Did You Know?

I'm producing two podcast episodes per week on the Content Inc. podcast now. Every Monday is a five-minute episode on one topic affecting content creators and marketers. Every Thursday (for at least the next eight weeks) is an interview with a content entrepreneur. Both are amazing and I'm not biased at all.

Some of the latest -

- How Ann Handley Built a 50,000 Subscriber Email List
- How NLW Developed a Top-5 Crypto Podcast
- How Wally Koval Built a World-Class Traveler Destination one Insta at a Time

And don't forget...Robert Rose and I produce our content news program This Old Marketing ever Thursday. Here's the one about how American Airlines was short-sighted for killing their in-flight magazine.


It's Up to You

My friends Becky and Marc turned me on to a new podcast called Smartless starring Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. I’ve listened to five episodes so far. It’s a great break from all my Bitcoin podcasts.

The premise is interesting. Each week either Jason, Sean or Will bring on a surprise guest that the other two don’t know about. It works. And, the advertising reads are some of the best I’ve ever heard. It’s the only podcast where I don’t mind the sponsorships.

While listening to the episode with Adam Sandler, the four were talking about auditioning for acting roles and how all their career decisions are out of their control.

Jason Bateman went into detail about this, saying “none of this [acting] is up to us.” He went on to say that all his success in acting has only happened because some casting director chose him.

I was running while I heard this and had to stop and make a notation.

Think about that. Here’s four of the most successful actors in the business, and they are all lamenting about how little control they have over their career decisions.

 
It was about 20 years ago I started writing down goals. One of my goals, once I worked myself into a leadership position at Penton Media (a business-to-business publisher), was to always have some say in the direction of the company where I worked.

In 2006, Penton Media was sold. During the valuation process before the sale, the buyer (a venture capital company) didn’t analyze our Custom Media group. Didn’t even look at it. No review of the financials. Or the staff. Nothing. We were about a $7 million dollar department with a 25 percent profit margin, but yet, no person from the buying group even sniffed at our group.

That told me all I needed to know. The new regime saw no importance in content marketing as a part of the future company. I was disappointed. I complained. Then I decided to do something about it.

The deal went through in November of 2006. I left the company at the end of March, 2007 to start a business.
 

On Tuesday the little podcast started by three actors whose careers were up to casting directors sold exclusive podcast rights of Smartless to Amazon Music & Wondery for about $80 million. Creating the podcast, marketing the podcast, growing the podcast, and producing over 50 weekly episodes were all controlled by them. Congratulations!
 

The Rise of Micro-Economies

Here’s a fascinating article on the topic. Much of this is what we are working to develop with $TILT coin.

“… micro-economies can be created in an instant. They allow creators to distribute liquid instruments (in the form of tokens) to better monetize intangible contributions and sweat equity.

To contributors, it offers an unconventional path to work on what you love, and get paid in assets with exponential upside in the process.

Adoption will not happen through gambling, it will happen through 100,000 niche communities teaching ten of their closest friends how crypto can make a fundamental difference in their social life today.”

If you read the article let me know your thoughts. I'm trying to wrap my arms around this concept. Everything in my gut tells me this is going to be huge. Tokenization is just beginning and a new way of monetization is here.

Thanks to Richard Patey for the share.
 

Are Savings Accounts Back?

I remember my first money market account. I was getting almost 4 percent interest on my cash and I thought it was amazing.

Today, the best rate you can find is about .5 percent. Mind you, those are the best rates.

The inflation rate right now is two percent and growing. That means that every year we are losing two percent plus on the value of a dollar. Inflation kills our buying power.

To combat this, we put our assets in stocks, real estate and cryptocurrency so we don’t lose money with the cash just sitting in a checking or savings account. But if you’re like me, you actually want to have a good amount of money in cash, for both diversification protection and liquidity.

Well, maybe crypto comes to the rescue.

Coinbase just announced that they are paying four percent per year on USDC. USD Coin is a stablecoin that is redeemable one for one with the US Dollar. If you have ten dollars you can redeem it for ten USDC…and vice versa. Could this be the new savings account? I don’t know, but it’s an interesting development. I could see someone having a checking account at a bank and then put their savings account in USDC to make some interest. NOTE: I don’t have nor am I recommending this.

You can also do this with crypto like Bitcoin and Ethereum with services like Nexo.io or Blockfi. If you keep your crypto with those institutions, they pay you interest…sometimes as high at eight to 10 percent.

With interest rates about nothing, banks can’t compete. This type of opportunity may get people dipping their toe in crypto as we (someday) move toward a bankless society.