I cut my followers from 30 to 11. On purpose.

I'd rather have the smaller number.

On October 2, I had 30 followers on X.

Not a big number. But it was mine, and I watched it.

Then I noticed a follow/unfollow swap. Accounts coming and going, and the ones showing up looked like OnlyFans-style spam profiles. That made me open my followers list and actually read it.

Most of it wasn't people.

What I found when I read the list

The pattern was easy to spot once I looked:

• Flirty selfie avatars
• Handles ending in a string of random digits
• Handles that were just random characters
• Generic slogan bios
• No real identity anywhere

I blocked what mostly appeared to be bots. That took me to 12. One more dropped later. Now I'm at 11.

I cut my audience by almost two-thirds. On purpose.

Why I'd rather have 11

My last Article was about data. The thesis was simple: data only matters if it changes your week. Measure. Interpret. Change one input. Remeasure.

I wrote that about health. Then I had to apply it to myself.

Here's where I honestly am. My published Articles:

“Money anxiety is a performance tax”

79 impressions

“Willpower doesn't fail at the meal”

67

“You got the data. Now what?”

10 after two days

About one like each. Almost no engagement.

That's early. I'm not going to dress it up.

But here's the problem with 30 followers when most of them are bots: every metric gets divided by a number that isn't real. My engagement rate looked worse than it was. My impressions could include accounts that will never read a word. I couldn't tell which.

The instrument was lying to me. Not dramatically. Just enough to turn every decision into a guess.

Clean books beat inflated revenue

I spent fifteen years in finance and accounting. This is a familiar problem.

You don't book receivables you'll never collect. If the customer is gone, the invoice is gone. You write it off.

Leaving it on the books doesn't make the business bigger. It makes the balance sheet a lie. And every decision you make off that balance sheet is a little bit wrong.

Bot followers are uncollectible receivables. They make the top line look better, and they are never going to pay.

So I wrote them off.

A smaller, real number is a better instrument. Eleven people I can count beat thirty I have to guess about.

It didn't stay clean

Here's the imperfect part.

On October 6, a new follower showed up. A flower emoji in the name. A bio fishing for DMs, something like: come test your conversation skills, I might answer faster than you think.

I checked it live. Account created January 2024. 1 follower. Following 217. 11 posts. 1,520 likes. And the posts it did have were in Japanese, about manga. Nothing to do with the bio.

That's not a person following me. That's a script wearing a costume.

I blocked it.

That's the lesson. Cleaning the list isn't a one-time event. It's maintenance. The leak comes back. You check again.

Systems over vanity

This is the same idea behind Wellness for Hustlers. Vanity metrics feel good and tell you nothing. Systems tell you where the leak is.

A scale that reads wrong doesn't help you get leaner. A follower count padded with bots doesn't help you write better.

It's also the Results & Results idea: outcomes are designed, not willed.

I can't will an audience into existence. I can design the inputs. Write something useful. Publish on schedule. Measure honestly. Change one thing. Measure again.

That loop only works if the measurement is real.

So this is my baseline. 11 followers. Real ones, as far as I can tell. From here, when a number moves, I'll know what it means.

If you're one of the eleven: thank you. You're the signal.

Run your own audit

You don't need an audience to do this. Pick any number you watch. Followers, revenue, steps, the scale. Ask one question: is this number made of real things?

If it isn't, write off what isn't real. Then run the loop.

Wellness for Hustlers is the 90-day operating system for people whose calendars are already full. Start at wellnessforhustlers.com.