Stop Building on Rented Land
A Case for Independence
This is not a breakup post.
I’m not leaving LinkedIn. I’m not angry. I’m not trying to start a movement.
And no — this is not one of those dramatic “I’m announcing my departure” airport gate posts.
You’ll still see me on LinkedIn: Commenting. Connecting. Learning. Cheering smart people on. That said, I’m making a meaningful shift. My original content is moving here.
Why?
Because this is bigger than LinkedIn.
It’s about energy. Time. Ownership. Alignment.
Here’s how it all started… kinda by accident….
How this started
I never set out to be a writer or content creator. In fact, my 7th grade English teacher would be shocked. lol
On July 26, 2021, I posted something on LinkedIn. I don’t even remember deciding to do it again the next day. I just did. Then the day after that. I’d read a few posts about people who showed up daily and what it did for them — their thinking, their network, their business. I wasn’t part of any cohort or 30-day challenge. I just started.
No plan. No brand. No strategy deck.
Just a guy with a list of ideas in Apple Notes, a folder for drafts, and a folder for whatever made it across the finish line.
I gave myself a personal hashtag — half because I believed in sharing good ideas, half because it made me laugh: the first four letters of my last name are “D’Ang.” So, “Dang, good idea.” #DangGoodIdea was born.
I started tracking what worked using a tool called SHIELD, mostly so I’d stop guessing. I followed people who were better at this than me — Justin & Jennifer, Josh, Kyle, and others — and tried to learn their structure without stealing their voice. A handful of early connections gave me guidance and encouragement when I had no idea what I was doing. I still remember who they were (and still are) David and Sonia.
Did my writing get better? Maybe. Slowly.
My thinking got sharper. That part I’m sure of.
I had no idea, back then, that any of it would matter five years later. It was just a habit. A small, daily act of showing up and sharing whatever I’d learned that day.
What’s needed now
A little over two years after that first accidental post, everything changed.
In 2023, my sales leadership role was eliminated. I was given a choice: leave the company, or stay on as an individual contributor. I loved the work and the people, so I stayed. It wasn’t an easy transition. I lost access to the coach I’d been working with. The year kept testing me — more layoffs, a few new managers, new processes nobody asked for, good people getting put on PIPs that didn’t reflect their work.
Somewhere in there, I started asking myself a question I still ask today, and have asked for as long as I can remember: what’s needed now?
Not “what’s fair.” Not “what happened to me.” Just — given where things actually stand, what’s the next right, aligned move?
On February 1, 2024, I was “invited not to return to work”. Two weeks of severance. No warning that mattered.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t rage. I asked the same question I’d been asking all year.
What’s needed now?
The answer surprised even me: forgiveness, and a decision. I told the people delivering the news, “I forgive you.” Then I went home and started building something of my own — because most of what I needed to get through that year didn’t exist anywhere I could buy it. So I built it. That became ResultsLab and ResultsOS™.
I launched it on February 29, 2024. A leap day. A date that only shows up once every four years, for a decision that only needed to happen once.
The conversation that asked the real question
Fast forward to May 26, 2026. I had a call with a CRO. He said something like: “I see you all over LinkedIn. Are you a LinkedIn influencer now? Is that your job?” I guess that’s a win for LinkedIn. And I guess my accidental content “strategy” worked. lol
I laughed. Genuinely. “I’m the furthest thing from a LinkedIn influencer,” I told him. “But I appreciate you seeing the content. This is just one channel to spread the work and the message of my own company.”
That CRO was the same one from the same company — the one where things ended in 2024. I’d reached out to him because I saw (on LinkedIn) he was between roles and considering spinning up his own business. I wanted to reconnect, repair the relationship, and cheer him on.
That call could have just been a nice exchange. A relationship a little more repaired than it was the day before. And it was that.
But his question sat with me longer than I expected.
Not because it stung. Because it was fair. From the outside, five years of near-daily posting can look like a personality. From the inside, I knew it was never the point. The point was always the work → the frameworks, the thinking, helping. LinkedIn was just where I happened to be standing when I started.
