Content Is An Enduring Investment

You may be reading this post the day I posted it. You might have stumbled across it three months from now. You may be the future me, re-reading it 15 years hence, lamenting how the kids just don't write blog posts like they used to with their fancy gizmos and idioms.

We’ll assume no internet-killing disasters occurred between now and your reading session, otherwise, can I please have my laptop back? But finish reading the article before you return it, because the point of the piece is that content survives like the Twinkies you probably found in the remains of my flat next to the husk of the computer.

The topic occurred to me following a discussion I had with longtime friend Michael Ashton. Mike explained how he had launched a fundraising round for his company, Enduring Investments. He also told me about the new book he just published. As we discussed the marketing of the new venture, we decided the two went hand-in-hand. 

One of the superpowers Mike possesses is a surpassing knowledge of inflation. He uses his abilities to help investors of many types protect their monies against its insidious destruction of value and distortion of incentives.

I can tell you that he knows his stuff, that he’s a nice guy who would zealously work to grow the value of your investment in his company, and that he excelled in his undergrad at perhaps the universe’s finest post-secondary institution, San Antonio’s Trinity University. I also expect that if you don’t know him (and especially if you don’t know me, either), even that glowing recommendation won’t be enough to get you to buy in to his venture. You’re going to want to see for yourself that he has the experience and wisdom to succeed.

Enter content.

Mr. Ashton has spent years writing a blog about relevant inflation issues. When we lunched together, he had just gotten back from a conference where he shared the stage with the likes of George Will. He is, as noted, a published author. Thanks to such contributions to the world’s base of knowledge, you don’t need to take my word that he’s more Mastermind than Madoff.

Find an article like “Maximizing Personal Surplus: Liability-Driven Investment for Individuals” on his LinkedIn page. If you’re an accredited investor, sign up for his blog. Buy his book (he’d really like that). You can satisfy yourself that he knows what he’s talking about and maybe get in on the ground floor of a fantastic opportunity.

Content endures. An author with a history can establish how he or she knows an industry inside and out. An older post may not reveal useful insights about current markets, but it does let you know the writer has experience on which to draw. Even the most ambitious central bank can’t crush the value of quality writing, audio, or video.

Inflation is indeed a supervillain. It punishes savings, penalizes long-term thinking, and serves as an enabling agent for greedy public officials. If you listen to Mike Ashton and his library of useful content, you might survive the next Weimar Republic or unauditable Fed. That’s probably why you’re the one poking through the rubble of my apartment. Enjoy the Twinkies.

Rush Olson has spent two decades making creative products for companies, sports teams, broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, shows, and related creative projects through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Making Your Investment in Sport Work

So you’re an investor and you love sports. Can you feed your passion by getting financially involved with a sporting entity and still maintain the fiscal discipline that made you a good investor in the first place? The answer is yes, and the key is to have a clear idea of what to look for and what to expect.

If you love sport, some of your return will be non-monetary. You’re going to enjoy feeling a part of a team, or moving your favorite sport forward, or seeing your investment on television, or interacting with elite athletes, or rewarding your hometown’s loyal fans. Those are worth a lot, but you’d still like to recover your investment, too.

 

I’m a sports business guy, not an investment guy, but I’ve been on the inside of a lot of teams and media outlets and seen what worked and what didn’t. If you’re an experienced investor, you know how to assess rate of return and the intricacies of the finance world. The sports business is different from every other industry, however, and being a sports fan doesn’t necessarily equate to mastery of the sport management trade. Here then, are some insider insights into what to look for.

Let’s start high profile. If you buy into a major league team, you’re looking to win and you’ll pay for it. Expect cash calls for the purpose of bettering the team on the field, especially in non-salary-cap sports like Major League Baseball and European football (soccer). You may make some money during your ownership experience, but the monetary return most likely comes when you sell. NASCAR has historically been an exception, with team sales yielding little value, though that may change with proposed new ownership rules.

Minor league sports represent a low-margin business. You’ve got to truly love the game, but also realistically assess how much that love means to you and how much you can afford to lose feeding it. At the lower levels in the U.S., franchises have historically moved and folded frequently. The right situation can still be a fun and profitable investment, but you have to approach it realistically.

Whether you buy a big or small team, quick cash probably isn’t what you should expect.

You don’t have to buy into a pro team to get into sports, of course. Marketing agencies, television/media projects, and a host of ventures aimed at those who play, attend, and work at sports have the potential to produce value. In fact, many feel a sports background is ideal preparation for becoming an entrepreneur. For what should you look at in the wider sports world?

Connections : If the venture requires an entrée into the world of big-time sports to work, do the organizers have them? If they just have a good idea but not the ability to reach busy decision-makers, this might not be the place to sink your money.

