I'm launching paid subscriptions (and terrified to do it)

I tell people all the time: start before you’re ready. Be clear about what you offer. Do the scary thing, and do it imperfectly, because feedback (and even rejection) is better than staying stuck in hypotheticals.

Today I’m practising what I preach.

I’m launching a paid tier for Imperfect Creatives. The free newsletter and podcast stay exactly the same. You’ll still get weekly articles with podcast updates and curated links every Friday. But I’m adding optional paid extras.

For €4/month ($5), founding members get extra content, a resource library, a one-off 30-minute 1:1 coaching call with me, plus monthly behind the scenes reports. That price locks in forever, but only for the next 14 days. Subscribe yearly and you’ll get another 20% off on top of that (€38, or $44).

I’ve been avoiding this for months, using “I’m still figuring this out” as an excuse to never ask for money. I even turned on Substack payments a year ago and then never mentioned it.

But it’s Black Friday, I’ve got a few weeks of cultural permission to launch something, and if I don’t do it now I’ll talk myself out of it again.

So here we are.

What this actually is

I’ve been running Imperfect Creatives for literally years now on the side of a demanding day job. In the last twelve months I’ve gotten consistent and more intentional about it: weekly articles, bi-weekly podcast episodes, spending €50-60/month on tools, music, and acquisition. I’ve been treating this as a side project I fund from my day job.

That works great for experimenting. It doesn’t work long-term. And I’m realising I really enjoy doing this and want to do more of it. Bigger experiments, more helpful content, more impact. To do that I need, well, actual revenue to fund it.

Here’s what I’m offering: You get a front-row seat to someone spending money and time building a creative online business alongside their day job so you don’t have to make the same mistakes. Every experiment I run, every strategy I test, every euro I spend, every product I create, you see the results first.

I know from experience that it isn’t easy doing meaningful, creative work that you love and also making a living from it. I want to help others do exactly that.

Think of it as: I’m running a creative business lab, and you get access to all the findings. You get to save time and energy through my painful learnings.

What you get

When you sign up before December 12th:

One 30-minute 1:1 call with me
Get my help on any problem(s) you’re facing; building your creative project, balancing it with your job, getting unstuck, finding direction, or just venting about the challenges of doing creative work alongside a demanding career. I am a senior engineering manager in tech with professional coaching training. I spend my days unblocking people & projects and that is what I can do for you as well. You can book this any time in the next six months.

€4/month ($5) locked in forever
For everyone else, this increases to €8/month ($9) after December 12th. Your rate never goes up. As an extra thanks, I’ll also ship you some cute Imperfect stickers (c’mon, everyone loves stickers).

50% off everything I create (forever)
Any courses, workshops, books, or products I launch - founding members get a permanent 50% discount.

Plus these ongoing monthly benefits:

Transparency reports (video & text)
Real numbers. What I spent on newsletter acquisition and how many subscribers I got. Which promotion strategies worked. What failed completely. Behind-the-scenes on writing and marketing a non-fiction book, and eventually the actual launch numbers. The raw data I don’t want to share “entirely” publicly here on the free version.

Resource library (grows monthly)
The automations and processes I’ve built to sustainably build this alongside a demanding full-time job as a manager in the tech industry. Templates I use, tools & equipment guides, social media workflows. How to carve out more time for the work you care about. How I use AI to edit and plan all of this faster. My full podcast setup. It starts small and grows every month.

Podcast input & early access
The chance to ask upcoming podcast guests questions, suggest the next guests. First access to anything new I launch in this ecosystem.

Direct input on everything I do & share
Suggest experiments. Vote on what I should test or build next. Ask questions about what I’m trying. Help me shape what this becomes! I have many, many more ideas and I’m happy to try out a bunch of stuff and grow this as a community of open, enthusiastic, creative folks.

Why this matters

If you’re building something alongside your day job, you know that every experiment costs time or money. If I spend €100 testing a newsletter growth strategy that doesn’t work and share it with you, then you just saved €100.

Waiting is expensive. Learning from someone else’s experiments is efficient, and meeting other people on a similar journey to you is fun and motivating.

The timeline

First transparency report drops end of December covering November’s experiments (including this launch right now) and actual spending. The resource library starts with what I have now (outreach templates, podcast setup, content workflows) and grows monthly as I build more and depending on what you tell me you want to see.

This launch price ends December 12th at midnight CET. After that, it goes to €8/month ($9) and the €4 rate never comes back.

If 15 people sign up, I break even on monthly costs. If 30 people sign up, I can invest more back into creating better content. If nobody signs up, that’s data too and I’ll share what I learned.

I won’t know unless I actually ask. And I’ve been avoiding asking because it makes me uncomfortable to be this visible about wanting this to work.

What if you’re not sure?

Stay with the free newsletter/podcast. They’re not going anywhere and stay exactly the same. You’ll still get new posts every Friday. The paid version just gets you earlier access to more resources and deeper insights.

But you have 14 days to decide if you want the founding member rate.

I’m launching this before it’s perfect and starting small. That’s literally the point. You’re seeing someone figure out “creative entrepreneurship” in real time, with actual numbers and honest reports.

If that’s useful to you, I’d love to have you along for the ride!

—Mike