About Me
I was born in 1997 in the French Alps, son of a farmer from the mountains of Savoie and of a florist from the countryside of Franche-Comté.
Big football and Harry Potter fan, I started my first blogs and social media accounts at 9 and rapidly became THE internet guy in my middle school. In high school I started helping professional athletes from my region with their social media presence.
At the same time, I developped a big interest for sociology and economy, finding out about the scale of inequalities after reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century".
At 18, I discovered a new world when I got into Sciences Po Paris to study politics and social sciences. A few months later, I launched my first company, CM Family to help local businesses in their digital transition, connecting them with Community Managers and social media experts.
Since then my life has been quite the rollercoaster, between startup entrepreneurship, freelancing, social justice & climate activism and struggles with my mental health leading to burnout and depression.
I am now a consultant and startup advisor, helping purpose driven entrepreneurs with a wide range of services, with my skills and experience or through my network of +300 freelancers & experts.
I am also building CreatorsForChange , a non-profit exploring how creators, from micro-influencers to celebrities can accelerate the transition to a more just and sustainable world.
About me page, authenticity and vulnerability
Something I learned is that authenticity and vulnerability are essential to build meaningful connections. To go beyond all the social roles and the pretending. To accept, understand and praise the fact that we are all complex, multidimensional beings, that shouldn't be reduced to a few labels like their job title, ethnicity or nationality.
It can be scary to be authentic and vulnerable on the internet, sharing (parts of) your life with strangers. But I believe it can also be really rewarding. On this page and on my blog I intend to share my journey, my opinions, my ideas, to attract the right people in my life, wether they share my opinions or not, I believe honesty saves everyone's time and leads to more meaningful conversations.
So this is just one big page where I can write about myself, hopefully it brings you some value, inspiration or a desire to contact me.
I also find it pretty useful as a self-exploration tool, to write my own mini autobiography and to see what parts of me I am comfortable sharing in public.
My professional life, part I :
Startup entrepreneurship & digital marketing
Consulting & training Services
To bootstrap the development of CM Family, I became the first freelancer of the platform. Crafting social media & digital strategy for +30 companies, from bars, restaurants, and local stores to insuretech & international accounting group. I also became a speaker and trainer on digital marketing, personal branding & social selling.
CM Family
In 2015, CM Family was my first ambitious venture. I had the vision to federate a big family of Community Managers and social media experts, a platform where digital native kids like me and experienced marketers would team up to provide affordable, quality services to the 2,1 M SMBs in France. The idea was not just to help local businesses in their digital transition, but to promote a vision of a more open and collaborative economy, where businesses would co-create with their community. This idealism led me to not be focus enough on the day to day execution. It's important to dream big, but essential to stay grounded and focused. I made a lot of mistakes... But I also learned a great deal about startups, entrepreneurship, co-founders relationships... and myself !
Startup Advisory & pay it forward
After joining startups accelerators Astarté Paris & Start Innov' by SPN, spending a lot of time at TheFamily, and being a member of the Social Good Accelerator and of LiveForGood's community of "Entrepreneurs for good" I developped a strong network of startup entreneurs & founders in Paris and France in general. I learned a lot at the contact of my peers and felt like I was part of something bigger, a movement of innovators, disrupting big companies and giving back value and power to the people. Full of energy and optimism, I became passionate about helping other early-stage entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of building and scaling their businesses.
While going back to school, at SciencesPo, to get my master degree in "communication, media & creative industries", I kept exploring the idea of "InfluencersForGood".In a media landscape highly reliant on advertising, concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires and saturated by corporate interests and consumerism , it became obvious to me that the fastest way to raise awareness and mobilize masses to take action and change the system is to leverage the platform and power of influence of artists, athletes, celebrities and content creators, from micro-influencers to global stars.
Why do some use their platform? Why others don't ? How are they doing it ? What are the results ? Is there a better way, a more efficient way ? How to mobilize more creators to be a force for change ? Different communities, different niches, different interests, different causes they care about, different motivations, different level of radicality, different level of freedom and dependency to brand deals, a lot of factors are important to take into account.
But imagine if it was made easy and effortless for a creator/celebrity to take action. Imagine if once a week, or even just once a month, opinion leaders, "influencers", would team up in a campaign to promote a specific charity, a fundraising, a petition, an action, a behavior, or simply to raise awareness on a specific issue ?
Millions of people would be reached and mobilized, and the transition to a more just and sustainable world would be greatly accelerated.
How to make this happen ?
With a platform connecting creators/celebrities and charities/NGOs, making it easy for creators to join campaigns that match their interests and limits. Take people where they are, and offer them options to do good, with different levels of time commitment and levels of radicality.
Tie this platform to a "CreatorsForChange" label, in between B-corp and 1% for the Planet, a way for creators to signal and certify to both their audience and the brands they work with that they use their platform for good. This could be a mix between a minimum number of posts/stories per month for charities/awareness campaigns and a donation of a percentage of their yearly income, to "walk the talk" and set an example to their community.
Burnout, depression & inner collapse : a spiritual journey
After several years of the intense journey that is entrepreneurship, I jumped directly into activism and became obsessed with the climate crisis and the collapse to come. The more I learned, the more bad news I discovered and the more trapped into climate-doomism filter bubbles I was, growing further and further apart from my friends, family and the general public. I was living with a deep fear of the future and a lot of doubts that were making me question everything. It was a real existential crisis that I tried to channel into action and meaningful projects. I put so much pressure on myself, wanting to "save the planet" and "change the system" that I neglected my health, my sleep, my relationships, my stability. And at some point, my mind and body just forced me to stop. I was both physically and mentally exhausted. More than a burnout, I was in depression. An existential depression. I couldn't accept nor understand the state of the world, and it made me question the very meaning of life, and existence. (great article here on activism/depression) Feeling like nothing mattered anymore, diving deeper and deeper in a form of nihilism and a loss of identity, not having any desire to live anymore. I also discovered a lot of unresolved trauma and suppressed emotions. The more I acknowledge them, the more I was able to move on and start living again.
