I don’t generally talk about money with my friends. Maybe a handful of times I’ve had discussions about money with people, but they were in similar situations.
And it goes both ways. My friends don’t want to talk with me about money. The issues and challenges are so different.
Yes, my wife and I had an amazing exit in 2016 and came into a lot of money very quickly. But the truth is, up to that moment, we had more than enough money at that time to retire, travel or do whatever. That was because of the decisions we made up to that point.
And I want to share them with you today.
The first thing is that you are 100 percent accountable for your life. You can blame some person or some situation all your want for your lot in life, but that’s not going to help you do anything about it. Once you realize you can make decisions to better your life, you will better your life. Blaming other people shifts the responsibility away from you, and then you can’t do anything about it.
Number two is debt. Stay away from debt entirely.
If you use a credit card, pay off the balance 100 percent so you never have to pay interest. I know people who are paying 15, 20, 25 percent on their credit card balance. Do you know how hard it is to invest and make 25 percent from your money? Well, if you pay off your credit cards, you’ve done just that.
And mortgage debt. If you can pay off your house, great. Our goal should be zero debt. But if you have a mortgage, any extra that you can pay off the principal is an amazing way to get money.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you buy a home with a $200,000 loan at 4.3 percent…a nice low rate. Your monthly payment would be about $1,000 per month, but in 30 years you’ll have paid almost $158,000 in interest. So that $200,000 loan would actually cost you $358,000. So anything you could pay off in principal is an incredible investment.
But your plan should be to get out of that mortgage as soon as you can.
Next up … let’s talk about what you buy.
We bought a new car once. Worst investment ever. Since then, we’ve always bought used cars. Cars are not investments in most cases. And taking a loan on a car is a killer. Your goal should be to buy a reasonably dependable car without having to take out a loan.
Now, if you stay out of debt, you’ll be ahead of 99 percent of the population. Just so you know, the average American is over $100,000 in debt, so as much as I’d like to recommend investments and such to build wealth, your first task is to get rid of the debt.
When we talk about what we buy, we really want to focus on living below our means. Do a budget and make sure you are never spending more per month than you are bringing in.
I remember when my wife and I went into business. We decided she would stay at home with the kids, and to make the budget work, we had to get rid of a car and stop going on any costly vacations for a while. We did a portion of our shopping at second-hand stores as well.
And then, once you get spending in order, then you can think about funding, consistently over time, that Roth IRA account. If you can only afford $20 per month, start there. And don’t worry about picking stocks. If you don’t understand a company and don’t have time to follow that company, don’t invest in it. An ETF that follows the S&P market works just fine. By investing every month, you’ll be able to dollar cost average over time.
And when you do this, time matters. If you invest a dollar at 20, that dollar is worth 50 dollars at 65 because of compounding growth. If you start at 35, that dollar is worth 18 dollars. Even at 45, your return is 6x by the time you get to 65.
Everything I’m talking about here comes down to self-discipline. It’s very hard to do, but the formula is super easy.
Stay out of debt, buy modestly, and invest early and consistently over time. Done and done.
Be Like NSYNC
Disney’s hit movie Deadpool and Wolverine recently became the largest grossing R-rated movie ever…and climbing well over the $1 billion sales mark.
And…the Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman movie is taking NSYNC with them.
The movie’s opener, in usual Deadpool fashion, features a fighting scene with Deadpool versus dozens of other fighters. For this movie, the fight scene is set to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” – which originally became a number one song in the year 2000.
Well, it might hit #1 again.
Bye Bye Bye, because of Deadpool’s popularity, is rising up the charts AGAIN. It’s cracked the Top 50 on the Billboard Top 100 and has seen more than 7 million listens on Spotify and 10 million additional watches of the original video on YouTube.
This newfound success for the group not only includes the resurgence in streaming revenue, but now there are talks about an NSYNC reunion tour.
This reminds me of the success Kate Bush saw with her hit song, Running Up that Hill, when the fourth season of NETFLIX’s Stranger Things came out. You couldn’t find a radio or SIRIUSXM station that wasn’t playing it on continuous loop.
You might not think you can see this kind of success with your content. Well, probably not to that extent, but content syndication is a key strategy in your arsenal that, frankly, most content entrepreneurs ignore.
When we first started publishing our content marketing research with MarketingProfs back in 2008, the initial reaction was to keep it on our site and gate it. Makes sense, right? We’ll get more email signups and really make it exclusive. The problem is, no one knew who we were at the time and, even more important, no one was using the term content marketing. Our goal needed to be to get this in the hands of as many marketers as possible.
So, we did more than give it away. We let marketing and media sites access and share the full report, we let the associations have it and share it with members. We added media companies as partners so they could report on it like it was their own. We removed all barriers and let it be shared far and wide on social. Little by little, we saw traffic coming on from sites we never heard of. People started to become attracted to the term content marketing.
And you can operationalize this. On what sites do your customers hang out on? See if you can come up with a strategy to approach each one. Maybe one would like a regular column from you. Maybe another one would like to post your videos on their YouTube page. Or maybe they’d like to republish your podcast episodes.
Now, if you are reining in creator cash, you probably don’t need this strategy. But if you are looking to break out and become the leading expert in your niche, this is one of the best strategies you can use. And now is the perfect time to look at this as you figure out your business model for next year.
What Are Your BHAGs?
I ran two years of track in high school. My event was the 1600 meters (or the mile). I had a goal, written down, that I worked toward for months. Break the 5-minute mile.
My final race of the year was sectionals. I gave it all I had. I crossed the finish line and then ran to the timekeeper. It read 5:00 on the dot. One hundredth of a second faster I would have made my goal of 4:59. I was devastated.
I didn’t accomplish my goal…but I came as close as possible. And I did all the right things during the journey.
That process…of creating a goal, writing it down, and reviewing it, became a cornerstone for everything that I did, both personally and professionally.
When my wife and I started our business in 2007, it took me about nine months to come up with a goal that made sense. In January of 2008 that goal read: I sell my company for at least $15 million dollars in 2015. I read that goal nearly every day, which helped me make the proper decisions to position us for a sale.
By the way, we didn’t achieve our goal in 2015. It happened in 2016.
The reason I’m telling you this is that I talk to content creators and entrepreneurs all the time, and hardly any of them have any kind of big goal or exit strategy.
A lot of them are just doing things…they have newsletters and YouTube channels and Instagram. They are creating lots of content, and most of them want to have financially sustainable businesses. But this goal setting process is important, and everyone seems to be doing it wrong.
So let’s set some aspirational goals. What Jim Collins would call BHAG’s or Big Hairy Audacious Goals from his book Good to Great.
Here’s what Collins says about BHAGs
“A true BHAG is clear and compelling and serves as a unifying focal point of effort—often creating immense team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines. A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them in the gut. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused. People “get it” right away; it takes little or no explanation.”
You need a big goal, an important goal, something you are passionate about, and something that can be measured and finished.
I remember thinking about my goals when I started getting into content marketing. I often said our goal was to be the leading informational expert on the practice of content marketing. The problem is, you can’t measure it. And what’s the timetable?
Now, let’s not think about exit planning. I’ve found that is a bit overwhelming to people. Let’s just think about being financially sustainable.
What does being financially sustainable look like? How much revenue or profit do you need? How many customers do you need?
And then put it in the present tense.
I generate $200,000 in revenue with my podcast in 2025.
And other goals
I run a 1:59 marathon in 2025.
I do 100 consecutive pushups in 2025.
I publish my crime novel in March of 2025.
You are probably doing some amazing things, but you probably aren’t creating BHAGs, writing them down, and reviewing them consistently. Let’s change that for good.