The Smell Test : Even if you’re not an experienced sports businessperson, your sense of sport from the fan’s perspective still counts for something. Does the idea sound cool? Is it something you’d like to see happen? Is it something you’d be passionate about? Because some of your return comes from your enjoyment of the project, passion for the concept counts for something.

Content : Does the venture have the ability to tap into the huge content engine that is sport? We’ve all read about some of the huge TV deals teams and leagues have signed recently. In a fragmented media world, sports retains the ability to deliver the eyeballs of desirable demographic groups. Does the venture have a television and/or radio presence? Can it effectively tap into the digital content space?

Growth Potential : Sports is a saturated market, but there are still profitable niches to be found. Digital technology has pushed the envelope in sport as it has in every other industry. As the world shrinks, international sports initiatives become more viable. Finding untapped markets or disrupting current ones has never been easier (not that it’s easy, by any means).

You may have a passion to grow your favorite sport and see its popularity increase, be it cricket, rugby (union or league), pickleball, jai alai, sumo, or whatever. Is there a venture that furthers that goal while also potentially turning a profit?

Value You Can Add : Can your background or expertise make the venture more viable? It’s important to realize what you don’t know, of course. You shouldn’t take over the draft room or coach the defense just because you bought the team, But if your, say, finance or technical background can help the endeavor grow, that might make it even more enjoyable to be a part of (while also reducing risk). The likes of Mark Cuban, Ted Leonsis, and Bill Veeck brought more than a checkbook to their franchises.

Any investment carries monetary risk (I think I’m supposed to say that somewhere here in case you make your investment decisions based on emails retrieved from your spam folder). That’s true in sports as anywhere else. Luckily, sports also provides a psychic satisfaction that’s hard to reproduce elsewhere. It’s why those of us who have made it our careers invest time, money, and passion into it. At some level or other, we’re all invested - hopefully this article helped you decide which kind of investment might work for you.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his companies, FourNine Productions and Rush Olson Creative & Sports. If you’d like to further discuss points raised in this post, email him any time at rush@rusholson.com.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/in/rusholson

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

LinkedIn’s Wild Side

Last year, LinkedIn helped me do something crazy.

I up and quit a job where I’d worked for more than a dozen years . . . with a boss who liked me . . . at a Major League Baseball team. I did it to start a business, an endeavor I’d never attempted before, and I couldn’t build up much of a client base before leaving because of how interconnected the industry is. One asset I did have to help me in this nutty venture was a certain business networking site. LinkedIn = enabler.

I started planning to go all entrepreneurial on the world two years before I actually did it. The preparations I made included buying a computer and selling a house. They also included business cards. I needed to print my own, which I had to get done rapid-fire at FedEx Office when I unexpectedly found out on a Friday that I had my first client meeting on a Monday. I also decided to go through the large stack of other people’s calling cards I had accumulated over my career. Here’s where LinkedIn enters the picture.

Every person represented on one of those cards that I felt might still remember me (fondly, ideally) got searched out on LinkedIn and received an invitation to connect. After I went through the mounds of business cards, I checked old emails, media guides (I worked for a baseball team, remember), and askmen.com’s list of available heiresses (not really - I swear). Relevant folks from those sources also received invites. I got back lots of accepted invitations.

I felt it important to start connecting with folks before I needed anything from them. At that time, I was the guy who worked for the Texas Rangers, a baseball team headed for the World Series, not a struggling startup proprietor desperate for paid-by-the-word blogging scraps. LinkedIn works perfectly for such a scenario because it feels low-pressure. Accepting an invitation doesn’t obligate one to anything or grant access to political-career-destroying-photos. It just reminds one you’re a professional and cracks a door to future business interaction.

The exercise helped with some personal interaction, too. I always try to use a personalized message in my invitations to connect and that stoked further messaging, phone calls, and an occasional meet-up with people with whom I hadn’t worked in years. Those connections proved fun as well as useful in networking.

Since then, LinkedIn has helped me do more wild stuff. It occurred to me that lots of the people I might like to do business with belong to the same LinkedIn Groups I do. I became more active posting content to those groups and started a blog. That led to more contacts, including a business partnership an ocean away and regular appearances on a radio showthat originates out of Corfu, Greece (really - I couldn’t make that up).

You can learn a crazy amount of information on LinkedIn about people you don’t know but would like to. That’s a two-way street, of course. Bring it on. Research me. Let’s mess something up together.

LinkedIn doesn’t host cat videos (unless you’re a veterinarian, maybe) or vacation photos (unless you’re a travel agent, perhaps). It has a more buttoned-down feel, as it should. But that doesn’t mean it can’t contribute to some completely audacious undertakings. Party on, LinkedIn.

Rush Olson decided to write this post after receiving an invitation to publish from LinkedIn (more craziness from them). So, he figured, why not make it about LinkedIn? You know, do a little apple-polishing.

Rush has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities and much more through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Behance.net/rusholson