It took time, but with the help of my family, friends, therapists, tools like meditation, breathing techniques and books like the power of now, I slowly came back to life. I'm still struggling with anxiety but overall happy to be alive, in a messy and complex world. Adopting a form of optimistic nihilism, I learned to change my perspective, to focus on what I can control and to accept what is. To live more in the present and to let my intuition and inner joy guide me. To accept that suffering & death, and even exctinction, are part of life, but nevertheless to live more intentionnaly, to find meaning in my actions, to contribute to what feels right, even if it might seem too late. I now understand myself better as well as human psychology, and I think I also became a better person.
If you are going through something similar, please reach out ! You are far from alone and one of the best antidote is community!
Climate & social justice activism
CreatorsForChange
At the contact of ChangeMakers like Cyril Dion, Magali Payen, Mathilde Imer or Camille Etienne I became convinced of the importance of crafting new narratives and offering a desirable vision of the future. After meeting celebrities like Marion Cotillard or Frah from Shaka Ponk and ending up on stage with them in front of 100 000 person, I also became convinced of the power of music and artists to amplify the movement. I started working on a platform-movement, Music4Climate and explored this idea with my friend and mentor Alexandre Jubien, who later developed the non-profit Music4Planet. I also met Jonathan Belolo, co-owner of record label Scorpio Music and founder of Rainbows, a next-gen social media platform empowering activists. Together, with Martial Breton, leader of YouthForClimate France, and a team of live production experts, we started working on organizing a big live event in front of the Eiffel Tower, with the vision and ambition of reaching a huge TV & streaming audience like the iconic Live-Aid, with less corporate sponsors and a more radical message supported by grassroots activists. More than a one-time advocacy event, it was part of the launch strategy of a new social media platform, gathering activists, non-profits, purpose-driven companies and citizens to take daily actions at the individual and collective level and shift our attention, our behaviors and our consumption.
The event, initially planned for May 24, 2019, the day before the European elections, had to be postponed to 2020.. The initial project was put on hold, and we started working on the building blocks of Climate Live, a series of international concerts organized by a coalition of young climate activists. I didn't join this new project, partly because of a difference of vision and strategy but mainly because my body made me stop.
Music4Climate, Rainbows & Climate live
Despite growing up in the mountains and being close to nature, it's only in september 2018 that I realized the full scale of the climate & ecological crisis. The more I learned about the urgency of the situation and the risk of collapse of our civilization, the less motivated I became to pursue the vision of CM Family. I felt like it was not enough, that we needed urgently a global and radical shift of our whole system. Being already connected to politics with my background from SciencesPo, I naturally joined the climate movement, offering my help to activists and organizers. I became a member of Youth For Climate, the French branch of Greta Thunberg's movement and I worked on the communication strategy and organization of marches.
At the same time, a unique self-organized movement was happening in France, with the "Yellow Vests" challenging the government and asking for more social justice & democracy. They were mainly people from the lower-middle class living in rural and peri-urban areas (like where I grew up near Besançon) who could see their economic conditions going down and were afraid of social downgrading. They felt generally misunderstood and even despised by a very Parisian, political, media and financial elite. Several members of my family and childhood friends & neighbors were actively protesting. Understanding that the same unjust system was responsible for the exploitation of both people and the planet, I worked on connecting both movement.
Part II : activism & influence
Part III : finding balance
non-profit entrepreneur, impact startups advisor & content creator
My plan for the next years is to develop CreatorsForChange as a non-profit global network. I don't think I want to become the CEO or president of such an organization. There are plenty of people with more experience in the non-profit sector and better management skills. Something I learned from my past experience is that I'm pretty good at understanding problems, analyzing situations and developing creative ideas and solutions. I'm good at building stuff, crafting concepts and narratives, but I'm not a good manager. I'm not good at running stuff and daily operations once product/market fit has been reached. So for now, my plan is to launch CreatorsForChange, to find the right people to build it with and to structure it in a way that will maximize its impact.
I also want to structure my consulting/advisor activity, to work directly with purpose-driven entrepreneurs and help them with strategy & marketing. I'm also working on a coaching offer, to help founders and entrepreneurs with their personal growth, mental health and fullfilment. That's something I've been doing unconsciously for years with clients who came to me first for marketing advice. I am a very curious person and I know that being able to work on different topics, different industries is what I want. It also brings me an holistic vision and the ability to connect people from different industries, fostering partnerships and collaboration.
Last but not least, I want to create content and express myself and my ideas on different topics. I know I can provide value to entrepreneurs and business owners by sharing my vision of innovation, entrepreneurship and marketing. I also know that I want to give myself the creative freedom to explore other topics, such as philosophy, psychology, spirituality and personal growth. All of this content creation is probably going to take place on different platforms, with different handles and alter ego.
This is how I envision my professional life for the next 5 -10 years. This is how I plan to make a living and maximize my positive impact while having a lot of freedom to explore and live a fulfilling, happy life, taking care of my health and the people I love. Sustainability is also about ourselves, our inner ecology, our work/life balance, and this is a priority for me now.
What am I doing now ?
Inspired by Derek Silvers's idea, I created my now page, a page regularly updated that tells you what a person is focused on at this point in their life, beyond a traditional about page or social media updates.