Your Substack - A Business Or A Hobby?
Let's fix that right now.
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 bleeds red.
You have 400 subscribers. You have a logo you paid $200 for. You have a content calendar. When you stop typing for two weeks, your income drops to zero. Your business is really just a demanding hobby, 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 a janitor and a mechanic.
I am here to fix things, and help clean up the behind-the-scenes mess.
The core philosophy: cash flow before 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 business so you get to eat, stay here.
What you will get
I write about the unsexy, mechanical plumbing of the Creator Economy.
The metrics that matter: How to extract the few hardcore numbers that tell you exactly how your business is travelling (hint - they’re not inside your financial statements).
The systems: How to publish when you feel dead inside.
The assets: How to turn your knowledge into services and products that people actually want.
The truth: Pinpoint the few crucial activities that make (and lose) money.
The business model
Everything published here is free to read
Yes, there are paid subscription and founder tiers, and I would love it if you join up. And so would you, of course - that warm comfy feeling of supporting a publication that takes in your wheelhouse is worth having, don’t you think?
However. Neither of these will get you additional, paywalled content. There are no secret sections or exclusive articles. I don't write uninspired filler articles to justify a subscription or pad newsletters out to make a paywall feel earned.
I think charging for access creates a perverse incentive to churn out content just to look busy, and I'd rather not build that incentive into how I write.
So, what’s with the tiers? Paid subscribers get the tools I describe below at a significant discount. Founder subscribers have all of this plus direct, founder-only email access to me personally for direct, personal answers when they need them most.
If any of this ever changes you'll see it beforehand, not read about it after the fact.
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, nominally once a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
And it might just save your dream from the boulevard.
