The Secret to Avoiding the “Bucket” (Part II)
Albert Einstein famously labelled compounded interest as the “eighth wonder of the world.” The concept is exactly what it sounds - interest being earned on top of earned interest – which comes on top of previously earned interest. A cycle of momentum stemming from doing the same thing over and over again.
It’s well illustrated in the story of the two friends that both decide to save for retirement? One invests $1000 a month at 10% from the time she is 25 until she is 35 and then stops contributing but leaves the money in the account compounding monthly at 10% until she is 65. The other friend procrastinates and doesn’t start investing until he is 35. But he then invests $1000 a month at 10% for the next 20 years. He then stops contributing and leaves the money to grow at 10% until he is 65. The first friend ends up with $4mm at age 65 while the second friend ends up with $2mm. In other words, the first friend invested half as much as the other but ended up with twice as much in the end. All because she started earlier.
Brand works precisely the same way – if you let it. Like money, there is a leveraging effect that occurs when building brand that generates a cycle of momentum. But with brand, that compounding progresses in stages. As mentioned in the previous post, building your brand starts with your story and progresses based on the experiences your audience has when they interact with your company, product, and people.
Shaping perception and getting your brand to precede you doesn’t happen by accident. It is a very deliberate process that you can chose to take control of – or not. You want to save time fundraising – start getting into rooms with people that are already predisposed to want to work with you.
How do you that? You start communicating your message into your audience consistently. And you start doing that today. And then you reinforce that message by further communicating that message over and over and over again.
Easy enough. What holds people back from doing this is not in establishing the story. It’s also not in finding ways to communicate thoughtfully to their audience over time, or even the expense required to communicate. It’s getting themselves started.
Basically – it requires initiative.
Coming back to the previous story - imagine two emerging fund managers both trying to get into see a prospective investor that requires a 3-year track record before making an allocation. Who is going to have a better shot of being recognized and getting into a warm conversation down the road? The one that has been actively communicating with the investor regularly starting today or the one that reaches out for the first time 36 months from today?
