1134. What's Hot on Substack Right Now: Updates, the Strategy, and How to Turn It Into an Added Revenue Machine

The Kelly Roach Show

Kelly Roach

Entrepreneurship, Business

4.9 • 965 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2026

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We stumbled onto Substack almost by accident.

It started as a requirement for a traditional book deal. And then something unexpected happened.

It exploded.

Growth, conversions, and revenue that shocked the entire team, and what is now pacing as a high multi-six figure income stream, built almost entirely by one team member running a turnkey system from existing IP.

In this episode, Kelly breaks down everything that is working on Substack right now: the three income streams they tap every single week, the recent platform enhancements that change the game for creators, why they chose not to move the Kelly Roach Show to Substack as its primary home, and exactly how they are restructuring their entire Substack strategy to reverse engineer directly into Virtual Business School in the back half of the year.

She also addresses the biggest misconception about the platform head on, that the only people making money on Substack are the people teaching Substack, and explains why that is completely wrong.

If you are a business owner, author, coach, or entrepreneur who has been sitting on a library of IP and wondering where to put it — this episode will show you exactly where.

Timestamps:

00:45: How Kelly's team discovered Substack accidentally through the Sacred Art of Selling book proposal process

02:30: What happened when Krista started repurposing Kelly's deepest work on the platform, and the growth that shocked everyone

04:00: The biggest misconception about who makes money on Substack, and why it has nothing to do with teaching business

05:30: The latest Substack platform enhancements: Substack TV, podcast hosting, and schedulable notes

07:30: Should you move your podcast to Substack? The honest answer and what it depends on

09:15: The three income streams Kelly's team generates from Substack every single week

11:00: How schedulable notes changed their consistency strategy and how they use AI to build out the entire week from one anchor piece

12:30: The three things driving new paid subscribers every single day

13:45: How they use branding ads to fill the top of the funnel and let content do the conversion work

15:00: How Kelly is restructuring Substack to reverse engineer directly into Virtual Business School for the back half of the year

16:30: Why Substack is where high ticket buyers are going and why they are leaving Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn behind

18:00: What is coming in Substack Mastery in May: co-created articles, adjacent niche growth, and the full A to Z system

19:30: How to get the replay of the first Substack Intensive and secure your spot for the May session

Resources:

Grab the replay of the first Substack Intensive: https://accelerator.virtualbusinessschool.com/substack

https://accelerator.virtualbusinessschool.com/substack--92237

Pre-order the Miracle Hour book and get instant access to the audiobook when you email your reciept to miraclehourbook@kellyroachinternational.com:

Subscribe to Kelly's Substack: https://kellyroachofficial.substack.com/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	we just saw it explode. We were shocked at what we saw from a growth conversion and monetary standpoint.
0:08.1	And it's now pacing as high multi-six figure income stream for us. We identified some of my
0:15.4	best deepest work that we wanted to get out in the world, breaking it down, repurposing it. And how do you
0:22.3	make the platform turn into a cash machine for your business? We discovered it accidentally,
0:28.3	and traditional publishers really want to see authors on substact growing a community and that they
0:35.0	do actually look at that when making a decision about awarding
0:39.6	book deals. And so we decided to dive deep into it. It's just been shocking every step of the way
0:45.2	how big this opportunity is. Today we're going to talk about what's at and what's happening with substack, some recommendations for you, and how do you make the platform turn into a cash machine for your business?
1:09.7	So we've done a couple episodes here on the Kelly Road show about Substack the last few months,
1:16.2	just to give a recap for that maybe missed those episodes or isn't like totally up to speed.
1:23.1	Subsack is a platform that really was initially designated more of a space for like artists,
1:30.3	creatives, journalists, long-form writers. And we discovered it accidentally through the process
1:38.3	of working on the proposal for the sacred art of selling. We found out that traditional publishers
1:43.3	really want to see authors
1:46.0	on Substat growing a community and that they do actually look at that when making a decision
1:52.2	about awarding book deals.
1:55.5	So we got on for that reason.
1:57.8	We got on for a couple months.
1:59.6	It was exclusively just Krista on our team. I didn't even
2:03.7	log into the platform. I had nothing to do with it. We identified some of my best, deepest work
2:11.4	that we wanted to get out in the world that was kind of hidden behind portals in programming
2:16.8	that we were no longer delivering.
	...

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