The #1 Entrepreneurship lesson I learned again and again (and how Medium was one of the teachers)

I want to grow my presence in the world of running influencers and have recently been trying to up my Instagram game. It’s going badly. Three reels and zero new followers. Actually, I lost a couple. I was at a nice round 150 and now 148.

I’m almost amused by my Instagram performance. I have over 5,000 followers here on Medium, more than 300 on Substack, close to 400 on Strava, and a pathetic 148 on Instagram, even though I’ve been present on the platform in the last couple of years.

Instagram is flooding me with ads about building my funnel. I once opened an ad about someone promising to build a super successful online coaching business, and now these ads are like parasites.

Separately, one of the runners who follows me mentioned that I should post more content, which is exactly what I’ve been thinking about. I connected with him, and he told me how he’d been working with a marketing agency that helped him boost his followers. Now, a year later, he’s finally seeing some initial results (he’s running a trucking business). He provided me with the contact of the marketing agency.

For one thing, I don’t have any spare money right now to pay for anyone’s marketing services. But then I also thought: fuck it…