Is your business solely dependent on another platform, social media platform or third-party marketplace? If so, you're just a digital attendant that can be evicted tomorrow. And if you read the terms and services agreements to the platform, it probably says something similar to this, we reserve the right to remove you from at any time for any reason, something along those lines. So, if they should remove you by accident or on purpose, then you can't sue them for any consequences that may have caused your business so I'm going to share with you today five essential elements to why you want to own your own platform. Let's get to it.

The first reason why you want to own your own platform is because of proprietary value and intellectual property (IP).  You own it. It's yours. You control it. Nobody can take you off of it. Nobody can take it away from you. Now, let's face it, if you don't own the sauce, you're interchangeable, believe me.

The second essential element to owning your own platform, and why you want to own your platform, is first party data. You have ownership over the data. What does this give you? This gives you direct access to your customers, allows you to know their behaviors, know your clients want. Allows you to personalize so you can tailor it towards your clients. You can put things in front of your clients that they want to see. You can tailor their experience to make their user experience better, and having data ownership also helps with marketing.  You know your client profile. You know what they want to see. You know what they're looking for so you can market better, which in essence, gives you more quality leads in doing business.

The third essential element to why you want to own your own platform is traffic distribution control. This is a big one. Now what this essentially means is you control what you want your clients to see. You control basically anything that you put in front of your clients. Now, when you're on social media platforms, they control it, which brings about distractions. It brings about other information that you may not want your clients to see, because it takes them out of the loop of your ecosystem. That puts them into someone else's ecosystem. You want to control what your client sees. When you control what your community sees, when you control the flow of all the information, it keeps them engaged with you. They're not distracted by what somebody else is doing. They're not distracted by other things that may be like what you're doing or what you're talking about, because you control it. They only see what you provide for them. You may be watching a video because traffic distribution from a social media platform. You may have watched a video like it previously. Social media platforms arrange the algorithm to give you more of what you want, so they can personalize the experience, so you can stay on their platform. But when you own the platform, you can do the same.

The fourth essential benefit of owning your own platform is monetization. Diverse revenue. Multiple revenue streams. You're not dependent on one type of revenue. You can create all different products and services. You can create subscriptions, you can create courses, you can create products. You can have affiliates. Affiliates sell your products. So, monetization is huge. It gives you leverage, gives you better profit margins. You're not solely dependent on one type of revenue, income stream.

Essential element number five is a big one, scale. Which is essentially growth. This gives you global reach. This gives you a massive audience. This also gives you the opportunity to automate. If you can automate the services that you have, this is how you make money while you sleep. This is how you can disengage from your business and focus more on the strategy, focus more on innovation, focus more on personalization, and improve your client's experience. Having sustained growth is probably one of the biggest essential elements, which is why I put it last. You want your business to scale. You want a business that's scaling, that's continually growing. You don't want a business that's capped or has reached a plateau. You don't want a business that's stale or is dying out. You don't want your income stream, and you don't want your clients going in the wrong direction. Clients are leaving because you don't have what they need. Owning your own platform puts you on a level playing field with the trillion-dollar social media companies. Like YouTube, like the Facebooks, Instagrams, the TikTok's, right on your own platform, puts you in that stratosphere, so you can do the exact same things they are doing. These five essential elements give you the leverage. Hopefully, these elements help you. These elements are why you want to own your own platform. Always remember it's not personal, it's business.