I Went Dark for 3 Years and Realized I Had No Business
I deleted Instagram at 2am on a Tuesday.
Not deactivated. Not "taking a break." Deleted.
30,000 followers gone. Three years of daily posts evaporated. Every carefully curated square, every witty caption, every humble brag about my "entrepreneur journey" — wiped clean like it never existed.
Want to know the most terrifying part?
Nobody noticed.
Not for a day. Not for a week. Not for three months. The 30,000 people who supposedly cared about my content? They just... moved on to the next account. The next story. The next dopamine hit in their endless scroll.
But here's where it gets worse.
When I deleted those apps, when the notifications stopped buzzing, when the likes stopped flowing — I discovered something that made my stomach drop.
I didn't have a business. I had a performance.
The Morning Scroll That Funds Lifestyles
Let me paint you a picture of my old morning routine.
Alarm goes off. Eyes still crusty. Hand reaches for phone before consciousness fully arrives. Check Instagram. Check Twitter. Check LinkedIn. Check email. Check Instagram again because maybe something happened in the last 30 seconds.
By the time my feet hit the floor, I'd already spent 45 minutes making Mark Zuckerberg richer.
Think about that for a second.
Every morning scroll, every double-tap, every story view — you're not networking. You're not building your business. You're literally funding someone else's lifestyle while your bank account begs for mercy.
Your screen time is someone's revenue stream. And it ain't yours.
I was waking up every single day and immediately going to work for Meta. For free. Actually, worse than free — I was paying them with my data, my attention, and the most valuable hours of my day.
The hours when my brain was fresh. When creativity was highest. When I could've been building something real.
Instead, I was a digital hamster on a wheel designed by Stanford PhDs to be as addictive as possible.
The Fake Following Disaster
Here's something nobody talks about.
I had over 300 thousand followers across all my accounts who wouldn't buy water in the desert.
Oh, they'd double-tap my motivational quotes. They'd fire emoji my workout posts. They'd comment "FACTS 💯" on my business tips. But ask them to buy a $9 ebook? Crickets. Launch a $99 course? Ghost town. Offer a $999 coaching program? They suddenly developed amnesia about who I was.
You know why?
They weren't following me. They were following my posting schedule.
I'd become human Netflix — bingeable but completely forgettable. They consumed my content the same way they consumed everything else in their feed. Mindlessly. Reflexively. Unconsciously.
I wasn't building an audience. I was feeding an algorithm.
The algorithm wanted consistency, so I posted daily. It wanted engagement, so I asked questions. It wanted video, so I danced like a trained seal. It wanted stories, so I documented my breakfast.
I posted for a very long time (years) straight to strangers who forgot me in three days flat.
One time, I met someone at a coffee shop who said they were my "biggest fan" on Instagram. When I asked what I did for work, they couldn't answer. They loved my "vibe" but had no idea what I actually offered.
That's when it hit me — I wasn't a business owner. I was a digital performing monkey, and my 300k followers were just tourists at the zoo.
The First Week of Darkness
When you delete social media after years of addiction, your brain does weird things.
Day one: Phantom notifications. You feel your phone buzzing when it's not. You reach for it every three minutes like a security blanket.
Day two: The itch. That physical sensation when you can't scratch something. Your thumb literally doesn't know what to do. It keeps making that scrolling motion on nothing.
Day three: The panic. What if something important is happening? What if everyone's talking about something and I don't know? What if I'm missing out on... on... wait, what exactly am I missing?
Day four: The silence. This is when it gets scary. No likes validating your existence. No comments confirming you matter. No DMs making you feel important. Just... quiet.
Day five: The mirror. You start seeing yourself without the filter of social media. Without the performance. Without the fake busy. And what you see ain't pretty.
Day six: The truth. That crushing realization that your entire "business" was just you talking to yourself in public while strangers occasionally clapped.
Day seven: The question. If nobody's watching, if there's no audience, if there's no feed to fill... who are you? What are you actually building? What exists when the performance ends?
For me, the answer was nothing.
What I Found in the Darkness
Three months into my social media darkness, I had a breakdown.
Not the Instagram story kind where you cry with perfect lighting. A real one. Sitting on my bathroom floor at 3am realizing I'd spent three years building absolutely nothing.
No systems. No assets. No real customers. No actual value.
Just content. Endless, meaningless content that evaporated the moment I stopped posting.
My "business" couldn't survive 24 hours without me performing. If I got sick, income stopped. If I didn't post, engagement died. If I wasn't constantly dancing for the algorithm, I ceased to exist.
You know what I'd been doing? Avoiding.
