🔥 Substacking! — Chapter 3 of 20: Substack Is the Business Plan

📘 Excerpt from the upcoming 20-chapter book Substacking! — It’s Not a Platform, It’s a Business Model — coming soon from Firestarter Publishers

Nov 02, 2025

By Kerry Lutz · October XX 2025

The Day I Stopped Writing “Business Plans” and Started Publishing Them

Every startup I ever built began with a forty-page Word doc full of projections nobody would ever read.
Then one morning it hit me: the business plan wasn’t supposed to sit in a folder — it was supposed to live in public.

That’s what Substack is.

Every post, every comment thread, every paid upgrade is a line item in a real-time business plan that evolves with your readers instead of your investors.

Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?

1️⃣ Mission → Manifesto

Forget the elevator pitch.
Your “About” page is your mission statement.
If people can’t feel your purpose in three paragraphs, no spreadsheet will save you.

Your mission isn’t to “build community.” It’s to earn one — post by post.

2️⃣ Product → Perspective

On Substack, you are the product — but the value is your interpretation.
Your insights, your filter, your ability to connect the dots faster than the feed.

Subscribers don’t buy information; they buy orientation.
They want to know where true north is when the compass is jammed.

3️⃣ Marketing → Conversation

You don’t “launch campaigns” here. You start conversations.
Every post is a focus group; every reply a data point.
Open rates tell you what the market feels before CNBC does.

In old media, feedback took quarters.
On Substack, it takes hours.

4️⃣ Revenue → Relationship Equity

Recurring revenue isn’t a metric — it’s a mirror.
If people pay you month after month, it’s because you’ve built trust that compounds.

Subscribers aren’t customers; they’re co-investors in your voice.
That’s the new capital market: attention → trust → transaction.

5️⃣ Metrics → Meaning

I used to measure success in impressions.
Now I measure it in impact.

Did someone quote me at dinner?
Did a reader forward an issue to a friend?
Did a post change one mind or clarify one truth?

That’s ROI — Return on Integrity.

6️⃣ Funding → Freedom

No VC. No gatekeepers.
Your readers fund you directly — and that’s the purest form of capitalism left.

Freedom isn’t free, but it can be $5 a month.

7️⃣ Exit → Existence

Traditional startups dream of exit strategies.
Creators dream of continuity.

Your Substack is your exit — from dependence, manipulation, and algorithmic indenture.

The goal isn’t to sell out; it’s to stay in.

🔥 The Firestarter Framework

If Chapter 2 was about escape, Chapter 3 is about architecture.
Here’s how I build each issue like a mini P&L:

ColumnFunctionExampleLead StorySignal“Why Silver Still Matters When Nothing Else Does”Secondary FeatureEngagement DriverInterview clip + short analysisCall to ActionConversion Lever“Join the Silver Circle → Subscriber Only Report”Analytics LoopFeedbackOpen Rate · Click Rate · RepliesIteration CycleCompounding TrustAdjust tone + timing next send

This is how a newsletter becomes a business machine — and why Substack is the new spreadsheet.

💡 The Moral

If you treat Substack like a platform, you’ll get a platform result.
If you treat it like a business plan — alive, iterative, reader-funded — you’ll build something that outlives any algorithm.

🚪 The Invitation

Start your plan in public.
Publish your mission, price your trust, and let your audience be your investors.
You don’t need a banker’s approval — you just need to hit “Send.”

📘 Bonus Plug — The World According to Martin Armstrong

If you want to understand the rhythm that drives markets — and why freedom always moves in cycles — grab my bestselling book The World According to Martin Armstrong.
It’s the clearest roadmap ever written for navigating chaos — straight from the man who decoded the economic code behind history itself.

Armstrong saw the pattern. Substack gives us the tools to break it.

Next Up → Chapter 4: The Inbox Is the New Feed 📬
Because the future of media isn’t a feed you scroll through — it’s a feed that scrolls through you.