This week, one of my websites got hijacked due to a third party developer that I was using. They fixed it in no time but didn't notice the hidden malicious code that got activated a few days later — and crushed all of my sites.
Luckily, some time ago, I decided to hire an expert. He's a web developer and I pay him to help me if anything is heading south. During one and a half years, nothing major happened. But now it did. And my backups didn't work as intended due to the long term virus infection.
This incident showed me once again that it's a good thing to pay experts for what they're good at. If I had to have found a solution for myself, I would've been working on this issue for four weeks straight. Only to decide to dump the whole website and buy a new one probably. But with the help of this expert, I knew exactly what to do, and how to do it. And I "only" spent a total of four hours on this issue — saving me endless painful hours of not doing what I love — like writing to you. 🙂
Having an expert in place that can efficiently and effectively help you get the results that you want is a great feeling. Of course, it comes with an investment. And this investment usually doesn't show a quick "return of investment". But once it does, there's no better feeling in the world. At least for me.
I think going deep into the financial department right now would be a bit of an overkill. So I will just scratch the surface, and explain the "return of investment" a bit more to you.
The return of investment – or ROI – is the value that you get in return from investing in a resource on something. Usually, it's used in a monetary context.
If you spend 5,000 bucks on Facebook advertising, and you get 15,000 net revenue (aka the money that's still yours after paying all your expenses and taxes) through these ads by getting new fans that stream your music, subscribe to your memberships, or buy your merch and concert tickets, then your return of investment on these ads is 10,000 bucks.
My ROI for the web developing expert already paid off big time by this one critical incident.
In our modern world, at least for me, it's crucial to get help from experts. Why would I want to spend five or ten years on mastering something, when I can just hire someone to do it for me for a fraction of the price (i.e. my precious time)?
Let's take an example in the music world: A band is mixing its own music. If they're happy with the result, they shouldn't change anything. But if they aren't satisfied with how their mixes sound, they must make a decision. They have three options. One, spending hours, days, weeks, months, or even years on "mastering" their mixing craft by learning it themselves. Two, hiring someone to teach them. Three, hiring a mixing engineer so they can spend all their precious time on developing the necessary skills to become profitable musicians - for example songwriting, recording, performing, and marketing.
(We're back on determining your goals, ha!)
It's not important to know everything but it's important to understand every aspect of your industry to a degree that enables you not to become a victim that gets exploited easily.
Like the artist I spoke with last week who told me that she paid a "marketing agency" 5,000 bucks, and they just asked for more after having spent all of this for nothing. If she knew better, she wouldn't have blindly trusted a so-called agency, but instead had spent a 10th of her budget on a course or a mentor to learn how to do this, and then just spent the other 4,500 bucks on a marketing campaign — with a positive ROI. 🙂
So for now, I want you to take a step back, and look at your music career from a big-picture view. Ask yourself, what are the three areas where you struggle most with?
Once you have determined your top three biggest struggles, find a solution. Can you do it yourself? How much of your precious time would it cost you to learn it? How much money would it cost you to outsource it? What's worth more to you? (Estimate your potential ROI by calculating how much return of money, time, or another value could you achieve during this time?)
Then, make a decision, and keep growing your music career.