Time is money
Patience is a virtue. In tough times like this, though, we all want a quick fix. Some of us find it but I bet for the majority, achieving true success takes more time.
It’s tough and I know you’re getting squeezed from all sides. Advertising revenues are shrinking. Speaking gigs are few and far between. It’s hard to keep driving sales on your investment newsletter business when investors don’t want to buy anything.
Be patient.
Unless you’re a well-regarded, very popular VC, it’s not easy to make $30k just from your blog every year. It take a lot of effort and time to cast your sales net large enough to be bringing in respectable income sums from your investment blog or newsletter. I’d like to say a couple of things about this.
Couple of points about building your newsletter for the long term
- Gotta be in the game: Suppliers, distributors and customers all need to see staying power before they commit to a relationship and plunk down money fro your product. Customers can sense if you’re in the game for the long term or are just a Johnny-come-lately looking to make a quick buck. There will be push back. In the early days of your newsletter, you’ve got to convince prospective buyers of your newsletter that you’ve been doing this for awhile (don’t lie!) and that you’ll be sticking around for long term profits. It’s like a marriage — both sides need to feel commitment for everything to work as it’s supposed to.
- Valuable things take time to build: While the media likes to focus on the 23 year old who writes a business plan on the back of a napkin and becomes an overnight millionaire, that doesn’t happen to the vast majority of people. Most people take years to find their calling and then years finding a way to strike it big. The investment newsletter business is no different. You’ll try different strategies, different marketing/distribution techniques. All the while, you’re building your reputation online and offline. It’ll come. Just give it a chance.
- You never know where the success is going to come from: Being in the game and allowing your business to grow leaves the door open for so many opportunities. Maybe you end up writing a best selling investment book. Maybe you’ll be made full professor at a great business school. Maybe you finally get on CNBC and the PR that comes from that appearance launches your investment newsletter. You just got to be in the game to make it happen.
You must read this post on Get Rich Slowly. While it focuses mainly on personal finance, there are some valuable lessons to be learned for entrepreneurship. J.D. discusses Gary Vaynerchuk, a personality in his own right, who is just killing it online for his wine business. Check out all of Gary’s stuff that you can get your hands on. He’s a great entertainer and has found a great channel to really start moving his sales.
Anyway, Gary related the following recently and I think it’s got great meaning for investment newsletter publishers out there:
This bad economy is the greatest thing that ever happened to Hustlers and people in the trenches,” Gary tells the crowd. “It’s the best thing.” When you work hard, when you build Brand Equity — even if it’s only your personal brand — you can always make more money. But those afraid of hustle, or afraid of trying something new, get left behind.
“There’s a scary four letter word that a lot of people are just completely petrified of, and that’s called Work. That’s what you have to do,” Gary says. But he also says you need something else. “There’s nobody that has enough Patience. Everybody’s like, when’s it gonna happen? But you’ve been doing this for three months — are you kidding me?”
Gary describes how he spent 8-10 hours every day for 18 months pumping out a 20 minute wine video that nobody watched. He participated in the online wine forums. He commented at wine blogs. And gradually — very gradually — he achieved success. “That’s hard,” Gary says. “That’s Patience.”
Do you have the staying power to see some real results?
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