THANK YOU! 5,000 subscribers and a (nearly) free gift!

To celebrate the Product-Led Geek newsletter reaching a big milestone, I’m sharing my foundational growth process as a PDF, in exchange for a few minutes of your time to help me improve the content that I share.

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So………I’m a little late with this!

A couple of weeks ago, after just six months, my little newsletter passed 5,000 subscribers!

It’s now at 5,440!

Honestly, I’m just blown away by this.

I decided to start writing on here at the end of February and sent out my first post on March 3rd:

I'm finally doing this...

I’ve learnt a lot about creating a sustainable writing habit over the past six months.

After gaining some early momentum, I initially over-indexed on creating too much content (a long-form and short-form post every single week).

I quickly found that wasn’t sustainable.

On top of my day-to-day work advising founders and heads of product/growth, that volume of writing was a little overwhelming and started to impact other areas of my life outside of my work.

I wrote about it in this LinkedIn post:

So I adjusted to the current schedule of weekly posts with occasional audio essay versions of the long-form posts.

This has been far more manageable for me, and I’ve been a lot happier as a result. 😊

Thank you

I want to first say a brief thanks to the people who encouraged or inspired me to start writing on Substack - it’s been a super fulfilling endeavour. I’m grateful to you all for helping me get started properly with this writing thing.

The people:

Adam Fishman

,

Shomik Ghosh

,

Leah Tharin

,

Kyle Poyar

,

Elena Verna

,

CJ Gustafson

,

Ed Sim

,

John Cutler

,

Zachary DeWitt

, and of course, the newsletter OG,

Lenny Rachitsky

!

If, for some reason, you’re not aware of these folks and their writing, please do check them out; I know you won’t regret it. ❤️

But most of all, I’m thankful beyond belief that over 5,000 of you reading this chose to subscribe and stay updated on the things I have to say about PLG, product and growth.

Seriously.

I appreciate you all.

You have been the driving reason for me to keep writing.

Learning about your challenges, opportunities and questions and seeing your high engagement with what I write is incredibly motivating.

And I’ve needed that motivation.

In the last few months, I’ve lost my step-father to cancer of the liver, and my mum has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

There have been a lot of dark days and weeks where I really haven’t felt like writing.

But I’m glad I have.

Not only does writing help me better formulate and articulate ideas, patterns and frameworks that I see in my work day-to-day, but it’s also proven genuinely rewarding when one of you tells me how useful they’ve found something I’ve written. ❤️

So today, I want to take the opportunity to find out from you all what you love about the newsletter, what’s working less well, what you want to see more of, what you want to see less of, and hear any other thoughts you might want to share!

I’ve created a short Typeform survey that I’d love for you to fill in.

It should take just a few minutes of your time.

To thank anyone who completes the survey, you’ll get a downloadable PDF of my foundational growth process that I use with many of the companies I advise.

What’s next?

I have a few ideas about how I’ll evolve the newsletter going forward.

At its core, you’ll get the same topical focus around all things PLG, product and growth, informed by first-hand experience as an operator and now advisor.

I’ll continue to write more easily digestible content in the form of my Minute Monday posts.

And I’ll continue to write a longer form piece once a month.

I’m considering experimenting with Agony Uncle or AMA (Ask Me Anything) style posts and/or chats.

I also want to start featuring occasional guest posts from people who I think will have something really useful to share with you all.

If you are an operator in product or growth and feel you have something you’d love to write about in your experience, please feel free to drop me an email!

And, of course, I’ll listen closely to the feedback that you share in the survey and aim to adapt accordingly.

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Thanks for trusting me to be in your inbox.

To reward you a little more for getting this far and in a bid to brighten your day, here’s a photo of me with hair, along with my younger brother, and some big guy who kept telling us he was a real American. 🤷‍♂️

#geek4life

Until next time!

PS: Here’s the survey link if you haven’t done it yet :)