Imagine you wake up at 5am, get the first flight to Oslo, then another flight to a place you’d never heard of, before renting a car, meeting a stranger, and driving with them for four hours into the Arctic circle. You drop off your new friend, head to a town of only 13 people, before putting on a wetsuit, grabbing a surfboard and cycling to the ocean for a surf. And then imagine that this trip was sponsored by Birkenstocks, as part of their advertising campaign.
This is the life of Leo Olsson. Well, the life of Leo Olsson some of the time. His success in content creation allows him to get paid to spend days watching the Northern Lights and hiking knee-deep in snow. When I spoke to him he had just come back from Sweden, taking two trains, a bus and canoeing through a lake to get to his destination. He’d left without much of a plan, with one of his friends leaving in such a rush that he didn’t have time to buy a backpack. Apparently, the experience of carrying a wheelie suitcase on his head through the woods was “quite fun”.
Much like his adventures, Leo’s career path wasn’t a straight one. When he dubbed his childhood dream of becoming a filmmaker “unfeasible”, he studied hard and went to a prestigious uni because this “seemed like a smart thing to do”. One year into LSE, he dropped out to become employee number one at a protein cereal startup. After scaling their socials, he went to Lucky Egg, a board game company trying to get people off their phones. During his year there he blew up their social media, accumulating 540k followers for the business.
Throughout all this, his personal pages were his side hustle. He’s amassed an audience of 557k through posting content around the themes of storytelling and adventure. His videos allow his audience to follow his journeys, which include hopping on cheap one-way flights, moving to a cabin in the woods and spontaneously running the length of Liechtenstein. His content has evolved over the years, since he started the pages during Covid. At this time, he began by creating what he called “classic, relatable TikTok content that offers very little value to anyone”. When he turned 18, he said “I just had this crisis that I should be doing something of more impact with my life, or just, to be honest, something more interesting”. This led to him writing letters to every world leader for life advice, whilst exploring new video styles and techniques. His ventures were so successful that he quit his job at Lucky Egg, to focus all his energies on his own social media. He still consults for the company on the side, alongside some time spent with the business that gives you wings.
Leo’s recently launched his own business – a six week programme teaching companies how to effectively target their audience on social media. Working with marketing teams, new hires and startups, Leo differentiates his training from other programmes in the market by focusing largely on storytelling. He said “every company has the story of someone who took a risk to follow a dream… but for some reason in their marketing, they never choose to talk about that. They never focus on the main interesting thing, which is the actual story behind the company”. Rather than pumping out content like a machine gun, hoping something hits, Leo favours the “sniper rifle” approach. This reflects his tactics with the Lucky Egg, who on average saw an increase of 10k followers per video. He said “compared to a lot of brands, that’s a pretty good ratio”.
His simple thesis is “you can’t stand out if you’re doing the same thing as everyone else”, and it’s about “selling people before you sell product”. He encourages businesses to be public facing, and have someone prepared to be the face of the brand. He sees this epitomised in Red Bull’s social media campaigns. “Red Bull isn’t cool because the can is sexy”, he said, “it’s because of all the people that are associated with Red Bull”. He pointed out that whilst the energy drink is double the price of its competitors per litre, it somehow continues to be a market leader. He believes that this is because they put people first and product second. Exhibit A: space jump.
Behind the scenes of arctic surfing, suitcase trekking and flying to countries no one’s ever heard of, Leo actually lives a relatively normal life. He’s based in London, works 70 hour weeks and is on the grind as a startup freelancer. He said “there’s a funny irony in the fact that part of the reason I’ve stuck with doing content is because it forces me to go out and do interesting things, instead of just doing my accounting”. His goal has always been to work hard and be successful, and he feels incredibly lucky that the thing he’s ended up being good at is something he enjoys. He said “I feel super privileged to be in a position where the only thing that stands between me and what I want to achieve is how hard I work”.
TikTok: @.leoolsson
Instagram: @leomagnusolsson
