I launched my Substack with huge expectations.

I already had 40,000 followers on Medium and wanted to prove to myself—and maybe to the world—that my growth on another platform wasn’t just luck. And that I could actually build something meaningful without shortcuts. However, after my first month on Substack, I only had 32 subscribers.

Every morning, I refreshed the page, hoping for something, anything, to change. But nothing did. I remember thinking, Maybe I’ve made a huge mistake. Was this all a waste of time? Should I have just imported my huge email list from Medium? Or maybe, just maybe, are my newsletters not good enough?

That first month on Substack was tough. I won’t lie. I kept telling myself that success wasn’t going to happen overnight. And although it didn’t make the waiting any easier, it gave me something to hold onto.

Time passed, and while I still had to fight that impatience, things started to shift. 100 subscribers slowly became 1,000, and so on. Now, …