There is a reason the post about the mistake outperforms the post about the milestone, and it is not that people enjoy watching you fail.
A finished thing invites one response: nice. There is nothing for the reader to do with it. An unfinished thing invites an opinion, a warning, a story of their own — and every one of those is a person who has now spent time inside your work rather than scrolling past it.
Process is proof
Anyone can claim quality. Very few can show the eleven steps that produce it, because the ones who cannot are not doing them. The founder explaining why the second supplier was rejected is making a claim that cannot be copied by a competitor with a better copywriter.
This is why process content converts long after it is published. It answers the question every considered purchase turns on — is this made by people who care about the part I cannot see? — without ever asking the reader to take your word for it.
What to show, in practice
The decision you nearly got wrong. The version that did not ship, and why. The unglamorous middle of the job. The thing that costs more than it needs to, and the reason you keep paying for it.
Two rules keep it honest. Never manufacture a struggle for the camera — audiences read performed vulnerability instantly, and it costs more trust than the post could ever earn. And always land it: show the work, then say what it means for the person buying. Process without a point is a diary.
Save the trophy posts for the moments that genuinely deserve them. They land harder when they arrive at the end of a story people have been following, rather than as the only thing you ever publish.
On the mix: roughly two process pieces for every one that asks for something. Not because there is anything wrong with selling, but because process is what earns the right to — and a feed weighted the other way trains people to scroll past you on the days it matters most.
The practical objection is always the same: our work is not interesting to watch. It rarely is, from the inside. Familiarity is not the same as boredom, and the step you find tedious after four years is usually the exact one a customer has never seen anyone do before.