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Can I “Crush It” Gary Vee Style?

I’ve always been a huge advocate about education and always learning everything you can about the topic. So after Brian Urlage @Source1Auto pitched to me Gary Vaynerchuk’s event in Florida coming up, I decided I should probably finally get around to reading “Crush It”. It made it onto this week’s to do list, and I wrapped it up.

I’m honestly torn on whether or not I want to recommend the book, so I’m giving it the “OK” designation. Gary does self-promote, but not as offensively as many of his counterparts. He offers genuine thoughts and perspectives, but the entire book wraps up to what you probably already know.

It may seem small, but one thing I get stuck on is his reference to eventually succeeding enough to make 50k/year. I have to anticipate he’s trying to tone down crazy expectations some people have of being overnight millionaires. I love his quote that the only place that happens is the lottery. On the same note, it’s a lot of work for just 50 grand a year… so it better be your core passion. As long as you truly live it and breathe it, its free money, right?

I can summarize the book in a few phrases for those who haven’t read it:

  1. Work your rear end off. Work every day, all the time, and live your brand/site/product
  2. Be patient. You may not be successful in 2 years or 5 years, but stick to it.
  3. Having great content is important, which is pretty much the marketing concept of “Product”. Be the expert in whatever you are passionate about
  4. Great content needs to be everywhere, which is essentially the marketing concept of “Placement”
  5. Having great content isn’t enough, and you need to spent most of your time engaging others, which is essentially “promotion”
  6. Be authentic, and true to you. It’s the only way to maintain passion and come off as real to your users.

I firmly doubt the effectiveness of personal branding quite to the effect suggested in the book. Trust me, I think personal branding is important- I’ve hired professional designers to make my custom web page and I am all about building a brand, but the concept that resumes are useless and your followers will offer you a job when you lose yours? Not so much. If you have enough followers to do that, then odds are you have enough followers that you don’t need to work at all!

It is a great book to get jazzed up about. He’s pretty motivational from that regard. I would never suggest people avoid the book, but take it with a grain of salt. Branding is a piece of the puzzle, but its not the whole story, and thinking that a personal brand is all you need in life works for very few people.

On the contrary, it compliments products and services quite well!

Gary Vaynerchuck’s “Crush It” is available on amazon here:

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Ahhh! I see ads on the website now- Why? and how does that work?

You may have noticed that as of this week, there are some Ads on Millionairewho.com

Hate it, don’t you?

At least I’m fully disclosing WHAT and WHY. It wouldn’t be fair for me to do otherwise.

There’s three types of ads you’ll see on here:

The first type is a Google Adwords ad. These are auto-generated by Google based on whatever you have stored as cookies on your computer. I have no control over what you see:



In my first week with Google ads, I’ve brought in an impressive one penny. Yes, thats no exaggeration- I’m proud to inform you I made a penny. Whoohoo! Thanks.

The second type of ad you’ll see is an Amazon Affiliate program ad. Again, these ones I have no control over what you see. It may automatically select something related to what I am discussing, or it may not This looks like this:



Amazon will offer a little bit more than Google, but only if you buy whatever it is that shows up. For example if it lists a $20 movie, I could make 40 cents. If you don’t buy the movie, I get 0 cents.

And the last type of ad you’ll see is a specific product link to amazon. Its true that I get paid a couple of CENTS if you buy through this link, but you pay the same price you would if you just went to Amazon directly, and lets be honest- you’ll probably buy it at Amazon anyway, so why not help me out with a few pennies (literally) when you buy?

Here’s my DAUGHTER’s book she wrote:

Here’s what I do promise.

I will never link to an amazon product explicitly for the purpose of getting you to buy something.

I’m a professor first, and will give honest recommendations. Any product that I recommend and link to is something I authentically recommend, and I am offering the amazon link as one way to buy it. For example, I already wrote a number of book reviews that are scheduled to show up in the blog over the next 3 months. I recommend some of the books. I tell you not to waste your time with others, but regardless of whether I recommend it or not, I will put an amazon affiliate link at the end of it. If you choose to buy it, great! its always a good thing to learn, and I’ll appreciate the pennies I receive from your purchase. If you choose not to buy, I hope your learning in other ways but I’m still here to serve you!

So here’s an example of what was sold so far this week:


(This is a screenshot of Amazon Associates)

See? full disclosure, and no games!

