Long Term Goals and What Skills are Necessary to Be an Influencer

Continuing Happy Hour Finance Fridays! This week is focused on financial independence.

What kind of training or skills should one develop in order to be an influencer?

• Networking - Cannot stress the importance of building relationships with others
• Multi-tasking - As a self-employed entrepreneur you’ll have to wear many hats. We are photographers, videographers, editors, copywriters, negotiators, SEO analytics, project managers, and more. The more you learn to do on your own, the more you are in control of your work.
• Find your niche - Put a great deal of thought into how to stand out compared to other influencers in various industries.
• Tough skin - You have to be able to handle both positive and negative comments.
• Consistency - Quality over quantity and once you have that down then it’s quantity of quality. It’s not the one amazing Instagram photo or Youtube video that’ll grow your following. It’s the consistent profile with content to show this is what you are getting with my work. This is probably where most fail because they think “it’s just taking a photo” but it really is a whole business operation and to be consistent takes up a lot of time. Those without clear passion and purpose will burn out.

What are some of your long term goals?

Growing up as an Asian immigrant in NYC, my goal had always been to get a good, stable job and buy a house. My goals have changed since then and now I am focused on learning how to invest my money more wisely and diversify. I want to keep creating new streams of passive income so I can work smarter, not harder. Of course, I would still like to buy a house or apartment someday. I would also love to have a nice car. That's always been a goal of mine since I was a teenager. 

What easy revenue streams should I explore?

Over the years I wanted to keep growing and diversifying my brand partnerships. The first few years I was mostly focused on fashion brands because that’s my main go-to topic. Over the years, I started posting content about traveling and luxury products. That was my way to slowly get into those industries. That has really allowed me to work with a lot of amazing brands in various industries.

I’m not sure if there is such a thing as an easy revenue stream. However, stock investing is big right now because of the market. I’ve heard about dropshipping, but I haven't yet explored that. Easy when it comes to effort could look like buying something at a lower cost and selling it for a higher price. That could be finding things at a garage sale like Gary Vee and flipping it on ebay, buying hype sneakers at retail and selling it 3x on resell, or finding things in thrift stores and selling it on Poshmark.

As an influencer you could offer services of social media for other brands. You can offer photography to create content for them instead of the usual sponsored posts. This is a good time to reach out to your brand partners to see what they need and how you can help. Even if you are doing “for free” at this moment, you could see a return on it later on with a potential paid partnership.