Understanding Owned, Paid and Borrowed Media: Tools for Your Own Media Empire

I was flying to LA last year for my buddy Eric’s Leveling Up Mastermind from Vancouver. And as I was checking my email at the airport, I saw I had gotten a notification that there was strange activity on my Linkedin profile and I needed to send my ID to verify my account. I did not think very much of it, so I just sent it in. 

But then I quickly realized that my entire account was hacked and shut down when several friends pinged me to see if I was okay because my profile disappeared. Why was this an issue: I use Linkedin as one of the media that shares all my articles and readings and thoughts. I had 24,000 followers there which is one of my main channels. It took me a while to get my Linkedin account back as their customer service sucks like it does on most online services. 


So why do I share this story? In this digital day and age, as people spend more and more time online whatever you do in your career, your digital presence is critical. I’ve said before that everyone has to become a media company of ONE. I firmly believe that. It’s how you build your personal brand, how you get new opportunities & work, and how you get your point of view and ideas into the world. David Perell said “It’s your serendipity engine.” 


But like everything it’s a double edged sword and you quickly forget how reliant you are on them, especially when you lose access. And you also quickly learn there are different kinds of media. 

Borrowed Media: These are platforms like Youtube, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter or Linkedin where you can share content to their massive audiences. 

Paid Media: which is the media you buy, like paid content you place in magazines or publications online or more commonly advertising whether on Meta or Google or Amazon or other players. But it’s pretty costly to use on a regular basis. 

Owned Media: This is your own website, your own blog, an email newsletter or email list. You own this platform and 

I’ve learned the hard way that if you build your media empire on “Borrowed Media” platforms you are building on sand. You never know when you get hacked or canceled because someone finds what you post offensive. And even losing access for a week or two hurts your growth. 

This is why you need to focus on building out your “Owned media” first: newsletters or your own blog/website. It’s arguably the most important part and where you need to focus your initial energy and efforts. You use Borrowed media and Paid media to promote your owned media. 


You never want to be dependent on one platform, and if you happen to have a large audience in Instagram, it’s not a bad idea to start building out on another platform once you get to critical mass on your main borrowed media channel like Snapchat or Youtube for example. Basically it’s like personal finance, focus & have a concentrated portfolio to build wealth, but then you have to diversify to keep the wealth. You have to treat media channels the same way. My lesson from losing access to Linkedin forced me to figure out Twitter. 


As my friend and new media master Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening wrote:

“All businesses are compounding engines, but content businesses are especially so as platforms & audiences generally reward consistency over time. 

You can 'freeze' a few hours of labor in time (writing one blog post, making one video) and leverage it for hundreds of thousands to millions of views over multiple years.

When given such a gift, DO NOT disrespect it by getting distracted by other opportunities, other priorities, etc.

It takes 2-3 years to spin up a micro media empire at minimum unless you're an extreme outlier, so it's tempting to give up at any point in that process.”


So if you want to build your own media empire you will have to learn the difference between Paid, Borrowed and Owned Media. And then figure out how to best utilize them. Each of these have their own advantages and pitfalls but they will be one of the most valuable tools to make your life better and help others if you use it well.

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