You built the thing. You launched. You waited.

Nothing.

A silence so complete it feels personal. It’s like the internet looked at what you made, shrugged, and went back to watching someone else’s content.

No one tells you that the launch is not a discovery event. It never was.

The idea that you build something, announce it to the world, and watch the world show up is a myth. It has everything to do with survivorship bias, because the people whose launch everyone envies had an existing audience. They are the survivors.

They delivered three years of consistent output that preceded their overnight success. Everyone just sees the success and says, ‘I could do that.’

So let’s talk about what discovery actually is, because it’s not an event. It’s a system. And right now, you probably don’t have one.

The attention problem is a volume problem first

Your instinct when nobody’s watching is to make the thing better. Polish the website. Refine the offer. Rewrite the about page. This feels productive because it’s within your control, but it’s displacement activity. The market can’t tell you your offer is weak if the market doesn’t know the offer exists.

Before you fix the thing, you need enough people to see the thing. That’s not a quality problem yet. That’s a distribution problem.

Attention, in practical terms, means one thing: showing up in places where your specific reader already spends time, repeatedly, with something worth reading. That’s the whole formula. There’s no shortcut buried in it.

The ‘specific reader’ part matters more than most people realise. If you write for everyone, you write for no one. The founder who’s Googling ‘why is my cash flow broken’ at 2am is a specific human with a specific problem. Write for her. Write like you know exactly what her sleepless night feels like. Broad topics attract broad audiences; broad audiences don’t convert.

Consistency is the mechanism, not the goal

Most people treat consistency as a character virtue: either you have the discipline, or you don’t.

But that’s the wrong frame entirely.

Consistency is a compounding problem, not a willpower problem.

One article does almost nothing. Ten articles do a little. Fifty articles, published over twelve months in the same place on the same topic, build something that search engines index, that readers reference, that other writers link to. The fifty-first article gets seen by more people than the first ten combined because the infrastructure around it is bigger.

But it can’t be consistency, full stop. There must be substance. Consistency without substance is noise. The internet is drowning in content. What it’s starving for is ‘idea density,’ the ability to pack a short piece of writing with so much signal that the reader finishes it and thinks ‘I wish I’d written that.’ That’s the bar. You have to ask yourself, ‘did I give someone an idea they’ll still be thinking about on Friday?’

You find idea density at the intersection of two things: problems your reader genuinely has right now, and ideas you actually find interesting. If you’re writing about something that bores you, the reader feels it. If you’re writing about something you love but nobody cares about, that’s journaling, not publishing. The overlap between those two circles is where the good stuff lives.

The discipline question is irrelevant. The real question is, ‘have I built a publishing system I can maintain when I’m tired, busy, or uninspired?’ Because a mediocre article published on a bad day beats a perfect article that never gets written. Every time.

The channel decision is where most people get stuck

Being everywhere is how you burn out without building anything. So don’t be everywhere. Pick your place and go deep.

Choosing a channel is about understanding what kind of creator you’re trying to be, and what kind of work compounds over time.

Dan Koe draws a distinction that’s worth thinking about. Level 1 creators chase trends and virality. They’re optimising for reach, for numbers, for the dopamine hit of a post that blows up. Level 2 creators, the ones he calls ‘brilliant nobodies,’ have real ideas and genuine depth, but they refuse to learn distribution because they think marketing is beneath them. So they stay invisible. Level 3 is where you want to be: a creator whose every piece of content connects back to a central mission. Every article, every post, every short-form fragment points toward the same north star. Readers don’t just consume the individual piece; they start to follow the thread.

That throughline is what makes a channel choice matter. Pick one primary platform and treat it like your job. One place where your reader actually lives, where you can publish consistently, and where the content has some shelf life. Social media posts evaporate in hours. Long-form articles on Substack or a well-maintained blog compound over months. The effort you put into a good piece in January can still find readers in October.

Your secondary channel should amplify the primary, not replace it; a thread on X linking back to the full piece, a LinkedIn post excerpting the key idea.

The mechanics are simple. Write the thing, publish it in your primary place, share a piece of it somewhere else, then repeat.

Do this every week for six months before you decide it’s not working.

Six months is the minimum viable commitment

If you quit at week eight because the numbers are small, you’ve paid the full cost of starting but collected none of the return. The founders who get traction are not smarter or better writers. They’re just still in the room at month seven.

Think of the writers you were watching when you started. Half of them have gone quiet. Not because they failed publicly. They just stopped showing up one week and never came back. Nobody announced it. The feed just moved on.

The audience you want to reach has been burned before by people who showed up for a few weeks and disappeared. Don’t be another one. Trust is built by simply not quitting. Every time you publish when it would be easier not to, you’re making a deposit into a trust account that pays out later, slowly at first, then all at once.

Nobody knows you exist yet. That’s not a verdict. That’s just where you are in the timeline.

Build the system. Keep going.

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The Invisible 37%: the prospects who enquired, took your time, and then drifted back into research mode because life got in the way. They’re a leak in your business, and you already paid for their attention. Stop chasing new clicks and start a low-friction conversation with the gold mine you already own.

Most business owners are addicted to the hunt.

They wake up thinking about the ‘New.’ New clicks. New enquiries. New ‘Buy Now’ customers.

They pour thousands into Google Ads and LinkedIn campaigns, and fight a bloody war for the top 3% of the market.

According to Sabri Suby’s Larger Market Formula1 at any given moment only 3% of your market is ready to buy. And they will buy, because you and every of of your competitors is chasing them

The other 97%? Dismissed as ‘junk,’ ‘tyre-kickers,’ or ‘lost deals.’

But there’s a segment within that 97% that represents the single biggest leak in your business.

It’s the Invisible 37%. This graphic, page 78 of Suby’s book, explains it:

Do you see where the 37% is?

37% Didn’t Just Disappear, They Moved

The Invisible 37% holds two groups:

• Information Gathering (17%)

• Problem Aware (20%).

Six months ago, these people were in your top 3%. They enquired. They downloaded your lead magnet. They sat through a discovery call. You prepared (and they received) the proposal.

Then, life happened. A budget got cut, a project got delayed, or a competitor’s shiny ad distracted them.

You marked the deal ‘Lost’ and moved on.

But they didn’t stop having the problem. They just moved back down the pyramid. They’re still researching. They still need help. They sit there forlornly, a record in your CRM, waiting for a human to tap them on the shoulder. If you aren’t that human, you’re just warming them up for your competitors to close later.

The Marketing Black Hole

Why do we ignore the 37%? Because there’s always more new leads coming in. Because the salesperson got told ‘no’ the first time, and doesn’t want to beg another call.

But the math doesn’t add up. The Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) for that top 3% is skyrocketing. You are outbidding everyone in your industry for the same tiny slice of the pie, and it’s a race to the bottom for you all.

Meanwhile, you’ve already paid to find the 37%. You paid for the click. You paid for the lead capture. You paid for the initial sales person’s time.

Ignoring these leads is like buying a gold mine, digging halfway, and walking away because you didn’t find a nugget in the first 10 minutes.

Educate Me

In his book, Suby talks about the need to ‘educate’ the middle of the pyramid. Marketing agencies position this as ‘send them a 40-page whitepaper or a fancy glossy newsletter.’ Which, of course, they’re happy to produce for you.

Wrong.

The 37% don’t want more content.

They want a conversation.

They want a low-friction way to figure out if what you’re offering is what they want.

They want to take their time before they spend their hard-earned cash.

You want the sale. The prospect says, ‘Not yet.’ Your salesperson hears, ‘No,’ and moves on to the next prospect.

Sales process done, lead marked ‘Lost.’

But it’s not always lost. For whatever reason, the timing wasn’t right. Or some higher-priority thing came up. Or they didn’t trust your salesperson. Or - and this is common - they just wanted a bit more time to think things through.

Re-engage

Even if it’s been months, you can easily and respectfully re-engage with your once-warm prospects.

It’s all about putting the sales pitch to one side and simply asking if they’re still interested.

