The Flat Part
A Building It post. What it actually looks like before anything shows.
I saw a post in my feed last week from a woman who’s built a successful business on Substack.
Tens of thousands of subscribers. Hundreds in paid subscriptions doing real numbers. A course that made five figures in a day.
She posted the graph. And the graph told a total different story.
For the first year, the line is almost flat. Nearly nothing.
Then it goes vertical, all at once, months eight through twelve doing more than the first seven combined.
She said something I haven’t stopped thinking about since.
People find you at the vertical part and assume the line always looked like that.
It didn’t. The flat part was most of the story.
The pillars, the voice, the trust, the habits.
All of it got built in the stretch where the numbers said nothing was happening.
I’m in my flat part right now.
Dear Diana has been going out every week for months.
The series closes this month.
Fifty-Two Fridays opens for applications next month, and I don’t know yet if anyone will say yes.
I don’t have a graph that goes vertical.
I have a stretch of weeks that mostly look like nothing, from the outside.
Here’s what I have learned to do with that.
I don’t treat the flat part as evidence something is wrong.
I’ve spent enough of my life reading slow progress as failure.
The job that took years to feel right, the surfing I couldn’t do for the first four days at camp, the years I spent not going back to Jamaica because the timing was never quite right.
Slow is not the same as broken.
I know this now in a way I didn’t before.
I also don’t fill the flat part with noise, hoping volume will do what patience is supposed to do. That’s its own kind of impatience, dressed up as effort.
What I do instead is keep the letters going.
Keep the standard high even when almost no one new is reading yet.
Trust that the woman who needed to read this today found it today, whether or not the numbers show it.
If you’re in your own flat part right now, the business, the habit, the woman you’re quietly becoming, I don’t have proof for you that the line eventually moves.
I only have my own stretch of weeks that looks the same as yours.
And I’m still here. Still writing. Still building it before there is any evidence it is working.
That has to be enough for now.
Janelle x
Dear Diana is a letter series for the woman who has done everything right and still feels the gap. If you haven’t read it yet, it starts here.
Hi Janelle, I think 52 Fridays is a great idea. I read all your newsletters and always enjoy them so I've also just recommended your substack on mine. Whenever I'm in a flat part of something, and there's always something, I try and remind mysef of the Alber Camus quote "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." makes me giggle and takes the unease away....
You are so right, Janelle. I've been writing on Substack for about a year, and my growth has been slow too. But a very wise woman once wrote, "Slow is not broken," and I think that's especially true when the readers you do have are engaged, thoughtful, and genuinely invested in what you're creating.
I'd much rather have this kind of community than a huge audience that's nothing more than a number. Keep going. Those of us who are here are here because your words matter, and I, for one, can't wait to read what you write next. ❤️ XO