I’ve never done one of these “business recaps” but I felt like this year warrants one, so here goes.
By the Numbers
As for the newsletter, I started the year at 28,392 subscribers, and ended 2024 with 39,871.
We briefly hit 40k subscribers for a few months but I was actively unsubscribing lots of spam email addresses so it’s hovering slightly below that number.
Here are some other numbers if they are interesting to you:
- New subscribers: 30,199
- Unsubscribes: 16,359
- Deep dives published: 17
- “Other” Articles published: 16
- Number of words written: 110,642
- Total Pageviews: 466,000
- Unique Site Visitors: 240,600
Fun fact: 16,000 unsubscribers would be like if I stood center court at the Wimbledon stadium and every person there (including the staff) yelled “Unsubscribe!”
Ha, that’s fun. 🫣
If you want to make that number go up instead of down, feel free to subscribe below 🙂
What Was New in 2024
1. Launched a Newsletter Community
The one thing I launched this year that I’m most excited about is the Growth In Reverse Pro community. For a long time, I’ve wanted to create a place for people to come get feedback, meet other interesting people, and learn from each other and experts I bring into the community.
So far, we have 75 members, which is awesome considering I’ve barely talked about this. (Mistake #1 from last year)
2. Launched a Podcast
I’ve wanted to create a podcast for a long time. And especially since starting the Growth In Reverse newsletter.
In December of 2024, that became a reality.
It’s been fun already to talk all things newsletters with my co-host, Dylan Redekop, and getting to chat with the people I’ve written deep dives on.
Shout out to our editor, Tim Forkin, for making the shows sound and look much better than they would have without your help!
Here are some stats for our first month of the podcast:
- YouTube Subscribers: 477
- Spotify listeners: 207 (10, 5-star reviews)
- Apple podcasts followers: 196 (7, 5-star reviews)
Clearly we need to do a little work asking for ratings and reviews. If you’ve enjoyed the show at all, I’d appreciate it! 🙂
I’m trying not to follow the stats too closely since this is a new medium and I’m just having fun for now.
3. Tested Different Content Styles
Until March of 2024, I had only really published long-form deep dives reverse engineering the growth of creators. But I was starting to fall off my normal publishing schedule because they take so much time to research and create.
On March 17, I shared an experiment I had tried where I created a lead magnet and promoted that in my posts vs just a typical “Get more deep dives” call to action.
People loved that post.
I think it resonated for a few reasons. It was different, I was sharing something I tried after seeing lots of other operators do it. And it was my own personal experience.
Readers have come to know a little bit about me through my writing style and how I analyze different growth strategies, but they hadn’t really seen me do it myself. So when I shared how it increased growth by 1400%, people ate it up.
After that did well, I realized that I didn’t have to just publish deep dives.
Which gave me a sigh of relief because it was starting to be too much to put out a new one week in and week out.
I started sharing different growth levers people used, instead of a full deep dive into one creator. I pulled out specific strategies and went deeper on them, like Katelyn Bourgoin’s Reverse Lead Magnet, or Harry Dry’s Growth Loops.
I was also publishing about a specific type of growth lever used by multiple creators, like using challenges, or growing through cross promotions.
These did okay, but I wasn’t 100% excited by them, and I think the audience felt that.
4. I Finally Hired Help
This was the year I finally decided to get some help with the business.
I brought Dylan in to help with content ideas and creation in a small capacity in the beginning. And now he’s really ramped up and is helping in a lot of different areas.
It’s been great to have a sounding board for some of the ideas I want to implement, as well as an extra set of hands to help within the community.
And of course, now we’re doing the podcast together! 🙂
I also brought on an assistant named Isadora to help with a lot of the backend admin stuff. It’s been nice to see some of the ideas I’ve had come to life without much extra work on my end.
Sometimes I feel like I’m not utilizing her 100%, but am hoping to improve that in 2025.
And of course I have Tim Forkin helping out with the editing for the YouTube videos and podcast. I’m really happy with how everything is coming out so far, and know we can improve even more as time goes on.
Highlights
1. Community launch went well
Starting something new is always scary. All of the imposter syndrome creeps in.
But the GIR Pro community has been a big highlight of the year.
More than a handful of people have said it’s already paid for itself in terms of knowledge and partnerships. So that’s a huge win considering it’s only been live for a few months.
There’s also a general sense of relief from people knowing they have a supportive group on their side. It’s also been really cool to see content and collabs that originated inside of the community out in the wild.
2. Having another creative outlet is fun
Having a podcast and a place to talk to friends (Dylan and guests) about nerdy newsletter stuff is super fun.
I’m enjoying being able to create content without having to do a ton of research every time. And capitalize on the back of research I’ve already done.
And I’m getting more podcast guest requests, which means I get to do that even more.
3. Gave a main stage talk at Craft + Commerce
I was also asked to speak at Kit’s Craft + Commerce event in June.
If you couldn’t tell by my beat-red face, I was slightly terrified.
But I continue to hear good things from people who have watched the video afterwards, which is super nice.
The Not-So-High Lights
1. I did a terrible job of promotion.
My friends joke (maybe it’s their way of subtly yelling at me?) all the time about how little I’ve promoted this, and it’s true.
I’ve done a horrible job at talking about the community and what’s happening in there. So in 2025, expect to hear and see more about what’s going on there.
You know what else I haven’t done a good job at promoting this year? The newsletter.
No wonder my growth started to crawl. Growth in reverse…literally?
2. Not questioning best practices
When I was doing research about starting a community, I heard a lot of people say “don’t have too many calls” because it would dilute the effectiveness of each one. And I think that’s true for similar type calls (if you have 2 Q&A calls every week, very few people are going to attend all of them), but for different themed ones, I think it’s not quite on point.
I think I leaned too far in the direction of “not enough calls” and it hurt community engagement a bit. So I’m changing that this year, and January is already packed with awesome events.
3. I spent way too much
Hiring people led to a lot of extra spend this year that I wasn’t exactly planning for.
Going to reel in some software expenses and unnecessary office lights in 2025. It’s all moving towards good things, but for now the profit side of things tanked.
Plans for This Year
More Fun
I want to bring more fun into the business.
The newsletter started with me sharing ideas and research I found fun in doing. And I think that’s why the newsletter resonated with so many people, they could almost feel the passion in the content.
Over time, I feel like that’s wained a bit, so I’m working towards putting the fun back into it.
I want to step away from doing all of the things I “should” be doing, and either do them in a more fun way or stop them altogether.
More Community
I’m narrowing my focus this year into the Growth In Reverse Pro community. I want this to be the best place for founders and creators to come together and learn about audience building together.
I want to share more newsletter experiments I’m running, bring in more guests who are doing cool stuff, and highlight the members wins. I’m already planning some in-person meetups at some of the conferences I’ll be attending this year too.
The community will definitely remain application-only, and I want to get even more amazing people in there. Maybe you?
More Growth
And not just in terms of seeing the number go up. I want to share more growth ideas and strategies with you all. Especially as social media landscape is changing and evolving, it’s nice to bring in more ideas vs the old “tried and true” ones.
I’ll be doing more regular experiments and sharing some of those learnings with you all.
Starting with a 30-Day LinkedIn Challenge.