The smart tool is a simple, plain-text question that looks like it came from a human on your team:

‘Hey [Name], I’m cleaning up my files and your name came up. Are you still looking for help with [X]?’

That’s not salesy. It’s respectful. It’s courteous.

For the person who’s been vacillating in the ‘Information Gathering’ (17%) or the ‘Problem Aware’ (20%) phases for six months, it’s the bridge they need to move up to the ‘Buy Now’ (3%).

This Is Real

Your abandoned leads list is an asset. Like any asset, it decays if it isn’t maintained.

Data rots. Domains get weak. Relationships go cold.

Your list of 1,000 dormant leads holds value. There’s statistical certainty of found revenue. Even if 75% are truly gone, the remaining 25% represents weeks or months of sales.

You paid to get those names on your radar. The 3% will come your way regardless, but that 37% represents a bumper harvest.

You’re nursing a flat white you can’t afford while your Stripe notifications stay silent. You call yourself a founder but you’re really a hobbyist with dreams and an ego.

I worked with a bloke who arrived in Australia with his family, a pair of shoes, and a shirt that had seen better days. He didn’t spend his time building a personal brand or worrying about his aesthetic. He begged his fortnightly pay in advance so his family could eat. He looked desperate because he was desperate. Today, he owns his home in a leafy Sydney suburb and sleeps like a baby while you lie awake wondering how to pay for LinkedIn Premium.

This is the lesson: The difference between a successful new business and a dying dream is the amount of shame the owner is willing to swallow.

During the early formative months, consider the ancient art of bartering.

Bartering is the oldest trick in the book because it works. It worked before the Lydian Empire invented money, and it will work when we create money’s replacement.

Maybe you think you’re above bartering. It spoils your flex and anyway, trading your valuable skill for a bit of plumbing or free office space is beneath your ‘professional’ standing.

Pride is a parasite. It eats your potential and hollows your bank account. Real entrepreneurs don’t wait for a line of credit; they chat to the person behind them in the coffee line and find out what they need.

If you have no cash, you have time. If you have time, you have a service. Bartering is a cheat code because it bypasses the tax man and the banking system entirely. Bartering your time or expertise is a skill that no one can take from you. It works for people who actually want to survive, but it takes guts to get over yourself,

Ask everyone for help until they either give you a roadmap or the finger. Shame is a luxury you can’t afford when the rent is due and your sales are zero.

If you can’t trade a bit of your expertise for a bag of groceries, then your expertise isn’t worth nearly as much as you tell yourself it is. Stop acting like a success and start doing what is necessary to become one.

You're frustrated. Because the topic area that fires you up, that you want to write about, it's more crowded than Hyde Park on a sunny day.

You think the noise is overwhelming. You think you need a Marshall stack at 11 to get heard over the clamour of a thousand other creators, all hawking the same generic dream.

Wrong.

A crowded market is not a threat, it's a signal. The smart crowd knows how to turn that signal into useful information.

They take that silver-plattered dataset and pull it apart. It tells them exactly where the money is hiding and how everyone else is failing to grab it.

The not-so-smart (or the brave, or the foolish) look for a space where the competition is minimal or non-existent. Well, there's nothing new under the sun, folks.

All they've found is a ghost town where nobody else is selling. It's very likely a place where great intentions are converted into a graveyard of failed ideas.

Look for the unfulfilled gaps and leave the blue oceans for others. Saturation provides a complete map of competitor behaviour. Most people see 10,000 rivals and try to be 5% better or $10 cheaper.

That is a slow death. A race to the bottom that no one wins.

Instead, look for the one thing they all refuse to do or fail to recognise. There's always something to uncover.

When the entire industry moves in a single direction, they leave a vacuum in the opposite direction. Your job is to fill that vacuum with something that makes their offerings look like last week's lunch.

High-end example: Peter Steinberger created OpenClaw in November 2025. In February 2026 it was 'acquired' by OpenAI. Some sources suggest the deal for Steinberger was in the range of $2-15 million.

Check out some of the players in your field. You won't have to look far to find short, low-value videos designed to bait eager n00bs into some rehashed, mediocre $300 course.

It's a tired, transparent trope. Everyone hates it, but they do it over and over because they lack the imagination to move beyond the crowd.

Don't be one of them, please.

If you want to win, give the entire course away for free. No email gates, no hoops, just 6 hours of raw, unfiltered value sitting on a public platform.

Top-of-head examples: Anything from Alex Hormozi. Caleb Ralston's personal brand video:

These two guys know their stuff. It's a clever highjack that builds an audience of thousands while their competitors try to guide jaded leads towards upsell after upsell.

Don't overthink.

Get a piece of paper.

On one side, write down just 3 things your competitors do that make your skin crawl. On the other side, write the exact opposite.

Then figure out how to make the opposite real.

If they spout premium and exclusive, be gritty, informal, and accessible.

If they post high-production-value AI videos, use your iPhone and record yourself in your car.

This is your unique space. It stops the drift towards the boring middle ground where brands go to be ignored. It gives you permission to be the loudest, weirdest person in the room.

A simple system for publishing content when you couldn’t be jagged to produce anything. No inspiration required. Just the specific steps that work when your brain is offline and you still need to hit send.

You wake up and the idea of writing anything makes you want to throw your laptop into the ocean.

Maybe you’re sick. Maybe your relationship just imploded. Maybe you’re just empty and you don’t know why. Doesn’t matter. Your newsletter goes out Thursday and it’s Tuesday night and you’ve got nothing.

Here’s something to ponder. Inspiration is for people who don’t have bills to pay.

Professionals don’t wait for the muse. Professionals have a protocol for days when their brain refuses to cooperate. This is mine. You can steal it.

The truth about publishing when you’re broken

I’m not going to tell you to take a walk or practice gratitude or journal about your feelings. You can do that on Friday when the work is done.

Right now you need to publish something. Not your best work. Not work you’re proud of. Just work that exists and meets a standard you can live with and your audience expects.

The protocol I’m about to give you produces mediocre content. That’s the point.

Mediocre content published on schedule beats brilliant content that never ships.

Your audience doesn’t need your masterpiece this week. They need to know you’re still alive and still showing up.

You can write something good next week when your brain works again.

Step #1: Open the emergency file

You should already have this file. If you don’t, make it now before you need it.

Call it ‘Emergency Content Bank’ or ‘Brain Dead Archive’ or whatever keeps you from opening it when you’re feeling good. This file is not for your best ideas. This file is for the ideas you can execute when you’re at 30% capacity.

Here’s what goes in it:

• A list of 10 questions your audience asks repeatedly. Not interesting questions. Obvious questions’ ‘How do I start?,’ ‘What if I’m scared?,’ ‘Is this normal?’ The questions you’ve answered so many times you could do it drunk.

• A list of 5 formats that require no original thinking. List posts. FAQ compilations. Myth-busting articles. ‘Here’s what I learned this week’ roundups. Templates you can fill in like a form.

• 3 screenshots or saved articles that made you angry or confused in the last month. You don’t need to know why they’re wrong yet. You just need raw material.

If your emergency file is empty right now, take twenty minutes to fill it. Do it while you still have some brain function left. You can’t build a lifeboat while you’re drowning.

Step #2: Pick the path of least resistance

Look at your emergency file. Which item makes your stomach churn the least?

Not excitement. Not inspiration. Just the absence of nausea when you think about writing it.

That’s your topic.

Don’t try to write something good. Try to write something that won’t make you close your laptop, pick up your phone, and doomscroll for three hours.

Pick the easiest question. Pick the simplest format. Pick the screenshot that requires the smallest amount of analysis. Whatever.

Set the bar so low that even your current broken brain can step over it.

Step #3: Use the template

Here’s a structure that’s a whole lot better than a blank page. Not wondrous, but it works.

Opening (50-75 words): State the problem in one sentence. Add one concrete example of what this problem looks like in real life. That’s it. No setup, no throat-clearing, no building tension. You don’t have the energy for that today.

Middle (400-600 words): Answer the question or explain the concept. Use the simplest language you can. Pretend you’re explaining it to someone who just asked you at a bar. Even better, ELI5 (explain like I’m 5). No metaphors. No clever transitions. No fancy words. Just information in the order it needs to be said.

