Make Passive Income As A Filmmaker

Okay, so we've all heard the quotes investing yourself, investing your craft, believing yourself before anybody else does. All of these amazing statements that allow us to continue to be the best filmmakers that we can be. However, today I want to talk to you all about a different kind of investment. I want to talk to you all about why investing in the stock market as a filmmaker is so important and literally one of the best investments that you'll ever have. Let's get started. Before I get into my top three reasons, I want to kind of give you all a breakdown of why I decided to even create this video. So in March of 2020, COVID happened. It stopped the economy. It stopped production in Hollywood. Everything was halted. And so with that, a lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of people lost half of their income. Pretty much a lot of filmmakers couldn't even work because we realized that we didn't have as much control over our finances as we thought. Or we realized we didn't have as much control over the amount of work we could do without having those clients to then hire us to do the work because they couldn't hire us because we couldn't shoot because production was halted. So with that, a lot of filmmakers or at least a lot of my friends and what I was hearing about was that people realized that, man, I should have kind of created a savings. I should have had a backup plan. I should have prepared a little better for this. I don't think people were financially prepared for this because we all just kind of go through the day-to-day of shooting and getting work. But, you know, at the same time, we don't think about this as passive income because the stock market is actually one of the best ways to create passive income. And so with that and hearing all of my friends kind of talk about, you know, not being financially set up the way they should have, I kind of just wanted to talk to you all about just overall savings in general and why this is the best passive income that you'll be able to make. So with me personally, I did have a savings, but the reason why COVID hit me is because it hit the banks and it hit the interest rates that we were getting on our savings. So I have a savings in Alibank and the reason why it did hit me was because my interest rate monthly literally starts to get lower and lower and lower. So when I first put my money into my bank account, I had a 1.6 interest rate, which is why I chose the bank that I chose. It was one of the top interest rates that you can get outside of like Discover and another bank because most banks give you like 0.04 percent and so you're really not compounding your money annually. And so I had 1.8, I think I started off with 1.8 percent, but every month I would get an email that went from 1.8 to 1.6, 1.6 to 1.4 to the point where it got to 0.6 percent that I was getting for leaving my money into this savings account. Now the whole point of a savings account is only to use it for emergencies or use it for future use, but to only be able to get 0.6 percent annually was not helping my money grow and so that's why I turned to the stock market. So I didn't know a lot about the stock market, the only thing I really knew was that my dad had a 401k from his job, but in the African-American community for the most part we don't talk a lot about the stock market, at least growing up I didn't. Now at the age of 31 that's all I talk about, but I didn't know much about it and so I'm pretty much pretty late on this topic, but with the stock market it was amazing because you're pretty much allowing the same money that you were having your savings that you were having in the stock market to just sit and grow. You don't have to do anything and so I got into the stock market in April and I put $10,000 into the stock market just to kind of see you know what would happen. I feel like you don't really lose money unless you're trying to do short term and so for long term if you're not touching your stocks and you're not touching that money it should pretty much grow if you do it right. So it's about to be a year since COVID happened and I've literally already I'm already up 40 percent. So the $10,000 I would have just kept into my savings would have only grew 0.6 percent and I was actually able to grow 40 percent within a year. I am up $4,000 and I did nothing. All I did was put my money into certain stocks that I believed in and I just let it sit there. Which brings me to my top three reasons of why I think it is important as a filmmaker as any creator to invest into the stock market. The number one reason why I think it's important is because you're investing in your future. Now the thing about the stock market is I think a lot of reasons why we don't talk about it is because we're not getting that money now. We're getting that money for the future. If you're not working for a job you pretty much have to create your own retirement plan. So most people start with a 401k from their job but somebody like me I have to create my own 401k or I have to create my or I have to get a Roth IRA to then create my own retirement plan. Even if you have your own production company and you're paying yourself you still have to create some type of financial stability for the future and I think it's important for us to continue to talk about this in this space. But just as much as we're helping new filmmakers get into the world of filmmaking we should also help them get into the world of the business side as well as the future side of the business. So knowing that you do need to set yourself up for the future so that when you are ready to retire you actually have money to live off of is as equally as important as everything that's happening right now. The second reason why I think that we should invest into the stock market is because you invest in yourself and you invest in your craft. So we talk so much on YouTube about cameras. I mean a lot of the people that I follow talk about every single new camera that comes out. They go from the first new camera that come out to the second new camera that come out and why this camera is equally as great as this camera and how they're all great cameras and how all the this is all the equipment that you should get. But how are you paying for all of this? So what I've learned when I got into the stock market is the best way to pay for your gear is through the money that you're getting from the stock market. Now of course you have a long-term portfolio which is the stocks that you don't touch the portfolio that you do not touch and you allow your money to grow but then I also have a short term portfolio which I do play contracts and I do do options which allow me to pull my money out and from there I use that money to then pay for my gear because you don't want to use the money that you're getting from gigs for the every day because you need to be able to