Review #7: 6,000 subscribers

Lessons from the past 6 months, handling slower growth, and what's next

Sep 08, 2024

Hello! I'm Patrick, your guide to designing a rich, creative life. New here? Join our creative community to fuel your journey!

Hello everyone,

Today I'm back with the seventh edition of my quarterly-ish "business review" with my imaginary board of directors (aka you!).

It's been 6 months since the 5,000 subscriber update, and a lot of what I wrote then still applies. I deprioritized writing during this time to pursue a different quest of co-founding a startup. So, although subscriber growth slowed, I still learned plenty!

I’ll write separate articles about that co-founder experience, but in this post I'll cover:

The Newsletter
Social Media
The Community
Top-of-Mind Lessons
What's Next

1. The Newsletter

Growth slowed dramatically when I started working on the startup in April

Subscriber Growth

The fact that this Substack continued to grow is a testament to the platform and its recommendation engine. I wrote sporadically, recycled old posts, and even took a whole month off, and yet it continued to chug along slowly but surely.

Recommendations

50 other Substacks now recommend Better by Design.

This was the main growth driver for this time period, so thank you!

Open Rate

Open rates have declined about 10% from ~45% to ~35% in the last couple of months which concerns me.

Outside of my writing being generally worse during this time (sorry!), my hypothesis is that the average subscriber I get via Substack recommendations is less engaged than one who finds me actively via another channel.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of them don't even intend to subscribe in the first place. The design pattern Substack uses for recommending other publications is set up to juice subscriptions.

Content

Cadence: I’m not gonna lie, my writing cadence over the last 6 months sucked. Like speaking a language, writing gets harder the less often you do it. So, counterintuitively, publishing less often feels harder than publishing more.
Length: The average length of my articles has trended down. I prefer this. My favorite online writers tend to publish short articles frequently and then occasionally publish something in-depth. That's the kind of workflow I think suits me best as both a creator and consumer of online writing.
Sharing inspiration: I miss the ability to share links to interesting things that are inspiring me. Social media isn't good for this anymore since all the platforms have restricted the reach of posts with links. So, I'm going to think about how I share this stuff alongside my blog-style writing. Maybe it's just a very short second post mid-week that serves up a recommendation with some commentary. TBD.
A conscious expansion of writing themes: I started by focusing on software design and naturally expanded topics over time. I get most of my inspiration and creative insights from fields outside of design, so I want to make space for more of that in my writing. The subtitle for the first book list I shared was “design insights don’t have to come from design books,” and I think that’s a pretty good summary of what I can uniquely offer.

2. Social Media

As I mentioned, I stopped posting to social media almost entirely.

I learned a few things:

You have to play the social media game if you want to control your own destiny with growth. You don’t necessarily need to have major virality, but you do need incredible consistency.
Social media use scrambles my brain. The less I use it, the less scattered I feel.
I've made meaningful connections through social media. While the number of meaningful connections are small relative to the nonsense and noise of the entire newsfeed, I wouldn’t have found these relationships otherwise. This is just a trade-off you have to be willing to make.

3. The Community

The online community

We're spread all over the world! 127 countries! It's fascinating and humbling to think that my words connect with such a diverse group.

Earlier in the year, I prototyped a community extension of the newsletter using the platform Circle, but it fell short of my expectations.

As much as I love connecting with folks across the globe, the reality is that the more time I spend focused on relationships online, the less time I have for relationships in person.

So, at least for now, I’m focusing most of my community-building efforts locally in Los Angeles. I'd like to one day return to offering an online community option, but I will need more support to make it happen while keeping my life in balance.

The local community

I've put a lot of energy into fostering a local creative community here in LA. It's one of the things that brings me the most joy on a regular basis.

In the last 14 months, I’ve hosted or co-hosted 20 events!

So far, these haven’t been related to my writing, but they have served as a playground for some of my ideas.

I highly recommend taking the leap to start hosting events wherever you happen to live in the world. It doesn't have to be design or tech-related. Build it around anything you're excited about or the kind of people you want to spend more time with. I used Nick Gray’s hosting tips as inspiration to get started.

I'll share my experience and recommendations for how to bootstrap your own community in an upcoming article.

4. Top-of-Mind Lessons

The need to unify my efforts

I'm the kind of person who likes to always have a project in the works. However, I sometimes fly a bit too close to the sun and take on more than I can handle.

I share on social media every day.
I exercise every day.
I publish an article every week.
I host an event every month.
I support my friends on their projects.
I work a job to pay the bills.
Etc…

This surface area expanded to be more than I could handle over the last 6 months. My efforts across business, content, events, health, and relationships were too separate.

The key, I've found, is that I can do many things in parallel so long as those activities are complementary and support each other.

So I'm making an intentional choice to unify my writing, events, and social efforts, while stepping back into work I can do as a day job to support those initiatives.

It's time to retire the name Better by Design

I started this Substack by sharing ideas specific to software design, so keeping design in the name was important to me. However, from the start, I wanted to preserve space to talk about useful ideas from other disciplines.

Over time, I've found that creating a tech and design industry publication feels forced and unsustainable for me. I plan to write for decades, so I need to follow what feels good to make sure I’m excited to keep showing up for the long run.

I have a new name picked that's meaningful to me and that I think represents what I can uniquely offer. Basically, it just makes more space to venture further outside of the traditional realms of design and tech to surface more useful insights for everyone here. I've already been drifting this way for quite some time, so it shouldn't feel like too much of a change.

I’ll introduce this brand shift in next week’s post and then make the change.

The desire to tell others' stories

I want to start interviewing people in the community who reflect the values that I admire and whose stories might inspire others.

To manage my time, these will be written interviews to start, but I imagine I'll end up recording podcast-style chats sooner or later.

I’m lucky to know some amazing people with stories and insights to share about finding success, balance, and fulfillment as creative professionals. I'm excited to learn from them more formally and share those learnings with you.

5. What's Next?

Unification of writing and community
New name / rebrand coming next week
Focus on fostering in-person community
Sharing more inspiration (via my recommendations and interviews with community members)
Patrick goes back to work → Finding a new design day job

Thank you for your continued support. I'm excited about the direction we're heading and look forward to sharing more with you soon!

Until next time,

Patrick