In our first two instalments, we gave you the top ten things you can do to be the Preeminent Procurement Influencer. While that’s more advice than anyone else is going to give you without a large retainer, we’re not done yet. We have one final piece of advice for you.

Find your next job sooner than later!

You might think this is crass, but the doctor has your best interests at heart because, being one of the last remaining OG analysts and bloggers who has now been in this space for two and half decades, he knows the cold hard truth.

You’re getting into it for the fame, thinking the fortune will come, but it won’t.

You need to remember that THIS IS PROCUREMENT. It’s Not Public Relations. It’s not Marketing. It’s not even Sales. You’re not selling to someone who’s cool. You’re selling to someone who’s less cool in the corporate culture than the IT Squad locked in the basement, who has significantly less budget and oversight than the IT Squad because the C-Suite at least understands their e-Mail and ERP needs supersized servers (even if it doesn’t, because that was what was required two decades ago and they haven’t learned anything about IT since) and their shiny new gadgets (laptops, tablets, smartphones, and Garmin GPS devices which are great for hiking the Himalayas) cost big bucks, and someone who has almost no say into corporate decision making and goal setting. Moreover, you’re selling to a function which has the least professionals of all functions across the business, as well as the least jobs (about 500K in the US compared to about 2.5M marketing and 5.5M sales professionals in the US). They are few and far between.

As a result, that rush of getting new likes and followers isn’t going to last very long because you’re not going to get that many followers no matter how hard you work, how often you pump out that flashy content we chronicled earlier this week, or how cool you are. The first few hundred followers will come very fast, the next few thousand will come at a good pace, but then, things will slow down. The gratification and dopamine highs from seeing those numbers trend up will be fewer and further between. Right now, the most popular influencers in our space on LinkedIn have about 30K followers. Think about that. 30K followers, when most big name influencers have 100K+ or 1M+. That’s not very many, and that’s because of the very small market you’re targeting. If there are only 500K in the US, that means the number of professionals you’re targeting across North America, the UK, and EU (where LinkedIn is popular) is only a little over 1M — and they aren’t all on LinkedIn.

Thus, at the end of the day, there’s no fame.

And there’s no fortune either.

I don’t know if you bothered to do your research, but like most actors and actresses (who have to waitstaff or do odd jobs just to survive on their cans of tuna), most influencers don’t make money! YouTubers who get 1Million views a month can’t even pay their rent on that. UNLESS YOU HAVE A MILLION FOLLOWERS AS AN INFLUENCER, YOU CAN NOT MAKE A LIVING OFF OF IT!

But I can get sponsors? Good for you. You might pay your (office) rent on that, but you won’t pay your bills on that either. Ask the OG bloggers.

The daily grind is all there is. The ongoing, never ending, slog that will be there day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year with no fame, no fortune, and no reward.

And if you’d stop to ask why there are so few bloggers, sorry, content creators, left in our space, even fewer that have been doing it for more than a couple of years, and next to none that have been doing it for more than a decade, and did your research, you’d know that it’s because many started thinking it would be cool and fun, get them recognition and renown, and it would eventually pay off big.

But after a couple of weeks, months, or years, the vast majority of these bloggers, sorry again, content creators, realized that it’s not cool and fun (it’s just hard work), the breadth of recognition and renown was much (much) less than they dreamed, and the money, well, it just wasn’t there. They still had to make their living as a procurement leader, consultant, or startup founder — which, as we know, already required constant overtime before the content creation.

Dear Influencer, This Is Your Life! And let me save you some heartache by telling you now that You Don’t Want It. So figure out what you want to do and go do it. You’ll be much happier if you do. (Because no one is going to write your content creator obituary when you suddenly stop one day because you’re just too tired to keep going. the doctor stopped keeping track after the first hundred (100) or so dropped off. Yes, you read that right, hundred or so. Shortly after THE PROPHET and the doctor started almost two decades ago, we went from maybe a dozen bloggers to over one hundred, and then back down to less than two dozen three years later. They didn’t last, and you won’t either.)

Most of the time, it’s only the strong survive, but in our space, it’s only the non-sociopathic masochists with a pressing need to try and educate (or at least intellectually stimulate) others that survive. (And the doctor hopes THE REVELATOR agrees!) In other words, if you’re mentally well balanced, your chances of success are about equivalent to a pig flying through hell fast enough to keep the snowball from melting …)