When 25 Followers Feels Like Nothing and Everything at the Same Time
This blog has been repurposed from a voice journal from November 18th, 2025.
I’ve been on Threads for less than a week and I have 25 followers. I’m starting to obsess over it, which is so silly because what I actually need are people coming to my app, people buying the book, people actually using the Small Wins Method. But my brain wants to focus on that number instead. 25. Is it going up? Why isn’t it going up faster? Why are my posts getting 5 views when other people’s posts are getting hundreds?
I posted something today in a pretty active thread, asked an open-ended question and got zero engagement. It’s humbling. It feels like I’m talking to a wall sometimes. And the thing is, I’ve posted every day since I got on Threads, I’ve interacted with people every day, I’ve been genuine about it, not trying to sell anything, just being a person.
Followers are nice and all but they’re not everything.
The Thing I Saw So Clearly
But here’s what I realized. There’s opportunity everywhere on Threads.
People are always posting things like “I got 3 sales!” or “I hit 50 followers!” or whatever milestone they’re celebrating. And I’m thinking to myself, I hope you remember that a month from now, don’t forget that win. That’s literally what my app is for. That’s literally the problem I’m solving.
But how do I engage with those people without sounding like I’m trying to sell them something?
How do I say “hey, my app helps you remember those wins” without sounding sale-sy? I’m still figuring out that balance.
What Actually Matters
Consistency.
I need to post like nobody’s watching me and trust that whoever is meant to see my content will see it. If I was meant to get a bunch of sales right now, if I was meant to get a bunch of app downloads, I would have gotten them already. But I haven’t, which is fine because that tells me I need to keep focusing on making my apps great, then worry about followers and engagement and all that later on. I’ll still post, I’ll still make videos, but my focus needs to be different.
The Other Stuff That’s Happening
With WakeCheck, I worked on the web service over the weekend and finally got it to work with Claude’s help. Woo hoo! So now WakeCheck can receive messages via the cloud and run without me. I went back and forth with GitHub Copilot and finally got the test run to work. The next part is to check if the restaurants actually got populated automatically, because that’s the whole point. The cron job should make restaurants populate automatically.
I’m looking at the app right now and on the first load, the app just stays on loading and says no food places found. Which is concerning because I haven’t gotten any notifications from Render or cron-jobs.org saying the service is down.
There’s also the loading issue. It shouldn’t take 10 minutes to load the first screen.
I think it has something to do with pagination. Even though I have it set up in the code. I feel like pagination just isn’t working. It’s loading every single restaurant (3,800) instead of loading only the first 50.
It should only load the first 50 restaurants with specific data. Just the score, the name, the address and filter by the latest if it was updated more recently.
That shouldn’t take 10 minutes.
So, I need to look into pagination for Wake Check. Then, I’ll feel comfortable sending it to my testers to test it.
I should have that out by the end of the week on iOS. Then eventually, I’ll put it on Android.
Not right now thought because Android seems to be more complicated in how it translates from React Native to Kotlin. (I’ve had some bundling errors with Small Wins on a physical Android device AFTER bundling in Google Play)
The Small Wins Method Workbook
The book came in on Friday. Ahhhhh!
It’s available for purchase here.
I made an unboxing video and I’m excited to post it (eventually). I did make a post saying the book finally came in on Threads.
I had few likes.
The Reminder I Needed to Give Myself
The reminder I gave myself today was:
Lower your expectations. Or not lower them. But have realistic expectations.
Don’t focus so much on the outcome but focus on the baby steps you’ve accomplished along the way.
That’s the whole purpose of Small Wins. It’s celebrating what’s happened from start to finish. So I can focus less on what I haven’t done yet. And focus more on what I have done.
- I’m on Threads now.
- I have 25 followers.
- I have posted every day since I got on Threads.
- I have interacted with many people on Threads.
- I have updated my website.
- I have published blogs.
I have done all of these things that matter.
I’m proud of that.
As I keep saying, if I was meant to have a house right now, I would have a house. If I was meant to have a million dollars, I would have a million dollars. But I don’t right now.
If it’s meant to happen, it will happen.
Keep focusing on the important things. Keep focusing on the things that you have done and what you want to get done. And the small steps you’re going to take to get to that point.
But also, don’t stress myself out over things that are out of your control.
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