This article will discuss why I quit being an influencer and what I did to make sure I never return to that role.

In the past year, I have quit a few things. One was to quit giving to every single nonprofit I supported for the purpose of receiving a tax credit from the government.

Another was to quit consistently having sex on my first date. But quitting working as an influencer was one of the most painful actions I've ever taken.

I worked as an influencer in a startup called Novena for three and a half years. The gist of it was, I'd design several articles a month for their blog.

I even used the Novena network to help me find my next job. But things got stressful because they'd launch a new product and I'd have to write about it.

And every new hire brought with it a new project that I had to write about. And I was one of their only employees so if something went wrong, I would be held accountable.

It's hard to do anything unless you have a team and a network

Eventually, I realized that I was trying to be the person I thought I had to be. I was trying to please someone else's expectations, rather than my own.

But the other challenge was that I'd take things too personally. If someone didn't like one of my articles, I'd think, "Okay, this person thinks I'm not worthy of being here," when in reality, this person likely didn't even read my entire blog.

With all of that said, I've been following a few of the author's careers and one thing I noticed is that the ones who quit being influencers did one of two things. Some changed their names and became bloggers (i.e., Dave Blair, Elisa Camahort Page, Seth Godin, etc).

While this can be effective, I'm not the biggest fan of this approach. I think it's too easy to adopt a pseudonym and it becomes too easy to hide behind the internet to do things you wouldn't normally do in person.

And you can never go back to being an influencer once you've gone there.

Another option was to keep the name, but abandon the company. I approached this in my own way.

I just said, "I'm not really comfortable with the direction that the company is going in and I'm going to leave." And I'd received support from my colleagues that they were grateful that I was freeing up the time for them.

Now, let's talk about how I quit being an influencer for good.

My reasons for quitting

There are so many reasons I quit being an influencer. Here are the five most important.

I didn't want to be on a public stage

I didn't want to be in the spotlight. And honestly, I didn't want to make an income out of it.

I like doing things privately. I found that I only achieved things when I was isolated or doing a project for myself.

I was spending so much time on it

I worked 20-hour days when I was focused on it and would still work on it when I was having lunch with my family or hanging out with my wife. There was always a burning desire to work on it.

I didn't get the recognition that I wanted

I really liked the feeling of getting press but this was hard to come by. But by staying in it, I would gain some recognition which would drive me to work harder to continue gaining recognition.

But then I'd try to do things for public approval which would drive me away from the source of the recognition.

It was a real time suck

I could feel myself wasting time and not being my full self.

I was pushing myself further and further into debt.

After starting my first job as an influencer, I had enough to live comfortably. But as I went on to create more and more blogs, I found that I needed a mortgage and a car and college tuition for my daughter.

Eventually, the Internet would pay my rent, the food, the car insurance, the car loan, the tuition and the daycare, and my kids would go to a different daycare to save on the cost. There were just so many things I had to pay for that I could never live without.

So, I stopped being an influencer. This was the hardest thing for me.

I was so attached to the idea of being an influencer. I had dreamed about it.

I felt like I was living the dream.

I was finding more and more ways to do it so it was becoming a real drag. I became a real people pleaser and was putting out anything I could think of.

And I made a lot of friends along the way, but I was working 20-hour days all the time and didn't have time for my family. I just wanted to keep going, keep meeting new people and learning things.

I recently realized that being an influencer was just a job. It wasn't who I was.

I wasn't some superhero and I didn't want to be. I don't think that every professional blogger has to ditch their blog to become an influencer.

But there are ways to do it that won't burn you out.

So, that's my story about why I quit being an influencer for good. I did it for my own sanity.

For my family. And to free up some time for me so I could be more of who I really am.

I'm so glad that I can do it now for real. It's truly a privilege to be able to make a living by doing what I love and spend time with my family.

I know that everyone has a different reason for quitting their careers, but I do know that for me, it wasn't about money or fame, but it was about being myself and being able to spend time doing what I love.

Influencers are doing less interesting work

This is probably the biggest problem I had with influencers. Not only do you get a lot of the same content posted all the time, but it's often done in the same way.

People are doing their best to promote things, but they are using the same tactics. It's not creativity, and you're not watching anything you haven't seen 100 times before.

I would post something on social media and it would get zero interaction. It might get a few likes, but that was it.

That is one of the reasons I quit this game. You see people like Jay Busbee post a piece every day, and it gets a lot of attention, but not nearly as much as it used to.

Instead of pushing themselves creatively and challenging their thoughts and opinions, most influencers are using the same old, boring tactics over and over.

This has affected our industry as a whole.