In startups and software, nobody asks "How much did you sell this month?"
They ask about ARR.
Annual recurring revenue.
The money that comes back without you having to win it all over again.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because when we look at our own numbers, Write • Build • Scale is now almost at seven figures in ARR.
Our paid tier on Substack, our coaching programs... nearly everything we offer comes with a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.
If I'm honest, that's one of the best decisions we ever made for this business.
When you don't build recurring income, every month starts at zero.
You're always on the hunt for the next lead and the next sale, while you also have to create new products, deliver what you already sold, and market all of it.
All of it, all the time.
That's why scaling to seven figures feels so hard for so many coaches and creators. It's rarely a talent problem. It's a model where you have to keep replacing the people you just served.
Recurring revenue changes that.
We know we have a strong baseline of clients who come back month after month, year after year. So we don't spend our energy replacing them. We spend it serving them.
And that's the part that matters most to me.
The stability is nice, but the real win is depth: we get to go much deeper in the actual work we do with our clients.
For example, starting tomorrow, we're hosting live coaching sessions EVERY weekday inside our Substack Accelerator.
That kind of decision only makes sense when you know your clients are staying.
Here's what I want you to hear:
You don't need to sell more things to more people to build a bigger business. You need offers people have a reason to stay in.
Substack is built for exactly that.
A paid tier is a subscription.
A coaching program or community on top of it can be one, too. Whether you have 10 or 10,000 subscribers, you can start designing your offers around recurring income instead of one-off sales.
So this week, look at what you sell today and ask yourself:
"What would make someone want this again next month?"
Worth Your Time This Week
If this got you rethinking what Substack can actually do for you, start here:
→ How I'd Build a Bestselling Substack From Scratch (Step-by-Step). The 6-move roadmap from zero to your first 100 paid members, in the order we'd do it.
→ Stop designing your Substack the wrong way. A week inside the Substack Accelerator: the real questions, coaching sessions and wins.
→ How This Creator Made $12k on Substack Within 30 Days. How Virgil Brewster used Substack as a sales engine from his first month.
→ Substack Freewalls: How to Turn Your Best Posts Into Subscribers. Our new YouTube video: what a freewall is, how to set one up, and 4 smart ways to use it on posts you've already published.
Cheers to subscriptions people actually want to renew,
Sinem
P.S. What's one thing you could offer that people would want every single month?