If you’re stuck, try this framing:

• Here’s what most people think.

• Here’s what’s actually true.

• Here’s why the difference matters.

• Here’s what to do about it.

Four paragraphs. One point per paragraph. Connect them with ‘but,’ or ‘so,’ or ‘this means.’ Surely you can handle that?

Ending (50-75 words): Restate the main point in different words. Then stop typing.

Don’t write a conclusion that ties everything together. Don’t end with an inspiring call to action. Don’t try to drop something profound. Just stop when you’ve said what you came to say.

Step #4: Add a disclaimer then send it

At the bottom of your post, add this, ‘I wrote this while running on empty. If it helps, good. If it doesn’t, there’s always next week.’

Or some version, in your voice. Give yourself permission to publish something imperfect. And give your audience permission to skip this one if they want.

Some won’t skip it. Some appreciate the honesty. Because some are also running on empty when they read your work. Everyone has days like these.

Send it before you talk yourself out of it.

What this protocol does

This protocol says nothing about producing amazing content. Nope. It’s about keeping your publishing streak going when you don’t feel like it..

Streaks matter. Not because consistency is a virtue, but because stopping is dangerous.

If you skip one week, skipping two weeks gets easier. Skip three and you’ve trained yourself that publishing is optional. Skip a month and you’re not a creator anymore.

The protocol keeps you in the game on days when you can’t play well. It keeps your name in your audience’s inbox. It keeps your muscle memory intact so when your brain comes online, you don’t have to rebuild momentum from zero.

You will publish mediocre work using this system. You should publish mediocre work. Mediocre work published is better than brilliant work-in-progress.

Besides, no one expects you to hit it out of the park with every article you publish.

Inspiration comes from doing the work, not before it. Write your way into clarity. Don’t wait for clarity before you write. That rarely happens.

Try it next time

I’m sorta hoping you’re reading this article on a good day, good enough to get step #1 under your belt.

Because sooner or later you’ll have bad day. A bad week. A period when everything feels pointless and you can’t remember why you started this in the first place.

Happens to us all.

So open the emergency file. Pick an easy option. Follow the template. Add the disclaimer. Hit send.

Then go do whatever you need to do to improve your day.

You’re $3k short for Monday’s payroll. Here’s what to do this weekend to survive without losing your team or facing legal action. Not theory. Survival.

You check your bank balance Thursday afternoon and your gut hurts. Payroll processes overnight Monday. You’re three grand short. Maybe more.

This is not the time for a business pivot.

This is not the time to reassess your pricing strategy or read another chapter of that book about cash flow management you bought six months ago.

You need to move money, now, and you need to do it without torpedoing your business in the process.

Here’s what works when you’re staring down a payroll shortfall.

Stop lying to yourself about the timeline

You don’t have a week. You don’t have five business days. You have Friday, the weekend, maybe Monday if you’re lucky.

Sit down. Open your banking app. Write down the exact number. Not the rough estimate. Not ‘around three thousand.’ The actual shortfall to the dollar.

Now write down when the money needs to clear. Not when payroll gets processed. When it needs to be sitting in your account, cleared and ready. If you use a payroll service, that’s probably Monday midday. If you do manual transfers, you have until Monday close of business.

The number and the deadline. That’s your entire world for the next 72 hours.

Rank your payment obligations by legal consequence

Not all debts are equal when you’re in crisis mode.

Wages are non-negotiable. The Fair Work Ombudsman does not care about your cash flow problems. Pay your employees late and you’re opening yourself to legal action that will cost you more than the shortfall. Employees can and will report you. The FWO moves fast on wage theft claims.

Superannuation comes second. Yes, it’s legally required. Yes, the ATO will eventually come for you if you don’t pay it. But you have more runway before they notice. The quarterly1 super deadline gives you breathing room that weekly or fortnightly wages don’t.

Everything else - suppliers, contractors, your own drawings - comes after that. You negotiate with suppliers. You delay contractor payments. You skip paying yourself. You can’t skip paying wages without risking everything.

This isn’t how to run your business long-term. This is triage. You stop bleeding first, then you bandage the wound.

Call the people who matter before they call you

If you’re going to be late, tell your employees now.

Not Sunday night. Not Tuesday morning when the money doesn’t hit. Now.

The message is simple, ‘Payroll will be 48 hours late. The money will be in your account by Wednesday morning. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.’

That’s it. No long explanation about client payments falling through. No justification about how tough the market is. No promises that this will never happen again.

You’re giving them information they need to plan their week. Some of them have rent, mortgage, or loan payments due. Some of them have direct debits set up. They need to know now so they can move their own money around, call their bank, adjust their own plans.

Transparency here buys you something valuable: the chance to keep your team. If someone’s first indication that you can’t make payroll is when their account sits empty on Tuesday, they’re updating their resume by Wednesday. If you tell them early, with a clear timeline, some of them will stick around.

Some won’t. That’s the cost of running out of cash.

Liquidate whatever you can liquidate today

That invoice you were going to chase next week? You’re chasing it today.

Call the client. Not email. Call, ‘I need to reconcile my accounts before end of week. Can you process that invoice today?’ Most clients can push through an early payment if you ask directly. Some will say no. Ask anyway.

That equipment sitting in your office that you’ve been meaning to sell? Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, whatever. Price it below market value. You need cash today, not top dollar next month.

Your personal savings account? Yes, that too. I know you’ve kept business and personal separate. I know you’ve been disciplined about not mixing the two. Break that rule now, fix your systems later. Loan your business the money. Document it properly so you can pay yourself back. But get the cash moved today.

This is the uncomfortable part. You’re going to feel desperate doing this. You should feel desperate. You are desperate. Desperation focuses the mind.

Sell what you can sell. Call in what you can call in. Move what you can move. The goal is to close that three thousand dollar gap before Monday lunchtime.

Build a system that stops this happening again

You’ll survive this week. Most people do.

Then you need to make sure you never have this weekend again.

Open a separate bank account on Tuesday. Figure out, on average, what % of your gross expenses (including cost of goods sold, if you have those) is payroll and superannuation. Call it your payroll account. If you don’t know, start with a figure like 30%.

Every dollar that comes into your business from this day forward, 30% goes into that account immediately. Before you pay suppliers. Before you pay yourself. Before you do anything.

Treat that money as already spent. Because it is. It’s your employees’ money, you’re just holding it until payday.

This is not sophisticated financial planning and definitely not optimal cash flow management. This is the system that keeps you out of Fair Work trouble and keeps your employees from walking out.

If the income doesn’t cover all your expenses including payroll, your business has a revenue problem not a cash flow problem. But that’s a different article.

Right now, you have a weekend to find three thousand dollars. Start making calls.

There’s a special shade of orange Substack uses for its growth charts.

Do you know it?

It’s a bright, optimistic, happy colour, and it’s been artfully designed to trigger the same receptors in your brain as a slot machine. You open your dashboard, you see the line going up and to the right, and you feel, well, validated.

You think, ‘It’s working. I’m making it.’

Then you tab over to your banking app, and it’s not so much fun anymore.

The orange line says you are a media mogul. The bank balance says you are unemployed.

This cognitive dissonance, the gap between Audience and Income, is where most creators die. They starve to death while standing on a stage, receiving a standing ovation from people who haven’t paid anything to be there.

Let’s break the spell of the dashboard.

Let’s stop looking at the subscriber count as a score and start looking at it for what it actually is. A liability.

The liability of free subscribers

This runs counter to everything the Growth Gurus chirp endlessly at you on X. They tell you to ‘build the list.’ They tell you ‘attention is the new oil.’

They’re lying.

Attention is not oil. Attention is a fire hazard.

A free subscriber is not a customer. A free subscriber is a stranger who’s vaguely agreed, some time in the past, to let you shout at them once a week.

In exchange for this permission, you incur Audience Debt. You feel the pressure to perform. You spend hours writing, editing, and formatting to keep them entertained. You worry about your open rates. You censor your more radical ideas because you don’t want anyone to unsubscribe.

