A Health Warning: How I Lost my Way on 𝕏 by being Sucked into Growth Culture

I began seriously using 𝕏 — or Twitter as it was back then — in May 2023.

That’s precisely a year ago.

Importantly, I knew what I was doing there.

In 𝕏 parlance, I was clear on my content pillars and what my offer was, long before I started speaking that language.

My four content pillars:

• Publishing books
• Business process
• Writing online
• Design

My offer:

• I help you get your book out of your head and into people’s hands.

Simple.

Easy to understand.

Proven. I’ve been in business selling that offer, and variants of it, for almost a decade and a half. Designing and producing books, branding and publishing authors.

I know all this to be true not only because I remember it clearly (it was only a year ago after all). But also because it’s written in my journal from back then.

(I love to journal, by the way, feel free to drop tasty journaling morsels in the comments below).

And yet…

I was blown off course – on 𝕏 certainly, but there was an impact away from that place, too.

Within days of dusting off my old account, I’d stumbled on what is variously known as Money 𝕏 or Growth 𝕏.

Here’s the process by which the wrong wind hit my sails. I think it demonstrates how easily it can blow anyone way off course, for I know I was far from alone on this journey:

• You believe in your offer and want to bring it to the attention of more people. That’s commendable
• You join a social channel – 𝕏 in this case – and see a community of people who appear to have answers around how to get eyes on your content. That’s understandable.
• You follow those people and their advice, and you start to see rapid growth in your follower count and your impressions. That’s rewarding!

But here’s where things begin to get a little wonky…

• You begin to notice, in this world of the Growth Guru, that your impressions spike when you also talk about growth. That’s stroking the ego.
• You tilt your content increasingly in that direction — they call it responding to signals, which makes it sound pretty hot and justified! Suddenly you’re averaging thousands of impressions and hundreds of Likes on everything you post on 𝕏. Now you’re becoming a low level rockstar in this heady world, and the Big Gurus are reposting and commenting on your stuff. That’s mad!

It feels good. Sort of.

Except for the knowledge in your core that in fact, right now, you’re lost.

This was not what you came here for.

That journey I describe above was precisely the path I followed, for around seven weeks last summer, until my conversation on 𝕏 was entirely divorced from the thing I could actually do well for people in the first place.

Huge. Epic. Fail.

I doubt that any of the people who were guzzling down my posts and constantly DM’ing me really had any idea what I came for in the first place.

I help busy people to produce books that sell.

I’d made the simple incredibly complicated.

Why? By the end of those seven weeks, I couldn’t even remember!

The problem is that growth around my expertise has none of the jazz hands or instant gratification that growth around growth has.

But here’s the thing: growth around growth is a house of cards. It’s always going to tumble.

So I stepped away for a whole lot of time. I was scorched by my time in the Growth community. I met some great people, absolutely. But I encountered a culture that was toxic. Simultaneously dangerous for my health and absolutely alien to everything I’ve built in my business over the past 15 years.

Now here I am: gingerly dipping my toe back in the swirling torrents of 𝕏, writing things I care about on Medium, even dropping some posts onto LinkedIn here and there.

I’ll be honest: it all comes with a huge dollop of wariness for me as a result of that experience last year.

So yes, I wanted to write this as a health warning to anyone embarking on a similar journey with an actual area of expertise to talk about: have courage in your convictions and you will find your tribe.

But I also wanted to write it as a health warning to myself, second time around: beware! For there be monsters lurking in them swirling torrents!

Believe in yourself, dear reader.

And in yourself, dear writer.