Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
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Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
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🙋♀️ Nora’s number that won’t move
Nora is a UX designer who runs a YouTube channel on the side.
Her channel has had the same three hundred subscribers for four months.
Every Sunday she opens the dashboard, sees the same three hundred,
and closes it a little more sure that the channel is a dead end.
So she starts planning a new topic.
🧩 Her struggle:
She reads a flat number as failure, so she’s about to throw away four months of videos.
That Sunday, she clicks on a video that tells the true story of a writer
who also saw almost no growth for years,
and came out with a book that sold more than thirty million copies.
Most people would’ve quit by year two.
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📅 Every Monday and every Thursday
James Clear published an article on his own website and had zero readers.
That was the twelfth of November 2012.
Then he did something fairly boring.
He wrote a new article every Monday and every Thursday, and kept doing it.
Not a big launch.
Not a viral push.
Two articles a week, on the same two days, for years.
Turns out the book that made his name, Atomic Habits, didn’t come out until October 2018.
Six years after that first post.
Get this — it has since sold more than thirty million copies, and his Thursday newsletter goes out to more than three million people.
Now rewind to year three.
No book deal, no advance, and no way to know either was coming.
Every time he got disappointed, he reminded himself that slow early results are normal while an idea is still taking shape.
He kept going through each slow stretch,
and that’s what let him publish Atomic Habits.
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🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Valley of Disappointment
James published every Monday and Thursday for six years before the book existed.
James’s name for that stretch is the Valley of Disappointment.
It’s the gap between the big results you hoped for and the small results you actually got.
Each slow month in that valley gives you a new reason to quit.
Keep going anyway, because the results are late, not missing.
And if your idea is still rough, you’ll go through the valley more than once,
before you find the version of the idea that works.
That is how this newsletter evolved.
My original idea was completely different.
So you keep going, because now you know a flat month is normal, not proof you failed.
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🛠️ Nora’s turn
Let’s check in on Nora and her YouTube channel, stuck at three hundred subscribers for four months.
That evening, she runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and tells it how long the number has been stuck.
Her AI sidekick doesn’t waste words:
This is the valley, not a dead end, so keep your topic and keep posting.
She deletes the plan for a new topic.
That week, the next video goes up, on the same day as always.
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🌅 Eight months later
Nora still posts every week, on the same topic.
The number sat still for two more months, and then it started to climb.
About a thousand people subscribe to her channel now, and comments show up under most videos.
A number that won’t move isn’t always a dead end.
Sometimes the results are just late.
Keep publishing, even while your subscriber count isn’t moving.
That’s it, my fellow outliers!
Yours ‘showing you that building a business is fun, not a drain’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
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🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below works out whether you are in the Valley of Disappointment or on the wrong idea,
and what the first signs of growth would look like, so you can recognize it when it happens.
🧰 What you’ll need
What you’re building, and how long you’ve been at it
- e.g. a YouTube channel teaching design to people who aren’t designers, 11 monthsWhat has actually happened so far, and what you expected by now
- The real numbers, however small.
- e.g. 302 subscribers, up from 296 four months ago, two comments ever, one person shared a video with her whole team. I expected a thousand subscribers by nowWhat you’ve already changed since starting
- e.g. the channel name once, the upload day twice, and I redid the thumbnails in March
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my analytics, drafts, or published work, pull the real numbers from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume people who aren't designers but have to make slides, flyers, or simple web pages look good at work.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- Do not reassure me. If the evidence genuinely says dead end rather than valley, say so and say which evidence.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
What I am building, and how long I have been at it:
{e.g. a YouTube channel teaching design to people who aren't designers, 11 months}
What has actually happened so far, and what I expected by now:
{e.g. 302 subscribers, up from 296 four months ago, two comments ever, one person shared a video with her whole team. I expected a thousand subscribers by now}
What I have already changed since starting:
{e.g. the channel name once, the upload day twice, and I redid the thumbnails in March}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. Valley or dead end — which one the evidence points to, and the specific thing in my inputs that decides it.
2. What is being stored — name what has accumulated that does not show in any number yet, in plain terms.
3. The comparison — name a real creator further along on the same path, how long they took to reach visible results, and where that puts me on the same curve.
4. My crossing signal — the first concrete sign that I am through it, described so I will recognize it rather than miss it.
5. The restart cost — what each change I already made did to the clock, and what it would cost to start over somewhere new.
Then tell me the honest expected wait: how much longer this normally takes before anything shows.