2023 Review
Thoughts and feelings from another strange year.
As the next scheduled post date is Christmas weekend I’ve decided to use this post as a bit of a wrap-up for the year.
I want to share a bit more behind the curtain, and get your thoughts on my plans for the next year.
Firstly, thank you. The satisfaction of writing is one thing, but some of the responses have been very moving.
The second year has been a bit different to the first year. I’ve published 37 times this year as opposed to 51 in 2022. I’ve been a bit easier on myself when it comes to getting content out there.
This week’s post is going to cover a bit of logistics, plans for 2024, a bit of TownSq news, and content stats.
Logistics
Last year when I did this post I shared a bit about the writing process and that seemed to go down quite well, so firstly here’s a bit more from behind the scenes.
I’ve moved from Revue to Substack, and that’s been broadly fine.
Revue, the platform that I launched on, had been acquired by Twitter only for Musk to decide that it needed to be closed down. That led to a bit of a dash to a new platform and Substack was the one.
The only issue I’m having is that the SEO is rubbish compared to Revue - so if anyone has any clues on that I would be grateful for the insight.
In 2022 I tried to stick to the 10am on a Sunday slot but in 2023 I started to try out publishing at different times and on different days.
The data tells me one thing, but I would love to get your views on this; was it a good thing to receive on a Sunday morning or is the Monday morning/lunchtime slot better as it’s more worky?
I did the 10am on a Sunday slot originally because that’s when some of my favourite newsletters went out, and to play to the fact that traditional media always saw Sunday morning as being peak reading time, but old rules needn’t apply here.
2024
I have lots of thoughts spinning around about what to do with this blog in the next year. As always I’d really value your views.
I have a bunch of half written articles on topics like:
Knowing where you are in your journey, inspired in part by a trip to Cadbury World for my son’s birthday and realising how they built their whole village 25 years before they even discovered their most successful product.
Won’t do what you tell me, on our conflicting desire for freedom and direction.
Loathing learning, on the state of the education sector right now.
What if there were no freelancers?, talking about their importance and questioning why they are so often overlooked.
The value of gossip, and why we don’t always appreciate how useful it is for organisations and communities.
Why you shouldn’t work from home, without getting too dragged into my own personal bias!
You against me, me against you, on the issue with our competitive rather than cooperative society.
React, on the way we learn how to react to situations better.
The ticket, looking at how we pick up on the behaviour of others in unfamiliar situations, and change our own way of being.
Fair portions, on the imbalance when it comes to entrepreneurs raising investment.
Plus, many, many more, like:
The dark room, teach them a lesson, the value of chaos, divergence and convergence, creating conditions to create, it’s not that simple, what we want from life, how we do things around here, slow Tuesdays, getting stressed out, and edging out of comfort zones.
I’ve heard feedback from many of you as to where I should point my nose next, and I’m trying not to take on the analytics-driven journalism mindset of just churning out posts that match topics that have done well on the algorithm in the past.
Whenever I’m asked why I do this I flippantly suggest it is just for my own mental health, which is true but as it has grown it has been about validating some of the way I see the world and hopefully introducing challenge.
Recently I shared the bit from Farnam St about the value of writing. It resonated with me.
Sometimes writing about a topic has fully changed how I think about it, but also has forced me to consider that my viewpoint might be overly biased or narrow.
I’ve been told I should do it as a podcast, or I should post more often, but I don’t want to over commit and end up not enjoying it.
That said, maybe I’d enjoy it more.
I’ve also been told to pack it in, so there is some balance!
I’ve considered rewriting posts from the first year with two years’ more experience under my belt, and it has crossed my mind to spend more time compiling these into a collection and exploring options for publishing them, but I don’t think I want to get sucked into all of that just yet.
My master document has 110,000 words in it now, which is well over 600 pages of content.
I’ve ignored a lot of the advice (and my own medicine when talking to start-ups) about finding a niche or a single audience and writing for that persona. This isn’t intended to be that just now, and it’s nice to see the broad range of entrepreneurs, freelancers, professionals, musicians, sportspeople, politicians, investors, lawyers, broadcasters, colleagues, family members, friends, and everything in between that have engaged with the posts every week.
The last thing any of us need is more email, and the last thing most of us need is another entrepreneur with a newsletter, so I’m grateful that I’ve passed that filter with so many of you.
One thing I considered for next year (but which I think I’ve ruled out) is taking a bit more of a political viewpoint. Next year is going to be a big year in the world of politics, so trying to apply a bit of the Good Founder thinking to issues such as education, housing, economic policy etc.. I think that one has gone away for now, but as always - just let me know!
TownSq news
More broadly, I’m pretty satisfied at being able to keep this going while my day job has not slowed down!
We’ve had a serious year of things at TownSq, I know I keep a lot of it out of this newsletter so as to avoid it being an aditorial, but we’ve hit some major milestones this year.
We made Fast Growth 50 for a second consecutive year, and we’ve managed to fully plug a big gap from a short-term contract with revenue growth from our core business.
We’ve launched new initiatives like Creative Collective and TownSq Online, new spaces like Hereford and our Barnstaple extension, and signed on for our latest spaces in Kingston and Tunbridge Wells.
We’ve also had so much heartache. We lost one colleague from our team, and three colleagues from external partners, all before their time.
We’ve had to try to balance the cost of living crisis which bites particularly hard for a company with a lot of property.
We recertified as a B Corp after 20 months of trying, and launched our 50 Stories Impact Report.
Earlier in the summer we acquired a business to grow our Admin Support operation, and we relaunched our Startup Club format which has helped thousands.
It’s been busy, but it’s been satisfying, and I think that’s the most important bit.
Content stats
Three posts in particular seem to have struck a chord in 2023:
This is the Last Time (which apparently made people cry, this was not on the list of goals when I first started out)
But no post got close to doing the numbers that two from last year did:
And far and away the most viewed post is Loving Problems, Breaking Up With Ideas.
Readership growth
Thanks to everyone who subscribed in 2023, we’ve grown as a community by 44% which I’m really chuffed with, and not seen open rates drop off.
I could have thousands more subscribers and get lower engagement without having such a loyal following, so for that I’m grateful to you all.
So that’s it for 2023, thanks again for all of your love and support. Please keep in touch and regularly nudging me, it feels like shouting into the void sometimes only to bump into someone and have them tell me how much they loved a recent post. I’m a simple guy, that stuff means a great deal.
See you in 2024!