Month 4 of your newsletter.

Your friend asks: "How did you get your first 100 subscribers?"

You tell the story: "I wrote an essay about productivity and posted it on Reddit. It hit the front page. Got 500 upvotes, drove 120 new subscribers."

Your friend tries the same thing. Writes about productivity. Posts on Reddit. Gets 3 upvotes. Zero subscribers.

"Wait, you said this worked for you?"

What you didn't mention: You'd posted on Reddit 20 times before that one hit.