#5: An Investors Mentality To Digital Marketing
What I’m Learning In a Round About Way On My Journey to Financial Freedom
Creeping up on 30 can be a bitch. Not for me, but for some people. I’m 28, and I’m lowkey excited about it. Maybe it’s the age or having a new family, but my attitude towards money has started to change. It all started a year or two back, when I was going through some money problems. I was stressed because I wasn’t making enough to handle all the expenses it takes to live decently in New York. It was an especially big blow because I was making good money a year prior, and took on more expenses thinking I could handle it. I couldn’t handle it.
My friend Jonathan Master started putting me onto books about money management and wealth. I had read Rich Dad, Poor Dad before that, but I was still all over the place. The book he put me onto was called Your Money Or Your Life by Vicki Robin. From there — and for the last few years, I’ve been picking up more and more books. Investing In Your 20s for Dummies, The $100 Start Up, and now Money: Master The Game by Tony Robbins. I’ve also been watching a ton of CNBC (half understanding it all), and reading as many article I can online about business and investing.
Studying all this stuff, I started to realize a correlation between investment and marketing. It’s not direct, but if you think about it, it’s there. I’ve started to actually put these approaches to use in my work, and will be expanding on them throughout the rest of the year (at least). Here are a few ideas that I’ve learned and how they relate to music/marketing. I hope they’re helpful for you on either side of your life:
Your Time Is Money: In Your Money Or Your Life, a big exercise is figuring out how much your time is really worth. This comes from finding out all of the money you’ve made, and dividing it by the number of hours you actually work. That includes the hour it took to get ready to go to the office, the two hours for commute (there and back), the hour or so that you’ve spent writing emails afterwork. Basically ANY TIME that you focus on work divided against the money in your pocket.
This one is helpful in a million ways: How valuable is your time really? How beneficial is a project to you that makes no money (the cost of your time vs the expected return), Is the workload of a campaign worth the effort, etc.
Buy Low, Sell High = Whitespace: It’s easy to hop on a trend that’s popping. As soon as an influencer does something funny, it seems like they’re pegged by everyone and their mom to create something. How many #challenges did we see in the past year after the mannequin one broke Black Beatles? Probably a billion. More-so in marketing than stocks, the game is to look for what’s next and hold your position. NOT to jump on a booming trend.
Do some research. Find that influencer that’s bubbling up, or think of that area that isn’t being over served with marketing initiatives. Spend your time and your money working and growing with them, and don’t forget to HOLD YOUR POSITION.
5 to 1, Reward vs Risk: Don’t blow a bag on something that doesn’t present you value. Paul Tudor Jones rule in investing is every $1 spent on risk should lead to a $5 reward. That way, you have 5 investment chances to make your money back (at least). It doesn’t need to be 5:1, but don’t go all in with your marketing budget or effort ever.
If you have only a few hundred a month to spend on marketing initiatives, come up with a plan to test small spends across the board. If you see something working, adjust your spending the next month towards the product that brings in the best return. Take the rest and rebalance, trying out new initiatives in the process.
Slow And Steady Wins The Race: This goes back to holding your position. The best investors tell the individual to less focus on moving money and attempting to beat the market, and more on owning the market and building on compounded interest. The parallel of this to me is as simple as, own your audience and focus mainly on that.
There are a million awareness campaigns you can run, but that’s like trying to beat the market. Instead focus on developing a rapport with the consumer that cares about you. From that, they’ll be able to garner you more awareness, which in turn leads to more fans. It’s a slow grind, but it will definitely lead to a longer and more monetizable career.
Ok, there’s definitely a bunch more, but I can’t think of them right now. I’m definitely going to start developing more concepts around this for use in the future. If you’re interested in learning more about investing your money, I’ve included links to all the books I’ve read/am reading below. If you have any ideas of things I should be looking at, shoot me a text at (347) 514–9418.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad: https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle/dp/1612680011
Investing In Your 20s & 30s for Dummies: https://www.amazon.com/Investing-Your-20s-Dummies-Lifestyle/dp/1119293413/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506457444&sr=1-1&keywords=investing+in+your+20s+%26+30s+for+dummies
Your Money or Your Life: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0143115766/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506457489&sr=1-1&keywords=your+money+or+your+life
The $100 Start Up: https://www.amazon.com/100-Startup-Reinvent-Living-Create/dp/0307951529/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506457516&sr=1-1&keywords=the+100+startup
Money: Master The Game: https://www.amazon.com/MONEY-Master-Game-Financial-Freedom/dp/1476757860/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506457568&sr=1-1&keywords=money+master+the+game