You’re working for them. But they’re not paying you, and likely never will.

If you have 10,000 free subscribers and zero revenue, you don’t have a business. You have a very loud, very demanding volunteer job. You’re running a charity for doomscrollers with internet access and time on their hands.

The maths of the ‘starving viral’

Let’s look at two hypothetical creators.

Creator A writes about ‘The Future of Work.’ They write sweeping, philosophical threads that get retweeted by venture capitalists. They have 25,000 subscribers. Their Revenue Per Subscriber is $0.00. They pay their rent by dipping into savings and telling their parents that ‘big things are coming.’

Creator B writes about ‘HVAC Repair for Small Business Owners.’ Their writing is dry. It has typos and is formatted like a dog’s breakfast. They have 400 subscribers, 85% of them from the northern hemisphere where people have winters. They sell a $50 PDF called ‘The Winterisation Checklist.’ 10% of their list buys it every November. They make $2,000 in a weekend.

Creator A is famous.

Creator B is solvent.

Which one do you want to be on the 15th of the month?

The internet is piling up Creator A corpses. They die chasing vanity metrics. They optimise for width (how many people see me?) instead of depth (how many people trust me enough to whip out a credit card?). They build a massive machine that consumes energy but produces nothing but noise.

They would make more money refilling greengrocer shelves at night (maybe they do, to make ends meet).

So…

Stop building a media company and start building a shop

This is The Banana Stand.

The name may be a dated meme, but the philosophy behind it is dead serious. We’re not here to fuck spiders. We’re not here to ‘express our inner truth’ (save that for your gratitude journal).

We’re here to run a shop.

A greengrocer doesn’t care if 10,000 people walk past the window and give a thumbs up. The greengrocer cares a lot about the three people who walked in and bought bananas.

This thinking demands a fundamental shift in your priorities. And in the process, forgetting most of the Growth Guru kruft you’ve been fed for years.

Stop obsessing over your headlines and start obsessing over your offer.

Stop checking your Growth and start checking your Conversions.

If you posted an article today and nobody bought anything, you did all that work for free. Return on Investment equals zero. That’s bad business in anyone’s terms.

The occasional misfire is fine. I get that. If nothing else, they build goodwill. Doing it every week is suicide.

The month of death

Here is the only metric that really matters. You won’t find it on your Substack dashboard.

When do you run out of money?

I don’t mean a vague sense of ‘I have a few months.’ I mean a specific month. October. January. December. Or best of all, never.

If you don’t know the month, it’s like flying a plane with the fuel gauge taped over because looking at it makes you anxious.

This is truth. You can’t fix a situation you haven’t quantified with cold hard data.

Most creators hide from this number. They treat their finances like a magical mystery box. They hope that if they just write one more viral post, the money will somehow manifest.

But hope is not a strategy. Hope is an opiate.

Wake up.

Look at the numbers, as ugly as they may be.

Know exactly how much your Tax Drag is (the money you owe the government that sits in your account pretending to be yours).

Calculate your True Hourly Wage to know if all your vaunted expertise earns you less than a street cleaner.

Look, these figures may be awesome. You could be making serious bank. Or not. If nothing else, knowing these numbers helps you find and focus on the areas of your business that give the best return on your time.

The ask

I’m not going to ask you to share this article. Exposure doesn’t pay my bills, and it doesn’t pay yours.

I’m going to ask you to audit yourself.

Look at your last five emails. Did you ask for the sale? Did you offer a solution to a painful problem, or did you just offer ‘content’?

If you’re tired of guessing, I built a tool for this. It’s not pretty. It’s a Google spreadsheet.

It asks you to input your cash, your revenue, your burn rate, and your taxes. It spits out your Month of Death in bright red text.

It costs AU$36 (inc GST).

That’s the price of four lattes and a croissant to share.

Or, it’s the price of sleeping through the night because you finally know exactly where you stand.

GET THE CASH FLOW WORKSHEET

Welcome to your Banana Stand. Get back control of your cash.

You, me, everyone - we all have a ‘banana stand.’ It’s not fancy, or unique, and it’s unlikely to put a dent in the world. But it’s your dream business. The problem, though, is that your personal banana stand isn’t quite finished yet. It’s just limping along, not growing, not shrinking, just somewhere in between. You’re confused, frustrated and angry, and you’re not sure where to go from here.

But how do you turn a not-quite-ready dream business into a real, revenue-generating powerhouse?

By taking advice from someone who’s been where you are now, figured it out, and decided to share every step of it. In this Substack newsletter, The Banana Stand.

I’m Mark, the founder of The Banana Stand. I have 40 years of business experience behind me and I know the patterns and pace of good business practice. I started The Banana Stand to help you turn your would-be-killer business into a true income-producing asset. Through the articles you read right here and the occasional, low-cost PDF - I guide you towards the the skills, systems and proven practices that turn your dream business into a real one.

The Banana Stand is for you whether your business is a one-person digital-nomad operation, a book, blog or newsletter, an ecommerce store, or a bricks-and-mortar shopfront.

Free subscribers get access to every article when it’s first published. One sharp article every Sunday, something you can actually use before the week is out.

Paid subscribers get full access to a growing archive of past Banana Stand articles, so you can dive deep on any problem, anytime. Plus, paid subscribers receive a standing 100% discount on all PDF guides.

Founder subscribers have all of this plus direct, founder-only email access to me personally so you get direct, personal answers when you need them most.

‘No,’ you say. ‘I never sold a banana in my life. Never want to.’

It’s a metaphor, tally man. Your Banana Stand is the dream, the idea, the project you never started. Or if you did, you did a half-arsed job and let it go stale.

Your Banana Stand was something that excited you enough to spend time and resources to make it real. And along the way, you lost the excitement.

Your Banana Stand now slumps sadly in some dusty Internet corner. It’s alive still, but it’s in a weird half-life funk. Somewhere between ‘done’ and ‘not done.’

You’re not sure you can muster enough enthusiasm to move it forward. You’re not sure you want to let it go. And so it goes, day after day. No progress, no closure, nothing.

We all have Banana Stands like this. Me, you, everyone you know. Most of us keep it secret because we’re afraid of letting people know about it. Afraid of what people may think of it. Or think how dumb you are.

But most of all, we’re afraid of starting it and failing. If it never starts, it can never fail, right?

Maybe now is a good time to brave up and dust yours off. Time to tally your bananas.

Banana Stands are everywhere

• Book manuscripts never completed.

• Blogs and newsletters abandoned by the million.

• Ecommerce stores that never booked a sale.

• Software projects that never made it to version 1.0.

• Subscriptions rarely used.

• Training courses never completed nor lessons applied.

Enough.

This newsletter is my Banana Stand

I’m Mark. I started this newsletter and named it The Banana Stand. I know how it feels to start something and never see it done. More than once. And this one, I want to see done.

The Banana Stand is a newsletter-centric business. Which means I’m transforming it from a casual hobby into a real, revenue generating business centered around this newsletter.

The casual hobby started on Substack in October 2024. Then life got in the way and it went into hiatus.

So now, I’m breathing life back into it. Right here, on Substack, in public. I plan to use every technique I’ve learned to make it succeed. To turn it into a newsletter-centric business. Structured to be most useful to creators like you.

This is my Banana Stand. What’s yours?

What she said. It’s true.

Welcome to the back office

If you’re new here, know this: scrolling through the feed is inefficient. You’ll find random articles about burnout mixed with technical guides on tax tactics. That’s a bad way to learn.

Your personal Banana Stand should follow a specific sequence if you intend it to be revenue-generating. You can’t optimise a business that doesn’t exist. You can’t scale a business that’s bleeding cash.

Follow this order

Phase 1: The Mindset (read these first)

Before you touch a spreadsheet, you need to kill your ego. These essays explain why your subscriber count is a trap and why we prioritize boring cash over exciting viral hits.

1. Your Subscriber Count Is A Vanity Metric

   • The premise: Why we treat subscribers as liabilities until they become customers.

   • Coming Wednesday, January 7, 0100 UTC.

