Six Things I've Learned Scaling My Newsletter to $126K ARR

In 2024, my LinkedIn views fell by over 50%. But my side hustle doubled to $126K ARR.

Hey, Paweł here. Welcome to the free edition of The Product Compass!

Every week, I share actionable insights and resources for PMs.

Here are a few posts you might have recently missed:

• The Complete Product Life Cycle: Tools, Methods, and Templates

• Introduction to AI Product Management

• Step-By-Step Introduction to AI Agents

• Top 9 High-ROI ChatGPT Use Cases for Product Managers

• 5 GTM Principles You Should Know as a PM

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From Strategy to Objectives Masterclass, 2nd Edition

Before we go further, I’m amazed by the positive opinions the Continuous Product Discovery Masterclass keeps receiving.

At the same time, after getting your feedback, it has become clear that From Strategy to Objectives Masterclass, while well received, was not on the same level.

I’ve been re-recording it all week. This Thursday, I’m publishing the second edition with:

• More dynamic videos with my face visible all the time.

• Practical case studies.

• You’ll perform a strategy and OKR exercises and get my feedback on Slack.

• I’ll add monthly ask-me-anything sessions to all my courses.

🎁 Everyone who enrolled will be upgraded for free.

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Six Things I've Learned Scaling This Newsletter to $126K ARR

In 2024, my LinkedIn impressions fell by over 50%:

My LinkedIn impressions 2023 vs 2023. Source: Shield

Yet my side hustle doubled to $126K ARR (annual recurring revenue) and didn’t slow down:

Six things I've learned you can apply to your SaaS product:

1. Vanity metrics

Metrics like views and reactions are useless.

But giving up those dopamine boosts was challenging. Inspired by

Aakash Gupta

, I started ignoring those numbers and focused on delivering the right value to the right audience to get the right engagement.

My North Star Metric became the number of Substack posts shared per week:

• It’s a single metric.

• It reflects how readers get value from the product.

• It is a leading indicator of the newsletter’s long-term success and is directly connected to my growth flywheel.

Example: 111 shares of Product Strategy Examples

If you want to learn how to select the right audience and drive the right engagement, check out The Secrets of Copywriting, where I explain this in detail.

2. Focus

Tradeoffs—things you don't do—are essential. Respecting your strategy means sacrificing many short-term wins.

What’s particularly tough for me is rejecting dedicated training requests, which would be easy wins. But I need to stay focused, especially having a full-time job as a PM.

One of many rejected coaching opportunities, LinkedIn

Strategy is not just about what you choose. It's even more importantly about saying no to other things.

What else do we need to define a product strategy?

Check out two free posts, Product Strategy Canvas and Product Strategy Examples, especially the concepts of a Value Proposition and the Can’t/Won’t test.

3. Purpose

Revenue is a terrible motivator, even for founders. You quickly get used to any number.

I paywall fewer posts than I declare, keep my prices lower than everyone recommends and publish opinions that contradict what some expect to hear (the extended OST, the flaws of Business Model Canvas, etc.).

But nothing beats the feeling of being true to yourself and knowing you're doing something that matters.

From our Slack community

This gives me the energy to keep moving forward.

I described this and other ways to motivate yourself and your teams in The Product Leadership Playbook.

4. Diversification

Many experts, such as Justin Welsh, suggest building multiple revenue streams. This would mean adding training, consulting, etc., to the newsletter.

But those products would drain my time and energy (Focus), and they wouldn't address the risk of relying on LinkedIn—a single partner that could change the rules at any time and disrupt all those “diversified streams.”

Instead, I focus on diversifying my marketing channels. I'm particularly happy that SEO views have surpassed LinkedIn. November 2024:

The Product Compass traffic sources, November 2024

What helped me a lot in anticipating threats and discovering new strategic opportunities was regularly asking myself questions from the SWOT analysis.

5. Failure

You will be wrong. A lot. And that’s okay. Getting things right requires trying and failing over and over again.

I'm grateful for every failed experiment that helped me understand my mistakes and improve.

If you could optimize just one thing, maximize the speed of learning—your Time to Learn (TTL).

6. Mental health

This one is challenging. At nearly 40 years old, I can no longer work 60 hours a week. I struggled with burnout while running a startup, and it could happen again.

What helps:

• Pareto principle & thinking in terms of Impact vs. Effort.

• Trying to lead with trust and context rather than control.

• Applying automation, especially at work (RPA, LLMs, AI agents).

• Support groups & learning together with others.

• Trying to avoid other sources of waste, like perfectionism.

• Physical activity at least twice a week.

• Making time for my family.

Many thanks to people who’ve been supporting me through the year, in particular, but not limited to:

Aakash Gupta

,

David Pereira

,

Maarten Dalmijn

,

Maja Voje

, and

Aatir Abdul Rauf

❤️

Which of those tips can you apply to your product?

And what are you going to do next?

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Maja Voje’s GTM Checklist

My friend,

Maja Voje

just launched the greatest Black Friday deal: her 100-Step Go-to-Market Checklist is now available with an $80 discount (~55%).

This checklist includes frameworks, examples, and templates trusted by VCs, endorsed by industry experts, and proven to help over 7,500 founders and product managers land customers and turn a profit faster.

You can get your GTM Checklist here: https://gtmstrategist.com/gtm-checklist

I don’t get anything for that promotion. I genuinely recommend Maja’s offer to those interested in GTM.

Exclusive for The Product Compass community

Maja is offering a free positioning workshop from her Bootcamp to anyone who purchases the checklist. After purchasing the GTM Checklist, email order@gtmstrategist.com with "The Product Compass" in the subject line to claim your free workshop 🙌

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Thanks for reading The Product Compass!

It's great to learn and grow together.

Coming next:

• Thursday: From Strategy to Objectives Masterclass, 2nd edition

• Saturday: Deeply Researched AI Pricing Strategies (the title might differ)

• By January 11: Product Innovation Masterclass + certificate.

Have a great weekend and a productive week ahead,

Paweł