My Work Was Never Meant for the Algorithm

The Distortion of Social Media and the Power of Proximity

I’ve made millions of dollars in my lifetime.

None of it came from social media.

Not one lead.

Which is interesting, because I’ve spent decades building real businesses in America. Cars. Credit. Houses. Firearm education. The backbone of the American economy. You name it, I’ve done it.

At the same time, like everyone else, I participated in social media. Posting ideas, sharing experiences, talking about leadership and integrity. And yes, occasionally pointing out the lies, the cons, and the games people play in systems that pretend to be honest.

Likes would come.

Leads never did.

Nor did I ever ask.

Part of that is probably because I’ve been in sales since I was fifteen. That’s thirty-five years of watching how and why people buy.

When you’ve spent that long inside the mechanics of persuasion, you start to see the levers.

The emotional hooks.
The scarcity tactics.
The carefully constructed stories.

Sometimes you watch someone online selling a narrative that you know isn’t real. A persona that works very well in the algorithm but has very little to do with who they actually are.

That may be the most disheartening part of the internet.

Watching a performance get rewarded while the public assumes it’s truth.

Because who someone presents online is often very different from who they are behind the scenes.

Once you see that clearly, it becomes very hard to participate in the same game.

Not because you can’t play it.

But because you’re not willing to.

So instead of trying to compete inside that system, I removed myself from it.

What’s interesting is that the people who have paid me the most over the years almost always met me the same way.

A retreat.
A training environment.
A workshop.
A conversation where someone hears how I think and suddenly says, “Can I hire you?”

No algorithm involved.

Just proximity.

That’s when something became obvious.

Social media operates inside the attention economy. Visibility. Constant output.

But real trust still operates inside a different system entirely.

Reputation.
Presence.
Witnessed competence.
Results that match your words.

The distortion of social media is the belief that if you are not converting online, you are invisible.

But many forms of influence have never lived in feeds.

They live in rooms.

And the more I pay attention to that difference, the clearer something becomes.

My work was never meant for the algorithm.

It was meant for the room.