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Hi friends,
It seemed like Monday’s email didn’t make it to many of your inboxes. This was one of my favorites to date, so if you missed it I’d suggest giving it a look-see here.
Here’s your weekly shot of Friday Fuel, a collection of things I’ve been learning from or enjoying recently.
📕What I’ve Been Reading: Investing in creators is a hot topic. Some are looking to bet on early talent in the form of ISA’s (more to come on this), while others would like to invest in the companies behind the talent. While the former is still in the works, the latter is now possible. Thanks to a reverse merger between a Chinese healthcare company and West of the Hudson, a multimillion-dollar real estate firm, you can now invest in content houses on the public markets. This NYT article breaks down the details of the deal allowing the public to invest in Clubhouse Media Group, a holding company for well-known TikTok content houses like Clubhouse Beverly Hills and Not a Content House.
In typical social media fashion, nothing is as perfect as it seems. West of Hudson has been bleeding money, losing $983,000 on nearly $96,000 of revenue in the first six months of the year.
🎧What I’ve Been Listening To: The OnlyFans business model is simple. Provide a platform for creators to post paywalled content and take 20% of the subscription revenue. Thanks to the site’s lack of content restrictions, it’s become a home for sex workers, adult performers, and models. It’s singe handedly revolutionized the adult industry giving birth to an entire ecosystem of self-employed creators, some of whom are raking in over $1 million per year.
In this Means of Creation interview, Aella, one of the top earning creators on the platform, breaks down the strategy and discipline required to find success in this industry. Like any business, especially one with a low barrier to entry, you need to be savvy and innovative in order to survive. Aella proves to be both of these and more as she shares strategic and futuristic insights that can be applied across multiple industries.
This conversation opened my eyes to the world of sex work and honestly changed my entire perspective around the industry. It also served as a great reminder to never judge a book by its cover.
🤯What’s Blown My Mind: With iPhone sales on the decline, Apple has turned to its accessories and services businesses to pick up the slack. As of Q3 2020, its Wearables, Home, and Accessories (WH&A) business alone had ballooned to the size of a Fortune 140 company, reporting $6.5 billion of revenue (a 17% increase YoY). In 2019, Apple sold $12 billion worth of Airpods alone…
🤯What’s Blown My Mind Part Two:
Nowadays, unique digital marketing campaigns are hard to come by. Very few catch my attention and even fewer really wow me.
World of Warcraft (WoW, no pun intended) managed to do both. Telling a story while tapping into the diverse audiences of numerous celebrities? Brilliant. To watch the full video, click into the Instagram link in the thread and follow the tags.
🧵A Quote I’ve Enjoyed: “A million seconds is like 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years…When I see 20-year-olds – the thought I had was they probably have two billion seconds left. But they aren’t relating to themselves as time billionaires.” – Graham Duncan
If you want to upgrade your sock drawer, share this with your smartest friends, family and co-workers. Post on socials and tag me or send me a picture of your outreach to friends and I’ll enter you in the drawing.
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Thanks for reading,
Randy