My Road to 50,000 subscribers

My fingers hurt

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After 1,343 days writing...Mostly Metrics just surpassed 50,000 subscribers.

I accidently filtered all my posts in reverse order, and discovered I’ve been at it for nearly 3.5 years.

It’s funny - no one read what I wrote for almost 2 full years.

In fact, it took me 500 days to get my first 1,000 view post.

I’m now at 50,000 subscribers, and have written nearly the equivalent of the entire Harry Potter series in the process (“CJ Rowling”).

To put 50,000 in perspective, we could sell out Yankee Stadium, and there would still be +4,000 of you (the ones with poor open rates) stuck drinking Miller Lites in the parking lot. Also, I’m a Red Sox fan. Yankees suck.

My unfiltered thoughts:

• Consistency is the 8th wonder of the world.

• You can “growth hack” your way to “subscribers”, but you can’t feign authenticity or experience when you’re “earning” a loyal “audience”.

• If you try to talk about stuff you don’t know, or haven’t experienced, you’ll get exposed like a paper Mache suite in the rain.

• If you don’t actually love the process, the grind, you’ll give up.

• Don’t copy other people’s stuff.

• You have to pick topics in an inherently selfish manner, and then write about them in an incredibly generous manner.

• Oh, and did I mention showing up, over and over again?

See you tomorrow for day 1,344.

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PS - while the Marathon Continues, some cool stuff that’s happened in the last ~3 years, all a direct result of writing online.

• I became a CFO

  

  National CFO Signing Day

• On day 1 of turning on paid, someone accidently charged $202,000 to their credit card and I had to figure out how to refund them without losing like $10K in processing fees

• I did a podcast with the legend who inspired me to start writing publicly about business in the first place - Tomasz Tonguz (Spotify | Apple | Youtube)

• I got to hang with

  Lenny Rachitsky
  IRL, exactly 49,100 subscribers after he gave me sage advice that helped me find my audience market fit

• I made a pilgrimage to newsletter Mecca - Substack HQ

• I recorded three podcasts from the floor of the NYSE

  

• I had my mug in Time Square (clearly a face for radio)

  

• Editor Walter ate 50 ice creams (1 for each 1,000 subs)

Thanks again for all the love. It allows me to do what I’m passionate about. If you have a colleague who would benefit, please share and tell them how early to the game you were, lol.

A live look at my writing process

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Run the Numbers

Apple | Spotify | YouTube

I spoke with Greg Henry, CFO of publicly traded Couchbase. We covered:

• The transition from subscription to usage based pricing

• How analyst call backs work after an earnings call

• Why they use non standard fiscal years

• What working at GE taught him about culture

• And why Couchbase guides to ARR

You won’t want to miss this one, as Greg’s one of the best in the game.

What I’ve Been Reading

Friday Forward is a weekly newsletter for nearly 200,000 people across 150 countries who are passionate about leadership and self-improvement. Friday Forward delivers a short inspirational or thought-provoking story to your inbox every Friday.

The topics vary, but they’re organized around universal themes: leadership, self-improvement, pushing your limits, building better personal and professional relationships, and reaching your full potential.