yes, I have goals. let’s talk about them.

Substack Bestiies: answering your first question

The first comment on my first post came from Shelbi over at The Thinner Side.

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

People keep asking, so I’m going to start talking about it