“So why are you trying to make money anyway?”

First off, websites cost money. This website costs several hundred dollars a year to host, plus the domain name. The podcast hosting service charges between 60 and 500 a year depending on how many podcasts go up. In addition, to record the video podcast I need a video camera, and due to feedback from listeners that the audio quality could be improved, I invested in new semi-professional microphones. Some day I could use a better camera… and better mounts.. and maybe some better software to edit these things.

At this point I’ve spent around $800 on this website, and thanks to ads I’ve earned almost $4 back. Whoohoo!

I don’t anticipate MillionaireWho will ever be a massive money maker. That isn’t the reason I started it- I started it because I’m a natural teacher. I want to help others and love to see others succeed. You can ask the hundreds of students who have taken my classes and I believe they will fully agree. I hope some day to generate enough money to hire someone to help maintain this website and edit the videos and audio so they are even better for you, but in the mean time I’m hoping to generate enough to keep it alive long term!

Some might say- “you seem successful already, does a few hundred bucks matter”? If you ask me that, you need to listen to my podcasts and read my blogs, because every dollar matters. I might have brought in $4 in ads, but those $4 matter.. and I urge you to keep reading and listening if you don’t yet understand why!

Hopefully this helps some of you trying to figure out the “advertising” thing.

For others I hope this helps you understand WHY there are ads on this website.

I appreciate your support, and most of all- I appreciate you learning, educating yourself, and securing your wallet, Stabilizing your future, and Succeeding in Entrepreneurship and Finance! This world will be better if more people learn to be better with with their finances!

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I funded a song and video? Talk about a cool project!

Sometimes you have to do some fun projects regardless of whether you expect an ROI or not!

I sponsored J-Lynn & the Partyboy in the creation of the song and video below. Don’t think I’m getting paid to refer this or anything, its just cool to see the results of your investments. Check it out and give them some hits!

You’ll hear about this on the podcast in a couple of weeks!

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Calculating if College is a Ripoff: Part 3, Pulling it all together

Here we simply apply the ROI formula:
ROI = Return / (Direct Costs + Indirect Costs)

In this case:
-What College Costs (Direct Costs) ($436,674 for Private, $213,113 for In-State)
-What Opportunity is forgone (Indirect Costs) (1,595,698 for a minimum wage employee in California)
-What the benefit is (return) ($1,056,611 for being a librarian instead of a teacher’s aid)

ROI = $1,056,611 / (426,674 + 1,595,698)

ROI = $1,056,611 / (2,022,372)

ROI= .52

In the above example, the ROI is way below 1, coming in at .52. This would suggest the investment is extremely poor, as for every dollar invested, only 52 cents is returned. In this example it would be better to forgo college and instead work minimum wage for 6 years and then step into a teachers aid role, assuming a teachers aid and librarian give you similar job satisfaction.

Being the ‘but’ Exception:

This gets to the point where most students will say, “but.. but.. but..”. “But I have more down than this”, or “But I’m better than average and will graduate in 4 or 5 years”, or “but I got a scholarship for $5,000 a year”, or even “But I’m a Richey”. For every one of you, there’s also the person that would have to say “I have less down than this”, and “I’m worse than average and won’t graduate at all”. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, only 32% of graduates at an open-admission college graduate in 6 years, while 88% of those at a highly competitive college graduate in 6 years.

However, this is where I urge students to do the math for themselves. If you are at an in-state school, even straight A students sometimes take 5 years because they can’t get into the classes they need to graduate. Scholarship amounts can be deducted from the “direct cost” figure, but keep in mind they are often only for 4 years. Any income can be made while in school, such as through student work can be subtracted from the opportunity cost figure. Figure out to the best of your ability what your numbers are, and determine if the investment is right for you.

 

 

OK, get to the point: so is college a ripoff? Yes or No:

While we all want the answers handed to us, this is a case where no one can tell you the answer, but I can tell you precisely how to find the answer for your unique case. No guessing necessary:

If you are confident in what you want to spend your life doing, and it requires a college degree: Get it (but maybe use what you learned here to consider what school you go to and what you do while your there?). If you are going to college wholly or partially because of the earning power, calculate the ROI for your potential degree and job types. If you get a strong positive, then college is right for you. If you get a negative, look into what variables you can legitimately change- such as switching to a cheaper college or a better field of study. If that doesn’t work out in your favor, then you know that college isn’t right for you.

