On Resolutions and Growth

I'm making a few changes (hopefully for the better) and hoping to grow. Maybe you can help?

Tl;Dr: I have a big goal for 2025 — to get to 1500 free, and 50 paid subscribers. To get there, I’m making some changes, and adding actual incentives to encourage folks to support my work. See the What’s In it For Me ? section below for more details.

But first … a picture of the newest temporary cat we took in, who is looking for a forever home:

This smol orange tabby is named Pumpkin, and he just came into our care yesterday. He also thinks he is very good at hiding, and that I have not seen him. He is looking for a good home, and will hopefully be fully socialized in a few days. No, we will not foster fail him.

Where I Started With This Blog

In May 2023, after a few months posting on LinkedIn, I launched this newsletter. I had a simple goal: to maybe get a few people willing to read and (hopefully) engage with the swirling cyclone of thoughts/rants/observations that rattle around in my brain. I reasoned that my poor husband and mom had heard enough (though I automatically subscribed them anyway).

In a little over a year, I reached 100 users. A few months later, 200. And now? Partly thanks to the likes of

Jorge García Herrero

and

Mahdi Assan

recommending me to all their followers, I’ve gotten to 400+ free and 12 paid subscribers. That’s 12 more paid subscribers than I ever thought I’d get, and way more subscribers overall.

I’ve received so much encouragement, support, and kind words from my friends, readers, and colleagues in the privacy and data protection world. People even come up to me at events and go ‘Hey, aren’t you that loud person who writes Privacat Insights?’ (okay, only 3 people have said variations of this, but still that’s more than zero). Someone translated my Data Protection Myths article into Portuguese. A dear friend of mine even bought a domain name for privacy disaster-related content (obviously, privacydisasters.com) — Thanks Avishai!¹

It turns out, that I really like writing, and apparently I’m reasonably good at it, or at least coherent enough that at least 426 of you want to have my ramblings delivered to your inbox. So, in November, I decided to prioritize doing more writing going forward.

Taking a Leap to (Hopefully) Make a Difference

I also set a goal for myself — I want to reach 1500 subscribers and ideally 50 paid subscribers, by the end of 2025. It’s a stretch, but one I think I can make. I also plan to turn my machine unlearning series into a proper ebook.

What’s In it For Me?

I have been bad to my paid subscribers. Here you guys are, supporting what I’m doing, and I’m publishing all the content for free anyway. My ego and desire to get my thoughts out there suppressed my baser capitalistic urges, which is probably a good thing overall, but still seems like a raw deal for folks willing to shell out actual money. Thankfully, I came across

Jeannine Ouellette

’s excellent story on how she grew her Substack, and I realized that I could provide benefits without burying everything behind a paywall.

How I Grew My Substack from Zero to 40K Annual Income in Just 12 Months

So here’s how it goes. No matter what your subscription tier, you’ll get access to almost all content in the newsletter, and I’ll continue to feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that people actually like what I rant about as much as I do. I will also commit myself to writing at least two substantive posts a week, and maybe tossing in more small-form content when the spirit moves me. Now that I’m doing much less consulting, I plan to treat this more like an actual job and that means writing consistently.

But I’ve added a few perks for Paid & Foundational supporters (aka, Members of the Cat Club).

Paid Subscriber Benefits

Paid subscribers will receive:

1. Access to all posts, including subscriber-only content (in-depth analysis, what I’m thinking about/brainstorming).

2. Access to a bi-weekly members-only Q&A/therapy/struggle session post where you can ask questions, share thoughts/recommendations on what I should write about, etc.

3. Access to an exclusive ‘Cat Cafe’ Slack Channel where we can talk about data protection and blog-adjacent things more regularly and under the cover of pseudoanonymity.

4. At least one meetup a year (place/time TBD, though now it’s looking like May 2025 in Barcelona!)

Founding Member (aka, The Cat Club) Benefits

1. Everything in the Paid Tier.

2. Special 1:1 sessions on a Founding Members Slack channel (or Google Meet if you prefer).

3. Early access to posts and the eBook I promised I’d write— see it before everyone else!

4. The opportunity to be a guest on the Chance Conversations Podcast (subject to

   Conor Hogan
   approval) — and yes, this means there will be more episodes, despite me hating the process of editing podcasts.

5. My undying support and gratitude and the knowledge that you have made the cats very, very happy.

6. More incentives as I come up with them…

To make things even more exciting, I’ve decided to discount my paid subscription tiers for the holidays. I also reworked it so that yearly and Cat Club memberships are more enticing. If you’ve been thinking about subscribing, why not take advantage of a 20% off deal for the first year?

I will be posting a follow-up post with relevant links to the Slack Channel, and sharing contact details with my Cat Club Supporters for 1:1 chats. Stay tuned, and keep sharing your comments here and in the various fora I’m on.

Btw, you should really subscribe to Jorge’s and Mahdi’s Substacks:

1. I note that the site is bamjanxed at the moment and I need to work on a better integration to migrate privacy-disaster-related posts from here to there.