and I want to get to a place where creating this content is my actual job. Not something I squeeze in between lesson plans and grading at 10pm.

The goal is not to quit dramatically. It is to build this slowly and steadily until the income from creating is stable enough that teaching becomes a choice. Maybe I still sub occasionally. Maybe I still step into a classroom sometimes because I want to. But I want options. Right now I do not have many.

I want to build a real community

Not just a following. A community.

People on GLP-1 medications who are doing this together. Women and men navigating the parts of this journey that nobody really talks about honestly. The stalls. The self doubt. The weird relationship with food that does not magically fix itself just because the number on the scale is going down. The feeling that you are doing everything right and still somehow falling behind.

I want this to feel like a group chat with people who get it. Not a clinical resource. Not a highlight reel. Just a real honest space where you do not have to explain yourself.

the question I sit with

What happens to this community when I am not in the messy middle anymore?

If things go the way I hope, in a couple of years I might be at or near my goal weight. I will not be in the thick of the struggle the way I am right now. And I have genuinely wondered whether that changes what I can offer. Whether my voice still means something when I am no longer actively figuring it out alongside everyone else.

Here is what I keep coming back to. I will always be on this journey. That does not end at a number on a scale.

GLP-1 medications are long term for most of us. Maintenance is its own chapter with its own challenges. The emotional side of this, the identity piece, the way your relationship with your body keeps evolving, none of that disappears when the weight does. And honestly, someone who has been through the hardest part and come out the other side might be exactly who you need when you are still in the middle of it.

I think about the people who helped me most on this journey. It was not always someone struggling the same way I was. Sometimes it was someone a few steps ahead who turned around and said, here is what I wish someone had told me.

That is the version of this I am building toward. Not a space where I am always the one who is lost. A space where I am always the one who is honest. Those are very different things.

where I actually am right now

47 days in. 47 paid subscribers. 1,371 people who found me organically and chose to stay. About $1,400 collected from writing about something I care about deeply, while teaching full time.

The $10,000 goal feels far from here. But $1,400 in 47 days from people on the internet who chose to pay for my writing is proof that this is real. That people value it enough to stay. That the community I want to build is already starting to form.

I am going to keep sharing the honest version of this as it grows. The good months and the slow ones. Because I think that is the whole point.

Thanks for the first question, Shelbi. Keep them coming.

Read other posts in this series: ALL POSTS

Not from my GLP-1 audience. From people who make content themselves. And they were all asking some version of the same thing.

Is Substack worth it? How are you getting paid subscribers so fast? How does any of this actually work?

Every time I answered someone individually I thought... this should just be a post.

So here we are.

what this is

I started my Substack on March 13th. It has been six weeks. I have figured out some things, gotten plenty of things wrong, changed my pricing three times, and learned way more about how this platform actually works than I expected to.

I am not an expert. I want to be really clear about that.

But I am someone who is doing it. Growing it. Figuring it out in real time while teaching full time and running a whole other brand. And I think watching someone work through something honestly is sometimes more useful than learning from someone who already has all the answers.

That is what Substack Bestiies is going to be. The behind-the-scenes of the actual build. The decisions. The numbers. The things I wish someone had told me. The things I am still working out.

the honest version of my head start

I want to be upfront about something.

I did not start from zero. I have an existing audience on Instagram and YouTube, and I brought a lot of them over. So yes, I had a head start that someone building completely from scratch does not have.

But here is what I did not realize until I was already in it: having followers does not automatically mean having paying subscribers. Those are two completely different things.

I still had to figure out what to offer. How to price it. How to write in a way that made people want to stay. How to convert someone who has been watching my reels for free into someone willing to pay every month. None of that came with my Instagram following. I had to work that out the same way anyone else would.

where I actually stand six weeks in

Here are the real numbers as of today. And I am going to explain them properly because if you are new to Substack, some of these terms might not mean anything to you yet.

imported vs organic: what that actually means

When you start a Substack, you have the option to import an existing email list. This could be from a previous newsletter, a website, a lead magnet, anywhere you have collected emails before.

I imported about 2,064 people from an old list when I launched. These are called imported subscribers.

Organic subscribers are completely different. These are people who discovered me on their own, through Instagram, YouTube, Substack Notes, or Substack’s own discovery features, and chose to subscribe. They raised their hand. They opted in on purpose.

Here is why that distinction matters so much.

Imported subscribers are cold. They did not necessarily sign up because they wanted a Substack newsletter from me specifically. Some of them joined an old email list years ago and have basically forgotten who I am. So when my emails started landing in their inbox, a lot of them unsubscribed. That is not a bad thing. It is just reality.

Organic subscribers are warm. They found me, they liked what they saw, and they chose to stay. These are the people who open emails. Who reply. Who eventually become paying subscribers.

When I launched, my subscriber breakdown looked like this: 91% imported, 9% organic. That means almost my entire list was cold. People who had not actively chosen me in this chapter.

Six weeks later, that breakdown has completely shifted. Today I am sitting at roughly 57% imported and 43% organic.

That shift is everything. It means my list is becoming mine. Real people who want to be here. And the more that percentage tips toward organic, the easier it becomes to convert free readers into paid subscribers, because you are talking to people who are already interested.

the actual numbers

Total subscribers: 2,933. But now you know why that number alone does not tell the whole story.

Organic subscribers: 1,288. Built in six weeks. Growing at roughly 30 new people per day.

Paid subscribers: 35. Most chose the annual plan at my launch pricing. A handful are monthly. One person joined as an Inner Circle founding member (which I do not offer right now, and we can talk about that in a future article.)

Conversion rate on my organic audience: about 2.7%. Meaning roughly 3 out of every 100 people who organically subscribe eventually become paying subscribers. That is a healthy number for six weeks in.

Revenue collected so far: just under $900. From writing. In six weeks. While teaching full time.

I am sharing all of this because I would have wanted someone to show me real numbers instead of vague inspiration. So there they are.

what I want from you

I want this to be a conversation.

Drop your questions in the comments. What do you actually want to know? What feels confusing or overwhelming about Substack right now? Your questions are going to become the posts. And eventually the answers we build together become something we can hand to the next person standing exactly where you are, trying to figure out if any of this is worth it.

(Spoiler: it is. But let’s talk about why.)

Ask me anything.

xo, Nyk