It’s been amazing 2 years of writing the Engineering Leadership newsletter 🥳 🎉
I started the newsletter on this day, October 3, 2022!
Intro
It’s been truly amazing 2 years writing the newsletter. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and discovered a true passion for writing.
This newsletter edition is a bit nostalgic for me - looking back at the early days when I didn’t know what I was doing 🫣 (well, to some extent I still don’t know at this time :)).
I just know that I want to keep helping as many people as possible and share my knowledge and experience.
Why I started writing
In my career, I grew from an engineer all the way to being a CTO. When I grew to roles such as Head of Engineering and VP of Engineering, I started asking myself what is the next goal for me?
There are not a lot more steps for me to grow in the engineering organization, as the CTO is the last step.
I love helping and supporting others to grow and thrive in their roles and I asked myself why not try helping more people - outside of the organization as well.
That’s where writing online came into play. I started to actively share my experience and the knowledge I accumulated over the years on LinkedIn and writing the weekly blog (newsletter).
How I picked the topic
There weren’t a lot of engineering leadership resources when I first grew from Senior Software Engineer to Team Lead. I made a lot of mistakes and was struggling with the transition.
After many mistakes and some wins, I started to get a hang of it. But if I had resources like the ones that I am writing, the transition would be much easier.
And that is the goal → help as many engineers and managers to become great engineering leaders.
A lot of articles are written in a way that my past self would get a lot of value from!
How I started with the newsletter
I started the newsletter on October 3rd, 2022, but it wasn’t in the format and with the goal as it is today. It served more for the support to my blog which I created at the same time.
I’ve built the blog myself with React and Gatsby and hosted it on Netlify. It was hosted on eng-leadership.com (now redirects to the newsletter) and the newsletter was hosted on Substack on newsletter.eng-leadership.com.
I was duplicating the content on both platforms and the goal was for readers to read online on my blog and get the newsletter to the email via Substack.
This is how my blog looked like back in the day:
I really had no idea what I was doing, just knew that I wanted to write and share my knowledge with others.
I was writing the blog and also posting on the newsletter for about 10 months and after that I decided to go full-on with the newsletter.
Moving fully to Substack was one of the best decisions I ever made!
Substack (I’m not sponsored by them) really makes it easy to just focus on writing. With my blog, that I built myself, I needed to deploy every time I made a new blog post + build and maintain the functionalities (support GDPR with proper cookie management, design and build all the pages, update libraries, etc.).
It felt like I was doing more development than actual writing, which slowed me down and moved my focus from what’s really important → that is writing.
When I first started writing online the feeling “is not good enough” is very real!
I needed a lot of time in order to become semi-comfortable with posting regularly on LinkedIn and sending out weekly newsletters.
I questioned myself a lot, like:
Do I know enough about engineering and leadership?
Is it good enough? Is it going to be interesting to read?
What will others think of me?
Well, I didn’t let this stop me from doing it. I published it anyway and nothing really bad happened.
What I learned is that it doesn’t matter how much you know and if you are an “expert” in something. The intention is what matters and the thought behind it is important.
If you are trying to be helpful and provide value, people will love to read it.
And now it’s been more than 100+ weeks of consistently sending out the weekly newsletter! And more than 400 days of daily LinkedIn posts!
If you are thinking of starting to writing online or you are already writing, I highly recommend checking out these two articles (paid articles):
Progress and learnings over the 2 years
I am a big fan of building in public. I think that’s the best way to build things. If you’ve been following me for a while, I have been sharing a lot of my mistakes and also some wins!
And I’ll keep doing that in the future as well. Here is the newsletter progression over the last 2 years:
0 - 6 months (0 - 200~ subscribers) → getting used to it
The newsletter grew to 200 subscribers. I remember feeling ecstatic, receiving an email notification of a new subscriber to the newsletter! That always made my day.
What I did wrong
I was just sending out the newsletter and that’s it. I didn’t really take the time to promote it and make it visible.
I did the same thing on LinkedIn as well, I posted 2x/week and just sent out the post and closed LinkedIn until I posted again that week.
I also didn’t collaborate and engage with other writers and people who are on a similar path than I am. I consider myself a lone wolf at this stage.
Looking back at some articles that I sent out, I get a “cringe” feeling and question myself: “How did I let myself send this out?” But I take it as a sign that I have progressed and improved!
What I did right
I kept going and being consistent with the weekly newsletter articles and also posting 2x/week on LinkedIn even when there wasn’t a lot of traction and growth. I persevered. I’ve built the consistency, which helped me immensely moving forward.
6 - 12 months (200 - 15.000 subscribers) → the launchpad
In April 2023 the newsletter grew from 200 to the first 1000 subscribers. Here is the case study about the 400% growth. And the growth kept increasing.
What I did wrong
I should have already opened up the paid subscription option with the first 1k subscribers, I believe that would give me a much better jump start with the paid option. I waited about 4 more months until I actually launched the paid option.
What I did right
I started building good relationships with people who are on a similar path to me. We have supported and helped each other. This has substantially helped all of us to progress and learn faster.
I moved from being a lone wolf → to a collaborator and being helpful to other creators around me.
I started to also post daily on LinkedIn which has helped me increase the reach and visibility for the newsletter as well!
12 - 18 months (15.000 - 50.000 subscribers) → the hypergrowth stage
This was the stage where I saw amazing growth, which confirmed that I was onto something here and gave me the confidence to keep moving forward and progressing + keep making things better and better.
I believe this stage happened due to SO many new people starting their engineering newsletter and LinkedIn was filled with new people starting. And that’s awesome! I am always excited to see a new person starting their engineering newsletter.
