A cabin, a decision, and a lesson I keep coming back to
Our family owns a cabin in the woods by a lake.
It’s pretty remote. One of my favourite places to be with my family.
We purchased it quite a few years ago now, and when we were looking, we had a couple of options. One was cheaper, which was really appealing given its proximity to the lake. The other was more expensive.
We ended up buying the more expensive one. Not because it was fancier. In fact, the cheaper one had a garage, which would’ve been nice when the weather’s poor, or for storing recreation toys like a golf cart, a canoe, bikes.
So why’d we buy the more expensive one?
Because it was freehold. We owned the land, as well as the structure. The cheaper cabin was on leased land. You owned the structure, but not the land. You’re merely renting it. And that usually means the purchase price is lower than something freehold.
One is an investment that grows over time. One is a recreation expense, even a liability that depreciates the closer you get to the end of the lease.
My monthly costs would’ve been lower if I’d bought the cheaper place. But I wasn’t interested in buying a cheaper place. I was interested in protecting my investment and having it grow. And so even though our mortgage payments are higher, the property value has increased at a healthy rate above market over the past five years.
This post isn’t about my cabin or investments, per se.
But it is about building something on land you own.
A social-first creator with 3.7 million impressions
I was talking with a buddy of mine just a few days ago. He wanted to know more about how I use email, and why, in my opinion, email is so important — especially over social media.
He told me he has about 3.7 million Pinterest impressions in the last month. 1.7 million on Instagram. His DM automations convert somewhere around 30-50%.
The guy is legitimately crushing it on social. He figured out how to play the game.
So he wanted to know — why would he even bother with email?
I sent him a demo video of how I build personalised email systems, using his actual offers, his actual audience segments, his actual testimonials from clients and partners. I showed him how each individual person can see a unique message at the right time, all automatically.
His response was, “Man, that’s wild.”
But then: “My email clicks are like 2-3%. My social never dips below double digits. Why would I bother? Plus, I hate writing.”
Fair question.
He’s not wrong about those numbers. His social converts way better right now. I can’t argue with 3.7 million impressions. Email converts at about 1-2% to an offer, generally. Open rates land around 30-50%, click-through rates at 1-5%. Sounds like it’s hard to compete.
But there’s a question underneath the question.
What happens when the algorithm changes?
What happens when Pinterest changes the algorithm? What happens when Instagram decides his content type no longer takes priority? What happens when the platform driving 5,000 link clicks a month decides to send those clicks somewhere else?
He doesn’t own any of it.
And that’s the thing most social-first creators don’t see until it’s far too late. The reach is real. The discoverability is real. The results are real. But the audience isn’t his. It’s rented. He’s building on land he doesn’t own.
I like to call this the leasehold property problem.
Social media is leasehold. You’re building on someone else’s property. The returns can be great. Until the landlord changes the terms. And they almost always change the terms.
Email is freehold. Owned distribution. Your list is yours. You can take it through a pivot, a rebrand, a platform shutdown. You can sell it when you’re done. Nobody can revoke it overnight. It’s direct access to your audience, in an inbox that no platform owns.
The real question
My buddy’s 3.7 million monthly impressions are doing a great job right now.
But the real question is whether any of those people are landing somewhere he actually owns.
Because if not, he’s not building an audience.
He’s borrowing one.
Is your reach yours? Or are you one algorithm update away from starting over?
BRAD