Monk Monté shares his investment philosophy
By Natalie Briggs (T&T Guardian)
Published: Sunday, March 1, 2015Machel Montano aka Monk MontéThe view of Port-of-Spain from his west Trinidad penthouse apartment is spectacular. Sitting on a bar stool on the balcony of the apartment, Machel Jesus Montano contemplates the scene.
In person, Montano is cool, calm, almost zen-like, in stark contrast to his high-energy, sometimes controversial, stage persona. He possesses an urbane wit, something he doesn’t hesitate to demonstrate.
“Am I a businessman?” He mulls the question over and takes a page out of Jay-Z’s book, “I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man!”
The boy who wowed crowds at 12 with an irresistible cuteness at the 1986 Dimanche Gras competition, singing Too Young to Soca, has spawned his own sub industry within the soca genre, with a branded concert series, merchandise, food and beverage, an app and even his own video game.
This, despite his own admission of not having a “fondness for figures or even physical money.”
While public speculation into his earnings and net worth is rampant, Montano shies away from specifics.
“I work hard enough to make sure I have enough to do whatever it is I like to do,” said the soca artiste.
“I’ve never really hung my hat too high. I’m not really much of a spender either. I’m very, very disciplined in terms of savings and very much into reinvesting in what I do.”
Warming up to the interview as he realises the discussion will not be centered around his winnings, income, concert receipts and the like, Montano discloses why he chose the Sunday BG to talk about his journey from the Savannah stage that night in 1986 to a multimedia spectacle that attracted between 25,000 and 30,000 people at this year’s Machel Monday.
Montano says it is for people to know and understand his business philosophy, which is built not only on constant reinvestment in his product and diversification of his assets, but also investment in others.
Montano has a staff of 50, more at Carnival, and he said he encourages every one of them to become business people in their own right.
“I also think it is important for businesses to invest in people,” said Montano.
His story is his way of leading by example, encouraging business owners to invest in their employees.
He didn’t always see things this way.
Montano reminisced about his attitude to money in his late teens.
“I had a very carefree attitude towards it in the early years. I remember thinking somewhere in the teenage years, that if I did X number of shows, if I keep taking shows, I could probably make some serious money and I started trying to do more and more and more shows.”
One summer he, the band and another teenage friend acting as manager, set up their own solo shows.
“We did them and we did them and we did them,” Montano thumps the table for emphasis here. “We were buying sneakers and hats and clothes while we were doing it. When the end of the summer came, we wanted to see where the money went and we couldn’t find any of it. That was a definite, definite point in my life, around 18, 19, when I realised, run down money, what you will probably do at the end of the day is probably lose it, you’ll probably spend it just as fast as you earn it.”
Montano said this was the point he decided to create legacies.
“I told myself, I’ll work hard on the integrity of my product, I’ll work hard on making something that will stand the test of time.”
“I stopped looking at the bottom line, stopped looking at what was being made at every show and started looking at what kinds of albums would I make and what kind of songs would they have and what kind of look I wanted the band to have. What I wanted the stage show to look like. And I kept increasing in that product, investing in that product, letting it stand out. Letting it mean something to people...You see, sometimes there is a healthy reward in keeping your head down and working hard on your product.”
Monk’s profit philosophy Montano’s “reward” has allowed him to invest heavily in something he has an almost spiritual reverence for: land.
While he admits to have some equities in local and foreign markets, real estate is his true love.
“For me, it’s almost like owning a piece of the earth. It is something that doesn’t rotten. It only increases in value over time.”
Montano owns properties in California and New York and has plans to make purchases in Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. He also holds real estate in Trinidad, as well as Tobago. The lands that grow the cocoa that will eventually become his branded chocolate hold pride of place.
“I think it is not just meaningful in terms of the intangible, but also something that is purposeful. For example, my investment into cocoa and chocolate is really based on sustainability for community, for the farmers, the villages that invest in these things. The Brasso Seco Village, Maracas Village where we have land, I see a long-term vision to help with agriculture and to teach people farming.”
Working as one with nature is also important to Montano. The soca artiste said much experimentation has gone on at an abandoned property he purchased in Toco, including trials in manufacturing soap and wine. He sees the property possibly becoming a “wellness” centre; the concept of wellness itself, he thinks, will become increasingly important in the future.
Montano’s financial ethos is an eclectic blend of the hard-nosed rational and the esoteric. Its development is a constantly evolving process
“My philosophy is the monk philosophy. It is a Movement of New Knowledge. Where is this movement happening? This movement is happening first of all inside of me. That is based on three pillars, the triangle.”
The table again becomes his drawing board.
“Tradition on the left, technology on the right and the truth in the middle. Left is the past, right is the future, the middle is the present...You want to marry the traditions of your past with the ever-changing, fluid situations of your future and technology, and you want to bring it into your present moment and let it inform your truth, let it inform your reality.”
Tradition, technology Giving an inside look at his financial underpinnings, Montano said his parents always encouraged himself and his siblings to be workers and savers, while giving them much leeway to develop their own business sense.
“I always remember, being in charge of our own money from the age of 12. How much money we made, how much money we spent, buying our own clothes. Our parents set us up to be very independent. I say that in a good way. We were making our own destiny and our parents stopped giving us allowances. At age 13, we were really businessmen of our own, because we were working and performing.”
The soca star said from a very early age he had funds invested in the Unit Trust Corporation. His parents were also aware of the pitfalls of the entertainment industry, particularly as artistes aged.
