Sunday Dinner with Indian Dad
The December 8th weekly breakdown from the world of YYC and Canadian tech, chips, parenting and some random nonsense.
Author’s Note: Sunday Dinner will be an abbreviated version today, and it will mostly be about this blog. You’ve been warned. If you’re looking for more insight and originality, a) you’ve come to the wrong place and b) I’ve already put an article out that you should read this week.
Growth News of the Week
I launched this thing exactly three months ago with the following goals:
For the first time to start something of my own
I like writing and wanted to see if I could do it consistently
See if I could grow an audience, with the eventual goal of expanding this into other media types
In my introductory post I committed to the following (emoji represents whether it is on track)
Content at least every two weeks ✅
We are going to leverage socials and referrals to build a subscription base ✅
If we can get to 1000 subscribers, we will start working on a Podcast (I was just checking the internet and I don’t think there are enough of these) 🟨
Learn something about growth and potentially reach out to us for B2B or B2C growth consulting 🟨
Randomly get 8000 words on the Oilers which will alienate 90% of the readers ✅
Chip recommendations ✅
Subscriber Growth
Following the initial bump from my immediate network subscribing, we have seen things level off. That being said, the graph is still going up and to the right, and the recent uptick in subscribers has been almost entirely organic and through people re-sharing of content.
Engagement Data
Subscribers are great but are people engaging with content?
Average Email Open Rate - 70.4%
6800 article views
148 Subscribers
Top Performing Articles
Tale of Two Coaches - 494 views
The Growlar System Part 2 - 407 views
The First Sunday Dinner Week in Review - 391 views
What are my conclusions from the above? People like original content. The weekly summaries and content create familiarity and engagement (and I’ll continue with them) but there’s also clearly something there with more personal long form writing.
This was further reinforced through the weekend as the post I just put up on Friday has been the most shared article I’ve written and is the fastest to 300 views.
Learning and Next Steps
When I started, I made a personal commitment that I would do this for a year. A quarter of the way in, what do I plan to do next?
Per the previous section, I plan to commit to at least one long form post per month
I’m going to run a 30 day experiment with Substack Notes to see if that drives additional engagement
I’m going to do some old fashioned email marketing to contacts (ie prospects) who have not yet subscribed
Random other fun growth thing. I got Google Analytics hooked up to the page this week and had the first click from search traffic into an article. Also realized I have some keyword optimization to do as the top search query that landed people on the site this week was “facials near me.”
Ninety days from now I’ll let you know how these things went.
The Best of LinkedIn this week
This week Indian Dad started to get some re-shares across LinkedIn. Do I personally know all of these people? Yes. Do I in fact share an office floor with all of them? Yes. Does that make it any less gratifying? Absolutely not.
Startup of the Week
Have you heard of Indian Dad Media?
Sports Moment of the Week
The NHL announced its rosters for the Four Nations Cup. It will be the first best-on-best tournament in hockey since the 2014 Olympics. It should be pretty cool but I’m mostly annoyed that Connor McDavid was the only Oiler named to Canada’s entry in the tournament. Zach Hyman’s 109 regular season and playoff goals the last two years and Evan Bouchard’s 58 points in 53 games the last three playoff years should have earned them both spots.
Parenting Moment of the Week
Oldest’s junior girls basketball team won city championships. They basically wiped out every team in the league all year and were up 16-3 at halftime in the final. Then halfway through the fourth quarter the other team cut it to 19-17 (!). They held on to take it 25-17 but I think I was sweatier than the players down the stretch.
Chip of the Week
Going to go a little off book this week and make a lentil chip recommendation. They are about a 7/10 chip but are a 10/10 if you have food allergies or sensitivities.
What Dad watched
Reminder on the rating system:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ = “What happened to the other 0 stars?” = The maximum rating we can give out.
Family Movie - Moana 2 - The first Moana movie is, for my money, the best Disney movie ever. Great story, fabulous animation, and a soundtrack full of straight bangers. The sequel is not the best Disney movie ever. It looks incredible, but the story is muddled, the new characters are forgettable and the music is menh. Very disappointing.
Movie review: “What happened to the other 4 stars?”
Family Play: A Christmas Carol - We went and saw Theatre Calgary’s annual production of this classic. We have seen it before but I think this year was the best version. The part I loved the most was the party scene pre-intermission that featured a pretty killer medley of well known carols. Go see it.
We give it a: “What happened to the other 1 star?”
What Dad listened to
This song was featured prominently on my eight year old’s iPad this week. It’s terrible and unfortunately incredibly catchy.
What I (will) Read this Week
I’ve talked Brandon Sanderson before, but on December 6th he released the final book in his excellent Stormlight Archive series. Looking forward to working my way through this one over the holidays.
