I Lost 10K Email Subscribers Last Month
February 2026’s business breakdown
Welcome to February 2026’s Monthly Memo.
If you’re new here, each month I share my income, expenses and what I’m working on now.
In today’s memo:
- Naval Ravikant’s advice on making money by not making money
- How I still made 5 figures
- Should you clean your list? (I lost 10,000 subscribers last month)
Grab a cup of tea, let’s dive in.
The Freedom Metre
When I was a dentist, I hated how my income was tied to my time. As a writer, I began tracking leveraged income (scalable assets) because what you measure, you improve. I started the Freedom Metre in January 2023. I’d made $89,360.77, and 35.82% was low leverage.
Today’s figures:
At the start of Jan, I put a stop to all revenue-generating activities that would take time from the book. This initially caused me a lot of anxiety. But I’ve been thinking a lot about Naval Ravikant’s advice on making money in bursts:
"If you're willing to bleed a little bit every day but in exchange you'll win big later, you will do better. That is, by the way, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs bleed every day. They're not making money, they're losing money, they're constantly stressed out, all the responsibility is upon them, but when they win they win big.”
This was easier to execute when I was starting my business, because there were no opportunities to make money. But saying no gets harder the more leverage you build. This means the reward for doing so only increases. I’m convinced the book is a great bet. Not just financially, but for my life, too.
I want to produce something I am truly proud of, and that means making sacrifices.
That said, we still made over 5 figures this month.
Let's take a look at the numbers, and I’ll explain how.
February’s income:
Gross: $12,863.19
Expenses: $6,353.34
Net: $6,509.85
Income breakdown
- Partnership Program: $7,500.00
- Products:
- Welcome Upsell: $3097.10
- Digital Products: $2266.09
The partnership program is my 1-1 high-ticket offer.
I launched it officially 3 months ago, but ran a beta 12 months ago.
My first client went from zero clients and no plan, to scaling an offer he enjoys and writing about ideas he believes in (recently he landed two $3k packages in 2 days—I was more happy for his wins than my own!). He was happy to renew. I had doubled my prices since we started ($10k for 12 months, to $100 for 6 months), so we met halfway with $7.5k
I’ve loved working 1-1 with people. Some are experts, some hadn’t written a word before we began together. The range of problems is fascinating, and I learn more about my readers every day.
I’ll share more about how I built my program soon. One lesson I’ve learned though is the importance of boundaries. I want to do my best work for my clients, so I set a cap at 5. I tell them I am available every day, but only after my writing is done. This is a great win-win, and something I will continue to offer in the future.
(You should be unreachable for at least half your day.)
If you think you might be interested in working with me, you can hop on the waitlist by clicking here.
The product revenue has come almost entirely from my welcome sequence. I set up a small ‘book funnel’ with product upsells, and this has let me advertise in newsletters such as Justin Welsh and Jay Clause at a profit. It’s been nice to not rely on social media for newsletter growth, which I’m sure you can imagine.
Expenses: $6,353.34
Notable Expenses:
- Monthly running cost: $4,700.18
- Meta Ads: $1,280.13
My monthly running costs are around $7k. This includes paying my lovely VA, Vim, $2k/month, advertising on meta, and software. $7k might sound like a lot to some (and not much to many), but it feels about right as a bigger ‘solopreneur’. Every investment is designed to save time and maximise impact.
Audience:
Total Followers: 274,842
Followers gained: 1,654
I made a decision last month to focus almost solely on X and YouTube. This was partly because I detest social media and wanted to focus on my book. But also because I realised I actually really enjoy X. The only reason I pulled away from it was because it is harder to grow there. But when I removed my desire from results and started having more fun, it picked up.
This is a lesson I am constantly relearning.
Written social content now takes around 2 hours per month. I’ve sent 2-3 emails for 5 years now and haven’t missed a day of social media content. Vim has been reposting, reusing, and redistributing old ideas. I just do quick edits and hit OK.
This has freed up more space to focus on YouTube.
We crossed 1,000 subscribers, and this week, I had my first semi viral video. It’s a lot of fun to start a new platform. But only when I treat it like a game. With any project now, I constantly remind myself: the purpose is play.
Let’s talk about cleaning your email list.
Newsletter:
Total readers: 25,760
New subscribers: 1,264
Unsubscribes: 462
Net growth: 802
Every 6 months, we run an automated list clean—removing subscribers who haven’t opened for 3 months.
This involves two weeks of ‘recovery emails’.
When my VA texted saying 10,000 readers had been removed, I felt like she chopped off my left leg. The pain is mostly my ego, but also that I am not sure if it was the right move. Standard advice is to clean your list regularly as un-opens can impact deliverability.
But I have realised that I, as a subscriber of other lists, go cold for long periods of time. Eventually a subject line catches my eye, and I am delighted to dive through someone’s back log. I also feel gutted when I realise I no longer receive someone’s emails.
I saw Daniel Throssell, an email writer I respect, send an email explaining why he doesn’t clean his list. Ben Settle said this, too. I’m not sure what my future response will be, but the more I build my business, the more I operate under one framework:
Market the way you like to be marketed to.
So we might relax on the list cleaning for a while. On a positive note, we’re back over 1k new subs per month, and I improved my welcome sequence, so the unsubscribe rate is lower too.
Cheers for reading. Here’s a round up of some of the previous content this month:
Some stuff you might’ve missed:
About Kieran
Ex dentist, current writer, future Onlyfans star · Sharing what I learn about writing well, thinking clearly, and building an online business