2. Anatomy Of A $1,000 Mistake

   • The premise: I set money on fire so you don’t have to. A look at the Laundromat philosophy of newsletters.

   • Coming Wednesday, January 14, 0100 UTC.

Phase 2: The Infrastructure (Plumbing)

Once you accept that you’re a business, you need the tools to act like one. Don’t write another word until these systems are active.

1. The ‘Dead Inside’ Protocol

   • The system: How to ship content when you hate writing.

   • Coming Wednesday, January 21, 0100 UTC.

2. The 10-Point Cash Flow Audit (AU$12 or free for you)

   • What this is: A brutal assessment of your solvency.

   • Download it here. Free if you use the link, AU$12 if you don’t.

Phase 3: The Armory (Paid Tools)

I don’t sell subscriptions. I sell speed. You can build these tools yourself if you have 50 hours to spare. If you want to save the time, buy the tools.

• The Cash Flow Forecast Sheet (AU$36):

  • What this is: The exact Google Sheet system to calculate your Month of Death, manage your runway, estimate your Tax Drag, and calculate your true Hourly Rate. Harsh, hard data you need to know.

  • Download it here.

• The Sponsor Pitch Deck (AU$60):

  • What this is: The ugly, high-converting slide deck I use to close deals.

  • Download coming soon.

A note about contacting me

I don’t do ‘coffee chat.’ I don’t do ‘pick brain.’ If you have a specific question about a specific financial bleeding point, reply to any newsletter. Email me at admin@thebananastand.co. Leave a comment if you’re on the app. I read everything.

Now, over to you.

Most Substack advice is a pyramid scheme of hope. You read articles about how to ‘find your voice’ and ‘build a community’ from people who are only famous for telling you how to get famous.

Meanwhile, your bank account is bleeding red.

You have 400 subscribers. You have a logo you paid $200 for. You have a content calendar. But if you stop typing for two weeks, your income drops to zero. You don’t have a business; you have a demanding hobby that is slowly eating your savings.

Welcome to The Banana Stand

I am not here to teach you how to write poetry.

I am not here to help you ‘go viral’ on X.

I am the janitor and the mechanic.

I am here to fix things, and clean up the mess behind the scenes so you can actually pay your rent.

The philosophy: cash flow over clout

The internet tells you to chase Growth. The Banana Stand tells you to chase Solvency.

Growth is a vanity metric. You can’t buy groceries with ‘impressions.’ You can’t pay taxes with ‘engagement.’ The only thing that matters is the delta between the cash hitting your income account and the cash leaving your transaction account.

If you want to know how to gain 10,000 subscribers in a week, go read the other guys. If you want to know how to organise your PNL so the tax man doesn’t destroy you, stay here.

What you will get

I write about the unsexy, mechanical plumbing of the Creator Economy.

• The metrics that matter: How to calculate your ‘Month of Death’ (the month you run out of money).

• The systems: How to publish when you feel dead inside.

• The assets: How to turn your archives into digital products that sell while you sleep.

• The truth: Forensic audits of where creators lose money.

The business model (read this, it’s important)

I will never charge you for a subscription

There is no ‘paywall.’ There is no ‘premium tier.’ There are no ‘secret sections.’

I believe that gating information behind a monthly fee creates a perverse incentive to churn out filler content just to look busy.

Everything I write on The Banana Stand is free. Always will be.

How I make money

I sell tools. Checklists, spreadsheets, guides, processes, and audit protocols.

If you read an article and want to fix the problem immediately, you can buy the tool. If you want to build it yourself, you can do that too.

I give you the recipe; I sell you the Aogami knife.

Who is The Banana Stand for?

• The panic-stricken: You quit your job to write, and now the reality of health insurance is setting in.

• The accidental mogul: You have an audience, but you are still managing your finances in the Notes app on your phone.

• The realist: You know ‘there’s always money in the banana stand,’ but only if you know where to look.

Subscribe. It’s free. You get good useful stuff in your inbox, once a week.

And it might just save your dream from the financial dumpster bin.

There is a moment in every Substack creator’s business that defines their future solvency.

It isn’t when they get their first subscriber.

It isn’t when they go viral.

It’s the moment they look at their bank account, see $2,000, and decide to buy a new ergonomic chair, forgetting that $600 of that money belongs to the government and $400 is for next month’s software subscriptions.

This is ‘Financial Soup.’

Most solopreneurs operate out of a single transaction account. Revenue comes in, groceries go out, Netflix subscriptions are deducted, and client payments are received.

All to and from a single bank account.

It is a warm, simple, chaotic slurry of money. You feel rich on the 1st of the month because the balance is high, and you feel poor on the 15th because the rent hit.

You’re making decisions based on the current balance, not the available cash.

This is how businesses that are technically profitable go bankrupt. They spend their tax money on tacos and trivialities.

Be smart, right from the get-go. Spend the 15 minutes it takes to set up the three bank accounts I describe below.

The problem with ‘Profit First’

Mike Michalowicz wrote the bible on using multiple accounts for different business purposes. His book, Profit First, is mandatory reading.

But Mike wrote that book for plumbing companies with five vans and a payroll. He recommends opening five, sometimes six, distinct bank accounts: Income, Profit, Owner’s Comp, Tax, Opex, and (maybe) GST.

If you tell a writer who’s making $800 a month to open six accounts, they’ll just say ‘yeah nah’ (for the non-Australian readers, this means ‘never gonna happen’).

Nope. They won’t do it. The friction is too high. It’s too complex, and the granularity doesn’t add value.

So our Substack creator leaves things as they are. They stick with single account soup, and get crushed at tax time.

Let’s strip the system down. Your Banana Stand is not a mighty corporation; it’s a guerrilla outfit. You don’t need a financial cathedral, you need 3 (and maybe 4) buckets.

The 3 account protocol

For a Substack creator doing less than $75,000 a year, you need exactly three buckets. No more, no less. This creates just enough friction to stop you from being stupid, without enough administrative drag to make you quit.

Account 1: The Airlock (Income)

This is your reception desk. Every single dollar you earn, from Substack, from Gumroad, from freelance clients - it all lands here.

Don’t get a debit card for this account. If the bank sends you one, cut it up. This account has one job: to catch the money and hold it. It creates a psychological airlock between earning and spending. Just because the money hit the account doesn’t mean you buy the chair.

These are the rules:

1. You never spend from this account. The only way money ever leaves this account is by you logging on to your banking app and transferring it to The Vault (account 2) or Feed Bag (account 3).

2. Every Thursday, flush it out. You move (via your banking app) every cent out to those other two accounts (and no others). The balance ends up at zero.

Handy tip for Aussie readers:

Register for PayID and link it to this account. Keeps the scams away.

Account 2: The Vault (Tax)

This is the most critical account in your life. It protects you from jail and bankruptcy.

Money in The Vault is dead to you. It does not exist. It belongs to the government. You collect it and hold it for them.

These are the rules:

1. You never spend from this account. The only way money ever leaves this account is by you logging on to your banking app and transferring it to your Feed Bag account (account 3)..

2. Every Thursday, you take 30% of everything in The Airlock and move it here. No trickery, no ‘but I have deductions,’ no bargaining. If you made $1,000, you move $300.

3. At tax time - once a quarter, once a year - you transfer your calculated tax payment to the Feed Bag account and immediately pay your taxes from there.

4. Anything left over after you’ve paid your tax (there will be some, because legitimate business deductions reduce tax payable) is a bonus tax refund. Buy that chair, spend a month in the Maldives, whatever - it’s your money!

The psychological relief this provides is better than a drug. At tax time you don’t panic. You don’t lose sleep. You don’t have to hustle extra freelance work to pay for it. You just open the Vault and send the funds you’ve carefully squirrelled away.

Handy tip:

Make this account really inconvenient to withdraw from. Use a high-interest savings account at a different bank, or a term deposit, or buy into a cash ETF. You know when you need to access it (tax time), and you transfer it into your Feed Bag account before tax due date. Fast access is not essential.

Account 3: The Feed Bag (Expenses)

The remaining 70% goes here. This is your operating reality.

