Hey, my friend!
By the time you're receiving this email, I'll be close to crossing the finish line at my first trail run ever. 🏃♀️ ⛰️ 🇦🇹
Muddy shoes.
Heavy breathing.
Probably questioning my life choices. 😅
A year ago, I could barely run 5 km.
I remember the first time I signed up for a 10K. I was genuinely terrified, thinking to myself: "what if I can't finish and everyone watches me fail?!?!?"
But I did it anyway. Slow and steady, I finished my first 10K race.
And then I kept going.
Short runs.
Slow runs.
Runs where I wanted to quit after the first kilometer.
Runs where I felt like I wasn't improving at all.
For months, it felt like nothing was happening.
Same routes. Same pace. Same tired legs.
And then at some point, things shifted.
The 5K that used to destroy me became a warm-up.
The 10K that terrified me became a regular weekend thing.
Now I'm preparing for my first marathon in a month. And I have five more races lined up after that.
When I write it out like this, it sounds like a transformation story with a clear arc.
But living through it, it didn't feel like progress.
It felt like showing up and doing the same boring thing over and over again.
That's the part nobody tells you about.
Progress doesn't feel like progress while it's happening.
It feels like NOTHING is changing.
And then one day, you look back and think: how the hell did I get here?!
I think about this a lot when it comes to building a business, too.
Because the pattern is exactly the same.
You publish your first post and three people read it.
You share your first newsletter and nobody replies.
You launch something and hear crickets.
But you keep going anyway.
Not because you see results. But because you decided you're the kind of person who keeps going.
Weeks turn into months.
The small actions compound.
And one day, you realize the thing that used to scare you is now a regular task on your to-do list.
Your first 100 subscribers felt impossible.
Now you're thinking about 1,000.
Your first digital product took months to create.
Now you know you could build one in a weekend.
The distance between where you started and where you are right now is probably a lot bigger than you give yourself credit for.
So here's what I want you to take from this email:
If you're in the middle of the grind right now — the part where it feels like nothing is happening — you're not stuck.
You're building the version of yourself that will look back a year from now and barely recognize where you started.
The boring runs count.
The posts nobody reads count.
The small steps that feel insignificant truly matter. You just can't see it yet.
Worth Your Time This Week
→ This Obvious Mistake Stops You From Growing on Substack — The single biggest shift that separates creators who grow from those who stay stuck
→ 2 Years of Substack Learnings in 14 Minutes — Everything we learned building Write • Build • Scale, compressed into one video.
→ 365 Substack Notes Templates — A full year of ready-to-use Notes templates so you never stare at a blank screen again
Cheers to the boring runs that build the life you want,
Sinem
P.S. If you've been at this for a while and it still feels like nothing is happening, I'd love to hear from you. Hit reply and tell me what you're working on right now.
I can't always write back, but I read every single reply — often with coffee in hand, smiling at my screen. Your replies shape what I create next, and reading them is one of my favorite parts of this job!