Hey friends,

It’s been 34 days since I last published a post on this Substack. This is by far the longest it’s gone without a new post. The truth is I needed a break and to take my time working out a few things.

About 2 weeks ago I hit a breaking point. I was deeply unhappy, lacked motivation, and none of the projects I was putting my energy into were showing any positive signs. It felt like I was spinning in place and nothing I was doing was working.

I needed to stop, take a breathe and reassess a bunch of things.

Thankfully I’ve made good progress, charted a new course, and made some tough, but necessary decisions about this newsletter.

A new start for SaaS Decoded

When I started this substack I had a plan in mind.

I wanted to help SaaS founders and operators grow their businesses by sharing long form, actionable content. I wanted SaaS Decoded to become the go-to-place for going deep on SaaS growth.

I have come to realize that I deviated too much from this mission. Instead of staying focused, I went too far out of the lines.

It’s time for a reset and to make some important changes.

Moving forward SaaS Decoded will have the following characteristics:

Targeted at founders who are building a SaaS which is sitting between $0 and $100k MRR. Even though heads of growth, VPs of marketing, and other operators may get value from my posts, I will be writing for the founders. This helps me keep a single persona in mind when I’m writing. The $100k MRR number is arbitrary but I’d rather focus on early stage growth which is within my comfort zone.
No more “follow the journey”, opinion pieces, and other types of posts which don’t follow these guidelines:
1. Each post should cover one clear, highly actionable topic. The post should teach the reader how to accomplish something concrete which helps improve their business’s bottom line. An exception to this rule would be in depth case studies but I will make sure those are jam packed with useful insights which are as actionable as I can make them.
2. The topic needs to fall within the category of growth, operations, BI, or product development, or a combination of 2 or more of these core content pillars.
3. Each post should have something tangible for the reader. This could be as simple as providing a list of use cases, a Google sheet template, or mockups to show off the end goal.
4. Each post will be world-class. This means thorough editing, easy to follow, unique, impactful, and the type of content you come back to and share with your friends.
One post published every 2 weeks. I previously committed to one post each week, and maintained that cadence for many months. I now have enough experience to know that it’s far better to publish the right content at a slower cadence, than the opposite approach. One post every 2 weeks will allow me to spend more time planning and creating the best content I can. I will also enjoy the process more since I’ll have less pressure to produce something every week. I may end up occasionally producing more than 1 post in a 2 week period, but my commitment is to 1 post every 2 weeks.
Better balance of sharing my own experiences, and useful case studies/lessons from others. I think people like to read real-world examples but they also want advice that works. This can be tough because I’m most interested in the work I’m doing, and it’s much easier to share that than case studies and lessons from others. I will need to do a better job of balancing this out so each piece I publish is truly impactful to the reader.
No more benefits programs and other distractions. I launched The Vault soon after starting SaaS Decoded thinking it would be a nice bonus for subscribers. Basically no one has taken advantage of the program and its done nothing for the newsletter other than take my time away from the writing. I will be shutting it down soon.
No paid posts. I am disabling monetization and making all paid content (just 2 posts) free. I may revisit monetization in the future but for now its not a priority.
Stopping and archiving the $0 to $10k series. I started that series back in May and have published 7 posts as part of my journey growing my SaaS, Project Echo. I ran some analyses on this series and was shocked to find that those 7 posts only drove 1 new subscriber. After some further analysis, I come to the conclusion that even though the series might be useful for some existing readers, its working against my ambitions to grow the newsletter. No one wants to have to read multiple, long posts to get up to date on a 7 part series.

I want to end this post by thanking you for your support. I’m truly honored that you decided to share your email with me and read my content.

Moving forward SaaS Decoded will be a far better resource and I’m excited to see how the newsletter continues to develop.

Until next time.

Justin

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