January Recap: Courses, retention wins, and a 5,000-word beast
Plus skiing disasters, door-staining failures, and a defeated return to coffee.
Hi there,
January felt like a proper reset.
After the chaos of Q4, I finally had some breathing room to work on bigger projects, spend time with family, and remember what skiing feels like.
It’s been a month of deep work rather than loud work: fewer stages, more strategy.
Here’s what I created, what I learned, and what I’ve been enjoying. As always, everything below is free to read or watch online.
What I’ve been presenting
It was a quieter month on the presenting front, which was welcome given that I’ve been preparing two courses (more on that shortly).
The one session I did lead was a goal-setting workshop for a women’s LinkedIn support group.
We talked through what everyone wants to focus on in 2026 — everything from finally tackling video content on LinkedIn to learning more about personal finance.
It was energising to start the year by thinking about how we can better support one another.
There’s no public recording, but if you’re curious about the research I did for the session on LinkedIn’s algorithm updates and Brew360, feel free to comment or hit reply.
What’s been happening with clients
A genuinely lovely client month.
For one advisory client, we’ve been deep in user testing, the kind of unglamorous work that doesn’t look flashy but shapes everything that comes after.
For another, we’re gearing up for a major product launch. I can’t share details just yet, but I’m especially excited about this one.
And I wrapped up an app advisory project that I’m really proud of. We saw significant improvements in Day 20 retention, resulting in meaningful gains in average revenue per user.
But what I love even more than the results is what the team said about the process:
“Working with Daphne was a very valuable experience for our team. She didn’t just give advice — she shared a real toolbox that we can continue using independently.
Her guidance helped shift our mindset toward better understanding real user needs before acting, and find our North Star Metric.
I would highly recommend her to any team looking for a thoughtful and experienced growth advisor.”
That’s the dream, right? Not just solving problems, but changing how teams think about them.
What I’ve been writing
Some big ones went live this month:
How Peloton lost me after a price hike and what they could have done differently (RevenueCat). My first article of 2026, and a personal one. The price hike wasn’t why I left, but it didn’t help either. Takeaway: Retention isn’t about preventing cancellation. It’s about earning the next renewal, every single time.
When to ship fast (and when not to) (RevenueCat). I really enjoyed writing this one. Fast isn’t always better — but there are definitely cases where we overthink and don’t ship fast enough. Takeaway: Speed matters most when learning matters most. Slow down when the cost of being wrong is high.
5 Web-to-App funnel examples (broken down) (RevenueCat). My longest article ever. A 5,000+ word beast breaking down five real funnels. Takeaway: The best Web2App funnels don’t just convert, they qualify.
You can also grab the free Figma file with all five flows mapped out.
Activation metrics: stop focusing on the wrong satisficing metric (RevenueCat). — just live today! Takeaway: Your activation metric should predict retention, not just feel good.
What’s coming with courses
Enough teasing, I need to come clean about those upcoming courses I hinted at!
A product growth strategy course with a brand I love is in the works. I just finished recording it this week! I’m bursting to share more, but you’ll have to wait a little longer... Promise it will be worth the wait.
And with Lucia van den Brink, we’ve been designing something close to my heart for Women in Experimentation: a course on building your personal brand and LinkedIn presence. It’ll launch in Q2 with a live cohort. Learn more here.
This month’s flip-flops
As always, the messy reality. Fewer work flops this month, mostly personal ones:
I crashed into 2026. Literally. On January 1st, a guy skied into the back of me at 60km/h and sent me flying. My ski snapped, and he skied off without checking in. Thankfully, nothing worse than a few bruises, but I did have to hobble about 500 metres down the slope with one ski. Not ideal.
For one client, January came in lighter than expected. We’d hoped for more than a 10% increase on December. We’ve dug into why and have a solid understanding, but it’s still a bit of a “hm” moment.
I tried my hand at home renovation. Sanding and staining a door. Turns out I don’t really know how to stain a door. The first attempt came out so uneven I had to sand the whole thing down and start over. Attempt two: slightly better. Still not great. Oops.
Good news: I’m finally back on regular coffee after stopping my ADHD medication. Bad news: I had to stop because it was causing high blood pressure and headaches. Good news: I’m thrilled to have coffee back! Still, I do miss the benefits. Back to experimenting and testing — on myself this time.
What I’ve been enjoying
Skiing! It had been a while — we couldn’t go last year for personal reasons — so starting the year on the slopes felt glorious (ski crash aside).
My older sister visited London. It’s rare for us three sisters to get time together, so it was extra special. We celebrated her birthday at Dishoom and then saw Titanique — a ridiculous, hilarious Celine Dion-themed Titanic musical. Highly recommend if you need to laugh until you cry. Also I baked her a tiramisu cheesecake which I can definitely recommend:
Home renovations (despite the door disaster). There’s something satisfying about making progress on the house, even when it involves redoing things twice.
Back to non-fiction reading. 2025 was heavy on fiction, but I’m diving back into the strategic stuff: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Product-Led Onboarding, and I’ve got a stack of AI books lined up — The Equality Machine, The AI-Driven Leader, and Superagency.
Went to a CRAP talks meetup. Not as weird as it sounds, a great CRO/analytics/product meetup, I got to learn and see again the wonder Juliana Jackson (check out her newsletter, Beyond the Mean) talk about how you can use data from 100s of ads to predict future success:
Finally, I’m also training for the Yorkshire Three Peaks again in April (I did it in 2023, but it took 11.5 hours, so I'm hoping to go faster this time), so lots of walking and hiking ahead — perfect audiobook time.
If you missed my newsletters this month
No worries, here’s what I covered:
Looking ahead to February
More work on the courses — I can’t wait to share it properly
Hopefully kicking off a new app onboarding project I’ve been talking to for a while — excited to dive in
Prepping for honeymoon time off with lots of writing and getting ahead on content (yes, I’m that person who batches before a holiday)
Till next time,
Daphne
big thanks for the mention lovely!