What I Learned from Failure in 2024

And, my 2025 health equity strategy for the EBWH Community!

I typically hate (and I know that’s not a nice word) doing end-of-year reviews. In the past, I’ve seen it as an annoying reminder of where I “failed” this year. However, as I recently reviewed Kristina God and Ciler Demiralp’s analysis of 75,000 Substack newsletters, I was utterly shocked by their insights. I had no idea there were 35 million active subscriptions, with 3 million being paid subscriptions. My newsletter has been free—intentionally—so it didn’t occur to me how many writers successfully monetized their skills.

That revelation, paired with doing a content audit - thanks to Jonathan R. Howard’s Signature Membership – pushed me to reflect on where I failed, how I succeeded, and what I learned going into 2025.

Even though I love data, reviewing my own was nerve-wracking. But here’s the thing: if I don’t take the time to review what worked and what didn’t, I’ll continue creating content that doesn’t resonate, which would be a disservice to you, the EBWH community.

So, I dove in with a weekend blocked off and a glass of wine. Here’s what I discovered and how it’s shaping my 2025 strategy.

Key Lessons and Reflections:

1. Some of My Newsletters Were Hits, and More Were Misses

Of course, I started my analysis by seeing what resonated with you—my amazing Substack community, where I’ve consistently spent the most time this year. The first glaring cause for pause was the declining open rate on the weekly newsletters. I won’t dive into the specific numbers, but I wish I had paid attention sooner. I could have adjusted more quickly instead of looking back in hindsight at my failure to act.

That said, what was equally shocking was that the newsletters with the highest open rates:

My most successful newsletter, with an 81% open rate, was “Why Advocacy is the Key to Better Healthcare.” In hindsight, I’m unsurprised as the top three newsletters with the highest open rates addressed a specific question while piquing curiosity. In contrast, recent newsletters haven’t resonated as strongly, possibly due to not being a question the community wants the answer to. Or not piquing your curiosity enough to determine what the newsletter is about.

2. My Lack of Consistency on YouTube What’s a Complete Miss

You might think, "I didn’t know you have a YouTube channel." The answer is that I haven’t promoted it and honestly haven’t been that consistent this year. Despite not being as present on YouTube as I wanted to be this year, I have been slowly growing a community there. Even though I see my lack of consistency as a failure, it wasn’t a complete miss.

It seems that the videos with the most views are the ones where I “start” with why:

These weren’t topics I expected to perform well on—I created them to fill gaps in my inconsistent posting this year. Yet they resonated with the small but mighty YouTube community. I assume it likely had to do with the titles of the videos and the fact that I had more personal stories to share. I suspect that’s what contributed to their engagement compared to my other videos, which barely get any views.

3. I Don’t Want to Admit It, But I’m “Reel-ly” Good on Short-Form Video

I’ll be the first to admit that dancing around and pointing at imaginary words on the screen makes me cringe. However, I have been told in person multiple times, and now the data proves that my short-form videos far outperform every other medium.

At least the video that performed the best this year required zero dancing:

enhanceblackwomenshealth

A post shared by @enhanceblackwomenshealth

I rarely do Instagram or TikTok trends; however, I did jump on the “POV” video bandwagon. Once again, I wasn’t expecting this to perform well. I was lazy and didn’t feel like creating another Reel, so I used a “b-roll” of me typing away on my laptop with on-screen text and a random blurry filter. Unfortunately, my caption and call to action were weak, so this was a real missed opportunity to leverage a high-performing Reel.

How These Insights Are Shaping My 2025 Health Equity Strategy:

Now that I have had time to reflect on what worked well and what didn’t in 2024, I need to consider what this means for the 2025 EBWH community health equity strategy. Even though I allowed myself to “test the waters” in certain areas, I realized the data did not support that approach. Therefore, here is how we will be approaching health equity moving forward:

1. Focused Newsletters Around Common Health Equity Questions

Even though I appreciate the creative outlet that has been writing, I know that in 2025, I need to be more focused on the weekly newsletter. I’m not just writing for me but for you, which means you want to see more of what you expect.

So, I have a question for you. What topics do you want to know about health equity in 2025? Drop it in the comments, and I will commit to being more intentional about the topic areas we will focus on each week.

2. Intentional YouTubes About Health Equity Barriers

Since I truly believe that YouTube is my “long-game” platform, I realize I have not been leveraging it as much as I could. Therefore, I want to utilize YouTube more to explore why health equity barriers exist.

Since the live panel I hosted a few months back did so well, I want to host more conversations with experts in health equity. If that’s you, feel free to send me a message! I’d love to connect and potentially collaborate in the future.

3. Short-Form Videos That Bring Awareness to Health Inequity

I’ve been genuinely inspired by creators like Joel Bervell and The Medical Mythbuster, whose Reels and TikToks are a perfect example of Edutainment (educational and entertaining). So, I’ll be taking more of that approach in 2025.

While I’ll certainly be looking at trends for inspiration, I’d love to know:

And, One More Thing - THANK YOU!

Thank you SO MUCH for being part of the EBWH Community over the past year. Through you opening these newsletters (and skipping a few), I’ve learned what resonates and what doesn’t. As you can see, I’ve been learning a lot through failure this year and look forward to taking these lessons to improve this community in 2025.

I wish you a fantastic 2025! See you next year!

X Tomesha