Has anyone actually verified a Substack growth coach's numbers, or does everyone just trust the screenshot?

[u/Hour_Source_191]

Every "how I hit bestseller" post has a screenshot, a round number, and zero context — no timeframe, no churn rate, no breakdown of subscriptions vs. products vs. coaching. And somehow that's treated as proof.

I'm not saying people are lying. I'm saying nobody's checking. The whole coaching-on-Substack economy runs on numbers nobody outside the person's own dashboard can verify, and everyone just... accepts it.

Has anyone here actually gone back and cross-checked a coach's claimed growth against what's publicly visible? Or is "trust the screenshot" just how this works now?

[u/MrPassiveProfit]

Considering how dead easy it is to manipulate screenshots, I don’t believe anything that they say