The Personal Brand Is More Important Than Twitter

Paul has once again quit the internet, but this time he’s left Twitter (namely, this personal Twitter account). What does this mean for Fathom, if anything?

NFTs were the final (minor) straw

Fathom’s recent launch of FathomCatz was the final straw in my decision to leave Twitter behind. I was excited to launch this fun new project, thought through the environmental aspect of blockchain things, and set up a local animal shelter to donate most of the proceeds to.

But then, the second I shared it, a troll surfaced to cut down my tweet. At first, I was mad, but then I realized:

1. I don’t feel like defending myself and my ideas to everyone, everywhere, all the time.
2. I don’t need to “be right” to others who don’t matter.
3. I don’t need to argue with strangers.
4. I don’t need my attention and mental bandwidth to be taken up by social media.

So while the NFT troll didn’t matter and wasn’t why I left, it was the final straw (of thousands) that led to the decision to remove my Twitter account permanently.

Does this decision impact Fathom?

Initially (i.e. years ago when Fathom Analytics started), a large chunk of new customers and awareness for Fathom came from my personal audience—via my mailing list and my writing.

Currently, this is no longer the case. Fathom isn’t just “Paul and Jack do software”; it’s its own brand. Sure, “Paul and Jack” the people are part of it, but the order goes Fathom first as the brand, then us.

So while removing my personal Twitter account could impact sales and growth with Fathom, it’s undoubtedly very minor. And, we have no plans to get rid of our Fathom Twitter account.

We’ve (especially myself) been very conscious about how we build the brand for Fathom: where the product is always first (or our cats are first?), and Jack and my personalities are a far second. Yes, who we are as cofounders of the company matters a great deal, but it’s the most important thing. And thankfully, we’re now at a place where my personal brand disappearing shouldn’t have a noticeable impact.

Scale scales negativity

When you have a small audience, there’s typically less negativity because there are just fewer people. But as an audience grows (as mine did), the number of trolls also increases.

Tim Ferriss has written about this (and the negative aspects of fame), as his audience is as big as you can get on the internet. And with it can come a volume of responses that one person could never be able to have time or mental capacity to deal with.

The Fathom Newsletter

Yes, at the start of the episode, I spoke about deleting my personal newsletter, but the reasons for deleting that don’t apply to… the new Fathom content newsletter.

The Fathom newsletter exists because we wanted a better way to distribute the articles and podcast episodes we’re creating all the time and putting a great deal of time and energy into. So it’s not a “personal, Paul Jarvis” newsletter; it’s a roundup of what Fathom has been up to, what we’ve written about or what we’ve talked about on our Above Board podcast.