Annual Update: 2024
A round-up of 2024 and my goals for 2025.
Well, look at that. It’s 2025. Happy New Year, everyone!
Let me cut to the chase: the Palantir analysis isn’t coming out tonight. I finished editing it around 8:43 PM EST (just in time for the 9:30 PM EST schedule), but as I reread it, the business section seemed off. The content of the section was accurate, but I had some significant misconceptions about the business model, and I don’t think I’ll have time to fix them before the day ends.
It’s probably unnecessary to redo this section, as everything was “OK.” But I think I can do a little better. Fixing this will take me an extra day to rewrite (realistically 6 or 7 hours, including additional research), which means it could technically be released tomorrow (Thursday). However, due to the scheduling of Weekly Brief, I’ll be publishing it as the next Stock Analysis instead.
This is a premature issue on my end, so if you’d like to see it earlier without the corrections, just reply to this email, and I’ll send you the draft. Otherwise, I’ll fix it up and post it in a couple of weeks, as per the schedule. I simply hold high standards for myself, and I don’t feel comfortable sharing this yet.
Now that I’m here and have your attention though, this gives me an opportunity to update you all on the business side of this newsletter: the growth, and the outlook of the community I’m building. As many of you may know, I only use two platforms: Blossom and Substack. You’re currently reading this on my Substack. I won’t go in-depth explaining what I post on each of these platforms—you can check them out to answer that question—but I will share my current followings, my hopes for fostering a community, and my projections for the future.
(I love projections, no matter how inaccurate they may end up being. Plus, I think it’ll be interesting for all of us to look back on next year. (I plan to do these kinds of reviews once a year.)
Current following and stats:
It’s awesome to see so many folks interested in my content, and I’m excited to see what 2025 brings to the table. I’ll continue to be transparent throughout this journey, striving to give you all objective high-quality posts essays and paid analyses on investing and the like, making you all objectively better indibvdial stock investors in the process. (I want to reiterate that showing all of these numbers and data is purely for transparency). I appreciate all of you—not just the numbers.
For transparency again, my ultimate goal here is to reach CA$50,000 per year in annual revenue. There are no costs to run this newsletter other than the 10% fee Substack takes for memberships, so most of this would be profit. I currently have little income (living mostly off my savings), and this newsletter has my full-time attention. Making that income goal annually, post-taxes, would net me around $38,000. Assuming my 80% save rate stays the same, and assuming this income is paid from a corporation via dividends to avoid CPP contributions, I’d be able to save and invest (according to my GARP strategy) $30,400 every year.
It’s ambitious, but it’s not out of reach:
Currently, growth on Blossom is about 8% every month, and this newsletter is about 20%. The conversion rate for paid subscribers is currently around 2%. If we assume this continues over the next year, here are the stats we can expect for 2025:
Blossom: 8,103 followers
The J. Nicholas: 10,552 subscribers
Paid subscribers: 211
Annual revenue: $17,938
Do I think this is realistic? No. In fact, I think these numbers are incredibly out of reach. This would be the absolute bull case. But it’s a great reminder that current growth—even if it’s slow—projected over time, will add up to success. I’m not one to constantly chase goals, as I firmly believe that consistency yields results eventually. Still, it’s always good to have a goal to strive for.
A more realistic projection for the end of 2025 would be:
Blossom: 5,000 followers
The J. Nicholas: 1,200 subscribers
Paid subscribers: 25
Annual revenue: $2,125
This journey is a long term one.
But who knows? Maybe all of you reading this will share my journey and amazing content with your friends, family, and colleagues, and we’ll grow much faster. Sneakily places a share button below this sentence for you to do just that.(Shameless marketing here)
Once again, Happy New Year, everyone. I’m excited for 2025, and I thank you all for coming along for the ride!
All the best,
Jacob
Happy New Year Jacob! Keep up the growth 👌
Congrats for results and transparency! Happy New Year!