still pay your bills and still live off of and so you have to find a way to get additional income that's going to allow you to pay for all the gear you want. I know a lot of people that use their credit cards to pay for their gear but I'm not that kind of person. I don't want to max out my credit cards. I because at the end of the day I still have to pay that back and what am I paying that back with? All the money I'm getting from these gigs. No I could pay that money back with the money I'm getting from the stock market. Now I won't get into information about options and contracts but there is a dope filmmaker who I do follow that talks about options and his name is Daniel. He has and also he also has a YouTube with his wife called Mango Street but he has a whole YouTube that talks about stocks and options and I follow him and I really like what he talks about and he's a filmmaker so I will have all his information below but he is definitely somebody that you can follow if you want to learn a little bit more about short-term contracts and so I'll give you all an example. In August of last year in 2020 Apple and Tesla was doing a split. I decided to get an Apple and Tesla contract before the split because I felt that they were going to run up and I was going to be able to make a profit. This is all short term so I got a contract and an option an Apple and Tesla. Literally before the split happened Apple and Tesla ran up because everybody wanted to get in before the split. So my contracts ran up and so I got a profit of $5,000 from Apple. So I put in $600 to get the contract and they got a profit of $5,000. So I was able to take that $5,000 out of the market. It is taxed. I was able to take the $5,000 out of the market but then with that $5,000 I can put it on business equipment or things for my business which then I can write it off which is pretty much what I did. So I think that's a better path to take than taking all of your money from a gig that you know that you're getting and then you're putting it all back on equipment. But not only does it help you invest in your craft but it also helps you invest in yourself in your daily life. So the money that you could take from the stock market you can put towards your dream car and your dream house real estate and your dream vacation even though it's taxed. There are things that you can do where you don't have to use your hard-earned work money. So even though you want to use your hard-earned work money for stuff that's allowing you to just save so much more because you're actually getting money from the stock market and additional money to pay for all the things that you want to pay for. Now again make sure you check out his YouTube and other YouTubers that talk about the tax side of things because there is a method to the madness but at the end of the day this is such a good way to earn passive income. The last reason why I think it is so important as a filmmaker to invest is because it gives you so much more wisdom about the economy. So the thing is the stock market moves as the economy moves. Whichever way the economy moves is how the stock market moves. If the economy is doing good then the stock market is doing great. If the economy is doing bad then the stock market is trash. And so you learn so much more just I think as filmmakers we also have to learn more about outside of our industry to get more wisdom and knowledge about how to move within our industry. Because there is a lot of things happening in Hollywood that is basically happening off the economy. When Biden became president the stock market moved a certain way. When Trump became president the stock market moved another way. Like I'm learning more about gas and oil and EV and how it's about to run the world and all of these things that allows me to just have more wisdom and knowledge just as a person and as an individual that could potentially help me as a filmmaker. You always want to kind of know about everything that's happening in the world because filmmaking isn't the say all be all and so we definitely need to have this wisdom and information to be able to just go throughout our daily lives. People are talking about it now in the clubhouse and even in Hollywood there are people you know there's an NFL I think I read a story about a NFL player receiving Bitcoin as his salary and you know for Zendaya's new show she paid everybody in Netflix shares. Like it's becoming a thing more and more and we definitely should have more conversations about this. So those are my three reasons why I think it's important to invest as a filmmaker. I think it's important to invest as a creator as an individual. It's just important to invest. My dad started investing and I didn't really listen to him when he was talking about it but now I am so passionate about investing. I tell all my friends they should have some kind of portfolio whether you decide to get into short term or long term it is so important to have the conversation. It is the best passive income that you can get so as much as we talk about how to make money on YouTube through affiliate links and all these other things it's just as important to make that money outside of your industry because we've all learned that you have to have multiple streams of income just from COVID when we couldn't film and we couldn't get hired to film what other way are you making money. So I say all I have to say there needs to be more conversations about the future life of a filmmaker. There needs to be more conversations about stocks in the filmmaking space and why it's important really important for us when we don't for the people that don't have nine to five. There should just be as much conversation about this as it is about the everyday equipment and gear and business side of things because this is also a business. So I just think that I just wanted to come on here and share this with you all. I'm very passionate about it as you can see but it has really helped me and I've really learned so much within this year about how this truly does set you up for your future. Not only is it setting you up but it's setting your family up. It's setting your beneficiaries up. It's setting everything up and I think we have to think about that a lot more than we do. If you all have any questions please let me know I will try to answer them in the best way possible. If you all want to learn a little bit about stocks and short-term stocks and options and contracts check out Daniel's YouTube and there's so many more other people on YouTube that I follow that talk about stocks that you can definitely check out. Read up on some books anything to help you learn as much as you can about this type of income and make sure you like this video if you liked it and if it was informative for you and if you learned anything please share this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I'll see you all again soon. Have a good day.