This is where you pay for your domain name, your hosting, your subscriptions, and anything else that is related to you running your Banana Stand.

And most importantly, this is where you pay yourself.

In the strict Michalowicz method, ‘Owner’s Pay’ and ‘Operating Expenses’ are separate. But for a newsletter writer, you are the main operating expense. Your overhead is low, so separating these two piles of cash at this stage is a complication you don’t need.

If The Feed Bag runs dry, you either stop spending or lump in some personal cash (this hurts). You don’t raid The Vault. You don’t borrow from The Airlock. You stop. You wait until you sell something else. Or you pump in extra cash.

This makes you focus on your real Banana Stand income, not your gross revenue.

The fourth bucket

I said earlier that you need three buckets.

If you report income in a country that has GST (goods and services tax) or VAT (value added tax), you may want a fourth bucket.

I’m going to double click on the Australian situation here because that’s what I’m most familiar with. But if you’re in another GST/ VAT country, it should work pretty much the same way.

If you run any business at all, the very first thing you must do is register for an Australian Business Number (ABN). It takes minutes and costs nothing. You have a choice then or any time after, to also register for GST. The choice goes away if you earn AU$75,000 or more through your ABN (you must then be GST-registered).

Earn less than AU$75,000? My suggestion is - hold off registering until you get close to that figure.

When you are registered for GST:

• You become a tax collector. You add 10% to the price of every sale, which is you collecting revenue for the government.

• You have to file a simple tax return (business activity statements, or BAS) every quarter, and pay anything that’s due.

• On the plus side, you get to credit the GST component on the supplies you buy from other businesses.

These three things add paperwork complexity, and complexity is what we all want to avoid.

You are small. Enjoy being small. Stay under the radar. Keep your banking simple, until the law forces you to complicate it.

Account 4: GST (Sales tax)

Is it really needed? Maybe not.

There are two approaches if you’re GST-registered (ignore if you’re not):

1. Set up a fourth bucket and call it GST. Before transferring money to the Vault or Feed Bag accounts, you transfer the GST component (in Australia, 10%) to the fourth bucket. Then, 30% of the remaining to the Vault and 70% to the Feed Bag. This is the Michalowicz way.

2. Stay with the three buckets and instead of 30% to the Vault, transfer 36.5%. The remainder goes to the Feed Bag. Why 36.5%? You sell for (say) $100 ex GST. But you have to add GST, so customer pays $110. You transfer $10 + $30 = $40 to the Vault. And $40 / $110 = 36.5%. Done.

You still use the Vault for tax, but now there’s enough for GST plus the tax on whatever you pay yourself. Plus you get interest! Plus you have some cash left over for an extra tax refund! Winner grinner chicken dinner!

Clean it up

If your Banana Stand money is mixed in with personal money, you’re not running a standalone business. You’re a hobbyist.

Go open the three accounts. It takes 15 minutes online. Name them: Airlock, Vault, Feed Bag.

The next time you sell a PDF for AU$36, put $10.80 in The Vault the following Thursday.

It feels ridiculous. It feels like Monopoly money.

But at tax time, when you look at that account and see $2,000 sitting there earning interest and ready for the tax man, you feel smug and safe.

That feeling is worth chasing.

P.S. Rule #1 of The Banana Stand 10 Step Cash Flow Audit: ‘Church and State Separation,’ don’t buy tacos with your business card. If your expenses are a soup of personal Netflix and business software, you cannot optimise. Separate the accounts today. And while you’re at it, use the button below to get the 10 Step Cash Flow Audit totally free (AU$12 value)!

GET THE 10 STEP CASH FLOW AUDIT

Today I surfaced a quote by Scott Berkun. Scott’s on Substack, by the way. His tag is @berkun, and he’s well worth your follow.

He wrote this in a Note back in July:

It’s clear enough, isn’t it? Write what you want to write. Everything else flows from this.

I’ll take this further. Everyone here can write, that’s the baseline. Yet not every author on Substack can write well. Unless you’ve had formal training in journalism or creative writing, chances are you need to put in big hours to get your writing skills from beginner, to acceptable, to master writer.

No criticism intended. We all follow the same path and it’s an easier path for some than for others.

Along that path you will see the advice, ‘write for your avatar.’ Your avatar is, of course, a potpourri of personalities that comprise your ideal reader. It’s a fictional profile that outlines their demographics, behaviours, motivations, pain points, and goals.

‘Successful businesses,’ you’re told, ‘use avatars to create products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your target market.’

The problem is, though, that your ideal reader is only ideal some of the time.

People are multidimensional. Your hotshot CEO works hard, yet Thursday nights he plays pickleball and every second Sunday he spends with the grandies. Your stay-at-home sourdough baker sings in a church choir and rides motocross every Tuesday morning.

Even you. You write on Substack and interact with others via comments and Notes. That’s your thing, your 5-9 job.

But it’s not 24/7. You are also an employee, a spouse, a parent, someone’s son or daughter, and you like pizza (but only once a week) You’re not an avatar. You’re a real person. Just like your ideal reader is a real person.

Look, avatars are fine. They are a great visualisation tool to keep your writing focused. But if you want your humanity to shine through, also write about human things. Let them know that a real live person, not some soulless and fact-based AI, assembled the words they’re reading.

Full disclaimer. I have three avatars I write to, and a niche that pretty much decides the lane I want my newsletter, The Banana Stand, to stay in.

Then, articles like this happen. They bubble up out of nowhere, and they have almost nothing to do with my niche or my target audience.

I don’t care. I write and publish anyway.

Even if my words are clumsy and there’s no revenue-generating ‘call to action’ embedded. Because I now have another 511 words out in the wild that didn’t exist a couple of hours ago.

Scott’s quote made me pause when I read it earlier today. Now I’ve been able to give it context and think it through to the point of being able to write about it coherently.

That’s a win, don’t you think?

P.S. No AI megajoules were consumed in the writing of this article.

Every writer is paralysed by the fear of picking the wrong focus. The truth? You don’t need a niche to succeed. You need the point of view you already live with. Let’s talk about the lens.

I know the feeling

I bet you know it too.

You’re smart. You have skills and wisdom to share. But you’re sitting there, paralysed.

Here’s why: You’re staring at a blank screen, sweating and stressing because you’re terrified of choosing the wrong niche.

You think a ‘niche’ is the key to success. We’ve all heard that ‘the riches are in the niches.’ So you figure you need a grand, unique plan to start.

That’s the biggest lie in online writing. The amateurs fall into this trap: they pick a niche, get bored, and quit.

A niche locks you in. Especially in the early days, when you’re not really sure what resonates and what doesn’t.

I’m here to tell you to STOP IT.

The secret to building a following isn’t a niche. It’s to ditch that limiting box and adopt a powerful, clarifying lens.

The confession: It’s not what you talk about

This is the emotional truth I want to lodge in your brain.

A niche is about WHAT you talk about. It restricts your content. It limits your market.

A lens is about HOW you see the world.

Think of the difference:

• Niche Guy can only sell fishing rods

• Lens Guy can talk about fishing rods, boats, insurance, and beachfront property, all through his unique perspective on risk, leverage, and the market tide.

The Lens sharpens your focus without limiting your scope. It gives your reader the consistency they crave, and it keeps you from getting bored to death. They come for the topic, but they STAY for the Lens.

The lens you already own

You don’t need to be an expert in just one thing. You just need a unique perspective that you apply to everything.

Look, you already use this filter in your daily life. We all do.

• You might be the person who always sees life through The LENS of EXPERIMENTATION, where every mistake is just a test report. People will buy your R&D department.

• Maybe you see the world through The LENS of PROFESSIONAL REINVENTION. Your content shows others how to shed their old skin and grab the next big opportunity. They are buying a blueprint.

• Or perhaps it’s The LENS of MID-CAREER LEVERAGE. You show people how to take their existing skills and make them work ten times harder. They are buying the shortcut.

These lenses let you talk about anything. A new book, a weird experience at the airport - but it always comes through that same, clarifying filter.