So I asked myself the question again. The one I’d been asking since long before that layoff, and plenty of times since.
What’s needed now?
The tipping point
Around that same time, I went looking for something simple: my own content. My own posts. My own thinking, written over years, that I wanted to gather in one place.
Turns out, that’s not simple at all.
You can request your LinkedIn data. You’ll get files, formats, exports. But your actual posts, the way you actually wrote them? Not easily. Not cleanly. Support tickets. Requests. Waiting. Maybe eventually.
That was the real moment. Not anger. Clarity.
If accessing your own original work is hard, that’s not a technical inconvenience. That’s a signal.
To be clear — this still isn’t anti-LinkedIn. This platform gave me real relationships, real clients, real learning, real visibility. No complaints. But platforms change. Rules change. Algorithms change. Access changes. That’s their right.
Which means it’s my job to make my own choice, too.
Energy is a business decision
I teach energy management. Focus. Intentional action. Less friction. Better systems.
So I had to ask myself the obvious, uncomfortable question: was I living that, or just teaching it?
Because if I was honest, posting had started to feel like this: create, polish, publish, hope, refresh, repeat. Not inherently bad. Just no longer the right energy ROI for me. And when the energy ROI changes, the aligned move is to adjust — not to grind through it out of habit, and not to make a dramatic statement about it either. Just to ask what’s needed now, and follow the answer.
This isn’t really a content decision. It’s an ownership decision.
Your ideas matter. Your thinking matters. Your IP matters. Renting distribution is smart. Depending on rented distribution is risky. Those are two very different things.
Social platforms are distribution channels. They are not your business. Not your archive. Not your home.
“Rented land” is any platform where you build an audience and a body of work, but someone else owns the rules, the access, and the archive.
That distinction is the whole piece, really. Everything else is detail.
What changes now
I’m still on LinkedIn, just a little less, intentionally.
Less publishing. More engaging. Less feeding the machine. More actual conversation, like the one that started this whole reflection.
My original content, the frameworks, the tools, the deeper thinking — that lives here now. Where I control access. Where I own the archive. Where the relationship with anyone reading is direct, not algorithm-mediated.
Cleaner. Simpler. More aligned with what’s actually needed now.
Where this started, and where it landed
It’s a strange thing to look back on. A habit that started by accident on a random Monday in 2021 turned into five years of near-daily writing, which turned into a body of work, which turned into a company, which turned into a conversation with someone from one of the hardest chapters of my life — a conversation that, almost as a side effect, helped me see clearly what to do next.
I didn’t plan any of that. I just kept asking the same question, in the moments that mattered and the moments that didn’t: what’s needed now?
Two dates, one decision
I’m publishing this on July 4, 2026. That’s not an accident either.
Independence Day in the United States comes around every year. It’s shared, public, the same date for all of us, a reminder that freedom is worth choosing on purpose, not just enjoying by default.
ResultsLab was born on a date that isn’t like that at all. A leap day shows up once every four years. Most years, it doesn’t exist. I chose to announce ResultsLab.io on February 29, 2024, on purpose — and yes, it was symbolic. A new beginning deserved a date that rare.
So here’s where those two dates meet. One reminds me that independence is something you declare, not something you wait for. The other reminds me that the moments that test you rarely follow a normal calendar and the response to them can still be a choice, made on purpose, asking one simple question.
What’s needed now?
This year, on the date everyone shares, here’s my answer: independence from rented land. A little more ownership. A little more alignment. A lot more agency. The same decision I made on a leap day two years ago, just applied to the next thing.
I didn’t see this decision coming a year ago. Yet once it was in front of me, choosing it was easy. The question just keeps working, on the days that matter and the days that don’t. That’s still the whole system, if I’m honest. It’s not more complicated than that.
If you’re happily creating on LinkedIn, keep going. This isn’t advice for you. It’s a decision for me.
And if you’ve ever poured years of thinking, energy, and ideas into a place you don’t actually own, here’s the only question worth sitting with: What’s needed now?
Let’s keep building together. With appreciation and gratitude.
Your guide by your side,
- mike d
Mike D’Angelo
ResultsLab.io Founder