Every post was sophisticated procrastination. Every story was an excuse not to do real work. Every piece of content was me hiding from the fact that I didn't know how to build an actual business.
Social media wasn't my marketing strategy. It was my coping mechanism.
I was addicted to validation because I was terrified of failure. Those little hearts and thumbs-up were micro-doses of "you're doing great!" that kept me from facing the truth: I wasn't doing anything.
The withdrawal wasn't from social media. It was from avoiding my real problems.
The Year of Building in Silence
So I did something radical.
I stayed gone.
Not for a week. Not for a month. For a full year.
No progress posts. No humble brags. No "building in public." No documenting the journey. Just... building.
You know what happened?
Magic.
Without an audience to perform for, I had to create actual value. Without likes to chase, I had to chase revenue. Without followers to impress, I had to impress customers.
I built my first real product in month two. Not a course about how to make money online. Not an ebook about mindset. An actual solution to an actual problem that actual humans would actually pay for.
Month three: First sale. Not to my mom. Not to a supportive follower. To a complete stranger who found value in what I created.
Month six: Consistent revenue. Not from launching to my list every week. From systems that sold while I slept.
Month nine: I realized something profound — the biggest flex isn't posting your wins. It's winning without posting.
Building in silence is the ultimate test of whether you're an entrepreneur or just playing one online.
No external validation. No dopamine hits. No audience cheering you on. Just you, the work, and the results.
Most people can't handle it. They need the performance. They need the likes. They need strangers on the internet to tell them they're doing good.
But here's the thing — real businesses don't need applause to survive.
The Return (With New Rules)
I'm back on social media now.
But everything's different. I have actual systems that work for me, they don’t need motivation and I don’t need to dance around like a monkey to get attention.
I treat it like a tool, not a lifestyle. Like a hammer — you pick it up when you need to nail something, then you put it down.
No morning scrolls. Ever. My phone stays in another room until I've done real work.
No bedtime stories. The phone goes off at 8pm. Period.
No endless browsing. I post with purpose and ghost.
Most entreprenerus us social media like a stripper pole. They show up, perform their routine, collect some money, and then leave. Then they do this for years in an endless, mindless loop. Sure, they have no emotional attachment. No seeking validation. No falling in love with the audience. But who would want to do that for years! Not me!
It's transactional. Not relational.
I check my bank account before I check Instagram. If the money's not moving up, the content strategy's not working, no matter how many likes I get.
The truth is that what I know now—what actually works—has given me the lifestyle I have today. This is the game I wish I'd understood when I started.
The Philosophy That Changed Everything
The real secret I discovered in those three years?
Stop creating for everyone. Start creating for someone.
That someone? The person you used to be.
Every piece of content I create now is for past me. The person drowning in information but starving for transformation. The person who had 100,000 followers but couldn't pay rent. The person who thought busy meant productive.
I don't create for the algorithm. I don't create for the masses. I don't create for likes.
I create for one person who needs exactly what I needed all those years ago — permission to stop performing and start building.
When you create for past you, magic happens. Your content gets specific. Your message gets clear. Your value becomes undeniable.
You stop being Netflix and start being medicine.
The Challenge Nobody Wants to Take
Here's my challenge to you.
Delete your social media apps for 21 days.
Not your accounts. Just the apps.
Watch what happens. Notice the withdrawal. Notice the panic. Notice how much of your "business" exists only when you're performing.
Track what you build versus what you scroll. Create one thing of value completely offline. Have one real conversation without documenting it. Make one sale without social proof.
Feel the discomfort. Lean into it.
Because that discomfort? That's not withdrawal from social media.
That's your brain remembering what actually matters.
Your real business — the one that generates actual revenue, creates actual value, and serves actual humans — it's waiting for you on the other side of that discomfort.
But you'll never find it while you're scrolling.
You'll never build it while you're performing.
And you'll never own it while you're addicted to strangers validating your existence.
The biggest flex this year isn't going viral.
It's going dark.
And when you come back — if you come back — it won't be for the followers.
It'll be because you have something real to say. Something valuable to give. Something that matters beyond the next scroll.
I'll be here documenting the journey. Sharing the real playbook. Building in public WITHOUT the performance.
You can watch and scroll past like those 300k ghosts who forgot me in three days.
Or you can join me in the dark.
Where real businesses are built.
Where real value is created.
Where your screen time becomes YOUR dream lifestyle to do what you want as you see it.
The choice is yours.
But remember — every morning you wake up and scroll, you're clocking into someone else's dream.
Isn't it time you clocked into your own?
See you on the other side.
Or see you in the feed.
Either way, I'll be building.
The question is...
Will you?
Your future self already knows the answer.
They're just waiting to see if you do.