Your point of view is your power

Stop forcing yourself to be interested in a tiny niche. Instead, look inside your own brain.

What filter do you ALREADY USE? What is the one thing you see that everyone else misses? That feeling, that perspective, that unique angle? That’s your LENS.

Take that existing filter and apply it to your work. Now, write.

You have just removed the biggest blocker: the fear of choosing wrong.

Because with a lens, you can’t lose.

Go pick your lens. Get writing. Get paid.

Alex Hormozi’s podcasts rarely disappoint. The one published Wednesday, ‘The System I Use to Make People Actually Listen | Ep 979’ is an absolute cracker.

In this podcast, Alex describes ‘SPCL,’ his four-element framework to build influence. The acronym reminds me of ‘special’ and the letters stand for Status, Power, Credibility, and Likeness.

Each of these four elements deserves its own article. This article drills down on status. There will be three more.

Vignettes

Vignette #1: Fat bald guy

Fat Bald Guy drives off with Girl – in his Lamborghini.

Nice Guy drives home – alone, again – in his Subaru.

It’s status, or the perception of status, that makes all the difference.

Because status isn’t a thing in itself. It’s a perception that someone, or something, has an attribute that we value.

Fat Bald Guy signals affluence with a flashy car. Nice Guy may have just as much wealth but chooses not to flaunt it.

Does Girl care? She probably does, but she made her decision based on incomplete information. Rightness or wrongness becomes apparent with hindsight, but she calls it for Fat Bald Guy.

That’s life. We all live by our decisions, good and bad.

Vignette #2: Substack

Dolly Parton posted her first Substack Note on November 12, and it got 27,000 likes.

How many likes did your first Note get? A few less, I would guess.

Dolly brings her history to Substack. Her profile as a popular performer, her understated philanthropy, her general ‘nice person’ demeanour – these things pretty much guarantee she starts as a Substack star.

Dan Koe first posted on Substack on May 2. He brings his status as an incredibly successful one-person brand, developed on X over many years. He currently has 203,000 subscribers (I am one of them).

Justin Welsh followed soon after, first posting on May 5. He built his reputation on LinkedIn and bolstered it with 3 immensely popular courses. Substack is not his main channel but it’s still 30,000 subscribers strong. (Again, I am one of them. I also bought 2 of his 3 courses.)

Where does status come from?

Fat Bald Guy uses material possessions to get what he wants. It doesn’t matter if he’s mortgaged past his eyeballs and the Lambo is two days off repossession; he still gets to take Girl home.

What would happen, though, if Girl was herself a Bugatti-owning billionaire? Or knows someone who is? Fat Bald Guy would be ignored, for sure. Girl looks for other status signals, and Fat Bald Guy looks elsewhere for his jollies.

Dolly, Dan and Justin use the status of their off-platform success to give themselves instant Substack fame. That fame may or may not be relevant to Substackers but nonetheless, lots of us pay attention to their work.

It sure does work, doesn’t it?

Substack’s long tail

According to one survey1, 82% of Substack publications have less than 1,000 subscribers. And 45% of all publications across Substack post less than once a month.

I guess these authors lost interest in their publication. Or, at the very least, the enthusiasm that drove them to start on Substack is less than it was at the beginning.

This wouldn’t happen (again, I’m guessing) if there are thousands of active subscribers clamouring for the next article. Those authors would write like Gary Vee on crack, pumping out content like their lives depended on it.

But for most of us, that’s not real life. The truth is that our potential audience doesn’t care enough about us, or our writing, to get their clamour on.

How can we build status?

We’re normal folk.

We don’t have a public profile like Dolly, Dan and Justin.

How can we overcome this apparent weakness and get ourselves on our preferred audience’s radar?

We must create our own status. Three simple tactics increase our audience’s perception of status.

Tactic #1: Publish often

I worked at Andersen Consulting for a time, before they rebranded to Accenture. Back then our communications platform was Lotus Notes, and internal interest groups formed and disbanded as clients and strategies came and went.

I remember one note in particular. A partner I worked with was prolific in multiple groups and one day I read, “Carl, you are everywhere.’ And he was. His personal reputation was formidable, partly due to the endless notes, comments and suggestions to people at every level of the organisation. Everyone knew Carl. He was the ‘go-to’ guy.

Tactic #1 is exactly this. Publish often. The same survey I mentioned above asserts, ‘The more frequent the publishing schedule, the higher the paid subscription ratio is.’ This implies that publishing more means more attention, more eyeballs, and more interest.

Tactic #2: Publish everywhere

Substack garners 47,600,000 monthly readers2. Sounds a lot, doesn’t it? Yet Google clocks in at 5.6 billion searches a month, which means Substack accounts for just 0.8% of the total requests for information. That’s just 8 out of every 1,000.

This is not a flickoff to Substack, they’re doing great, but a reminder there’s more demand for information that Substack is not yet meeting.

A core TBS tenet is to publish content in more places. It’s an experiment that’s in its early stages but you should know that TBS will soon have a www home, and a presence on each of Medium and Beehiiv to augment Substack’s discoverability.

Tactic #2 is to publish on additional platforms. At the least, on Medium (with links back to Substack so you capture subscriber data). I highly recommend @Burk’s downloadable guides to show you how.

Tactic #3: Utilise your network

If you’ve been active on Substack for more than a few weeks, you will have already formed a loose network of authors and publications you gravitate to, and who gravitate to you and yours.

It’s a natural thing. Just like in real life.

Tactic #3 is to utilise your network. Ask/ don’t ask if they can link to your articles, and you link back to theirs. Ask/ don’t ask if you can provide a guest post and accept a guest post from them in return. Ask/ don’t ask if you can record an audio interview and make it available for them to use on their publication.

The benefit here is the mutual links you create within your network. Everyone wins with this tactic because the Substack algorithm sees a cluster of excellence – you and your network – and promotes it via the Substack app. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.

A closing though on status

Substack looks for clues about status. Its algorithm is a piece of code that can’t understand the nuance of status, so it relies on proxy metrics. Things like likes, comments, incoming and outgoing links. And, of course, the content and context of your article.

These are how you influence the perception of status.

Next

Over the next few days, hopefully before Christmas, I will publish companion articles to cover the other three elements of Alex’s ‘build influence’ network – Power, Credibility, and Likeness.

Meantime, listen to the podcast (and take notes).

On Monday morning, December 1 2025, Zone RV entered administration.

No notice. No refusing new orders, or declining payments. No deliveries, even for completed caravans. No payments to suppliers.

And no payouts for 250 employees. Just termination, effective immediately.

I worked with Zone RV a couple of years ago. I got tapped to manage a stalled factory fitout. I had to dust off my engineer’s hat for this assignment, and it was fun.

Those 250 employees? I had beers with some of them just a few months ago. No indication of trouble, no inkling that management was struggling to keep the business afloat.

Now their Christmas is less happy than they hoped.

Just last month they advertised for a new CEO. Whoever got that gig must have inherited an irretrievable mess. Or perhaps, at discovering what the situation really was, called in the administrators.

Zone RV was a relatively large local employer here on the Sunshine Coast, not 3 kilometres from my house (in a straight line). It’s going to hurt a lot of people and businesses, not just here on the coast but all around Australia.

I don’t know why I’m writing this

Maybe just to vent at the failure of a business that should have been an exemplar of good manufacturing practice on the coast.

And a business where I was once on the management team.

Zone RV should not have failed

But it did.

If you’re a manager or founder of an existing business, please note this well:

Your business is one link in a supply chain that extends all the way from the mine site (or farm) to the end user. You have clients, suppliers, employees and service professionals who depend on your business’ success.

If your business fails, the chain breaks.

Everyone loses.

Your business is a machine. It takes inputs at one end and outputs products, services and profits out the other. Your job is to maintain that machine and keep it in tune so it continues to deliver.

Because that’s what managing is all about.

Wishing all Zone RV ex-employees the best of luck, and quick success in finding their next role.

I started TBS with the idea that I would write about the business issues I discover in my corporate work.

Why they are issues in the first place.

How they hurt the business over the long term.

