Notes From The Build August
How I fast track my month of August
It's the first week of August. I'm writing this from my desk, in the morning light.
July was long. In the way months are long when a lot happens quietly. I want to walk you through what got built, what I'm carrying forward, what I'm turning over, and what I want you to know going into this month with me.
This is the first Notes From The Build. If it lands, I'll do one every month. Same shape, same rhythm — a first-week-of-the-month letter that shows you what I'm actually doing behind the front-of-house teaching. Numbers where useful. Decisions in real time. The version of building this business that most creators never publish about.
What I built in July
Letter #1
This letter was inspired by one of my clients who owns six figures business and have nothing to account for by the end of very month, it was quite brutal for him.
Why Six-Figure Founders Still Feel Broke
82% of small business owners report feeling financially anxious. 42% of six-figure earners in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck. The average solopreneur reinvests 63% of gross revenue back into the business and takes home less than a full-time employee makes at half the top-line. Nearly 1 in 3 founders making over $200K a year say the…
Letter #2
(There are 2 levers you can pull to achieve this
Letter #3
10 Quiet Ways To Get Dangerously Ahead
10 Quiet Ways To Get Dangerously Ahead
While everyone else is scrolling, hedging, and waiting for permission, here's the actual list.
Letter #4
The letter I'm proudest of is “Cutting Costs Won't Save Your Business (Do This Instead)” It's the piece that made me feel like the brand is starting to sound like itself, not like anyone else's version of a finance newsletter.
The letter that surprised me is “You Have 6 Months To Lock The F*ck In” . I didn't expect it to land the way it did. That's data.
The numbers
I'm going to start sharing these openly because I think most soloprenuers are guessing at what a growing publication looks like, and the numbers help remove the guessing.
Subscribers on Slaywithfinances: 2,396 (crossing 2,400 mark soon, so excited for that). Up 299 subs from last month, that's actually crazy.
Product revenue in July:
Business Money Audit System: sold 3 copies. By the way it's our first official full month after being shipped.
Personal Money Audit: Sold 6 copies. INSANE
Money Audit system (bundled): Sold 3 copies
Profitable Creator Calculator (free): About 90+ downloads
Where the growth came from: Substack Notes (mostly), referrals & restacks from other creators, one specific letter that traveled (You Have 6 Months To Lock The F*ck In)
I'm not sharing these to flex. I'm sharing them because I promised transparency, and transparency without receipts is just another metric.
What I'm building in August
One: the writing.
I'm heads-down on ‘If You Have Multiple Interests, Do Not Waste The Next 12 Months’. It's the letter I've been circling for weeks and it's finally the right time to publish it, because so many of the conversations I've been having with readers lately have circled back to the same tension. The pull between too many creative directions, the fear of picking wrong, the quiet cost of never picking at all. I want this letter to actually resolve it for people, not just diagnose it.
The follow-up piece coming right after is on operating systems for one-person businesses. Two letters, back-to-back, that together make the case I've been trying to make for months.
Two: the product build.
I've been sitting with two things this month and I'm going to move on both. The first is a full walkthrough video of the Money Audit System, because I've had readers tell me the audit is the tool they want, and the barrier is that they don't know how to run it on their own numbers yet. A video walkthrough removes that barrier. Same product but better on-ramp.
The second: and I'm still turning this one over, is opening a small 1:1 layer alongside the products. Not a full coaching offer. A small, contained way to work with people directly on their real numbers, so I can learn the patterns that the audits are supposed to encode. This one is a decision I'm actively still making. If I do it, it'll be intentional and small. If I don't, it'll be because I decided the product ladder is the better use of my energy this quarter. What do you think?
Three: the system-level build.
I'm setting up the infrastructure for the paid tier so it can launch in Q4 without a scramble. The paid tier itself won't open until later this year, but everything underneath it, the sections, the pricing, the founding member setup, the transition from free-to-paid content needs to be built now while there's still runway. If I wait until September to build the infrastructure, I'll be launching under pressure. Which I've done before, and never again.
That's the month. Focused, but layered.
If you want one letter like this every week, plus the monthly Notes From The Build subscribe. I write the things the creator economy is too busy selling courses to say out loud.
The decision I'm turning over
Whether to open a small 1:1 layer alongside the products, since a former client of mine (a fractional CFO) has been quietly pointing out that 1:1 → group → scale is how most soloprenuers learn the patterns their products should encode. I've been avoiding it because 1:1 feels like a time trap. But the argument for doing it briefly, on my own terms, is real.
Whether to move Behind the Build behind the paid tier when it launches, or keep it free and gate other things instead. The case for pay-walling it is that transparent building-in-public is exactly what people pay for. The case against is that Behind the Build is what earns the loyalty that makes people want to subscribe in the first place.
Whether to build my “fashion Maison brand” in public (I haven't mentioned it before) alongside Slaywithfinances, or keep them completely separate until the “Maison” has its own footing. The case for building both openly is compounding. The audiences overlap more than people would expect. The case against is dilution.
What I'm reading and listening to
Book: Start with yourself by Emma Grede
Newsletter I'm not missing: 5 Steps to turning your Enterprise into a career leverage – By Alexis Barber
These aren't recommendations. They're inputs. The reason I share them is that the shape of a writer's mind is downstream of what she's putting into it, and I want you to see the shape of mine.
What I'm actually using currently
Since I get asked often, and since I want you to see the real texture of the build, not just the intellectual side, here's what's on my desk, on my body, in my routine this month. Real things. Genuinely in use.
Past read – Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine. I got recommended, honestly it's a 9/10
E-reader
Laptop cover
NESPRESSO - Creatista Plus Coffee Machine. Still obsessed!🤍
The point isn't to sell you anything. It's to show you what's actually running in the background of my life this month & some really cool recommendations.
What I want you to know going into this month
August is a strange month. It's the last soft month of the year in a lot of ways, the point where the summer stretch is starting to close and the reality of what you'll actually finish before December begins to sharpen.
If you have a project you've been meaning to build, this is the month to do it. Not because August is magical. Because the fourth quarter is going to move faster than you think, and the version of you who wishes she'd started in August is going to be very quiet about that in November.
Do the thing. Whatever it is.
I'll be doing mine over here.
See you in September.
— Jessica xx
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Loving your transparency with exact numbers and the resources you’re sharing as you build. That feels scary to me to want to put all that out there but every time I see someone else do it, I’m so grateful. You may have changed my mind on pulling back the curtain, so thank you. And I’m with you on Profit First. It 100% changed the way I operate my business.
The fact that you share exact per-product numbers, not just a vague overall figure, is what makes this feel like your story instead of generic advice. I have a hunch that this kind of specific, personal transparency is actually what's compounding into the results, not just the tactics themselves.