My Story - Part 2

After seeing so many of you guys tell me how much you liked reading about my background in the first part of the “My Story” series (read the first part here), I wanted to tell you a bit more about the journey of my life and how I ended up here.

In the first part of my story I went over my college years and how I was lost for so long pursuing self-improvement and growth for the wrong reasons, and how I started to get more interested in writing and sharing the message of masculinity with the world. That was already many years ago, and a lot of things have happened since then.

Projects in Lockdown

In this second part I want to go more in depth into how this project came to be and the evolution it’s been through since I started it in March of 2021. For context, at that point I was working for a startup and had been there for about 3 months. In 2020, during the lockdown, I had once again tried to do some kind of social media business. I had 12.000 followers on my personal Instagram —which I had gathered during my years of vain fizeek posting to try and become an influencer—, so I once again decided I would try my hand at the whole social media thing and see if I could start selling fitness and nutrition programs. Because at this point I had been posting fitness content on and off for years, most of the people in my circle saw me as somebody who had decent knowledge around fitness and nutrition, and were coming to me for advice regarding their own fitness.

Naturally, I thought that I could turn this into a business, but it was very important to me to not only have the practical knowledge but also the theoretical one, especially if I was going to start charging for giving advice. So I decided to get certified as a Sports Nutritionist and Personal Trainer with ISSA. I studied hard and completed both degrees in a matter of months. Once I had the degrees, I started offering online fitness and nutrition coaching using my social to promote it. I didn’t do bad at all, and got a few clients quite easily, mostly people that knew me or who knew someone who knew me. I was very happy with the results but also noticed I would have to keep growing the account and keep posting consistently to be able to find more clients. I knew I had to record myself training and post actually valuable content if this was going to be a sustainable business.

Going Dark

I did do that for a few weeks. It wasn’t too hard, because I was training twice a day at that point and it was very simple to just record and take pictures of myself to post on my IG. But I started to realize that I actually hated being so public. I detested having to talk on camera, post pictures of myself constantly, and I hated people knowing where I was or what I was doing at all times. I told you in the first part of my story that I’ve always been a private person, and this was everything but private. I got a glimpse of how terrible being a public figure would be and decided I did not want to go down that path.

This is also why I’m still anonymous. Some people online criticize anonymous accounts and say your message is invalid if you don’t show your face. I can’t say I don’t see their point, because I know perfectly well how many hide behind anonymous accounts to promote a message they themselves do not practice in reality. You have grifters and scammers posting whatever philosophy, and then being pieces of sh*t in their day to day lives. Which is precisely why they stay anonymous.

So I understand that anonymous accounts allow for some to be hypocritical. But I am very confident that I do practice what I preach, and I have talked to enough of you face to face for you to know it too. And in my case, the reason I still write under a pseudonym is simply that I have been non-anonymous, and felt like a complete imbecile posting videos of myself and pictures of myself. Maybe this isn’t the case for many influencers, but for me, it just felt non-genuine. I don’t want to be public, and would rather keep my private life private.

But back to the story. I realized all this and just closed all social media accounts and disappeared from the map. I was just overwhelmed, tired of sharing so much, and in need of a break from it all. This was towards the end of 2020.

I can’t tell you how much peace I felt during the months I was away from social media. It’s ironic that I know use it so much for business, but at that point, for the first time ever since it had become a thing, I realized how enslaved and mentally trapped we are by our social media usage.

I started being more present in what was going on around me, I could concentrate better, and it was liberating to only spend my time with the people closest to me and being able to giving them my undivided attention, without thinking about posting content all the time.

Back To Business

About that time, I finished college and since I had given up what was at the time my only source of income —the fitness coaching—, I went looking for a job. I found one quite easily, working in product at a completely new startup. I didn’t put too much thought into choosing a job, mostly because I had always known I would end up doing my own thing.

A few months after getting the job I moved out from my parents home, where I had been during lockdown, and found myself with a lot of time in my hands. The office was two blocks away, the startup was barely getting started, and because I was also very new, there wasn’t too much work for me. I also worked remotely most of the days.

Initially, I spent the free time reading, watching YouTube, and playing Far Cry (I used to game a lot). I remember those times fondly. Even though I was making very little money, I felt hopeful and excited for the future, I didn’t have social media and wasn’t constantly being flooded with videos and pictures of people having a better life which meant I could just be grateful for what I did have: my family, my job, my little room in the apartment I was sharing, my books, and my TV and Xbox. I don’t miss those times, but they were definitely simpler.

Eventually, I watched a video by John Doyle in which he talked about the culture war and how much ground we were losing because of our refusal to join in and fight. I’m paraphrasing, and don’t really remember which video it was, but I remember watching this and feeling a deep sense of responsibility to add my voice to the fight. I had been wanting to do this for years, with the books, even with the fitness content, always trying to create something that could help young men live better lives.

It had never really clicked, but for some reason, that video lit the embers in my soul and I decided to do it. That same day I created Simple Men.

On a sidenote, many of you have asked me why my project is called Simple Men, so I wrote an article explaining why here.

And that was how this project was born. It’s been a crazy ride, and if you’ve been here since then you probably remember that initially it was just random blog articles about masculinity and an IG page where I posted stock photos. Slowly the Instagram started gaining more traction, the content got more sophisticated, I created a better branding, and after 18 months, I reached 10.000 followers.

This was January 2022. A little throwback, sent by a long time follower.

Bear in mind, this was 18 months of posting daily content. DAILY. That’s the kind of commitment that makes it impossible for you to fail. It’s been an incredible journey, and one that I’m very happy to have started.

This article is getting to be long enough already, so we’ll leave it at that. Drop a comment if you want to see a part 3 where I tell you a bit more about how this project became a business, how I quit my 9 to 5 for good, and everything that has happened since then.

Thanks for reading and being here supporting and God bless you always!

Simple Man