Why did you start this?
3/21/24
blog, guides
The next day I had 23 followers and it just kept growing from there… day 3 we were up to 61 followers… day 4 I got called out by one the 150 followers I had that I was measuring wrong, so I apologized and ran the correct amount… I went to bed that night with like 300 followers and was woken up a few hours later by my sister and her husband telling me we had over 600 followers… my brother-in-law agreed to wake up early the next morning to film me run and that morning I had 1,122 followers. I made a deal with the followers that if the account had 10K by the end of the week I would run a 10K by the time I got off my 9-5 that day the account was up to 50K, and it quite literally doubled from there in less than 24 hours. On day 9 it was up to 169,000 followers!
When I first started, I shared the page on my personal Instagram account @sidney_stoker. I was a little embarrassed because it is full of friends from high school, and family and I didn’t know what they would think about it. My first 63 followers were all of my personal friends and family supporting the page. I am able to see from my personal page who follows the account and I want to thank all 171 of you for supporting me! I am learning to not care what people think and allow them to hold me back.
What ultimately pushed me to get to the point of not being embarrassed was a video with the message along the lines in 100 years from now anyone who knew you including you is going to be dead. Don’t let what others think about you dictate what you do. You can’t make everyone happy, but you can make yourself happy so do it.
I am so grateful for everyone who has supported me up to this point! I would not be where I was today without you!
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT! and don’t forget “PLEASE HELP ME GET TO A MARATHON!”
-Sidney Stoker
WHY DID YOU START THIS????
This is the question I’m constantly answering… to be honest… I don’t really know.
Back in January of 2024 one of my sisters and I were at the store talking about things we could do to “change our lives”. While we were talking, she started talking about some Instagram accounts that were doing things for followers. I thought to myself that it was dumb and could never get on board with it. Without ever looking up an account, I stumbled across a little boy on Instagram drinking 1 oz of milk per follower. I thought it was so silly. That night I pulled up chat gpt and looked up “a name for an Instagram account running 1cm per follower… oh and my name is Sidney.” it threw out a bunch of silly ideas but "@tiny.strides.with.sid it was. I went to work the next day and thought nothing of it.
When I got home my brother-in-law and my friend Taylor had found the page through ZERO advertisement or posts and I thought to myself… “I can’t let my two followers down. I’ve got to run my two centimeters”. I laughed with my brother-in-law for a minute about the fact that he followed it and then asked if he would come film me.
In October of 2018 my crazy cousin convinced me to run a half marathon with no training. Fast forward to January 2023 I ran my second ever half marathon… once again with very little training.
January of 2024, I found myself pretty unhappy because I had quit running January of 2023, so I decided to start back up again from scratch.
I started running 1 cm per follower as a joke. As of day, 7 I was running over a mile and well the rest is history.
Lesson learned:
DONT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF SMALL STEPS.
— Sidney
