✍️ 242K instagram views after starting from zero and what it taught me about newsletter growth
what's working and not working in July 2026
✍️ Welcome to Field Notes, a Creatorly series with behind-the-scenes reflections on sustainable writing and creator growth. I share what I know from 10+ years in communications and marketing, and what I’m learning here in real time, so that you can create with clarity and show up consistently.
June taught me more than I expected it to.
Some of it showed up in the numbers: The 242K Instagram views on a brand new account, the new Substack subscribers, and the posts that reached people who had never heard of Creatorly or me before.
But some of the more useful lessons came from the less impressive parts.
The posts that got attention, but did not always lead people where I hoped they would go. The content that reached strangers, but made me ask whether it was building the kind of trust a newsletter needs.
Attention can open the door, but it does not automatically build a relationship.
That is the part I want to learn from.
Because reach is useful, but it is not the whole picture. Views can tell you what made someone pause. Subscribers can tell you what made someone take another step. The space between those two things is where I’m learning the most about building a newsletter from the outside in.
So before July gets too far ahead of me, I want to lay out what actually happened in June, what worked, what did not, and what I am changing next.
Inside this Field Note, I’m walking through:
242K Instagram views on a brand new account, new Substack subscribers, and the gap that matters most
Two wins I want to name before moving past them
What broke down and what it taught me about consistency
The highest converting channel for newsletter growth that most creators are ignoring
The July plan and what I am doing differently
My hope is that this helps you look at your own content with a little more clarity and a little less pressure. Because sometimes the question is not simply, Is this working?
Sometimes the better question is, What part of this is actually moving people closer?
Everything after this point is for paid subscribers.
Inside, I’m sharing the full June picture across Instagram and Substack: what the numbers actually showed, where the growth came from, what I’m paying attention to next, and the parts that did not go the way I expected.
I’m also walking through the two things I’m most proud of from the month, what fell off behind the scenes, why I think it happened, and the July plan I’m using to move forward with more clarity.