Montano said they ensured band members had annuities and pension plans “to make sure that we had something to look forward to.”
However, his parents would manage his overall holdings until roughly ten years ago, said Montano.
Since then he said: “I’ve basically been deciding how I make my money and how I spend my money.”
One of the things he chooses to spend on is Carnival. Montano has launched his own band, the Epic Mas Band and has ambitions of updating this cornerstone of T&T’s culture. He is sure his experience in putting together one of the season’s more memorable events, Machel Monday, can be parlayed into good business.
“I can go in and make a difference in terms of the suggestions I may have, in terms of making these events more manageable yes. But more commercial and in a way, more beneficial to the communities that they exist in. For example, making mas in different communities, we want to encourage factories in Trinidad that make mas, that make steelpan.”
The steelpan itself is receiving the “Machel” touch. Montano said he has invested in the company Indigisounds. Owned by two young men, Montano said the company has changed the very landscape of pan music by allowing arrangers to “virtually” arrange their music through a library of digital samples of an entire pan orchestra. Instead of going to panyards to teach individual sections what to play, arrangers can now sit at home and hear what their song sounds like.
Rum drinking was another one of those local traditions to which Montano wanted to add his spin. Seeing it as a budding industry, he envisioned the 3-Zero rum brand as forever demolishing the image of dissolute rum drinkers living in rumshops. Three Zero was sexy, chic and was supposed to be representative of a new, sophisticated creature, the rum connoisseur, he said.
“Three-Zero was another attempt to diversify...It wasn’t an easy business. It was an uphill battle because, of course, we come out in a country where the rum industry is dominated by a major powerhouse, which is almost a monopoly. Sometimes, you try to go and sell ideas and nobody will see your dreams and nobody will see the attempt at change. But I think we did dent the market a bit, we did let people dream higher.”
There were challenges with the production of the spirit, with the decision being made to finally set up in Barbados.
“3-Zero is still going. We are still focusing, but we have our eye on the next step,” said the soca artiste.
Montano’s lips were sealed regarding that next step and the future of the rum brand.
Truth As the conversation continued, it became clearer that Montano, like any other average Joe, relishes his successes and ruminates on his failures, the difference perhaps being in scale of those successes and failures.
In Montano’s case, they go hand in hand; one couldn’t happen without the other.
While his largest financial success is the Machel Monday series, it grew out of the Real Unity concert disaster, something he considers his worst financial failure.
In terms of his biggest financial success, he says: “I am proud to say with my show, I hire every supplier in the country, in terms of scaffolding, in terms of stage, light and sound. Sometimes I have three, four different people working in unison to put this event on. Right now we are reaching the point where the stadium is too small for us.”
“We have the largest soca show today, which came from the Alternative Concert, the building ground for that. We started off with 5,000 people at O2. Now we have 25-30,000 at the national stadium. It took about 10 to 12 years to build. Now it is a solid brand. It is a brand that people know will not only deliver a high-quality show, but it will deliver something that is very inspirational, it will deliver something memorable, something futuristic.”
On his biggest financial failure, Montano said it was problems with finding a suitable venue that caused the Real Unity debacle.
“I remember promoting that concert up the Caribbean, promoting it in New York. I wanted to show people what Machel Montano was all about. Bringing people together. We tried to build a VIP stand. That was the year, probably right after Miss Universe. They brought in these bleachers for Miss Universe and we wanted to use them. At the time, we didn’t have permission to use the stadium for these kinds of shows. As a result, there was a tragedy.
“It was one of the hardest times for me business wise. At the same time I was signed to Atlantic Records. I had to go away to represent my genre and my country and my culture, while being heavily sued back home, and with my parents being in an unstable situation because of this financial challenge that was in front of us...this monster, this beast. It didn’t help in my production, it didn’t help me in my mind.”
The popularity of Machel Monday aside, the soca artiste said he actually makes the bulk of his money outside of this country and most of this income is in US dollars.
The Sunday BG asked members of his management team what was his situation under new FATCA regulations, given his US holdings, earnings and residency. They were, however, reluctant to share this information.
Montano said he prefers to invest the majority of his income back into his holdings, which are mostly based in T&T. By his own estimate, the soca star said he ploughs as much as 70 per cent of his income back into investments.
Monk Monté shares his investment philosophy
These are not just in making his show and his product better, but he said he also invests in developing people and talent. Montano has been instrumental in the careers of Nadia Batson, Patrice Roberts and Skinny Fabulous, among others.
“I measure my success by how many other people I have been able to help be successful.” said Montano.
He advised young and upcoming artistes to secure the best management teams their money could buy, inclusive of creative, marketing and financial talent.
A future without Monk Monte? Every career, even one as illustrious as Montano’s, comes to an end. In the event of an accident, or his death, Montano said he is insured, but provided few details about the extent and nature of his coverage.
He is pragmatic as he realises the day may come when he may no longer feel the urge, or be able to mount the stage to earn his bread.
“You have things that can last, so that if Machel Montano...”. He stops to knock on the wood table. “...is not able to perform for a year, he could release a greatest hits album, he could go back in the archives and say here is my calypso repertoire.”
And the soca star is always working, thinking and looking for new ways to expand his ever-increasing empire. He has made forays into film with the movie Scandalous and following the development of his app and video game, he said he is always looking for new ways to invest in technologies.
What is next for the Monk? The idea is probably already forming in his mind. And whatever it is he’ll, very probably, do it like a boss.