---
aliases: ["Q3 2025"]
Is A: Quarter
Created at: "2025-07-01"
Belongs to: "[[2025]]"
Has: ["[[25q3-ebook]]", "[[25q3-community-launch]]", "[[25q3-podcast-season-4]]", "[[25q3-leaddev-london]]", "[[25q3-peak-training]]"]
Status: Done
---
# Q3 2025

## Focus

Q3 was the most ambitious quarter yet. Three big launches — the ebook, the community, and podcast Season 4 — plus a keynote at LeadDev London and peak training for Stelvio. This was the quarter where I felt the tension between "scale everything" and "don't burn out." It worked, but just barely.

## Highlights

- Published [[25q3-ebook]] "The Engineering Leader's Playbook" — 12 chapters distilled from the best newsletter content, sold 1,400 copies in the first month at EUR 29
- Launched [[25q3-community-launch]] on Circle with 850 founding members from the premium tier — weekly AMAs, peer groups, async Q&A
- [[25q3-podcast-season-4]] opened with a special 3-part series on "Building Engineering Culture from Scratch" — 22k downloads in the first week
- Delivered keynote at [[25q3-leaddev-london]] on "The Newsletter-to-Business Pipeline" to ~1,200 attendees — biggest stage yet
- Completed [[25q3-peak-training]] block: 14 weeks of structured intervals, altitude simulation, and long weekend rides — FTP peaked at 285W
- Newsletter hit 78k subscribers by end of September
- [[measure-sponsorship-mrr]] reached EUR 20.1k — [[2025-reach-22k-mrr]] is close
- Rode Stelvio from Bormio side in 1h52m — [[2025-ride-stelvio]] achieved

## Reflections

I'm not going to pretend this quarter was smooth. It was intense to the point of being unsustainable. Three major launches in 13 weeks, plus a keynote, plus peak cycling training — something had to give, and it was sleep. I averaged under 6 hours for most of August. [[person-paco-furiani]] flagged it during a 1:1, and he was right. I need to build more buffer into ambitious quarters.

That said, the outcomes were extraordinary. The ebook exceeded every expectation. I'd been skeptical about packaging newsletter content into a book — would people pay for what they'd already read for free? Turns out, curation and structure have enormous value. The people buying the ebook aren't the same people who read every issue; they want the distilled playbook, and they're happy to pay for it.

LeadDev London was a career highlight. Standing on that stage, looking out at 1,200 engineering leaders — many of whom I recognized from the newsletter subscriber list — was surreal. The talk went well, but the conversations afterward were even better. Three potential enterprise sponsors, two podcast guest leads, and a half-dozen people who said Refactoring changed how they lead their teams.

And then Stelvio. Climbing the most iconic pass in cycling, legs screaming, lungs burning, the summit appearing and disappearing behind switchbacks — it was everything I'd imagined. 1h52m from Bormio. Not fast by any serious cyclist's standard, but I didn't care. I made it. [[2025-ride-stelvio]] done. Now I need to rest — body and mind — before tackling Q4.
