7 Lessons Learned From Investing In Innovation

It seems a week doesn’t go by without another innovative investment option to get involved with.

We’ve got the explosion of the creator economy, crypto assets, and crowdfunding opportunities to invest in early-stage companies.

It’s never been easier to support entrepreneurs you admire or be involved in communities or companies you want to see in the world, contribute your entrepreneurial energy, and potentially create wealth in ways we once could have only imagined.

If you want to invest—whether that be investing in NFTs, an early-stage business through crowdfunding like what we’re doing at Nobody Studios, or something you’re curious about—here are some tips from my own experiences you might want to think about.

Everyone is an investor

Whether you have one dollar, a million, or a billion, you can find opportunities to support innovations you’re passionate about.

You can pay to go to school, take a course, even get an MBA if you feel you need to, or you can go against the norm, back yourself, your interests, even try to fund your own idea, and make a bold bet on a future you believe in.

Investing in startups, cryptocurrencies, or digital products is a chance to participate in the future you want to see in the world, and potentially see wealth creation as a result.

1. You’re Investing In Knowledge

Until you buy cryptocurrency, you don’t go deep on cryptocurrencies. Until you invest in a startup in eCommerce, you don’t really seek to deeply understand eCommerce.

Buying in becomes a forcing function for you to focus on areas you are interested in. Worst case, you just invest in learning a new domain. Best case, you learn about a new domain AND generate wealth from it.

No matter what, if you see your investment as an investment in discovering new knowledge, insights, and understanding for how a domain works, you’re then investing in an education—and the benefit of that education is that it can actually pay!

2. Start Small

When deciding what you want to invest in, think about areas you’re curious about, want to learn more or sense has a bright future.

Assess those various domains, and then pick one or two you want to start with. Starting doesn’t mean you have to go big. You can start small and make a small investment. This way, you match your interest with an investment you’re comfortable losing if it doesn’t work out.

Setting up a digital wallet to buy a cryptocurrency, and later an NFT(non-fungible token) from a creator/artist or community you believe in could be one way to get started.

A small investment gives you skin in the game—and a reason to watch the results, reflect, and decide on subsequent next steps and actions.

3. Understand Your Risk Tolerance

It’s easy to overanalyze why it’s not going to work. You can always rationalize yourself out of doing anything unfamiliar when the results are unknown.

But what if things go right? Instead of always listening to what if things go wrong, ask yourself what you’re comfortable risking to learn.

Understanding your risk tolerance and setting boundaries helps you create a system to save hours of anxiety that no one needs.

4. Be A Magnet

The more you start being aware of what’s going on in different spaces, and sharing what you’re seeing with your community, the more you’ll draw people to you.

You actually start to meet more people in that space, learn about it, and build community.

The result? You might actually discover a whole new area you never knew existed that you want to spend your time and focus on.

5. Foster Your Long-Term Thinking

Always play the long game.

With any of these innovative investments you want to get involved in, it’s not just about what’s going to be successful in the next month—look ahead 1, 2, or 3 years from now.

Let these questions guide your thinking and conversations with others. Think freely beyond incremental improvement and open the doors to new opportunities.

6. Surround Yourself With Mentors

As you get into spaces, whether it’s people you follow on Twitter, sign up to Discord servers or interesting thought leaders in the space, you’re going to learn from them. And even better, as you start to reach out to them on social media, you can build rapport with them.

Each step brings you closer to that community, then you might start working with some of these folks that are leading it or become a leader to others yourself!

7. Share Your Knowledge

Whatever you learn, try to synthesize it and share it back with others.

You can bring more people on the journey or help them find their own paths and interests. To truly understand something you should try and teach it to others.

Share openly and honestly about your journey. People will appreciate it.

Give back to others, as others helped encourage and inspire you as you started your early steps, reading, following and learning from such people in your beginning.

Bottomline

With all these new, unique investing opportunities, there are multiple opportunities for all and no reason for you to put all your eggs in one basket.

Harness the power of multiple investment channels, diversify, and see what works and what doesn’t.

This isn’t investment advice, simply a story of my own experiences that I wanted to share back with the world. Thank you to those that have encouraged, helped, and inspired me on my journey—it still feels like I’m only getting started each and every day!

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