Starting Over After 70K Followers: The Lessons No One Tells You

Hey, it's Rae

If you notice that I haven’t posted on my 70k Instagram account for a few days already.

Why?
Because I’m starting new again.
I know sometimes the future doesn’t go always as we wanted, by the time we changed our mind of what we want, and here I am.

It’s not a failure, but a lesson. It’s a lesson that I can lift myself up and everyone around me, so here’re some lessons that I’m not ashamed to share with you. And I hope this will help you in some way to avoid mistakes.

1. Growth should be slow at the beginning
I just started my account, the growth is too slow I must say, it feels like I have forgotten who I was growing with my old account. But, when I think back in July last year, actually I was the same—I almost felt like giving up.

Back in July, when I was laying on the bed, zoomed out on the ceiling, I felt like this might not work for me, and now this feeling comes here again when I’m starting a new account.

So when you have this feeling, don’t think you’re the only one, that happens to everyone.

I realized it’s supposed to be that way, growth must be slow at the beginning, otherwise, everyone will make it, and then what’s the point of growth.

2. Consistency is key
I know I have spoken this a thousand times, but I’m not only telling you this, it’s also a reminder for myself to keep going.

At its peak, my old account was growing by 2,000 followers a day. But when I started my new account, it felt hard to even gain 1 follower. But when I thought back to the beginning of my first account, I realized—consistency is the most important thing when it comes to growth.

Consistency builds momentum, momentum is the way to success.

3. Comparison is the killer of a dream
Sometimes I compared my efforts to my old account or even to other creators, until I remembered I’m not competing with anyone. I’m competing with myself.

I don’t know about you, but a lot of times when I’m doing research on Instagram, I keep seeing people say they made $500 in the first week, and made $20k in their first month, then I look at myself, I only made $3k with my first product, and that was not my first month at all. I started launching my first product way too long after I was trying to grow my account.

But now when I think about it, I should never think in that way, because here’s something you don’t know, there are so many people who don’t even know how to make $1 on the internet. So don’t ever compare.

4. System is halfway to succeed
It took me 2 months and a half to figure out the viral strategy that worked across different accounts. And this time will be something different, why? Here’s the thing I have never told you what I learned from is—my end goal has changed.

Last year, when I grew my account, my goal was to grow followers to my account, but now, it’s an email list.

So, basically, I’m shifting my system, why?

You must understand one thing is on social media, you’re renting the followers, yes, you don’t own your followers.

So that’s why with my new account, I’m starting writing again, and one big news I want to share with you is, I have been working on my blog website, here's a post i shared recently 7 Proven Best Digital Products to Sell (People Are Actively Buying in 2025)  i have been working on for a while now, and today it’s finally out. Where I share all the tools and resources for online marketing, to help you achieve online success.

Now, every time when I think about giving up, I would go back to last July, and think instead of thinking to give up, think about what I can achieve.

If you ever have those thoughts, try to think in a different way, because there’s a common life philosophy:
“Hard choice, easy life. Easy choice, hard life.”
The hard work you put inside one project, the rewards are slowly walking to you, you got to have the patience and keep it on.

I’m not cheering you up about this, because that’s true. And it happened to me.

Despite all this, there’s so much more to share. I’ll keep sharing in future posts @itsraeswan and in my weekly newsletter Rae Swan.

We are not perfect, no one is perfect. It’s okay to not be okay every time. Through that imperfection, we learn, we evolve.

See you in my new account, and my next newsletter where I will share my secret on how to make sales without a following.

Best,

Rae Swan