No matter where you are on earth everyone has heard of Justin Bieber and in this article, I'm going to share with you exactly how Justin Bieber taught me to be rich.
How It Started
For some context, I need to share with you that I am a huge Justin Bieber fan. As such, I have been to two of his concerts (Believe & Purpose Tour) and let me tell you I was not disappointed. Now I know that many people have become a big fan of his in more recent years but my fandom started in the beginning. I’ve been a Belieber since the “One Time” and My World 2.0 days. Obviously it's one thing to say you're a fan so here is picture proof of how far I've taken my Bieber fandom.
I’m not sure if this admiration stems from jealousy at how talented of a singer he is or maybe this kinship is derived from the fact that him and I are both Canadian but no matter how you slice it, there's no doubting the fact that I'm a huge fan of his. Besides wowing me with his music, Justin Bieber has impacted my life tremendously and it’s when he taught me how to become rich.
So you're probably thinking did Justin Bieber come to your house and consult you on financial management or how to invest and I wish I could say that this was a case but unfortunately I had to learn how to be rich from him in a more indirect way.
My Justin Bieber Realization
A couple of years ago, I was mindlessly surfing the Internet when I came across an article outlining Justin Bieber's fame and fortune. Obviously, being a big fan of his I decided to click on the article and give it a read. The article had a lot of typical content within it such as where he grew up and how he became such a massive superstar in such a short amount of time and then it got into how much money he has amassed in his singing career. At first, I looked at the extravagant number asserted as being his net worth and thought to myself “well he's very talented and a good looking kid so of course he's made a ton of money from being as popular as he is”. A few minutes after reading this article, I was back to tackling my daily tasks and what I had just read slowly found a spot deep in the back of my brain. About a week later, I found myself thinking about that article again and contemplating just how anyone, even someone as talented as Justin Bieber, could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
At first, I thought about Bieber’s net worth at a very superficial level in the fact that he is quite talented so it makes sense why he would make so much money. In fact, in a single concert I've seen him sing, play the guitar, play the drums, oh and he also played the piano too. Not to mention his dance moves aren't too bad either. But there are a ton of people who have either one or many of these skills yet they just aren't as successful or as rich as Justin Bieber. What differentiates Justin Bieber from so many other aspiring musicians is his ability to disperse his value to the masses. I started to think a little bit deeper and then it hit me that Justin Bieber like many other famous artists have an incredible amount of reach and with this reach they are able to provide value to millions upon millions of people. Like I said there are many people with similar skills but because they lack the popularity and connections that someone like Justin has they simply can't provide as much value to a vast amount of people hence why they also aren’t as wealthy.
This light bulb moment changed my life forever. This train of thought made me realize that if you want to become rich, you need to not only have something valuable to offer but then you need to spread it amongst a ton of people and this is exactly what Justin Bieber does. Justin does this by doing on tour, releasing albums, selling merchandise and running his own clothing line. Needless to say, Justin is providing value from numerous angles which has allowed him to propel his net worth to astronomical heights.
After going through this mental exercise, it made me wonder whether this was a one-off instance and only related to popular artists or if this phenomenon exists in many other forms and formats within our world and it didn't take long before I realized that this phenomenon was taking place all around me and I just never realized it before.
Real World Examples
Some examples that struck me right away included The iPhone, which of course I was playing with as I was mulling over this financial theory, and other companies like Tesla who have literally taken over the world by providing luxurious and reliable electric cars to the masses.
In both examples that I just shared; two components remain consistent. The first is that the company has something of value to offer and the second is that said valuable offering is being distributed at an immense scale. But how widely distributed are these two desirable items?
If you ask the average person how many iPhones have been sold over Apple's lifetime they would probably guess somewhere in the range of tens or hundreds of millions of iPhones. This is a reasonable guess and quite frankly this is what I would have probably guessed too. But after looking up historical IPhone sales, I realized just how much value Apple has been able to disseminate through just this product alone. Since the iPhone was initially released, Apple has sold over 2.2 billion phones worldwide which is equivalent to one in four people in the world owning an iPhone. When you look at Apple's financials, this phenomenon perfect meets the theory that value plus distribution equals wealth generation.
Now, while Tesla is not quite the same financial giant as Apple, they're not doing too shabby themselves. In just a few years, Tesla has been able to sell over 1,000,000 electric cars and by the way they're going I'm guessing that they're going to be able to sell many millions more in the upcoming years. Tesla's value proposition in this case is that they're not only offering an electric car but one that also offers luxury which has been sorely missed out on in electric vehicle sector in the past. Again, offering an exceptional product combined with a ton of reach has proven to be a magnet for financial success.
But let's move away from technological products for a second and look at someone else who has recently cashed in on his ability to provide value at a large scale. My final example is none other than the podcasting giant himself Joe Rogan. After a decade I've producing The Joe Rogan Experience, his podcast has grown to a point where it is garnering hundreds of millions of listens and downloads every single month. It's no wonder that this past year, Joe was offered a contract from Spotify worth over $100 million. With these three examples alone, I think it's becoming very evident that there is a formula that you can employ to become rich and it exists all around us. This phenomenon involves taking something valuable and spreading it amongst the masses and it’s what I’ve coined as the “value disbursement method”.