And the abundance mindset is very true → new people starting → bigger interest from everyone → more eyes and visibility for everyone → we are all growing.
What I did wrong
I should have already started my cohort-based course “Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role” at this time.
I am having so much fun hosting these and I see the cohorts really help me to connect with people and see all the different challenges that people are facing. This helps me to write better.
What I did right
I continued to be consistent and also kept adding more and more useful things to my newsletter → learning tracks, guides and templates, a leaderboard, etc.
I also really started to focus a lot more on the quality of the articles and started doing illustrations that fit the branding of the newsletter.
18 - 24 months (50.000 - 77.000 subscribers) → the maturing stage
This is the current stage, which I have absolutely enjoyed (probably the most out of all the stages). I started to really get a hang of the process and my writing style + have built the consistency that I have confidence that will never go away.
I have been truly enjoying writing and it’s something I see doing for a VERY long time.
What I did wrong
I should be monetizing more content and also it’s the right time to increase the cadency. I should already increase the cadency to 2x/week, because I believe the readers would get a LOT more value that way.
What I did right
I started with my cohort-based course “Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role”, created the online store with cool Engineering Leadership swag and attended various different podcasts, conferences + hosted a roundtable in San Francisco and held a workshop in Amsterdam.
Plus not to mention, added a lot more guides and templates + increased the quality of articles further!
Newsletter’s annual revenue progression over time
In a bit more than a year, we’ve been able to grow from 0 → 43.3k$ ARR.
I started with the early bird paid subscription on August 21, 2023, but really started offering additional benefits from September 10, 2023, that’s when people decided to go for the paid subscription and the ARR has been growing consistently ever since.
A big thanks to 628 people who are already paid subscribers 🙏 I will keep adding more and more benefits + keep writing actionable articles that are very relevant to our great engineering industry!
My #1 focus has now become to keep growing and continuously improving this newsletter!
As you all know, for the last 2 years I have been working as a full-time CTO on our startup Zorion.
Unfortunately, the startup didn’t work the way we planned it out and as of recently, we needed to stop pursuing the product-market fit that we all wanted to achieve.
We have been putting so much effort into it for the last 2 years and the positive thing is that we have all learned a LOT from it + built great relationships, which will last for a lifetime.
I may write more about what went well and not so well with it in some of the future articles. But whenever something like that happens → it opens the door to something else.
This has been a clear sign for me to focus on building and growing this newsletter + focus on the freelance work (coaching & mentoring, consulting & advising, fractional/interim CTO roles), which I have been saying no to a lot in the last 2 years since my time is very limited.
Let’s get to that next.
I have added Fractional / Interim CTO options to work with me
For 11+ years I have been doing full-time roles and also freelance work at the same time.
Freelance work has been one of my secrets to growing in my full-time roles. I wouldn’t be growing in the pace without it, because my experience wouldn’t be as broad as it is right now.
You can read more about this in the article My secret for growing from engineer to CTO (paid article).
Doing fractional/interim CTO roles in combination with coaching & mentoring, consulting & advising fits me the most, as I can help as many people / companies that way + work with various of different teams and people in order to increase my experience further.
By Human Design, I am a projector energy type. And that is the reason why I enjoy writing this newsletter so much as well as helping various of different people and teams.
Reach out to me at info@gregorojstersek.com for more info. I’ll build up the landing page soon.
Plans for the future
Increasing the cadency of newsletters to 2x/week
One newsletter will be sent out on Wednesday (it’s going to be for paid subscribers). And I’ll keep Sunday’s newsletter free (same as it is right now).
This will start next week. I will send out the newsletter for paid subscribers on Wednesday, October 9.
I will keep monitoring this and adjust if needed in the future, but I know that increasing the cadency right now is the way to go!
Keep adding new guides and templates for you to thrive in your career
I have a lot more resources in my mind to help you progress in your career and become great engineering leaders.
Improving the learning tracks further
I plan to introduce more learning tracks as well as add more articles to the existing tracks.
Keep doing and continuously improving the cohort-based course “Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role”
I really enjoy hosting the cohorts with the students and I am really excited to keep doing them and improving them as time goes by!
Keep adding cool new swag to the Engineering Leadership store
I truly enjoyed building and creating the cool T-shirts and other things in collaboration with my designer. I have plans to create a lot more interesting stuff, stay tuned!
Consistently write on LinkedIn, Substack Notes and X
I started to post 2x/day on weekdays and 1x/day on weekends. Will keep doing that!
Other initiatives
A self-paced course,
A book,
Other things that may come up!
Last words
If you made it to the end, I just wanted to say that I appreciate you for being a reader and a subscriber! I am excited about what the future will bring and where this newsletter will go.
One thing I know for sure is that I’ll keep putting in my best to provide as much value as possible.
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Whenever you are ready, here is how I can help you further
Join the Cohort course Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role here.
Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? Check the sponsorship options here.
Book a Coaching and Mentoring or Consulting and Advising call with me here.
Take a look at the cool swag in the Engineering Leadership Store here.
Get in touch
You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
If you wish to make a request on particular topic you would like to read, you can send me an email to info@gregorojstersek.com.
This newsletter is funded by paid subscriptions from readers like yourself.
If you aren’t already, consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive the full experience!
You are more than welcome to find whatever interests you here and try it out in your particular case. Let me know how it went! Topics are normally about all things engineering related, leadership, management, developing scalable products, building teams etc.
Fantastic journey, Gregor!
It's truly inspiring to see your growth and how you've continued to learn and evolve.
Good luck with the future plans.
Amazing journey Gregor. Thanks for inspiring so many others along the same path, you’ve been a huge help for me! 🙏
Good luck in the next step of your journey! Let me know if you’ll need beta readers for the book 🙃