Let E be a closed subset of the unit circle \(\mathbb {T}\) , and let \(\alpha \in (0,1)\) . Nikolski’s result states that if the Hausdorff dimension of E is strictly greater than \(\alpha \) , then for any operator T on a separable Hilbert space such that the point spectrum \(\sigma _p(T)\) of T contains E, the series \(\sum _{n}n^{\alpha -1}\Vert T^n\Vert ^{-2}\) converges. A partial converse of this result has been obtained by El-Fallah and Ransford. Namely they constructed, for any \(\alpha \) strictly greater than the upper box dimension of E, an operator T on a separable Hilbert space such that \(\sigma _p(T)\) contains E and \( \frac{1}{n} \sum _{k=0}^{n-1}\left\| T^k\right\| ^2\lesssim n^{\alpha }\) . In this paper, we improve on this latter result for regular sets. Indeed, for any Ahlfors–David regular set E and for any \(\alpha \) strictly greater than the Hausdorff dimension of E there exists an operator T on a separable Hilbert space such that \(\sigma _p(T)\) contains E and \(\Vert T^n\Vert ^2\asymp n^{\alpha }\) .