Quarterly Review - Q1 2025
IRL dinners, quiet growth, and 50 unexpected notebooks.
At the end of last year, I committed to writing a quarterly review specifically on how The Come Up is growing — the good, the bad, and everything in between.
We’re a little behind schedule, but here it is for Q1 2025.
Growth…
Interestingly, we’ve maintained an 11.3% growth rate in readers, even though my marketing efforts took a bit of a back seat to competing priorities.
LinkedIn and social posts have historically been strong growth drivers — but between juggling client projects and, well, life — I haven’t been as consistent as I’d like.
That’s definitely an area to refocus on in Q2 — not just to grow the publication, but because I want to give maximum exposure to every guest who generously shares their story.
Luckily, I spent a good chunk of late 2024 setting up referral partnerships with other Substack publications, and those have continued to quietly deliver.
At this point, they’ve become our strongest attribution channel by far.
And even with all that, we’ve maintained a 55%+ open rate, which blows me away.
So thank you — seriously — for being such an engaged, thoughtful community.
The Come Up IRL
The most exciting update this quarter was hosting the first (and second) in-person event for The Come Up — a private room dinner at Mimi Chinese in Toronto, and another at Bar St. Lo.
I’ve always done this kind of thing informally over the years, but it felt right to officially put it under the banner. We brought together 12 business owners and operators ranging from real estate developers to agency leads to eCommerce founders to meet, help each other out, and trade stories.
From the beginning, The Come Up has tried to carry an ethos of honesty, and normalize the idea that building a business is hard, and we should probably stop pretending it’s not.
Not to make it sound impossible, but to admit tell the truth — the good and the bad — to highlight what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what we’re still figuring out.
More and more readers have told me that a lot of entrepreneurship content just stresses them out — especially when it makes things look effortless.
That feedback’s really stuck with me, so it felt like a natural next step to bring some of those people together in real life to talk shop, trade tactics, and swap war stories.
Half the battle of entrepreneurship is mental — and nothing helps more than being around people who truly get it.
If you want to come to one of these dinners, shoot me a message and I’ll add you to the invite list.
Analog Forever…
If you know me, you know I’m big on doing everything you can (including paying money) to reduce screen time, and getting offline to clarify thoughts. This is something that isn’t just a personal preference but is backed by science to improve clarity and creativity.
As a result, for years, I’ve written everything down in moleskine notebooks and gone for meandering walks through the city, giving myself time to think about what to focus on net, before re-entering the matrix to execute.
Finally, I decided instead of shelling out $50 a pop at Indigo, I may as well just produce my own, so I partnered with my friend Laura from Hand&Press to produce our very own notebooks for The Come Up.
I wouldn’t call this our first piece of official merch — more like I just ordered 50 notebooks to last me the next five years, then realized I probably don’t actually need 50 notebooks.
If you’d like one, shoot me a message.
There’s no ecommerce set up yet, but tariffs be damned we’re happy to ship across both Canada and the US.
With that said…if you have any feedback on how we can improve our content please let me know.
You can always respond to this newsletter or reach out to me directly!
Thank you for being part of this journey — your support and feedback mean everything.
Keep building!