The Weekly Scroll: Now, what did we learn?

On sprinting to 5,000 followers

Jul 03, 2026

Hello hello,

It’s me again (did you miss me?) I’m back from a quick vacation, and I handed off to Hailley, who took a brilliant turn on the newsletter.

I had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad June for a number of reasons, and every time there was a bright spot, it would be overshadowed by something else happening.

So when I looked at my numbers and realized that, without a miracle, I wouldn’t hit my goal of 5,000 followers by the end of June/Q2 as I’d been hoping and planning for, I wasn’t surprised. It tracked with the way the month had been going.

Now I could’ve let myself spiral, but perhaps because so many other things were going so badly, I was able to shift my perspective immediately.

And with that shift came some hard-won reflections about my sprint, which I wanted to share today.

1. Life will have peaks and valleys

One thing about life that always holds true: it will have peaks and valleys. It’s as sure as the laws of motion or the sun rising in the east. June was a valley, and no amount of planning was going to change that. I went into the month with a sprint plan I believed in, and I still think it was a good one. It just wasn’t the right plan for the month I got. You can’t outplan a bad season; you can only get through it with your systems intact.

2. Content creation is a game of rock, paper, scissors

The playable hands are life, plans, and content, and some games go better than others.
Life beats plans. A bad enough month will crush the smartest sprint plan anyone has ever written, and June crushed mine.

Plans beat content. On any given day, a decent system will outperform waiting for inspiration. Templates, batching, scheduled slots: that’s how the work gets made when you have nothing to give.

And content, sort of miraculously, beats life. The posts I’d already published kept working the entire time I was struggling, getting discovered by new people and playing rounds on my behalf. More on that in lesson six.

No hand wins every round. I threw plans all month, and June kept throwing life. The comfort, if you want to call it that, is that the game is played in rounds, and losing one tells you nothing about the next. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed for good games in H2.

3. My consistency has become an instinct

Even in a rough month, I kept making things. Off-the-cuff posts, planned content, all of it felt like something I can just do now rather than something I have to force. That’s very new. A year ago, a June like this one would’ve meant total silence. The sprint didn’t get me to 5,000, but it proved the effort I’ve put in building up my consistency muscle isn’t in vain.

4. Templates are goated

I didn’t always have the energy or mental wherewithal to create at the level my goal demanded, so I leaned on templated carousels and formats I could execute half-asleep. Nobody scrolling past a good carousel knows (or cares) whether it took me half a day or 40 minutes. If you don’t have go-to formats you can pull off on a bad day, build them before the bad day arrives.

5. I should’ve preplanned the tactical stuff

The content side of my sprint was solid, but the technical, tactical side wasn’t. Things like DM automation and having resources ready to share with people would’ve really helped if I did them more, but I just didn’t have the capacity for it. I’ll be investing in brainstorming to make super valuable things that people will want, so I have something to lean on for future content.

6. Repetition is fine

I made too much net-new content. Meanwhile, new people keep discovering my heaviest hitters, which tells me those posts could’ve popped off all over again with slightly different framing.

7. I should’ve made more short videos

Instagram doesn’t punish you for posting multiple times a day, and I didn’t take advantage of that. Short videos would’ve let me have more chances in the feed without burning more energy than my carousels or longer videos do.

So no, I didn’t hit 5,000 by the end of Q2. As of writing this post, I’m sitting at 3,190. But my goal isn’t going anywhere. I plan to hit and even surpass it in July and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

💬 Have you ever missed a goal and come away better for it? I’d love to hear in the comments!

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