Blog #3: Separating Success from Celebrity

Blog #3 of the series on success foundations, Context: Male 29 years old

One of the most common misconceptions in popular culture today is that celebrity equals success. We assume (delusionally, irrationally, or wishfully) that with celebrity comes substantial amounts of money with which you can solve any problem you face. Of course we know that you can't solve every problem with money. It doesn't take long to uncover relationship issues, criminal history, overdoses, debt etc. among the celebrity community that money seems to be unable to solve. Together these blemishes start to unwind the idea that celebrity is inherently success. In a very specific sense, celebrity is a specific form of professional success which we assume comes with a lot of money. However, the harsh realty of celebrity is that not all celebrity is created equal. In a previous post, we calculated roughly 23,060 celebrities in the US today by combining political leaders, artists, athletes, and executives. It is usually our natural assumption to assume that with celebrity comes a certain level of financial success. But as we mentioned, not every celebrity is equal in their most basic tenets of financial success; earnings power. Let's take for example a proxy for earnings power that is readily available and extrapolate to the other "celebrities" in question; price per appearance for musicians.

The idea of showing this visual is to suggest to you that the top performers considerably out earn the average and low level performers as is the case with earnings generally in America. Led Zeppelin makes $8m per performance while second place madonna makes half that amount and so on down the list of celebrities. The following chart provides more interpretable numbers: 

	Beginning	Ex 1	Ex 2	Ex 3	Last
Ranking	1	500	1,000	10,000	23,060
Price per Performance	$8,500,000	$68,000	$40,610	$4,321	$1,917
% of Total	0.01%	2.17%	4.34%	43.37%	100%

 

This chart makes it clear that it is not just about making this list of celebrities. It is about: 

• Relative demand for your services when you are on the list

What is missing from this discussion so far is also: 

• How long you stay on the list

Let's consider Lebron James' salary expectations over time.

Unsurprisingly, as the top basketball player of his generation his earnings ability is considerable. But what is not shown by this chart is that Lebron's earnings from basketball will be effectively $0 after he retires (assuming he isn't paid a severance which he likely will be). For Lebron who has considerable endorsements and career earnings this may not be an issue, it is for quite a number of athletes. In a National Bureau of Econonic Research paper, even in the most conservative scenario nearly 15 percent of players will have declared bankruptcy by 25 years after retirement with the most extreme model predicting 40 percent.

Success here is not just about celebrity but it is about performance and your ability to sustain it.