How they cause stress and uncertainty for everyone involved – founder, employees, suppliers, clients, and actually every other stakeholder in the business.

So here we are, with a new iteration of ‘The Banana Stand.’

It should have been a sure thing, but it wasn’t

I had the image in my mind of successful businesspeople lounging back and relaxing, while the business itself ran as predictably as a Tokyo train. Not automatically, by itself, but systematised to the point that people could finish their work at 5pm and not give it another thought until 9am the next day.

I still think that’s entirely possible.

I have two mantras I try to inculcate at every client site I work with

The first is, ‘For 8 hours every workday, people get paid to utilise their skills, expertise, knowledge, networks and time for the benefit of their employer. The other 16 hours are theirs to do what they want.’

AKA ‘fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.’

The second is, ‘Finish up healthier, wealthier and wiser than when you start, every workday.’

AKA ‘win-win for employer and employee.’

These are great until some unexpected conniption upsets the steady, predictable calm of normal business.

Something like a product quality issue. Or a government safety inspector has a bad day. Or a key person takes leave. Or COVID.

Then the overtime kicks in. The endless meetings about meetings happen. The 2am emails. The blame, the cost-cutting, the short-term fixes to long-term complacency.

And in we go, me and my crew. We look things over and fix them, one at a time. Until the transients disappear and operational steady-state is restored.

That was the plan for TBS, at the beginning.

But over time, I got to understand that the corporate audience that’s attracted to this content was not on Substack. Maybe LinkedIn (God help me) or Beehiiv, but not on Substack.

It could be they come here eventually. When (and if) that happens, I may reconsider my strategy.

But now, a pivot

Substackers are typically creators, people whose reason for being here is to explore new ideas and round them out to completion, if not practicality.

And even more specifically, they are part timers for whom Substack is a 5-9 activity. A side interest, not their full time job.

A few Substackers would call it their side hustle. This is a flag.

It means writers here are using their Substack to generate some level of extra revenue. Buy a car perhaps, pay down a mortgage, save for a holiday, give the kids a new bike.

These are the Substackers I want to write for

Because there are things they can do to make their side hustle operate with the effectiveness and efficiency of a true business.

The 5 topics to be covered are:

1. Get ready

2. Write content

3. Get discovered

4. Make it pay

5. Keep it operating.

Address each of these in a thoughtful, cohesive, systematic way that’s relevant to Substack newsletter-centric businesses.

Document what works and what doesn’t.

Implement small iterations to weave operations towards optimal.

It doesn’t have to be hard

Someone much wiser than me once said, ‘what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’

This is good advice.

The problems I see in my corporate work are 100% applicable to solopreneur, non-incorporated businesses.

Like a Substack business.

There are no reinventions, or special considerations.

There are no ‘yeah nah my business is different’ moments.

So TBS will publish articles that reinterpret good corporate practice into tactical advice. Specific for micro businesses and solopreneurs, and for whom Substack is central to their business model.

Make sense?

What this looks like

No gratuitous Unsplash images.

Writing that’s as sharp and succinct as I can make it.

At least one article a week posted on TBS.

Multiple notes each weekday.

Occasional PDF guides available via Gumroad. Some free, some paid.

Occasional offers for other people’s products. Only the ones I think are useful and relevant.

All content on TBS is free. Free, as in no paid subscriptions.

The big blue subscribe button

You could be tempted, when you start out, to record all your business transactions in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. After all, there aren’t many transactions at the outset, are there?

Yep. Spreadsheets are super attractive, given you get these tools thrown in with your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription.

But I don’t recommend it. What I do recommend is:

Use an accounting package!

Start with an accounting package, right from the get-go.

Here in Australia the product of choice is Xero. But it could be MYOB, Freshbooks, Quickbooks, Zoho Books, or whatever. I’ve only used Xero so far (and so do all but one of my clients) and it ticks every box for creators like you and me.

Yep. Xero works good for creators.

There are dragons down the spreadsheet path. Here are a few of the biggies:

• No bank feed integration (this is a huge time saver)

• No audit capabilities (saves hours for you and your accountant when things go awry)

• Tax time complexities (quarterly tax returns, like BAS, are generated automatically)

• GST is tracked (both received and paid)

• Invoices are stupidly easy to pop out

• Transaction matching (makes reconciliation a breeze)

• Reporting (PNL, balance sheet, cashflow, others)

• Chart of accounts (great for expense tracking)

• Access for your accountant (for annual and quarterly tax payments).

I know. Accounting software costs money you don’t have, and you’ll move things over when the cash starts coming in.

Yeah, right.

Xero costs AUD 35 a month for the most basic plan, which is good enough for use creators. And the last thing you want to spend time on is figuring out your financials.

It’s money well spent. Trust me on this.

P.S. I have no affiliation with any of the products I mentioned above.

P.P.S. No AI megajoules were burned in the creation of this article.

There’s a business owner’s perspective and a prospect’s perspective. They are different, and it helps to keep the differences in mind when you draft your articles.

For a time I lived and worked in the city of Surabaya, Indonesia.

I shopped in a local supermarket that dedicated one aisle to chili sauce.

One whole aisle! I don’t mind chili, but my western taste buds can’t tolerate nuclear-level hotness.

What to choose? I had no idea, so I took a punt. I grabbed one off the shelf and took it home with the rest of my purchases.

It was okay, but too sweet for my liking. I could’ve done better.

I thought about this

And I realised, there were 4 business lessons here.

1. Limit choice. It confuses most people, especially those of us who aren’t familiar with your offer and the space it occupies in your specialty field. One full aisle of chili sauce? Too many choices. Overwhelming.

2. Make your offer easy to understand in terms your prospect relates to. My Bahasa was limited and the labels made no sense. They communicated nothing to me, so I had no useful information to make my selection.

3. Make your offer and everything surrounding it visually appealing. Books are judged by their cover, and chilli jars are judged by their pretty labels. With nothing else to go on, that’s how I made the call.

4. Seek help if you’re doubtful. I should’ve asked someone. There were lots of people in the supermarket and Surabayans are the friendliest people. Any one of them could have guided me to the precise product I wanted.

Closing thoughts

It’s weird, isn’t it, how a simple shopping trip can deliver lessons that spill over into other aspects of our lives?

The next time you’re off on an everyday task, slow down and just observe what’s around you.

Start with a business owner’s perspective, as a seller. What are they doing that’s right, and what could be improved?

Then change to a prospect’s perspective. What attracts you to one product over another? And what repels you?

Lessons are everywhere. Observations pays.

The premise of my newsletter The Banana Stand (TBS) is to guide aspiring and existing business owners how to start, operate and grow a business that doesn’t take over their life.

On Substack there are plenty of nascent entrepreneurs who have ideas about starting a newsletter that generates income. Income that may augment their full time salary, pay down a loan, or even completely replace their income.

In other words, turn their Substack into a business

A newsletter-centric business.

Quick context: my real job is to help small- and medium-sized business owners achieve what I said above. I’ve done this for 20 years. I think I’m pretty good at it.

What I haven’t done is apply these principles to micro businesses, which is, I guess, where a Substack-based newsletter business fits.

So for the next few months I’m going off on a tangent

My TBS articles will cover the systems, technologies, processes and operations that guide Substack newsletter owners towards building a dream business that, like I said, won’t dominate their every waking moment.

I won’t be detailing the art of writing, comments, or Substack Notes. But I will be covering their importance in your newsletter-centric business.

If you need writing advice, awesome resources already exist on Substack (send me a DM or comment if you want some pointers).

Nope. I plan to limit things to the mechanics of running a micro business.

My dirty little secret

The Banana Stand has not made a single dollar since I started it almost 12 months ago. My main income is from consulting work but, like you, I want to reclaim some time and prove to myself that additional income is not some empty Internet promise.

So I’ll be following along and eating my own dog food.

I would love for you to follow along with me. Which you can do by subscribing to The Banana Stand.

All TBS content is free. Nothing is paywalled. It’s all there for you, as long as you take the trouble to subscribe.

So… join the Banana Stand crew and be part of the journey.