Most weeks, my schedule and to-do list are full in the best way possible: calls, coaching sessions, live streams, and dozens of pieces of content.
That's the kind of week when you feel really ✨productive✨
But this week was different.
Philip, Jari, and I closed the laptops for three days to sit in a room, take an honest look at the last few months, and ask ourselves what's working and what isn't.
3 founders, a whiteboard, and the questions we'd been too busy to actually sit with all year.
If I'm honest, blocking time for this type of get-together always feels indulgent.
We're currently in the middle of our strongest year and hitting 6-figure profits, so taking time to just think feels like a major compromise.
But there's always another launch to plan, another cohort to fill, another post to write, so if you want to grow and scale a business you truly enjoy running, you have to step back every now and then. And you have to do it before it's too late.
When you're building your own business, nobody else is going to notice that you are pointed in the wrong direction. It's your responsibility to make time for the activities that feel unproductive but are the foundation of everything you do.
The good news is that you don't need a retreat, a team, or perfect conditions to do this.
You need a distraction-free morning, an honest set of questions, and the willingness to trust that a few hours of honest thinking will beat a week of grinding on the wrong thing.
If you want a starting point, these are the three questions we kept coming back to:
- What has actually moved the needle in the last six months, and what have I been doing mostly out of habit?
- What am I quietly dreading on my calendar, and why is it still there?
- If I could only keep three things on my plate for the rest of the year, which three would they be?
If you're serious about building a Substack publication that turns into real income and a business you actually want to run, this is exactly the kind of clarity we bring to our clients inside the Substack Accelerator.
Instead of bombarding you with more tactics, we help you make sharp decisions so that you build a best-selling Substack publication that actually generates serious profits in a matter of months instead of years
>>> Apply here.
Worth Your Time This Week
→ The 6 Decisions I'd Make Before Starting a Substack From Scratch in 2026. The six calls I'd make on day one if I were starting over, including the ones most creators get wrong.
→ Most Creators Are Using Substack the Wrong Way. Why treating your publication as the business (instead of the entry point to it) quietly caps your growth.
→ How to Actually Make Money on Substack. The podcast conversation on why paid subscriptions are almost never the biggest revenue lever, even for growing publications.
→ I Analyzed 100 Substack About Pages. Here's What I Found. The patterns that pull the right readers in, and the ones quietly costing you subscribers.
Here's to closing the laptop long enough to think,
Sinem