The Value Disbursement Restriction
Now given that examples of this income generation method exist all around us then shouldn't we all technically be wealthy? Well it's pretty obvious that not everyone is going to be able to reach a Justin Bieber level of wealth but I also think that there are three main reasons why so many people fail to employ this wealth formula into their own lives.
The first reason that people don't employ the value disbursement method is because it’s not aligned to the traditional life path that most of us are told to follow by our friends and family. I have to think the 99.9% of parents don’t recommend their child to gain their financial wisdom from Justin Bieber which means that their chances of adopting the value disbursement method is low. Instead they're more likely to tell you to study hard, get your degree and then land a land that you can work at until you retire. Sure, this method of making money will cover your bills but it makes very few people extremely wealthy. Not to mention, many people work jobs that consume a ton of time and energy leaving them incapable of ever having what I like to call the “Bieber Epiphany” which I was fortunate enough to have had just a few short years ago.
In fact, when it comes to working most 9-5 jobs, we are taught that if you want to make more money you just have to bide your time and with more experience will come a bigger paycheck. It’s true that the more time you invest in your career, the more likely you are to increase your annual salary but the reality is that being a 9-5 worker restricts how much value you can provide. Chances are you're only providing value to those in your small working group like your manager and your other colleagues. Luckily however, you don’t need to become an international popstar to extend the reach of your current value offering which is why I want to share two workplace examples of the value disbursement method in action.
The first example revolves around executives of organizations. For example, the CEO provides guidance and direction for not only other executives but the company as a whole therefore they are providing value to a more vast amount of people then say a payroll clerk who is only generating value to their working group. In this case, it's pretty evident why the CEO would be making more money than this other employee.
Lucky for you, you don't need to be a CEO of a large organization to be able to cash in on the value disbursement method. Take the example of a salesperson. The salesperson is able to take the product that the company is selling and then attempts sell said product to the largest amount of customers possible. By spreading the product’s value amongst numerous people, the salesperson is able to collect a large commission which allows them to leverage this wealth generation model without being at the top of their company.
However, even with the workplace examples I outlined above, there is another factor that is holding many people back from using this tactic to grow their wealth. The harsh reality is that many people simply lack something of value that they can offer to the masses. Unfortunately, after college many people call it quits when it comes to improving their knowledge and expertise and they end up in the work and Netflix turnstile where they need to drown out the emotions from their taxing work day by immersing themselves in mindless television. While these people probably do want to make more money, like the rest of us, they simply don't have any time or desire to upgrade their skills and level up what they can offer to others.
The final reason people don't generally jump to employ the value disbursement method is because it often requires them to take a non-traditional life path. As I just outlined, there are not that many positions in the 9-5 workforce that allow you to make money using this financial tactic. In the examples of famous individuals who have maximized the use of the value disbursement method like Justin Bieber and Joe Rogan, they both had to carve their own path in life. This means that while those around them were going to school and pursuing professional careers, they were instead honing their craft and trying to make it in their respective industries.
Veering from the typical life path can often come with a ton of judgment from people like your parents, your extended family and of course your friends and in many situations you are taking a risk and hoping it will pay off. In the examples of Justin and Joe, there were no guarantees that all the hours they put into their craft would eventually pay off but as the saying goes “no risk, no reward” and I think that their reward has proven to be quite lucrative and something that we can learn from.
My Own Experience
Now, it would be quite hypocritical of me to be singing the praises of Justin Bieber and the value disbursement method without having actually employed it in my own life. Initially, I put this concept into action by trying to increase the amount of value that I provided at work. At the time of attending two of Justin Bieber's concert's and having had my Bieber epiphany I was simply one amongst a sea a fresh university graduates looking to get their first professional job. At this point in time, I can tell you that not having a ton of value to offer definitely was reflected in my entry level salary. Luckily, over time, I employed this tactic and increased my value as best I could by attaining not only my master’s degree but by acquiring two professional designations. As you probably guessed, by gaining this extra expertise and having the ability to offer more value at work my annual salary has literally doubled since I started my career.
Unfortunately, I did eventually hit an earning ceiling at my 9-5 job and knew that I needed to channel my inner Justin Bieber in order to spread my value to a greater number of people. This is when my journey on YouTube began.
In January of 2018 I started an animated personal finance channel called Betterment Boss and as of late 2020 I have now amassed over 100,000 subscribers. Not surprisingly, the more subscribers I attained, the higher my monthly income rose. It was the value disbursement method in effect and the more peoples lives that I touched and provided value to the more money I made.
At this point, I hope that have enlightened on how you can create more income for yourself using the financial model I’ve discussed in this article. However, you may not be able to sing like Justin Bieber or want to start a YouTube channel like I did, and luckily there are still a ton of different ways for you to leverage the value disbursement method to build your own sizable wealth. A few very practical examples could include writing a book, starting a podcast, creating a blog or writing on platforms like Medium. You can even offer live personal training sessions through Zoom. As long as whatever method you decide to choose combines the value that you have to offer and the ability to reach a vast amount of people then you too can earn more money and tell your friends that Justin Bieber taught you how to be rich!