When I advise individuals and teams on business plans, I always stress the importance of a business plan. While some people will downplay its importance, I assure any business startup that their business plan is of the utmost importance. I don’t care about the actual output, format, or anything similar, but virtually every person who I have ever worked with on a business plan gets to the point where they say, “The math doesn’t work”. They realize that the business they designed doesn’t play out- the returns don’t justify the investments, and the business model doesn’t work.

It is the next step that is the most important part of the business planning process to me: Once you see it doesn’t work, you can see why it doesn’t work, and change your plan accordingly. It doesn’t mean you give up on a business startup, it means you rework it. Some businesses decide that instead of having a specific restaurant location, they could have a mobile food truck. Others realize that they can’t make the product cheap enough to sell through a wholesaler, but if they generate a direct-sales model, they can be profitable.

This is what those seeking college need to do. Once they calculate out the results of their educational plan, many will discover the return doesn’t justify the investment. In those cases, it is not simply a “don’t go to college”, but rather it is, “Let’s play with the inputs and outputs a bit”.

My wife went to a local regional college for 2 years, the Middletown branch of Miami University, before finishing her last two years at the Oxford Branch. This saved her considerable amounts of money. Other students choose to go to a 2 year school before they go to a 4 year school. Others use it as motivation to seek out more scholarships, or to choose a slightly less prestigious college who offers them drastically more money. There are a large number of variables in the equation which can be tweaked.

Individuals can lower their direct cost, lower their opportunity costs, or increase their return to change the equation in colleges’ favor. Students can lower the direct cost through various ways including choosing cheaper programs, finishing sooner, and getting scholarships. Students can lower opportunity costs by working full time or part time while in school to produce the same or similar income as if they were not working, and by finishing school sooner. Students can increase their return by choosing careers prospects which are higher paying. By manipulating these three factors, college can make a lot of sense.

Another Look at “No Brainer” degrees:

The example was assuming minimum wage and a liberal arts major choosing to become a librarian. Other careers, such as medicine and engineering are often viewed as “No Brainers”. Imagine you are trying to decide between going to private school to become an automotive engineer and becoming a mechanic? The average salary for an auto mechanic is $40,720 and can often be learned in trade school even before another student would go to college, while an automotive engineer may make $73,721 according to payscale.com. You may start out at only about $23,000 straight out of highschool as a technician, but with your $138,000 head start and $437,000 less in direct costs, it is actually a closer calculation than you might guess. Try it out!

To give you a hint, the 1.1 million in extra earning power may be offset by the $437k in direct costs and $1.42 million in future value derived from saving 80% of your post-tax income over the first 6 years. As long as the mechanic could save about 45% of their income over those first 6 years and invest it into 7% return, the two options are about even.

Now getting the average mechanic to pocket 45% of their income over the first 6 years of their career might seem like its as challenging as convincing your 4 year old to go to bed, but still its fairly astounding when you really think about it. Even graduating college in 4 years happens less than 20% of the time. Therefore If your a parent and your kid wants to become a mechanic, maybe letting them stay at home for 6 years dumping their cash into Roth IRA isn’t a bad parenting move.

 

 

 

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/noodleeducation/2015/05/28/more-than-half-of-college-faculty-are-adjuncts-should-you-care/#5c99dac61600

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/franklin-adjunct-professor-salary-SRCH_IL.0,8_IC1145714_KO9,26.htm

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/education/most-college-students-dont-earn-degree-in-4-years-study-finds.html

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/10/07/student-loan-expectations-myth-vs-reality

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Automotive_Engineer/Salary

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Librarian/Salary

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Morning Drive Episode 8- How realistic is it becoming a millionaire? How Money Works and getting things for free, plus Why I wear a suit on friday.

MillionaireWho – Stabilize your wallet, Secure your future, and Succeed! in Entrepreneurship & Finance introduces the weekly audio and video program, “The Morning Drive” with Brooks Fiesinger hosting. Ride with Brooks and discuss how realistic it really is for YOU to become a millionaire. Discuss how money works, and how Brooks got paid to put new tires on his truck, and Personal Branding/Why Brooks wears a suit on Friday.