Stop focusing on your growth numbers

Your content and mental health will thank you

Whenever we create something—whether it’s a blog post, short form content, or a work of art—we want it to mean something to the people around us. We want the algorithm to share it copiously and for people to engage with what we create. Of course we do.

I’m relatively new to Substack, but I’m not new to growing an online community around my work. I’ve grown my Twitch stream (where I chat and play video games for the internet to see) to be in the top 1% in viewership and engagement.

If you were to ask me what are the days I feel the most burnt out—the days where I contemplate quitting my stream—I’d tell you they’re the days I focus on my performance numbers.

Whether I like it or not, I can’t control who decides to view my content, who subscribes, or whether the algorithm promotes me. I can do my best to be entertaining and build a fun stream for my community, but it is up to other people to decide whether they will like my work enough to stay.

So when I focus on the numbers, I drive myself crazy.

Substack, my friends, is no different.

There are countless content creators offering tools for growing a following and an online business. It seems like every other Substack note is about how to grow your following and subscriber numbers.

I’m not going to ask you to “join my online course” for growing your Substack. I’m going to tell you to focus on why you love writing apart from its potential to make money. If you focus on the numbers, you will go insane.

My stream numbers get worse when I attach my enjoyment to them

Despite what seems to be convention these days, I did not accomplish my Twitch following by obsessing over growth metrics. Instead, I focused on honing my craft and having a reason to enjoy sitting down three nights a week to go live.

The strength of our online presence, regardless of the platform or the type of content, is dependent on the quality of our work above all else. Numbers can inform us in valuable ways, but when they are all that drive us, our work suffers for it.

During streams, when I’m worried about how many people are watching, or if I’m growing, or if I’m gaining subscriptions, my entertainment quality plummets. I lose my ability to be fully present and am not able to give my viewers my best energy. This only makes my numbers worse and ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This vicious cycle is a form of tilting¹ that can happen in any creative craft. When we overthink and obsess over external validation, we lose our ability to achieve flow state and create our best work.

This is not to say we shouldn’t proactively do things to grow our following. For Twitch, I post short-form content on TikTok and network with other streamers. But there’s a difference between taking intentional steps to grow community and deriving our enjoyment and worth as creators from growth.

Reframe how we view growth

Platforms like Twitch and Substack encourage us to focus on our numbers because that’s how they make money as for-profit enterprises. When a viewer subscribes to me, Twitch receives 50% of that money. Substack is much better with a 90/10 split, but their incentives for pushing paid subscriptions are still the same.

The reality is that online content creator landscapes are incredibly competitive, and most people who stream on Twitch or write on Substack cannot afford to pay their bills from that income stream alone.

For our sanity as creators, we need to return to perspectives of abundance and the reason we love our craft. We can reframe our paradigm on growth to preserve our joy and authenticity.

Instead of: I need to reach more people so that they will spend money on my content.

Reframe to: When I grow my online community, I’m able to reach more people that can benefit from my work.

When we ask ourselves, “What does success mean to me?” our goals and expectations should stem from a genuine commitment to our craft and the consistency we bring to it. Success should be rooted in the joy of creating and building meaningful connections with others, rather than viewing those connections as a means to an end.

So keep networking on Substack, engaging with other writers, and posting those notes, but don’t forget the whole reason you came here: because you love to write.

Thanks for reading

This post is in a lot of ways a reminder to myself, because despite my strong feelings on the matter, it is very easy to get lost in the numbers.

See you next time, Ari

1. What this blog is named after. See my intro post for the full explanation.