I am fed up with scrolling through social media and cluttering my mind with everything happening there. I find myself drawn to doomscrolling whenever I lose focus or don’t have plans for my time. It feels like a trap, as if I am pouring my life into this endless void. Yet, on the other hand, I have plenty of “justifications” for being on social media. I mean, how can you even build a business today without being active on LinkedIn and X? How do you keep in touch with friends without Instagram and TikTok?
I know that’s complete bullshit, though. On the business side, it’s an inflated narrative that happens because the voice and reason of socialpreneurs, of course, is taking up a lot of space on socials by preaching their methods—it makes sense. But I’d bet that so many thriving businesses are built on solid value creation and not self-promotion on socials.
I’m convinced, though, that it’s a popular and viable strategy because it works. I just experience it as the most boring and limiting way of bringing yourself to the online space, and I’m sick of consuming the nonsense content that is regurgitated over and over again.
→ Find your tiny niche, and figure out how you can say the same thing every day in 10.000 different ways.
That’s the model, and gosh, it’s so boring. I honestly can’t believe for a second that anyone following this strategy is not sick and tired of themselves and the niche they picked after a while. But hey, you gotta stick to it for the strategy to work!
Try that strategy in real life, and insist on only having the same conversation over and over again with your friends or colleagues. You’d be without both in no time. So why has this become the golden standard of personal branding online?
Maybe I’m also just fed up and a tiny bit too negative about it right now. But great things come from being fed up cause that’s when the price of not changing is greater than that of changing. It becomes the moment where we actually tend to do something about it instead of just complaining. My writing this, with the intention of finding an outlet that allows me to express myself without being cuffed by social media, is that action that might lead to change.
Because that is truly how I’ve felt for many years while trying to “fit in” on social platforms. The first time I became aware that there was a conflict was 5-6 years ago, when I, in my early/mid-20s, stumbled upon the world of email marketing and quickly became a decent consultant. My boss at the time was the biggest (and almost only) email marketing profile in Denmark. That was (and is) his personal brand. I saw an opportunity to join him in that niche, but I was deeply conflicted about becoming “the email marketing guy”, because I knew that I was much more than that, and that my time only working with emails would be limited. So I didn’t double down, instead I intentionally didn’t post much about the awesome work I did.
This conflict was only enhanced when I was hired as the Head of Email Marketing for a popular marketing agency a few years later. All of a sudden, I was also a marketing element for them. If they could brand me well, it would bring in clients. So, we started doing webinars, and I did some public speaking on the topic. And to be fair, I loved being on camera- and stage. I loved the direct and impactful form of communication. I just didn’t love being branded as THE go-to guy for anything email marketing related. It somehow felt like a sacrifice to all the aspects of my personality and experiences that I personally felt much more passionate about than marketing. Again, I veered away from self-promotion or personal branding, besides what we did as an agency.
And even though I knew since the beginning that email marketing was not for me, and it most certainly wasn’t my end-all-be-all, I really thought that I would’ve managed to “get on” with something else faster. I’m still very much involved in email marketing as a freelance consultant, as has been so for the past 2-3 years since I stepped out of the agency. It has been my way of paying the bills while doing fun projects and working on my startup dreams. It has been a HUGE blessing to be able to bootstrap a tech startup for 1,5 years by doing freelance work in the range of 30-ish hours a month. That’s incredible flexibility and freedom. But it’s also a bit of a curse; like most things, the coin has a dark side.
One that I’ve started to become painfully aware of in the past year or so. I haven’t been stimulated or super-engaged in doing email marketing for a long time. So, for the past 4-ish years, I’ve justified continuing for other reasons than my love for it. I justified taking the Head of Email Marketing position because it would be a career leap, allowing me to sharpen my leadership skills and position myself as an authority within the industry. I’d say both of those worked out really well, and I’m happy I made that call.
Then I realized (again) that email marketing wasn’t where my happiness and fullfillment was, so I stepped away without having another path.
That randomly led to my participation in Project Iceman, the coolest and most fun project I’ve ever taken part in. However, my role on the team was also rooted in marketing, especially email marketing.
Through Project Iceman, I got to know a lot of awesome people, like the team behind Yes Theory. They got to see the value I created on the project and ended up hiring me as a freelance marketing consultant afterward. That collaboration lasted more than two years and set the precedent for me to continue with freelance consulting while figuring out what to do with my life (and spare time).
Since then, I’ve felt the effect of having a strong network and being in an authority position within it. I’ve not had to do any outbound sales at all. Since leaving the agency, every single client I’ve had has been inbound, without posting about email marketing a single time on social media. Most of the time, you wouldn’t even be able to tell from my profiles that I provide such services. They’ve all come through recommendations from people I know. Old clients, old colleagues or friends.
It has led me to contribute to cool projects for companies and creators like Yes Theory, Seek Discomfort, Chessly, Simon Squibb, Cana Care, Female Invest, RSLT, More Than Health, Willingness To Pay, Body SDS, Dately, and more.
Many times, I’ve had to turn down incoming work to maintain the balance between consulting and focusing on my startup. That’s been a difficult balance to strike when someone offers you work north of 90K DKK a month. And I’ve not always been able to maintain the balance. Last year, in 2024, I had months with +100K revenue and 3 months straight with zero revenue over the summer. I averaged around 30K per month, roughly correlating to a 1000 DKK per hour for the work I delivered.
Even though I believe that this is the wet dream of many freelance consultants, it’s not mine. The flipside of this coin is that it is so good that it makes it almost impossible to let go of, yet it’s draining my energy, and the work is not rewarding anymore. Only two things give me value from my freelance work: the incredible people I get to work with and learn from and the money. And I don’t care much about money right now. I need them to pay my bills and enable experiences that enrich my life, but I’m not chasing them or super motivated by them. So really, it’s mostly the people that feel like “real” value. And while that is awesome, I believe that extraordinary people can be found in other contexts that can enrich more parts of my life.
But right now, without a super long runway (or any for that matter), I would have to make money to pay my bills another way or radically downscale my life if I let go of freelance work completely. And if I have to spend 3x the time making the same amount in a “normal” job, then it’s not really enabling me to find what I want to do. So it ends up being really hard to justify letting go from a logical standpoint. However, I also know that sometimes you have to let go entirely of something that isn’t the right thing to be able to position yourself to grab hold of something else that might be. You’re not going to be able to drift to a nearby island if you’re holding on for dear life to a sinking ship. It’s about being ready and available to grab the opportunity when it presents itself, like I did with my agency job and Project Iceman.
I think the real problem is that I’m super comfortable. The boat I’m holding on to is not sinking, yet it’s not going anywhere. It’s keeping me afloat, but I know I don’t want to stay on this boat forever. So I’m trying to build another boat that might allow me to leave smoothly instead of getting in the deep water and praying for something else to appear. And that seems somewhat logical, too. I’m just not sure it’s the most effective way.
Sometimes, jumping head first in the deep end is what enables you to learn to swim, or fly for that matter (if you were born a bird - don’t get any cute thoughts about leaping off).
I'm not sure exactly how this rant ended here, but either way, time will tell where I end up. Hopefully, that will soon be in something I find more inspiring and fulfilling than email marketing.
