You can invest in Broadway shows?

Hi Sheconomist Insider 👋 It’s Thamina, Founder of The Sheconomist. This is your bi-weekly dose of celebrating the female economy where I help ambitious, purpose-driven women like yourself flip the script on money, career & wellbeing conventions so you can live life on your own terms.

TLDR:

• 💼 What does freedom actually mean?

• 💬 I’m co-hosting a workshop on building a personal brand outside your 9-5

• 💰 What does investing in Broadway look like?

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🧪 Freedom Formulas

What does freedom actually mean?

One of my best friends reminded me of something important this past weekend:

“Thamina, you already have a lot of freedom.”

In the past, I would have disagreed.

There was a time where I had adopted a victim mindset and felt like so much was outside my control.

Wrong passport.
Wrong degree.
Wrong timing.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I remember feeling fearful and helpless.

This time however, I just nodded.

Because my friend was right.

Since moving to New York in late 2021, I’ve been able to build a life that would make my 20-year old self incredibly proud.

Green card ✅
Working for a great company ✅
Lots of travel ✅
Earning multiple 6 figures ✅
Having a strong community ✅
Having a wonderful partner ✅
Living in a luxury building in NYC ✅
Having passion projects on the side ✅

The ability to say yes to spending quality time and making memories with people I love.

And to set and enforce boundaries to anything that appears to be a threat to this life I’ve built with so much work and intention.

Check. Check. Check.

On Monday morning, I woke up feeling really overwhelmed.

Too many emails in my inbox.

Too many people expecting favors.

Too many people visiting NYC this month.

And when you’re in that mindset it’s so easy to start questioning everything and spiral.

As Billie Jean King once said: Pressure is a privilege.

The version of me who felt helpless would trade places with me in a second.

She wouldn’t call this overwhelming.

She’d call it the dream.

So on the mornings I forget:

Freedom isn’t a finish line I’m still running toward.

It’s what I’m already standing in, usually while complaining about my inbox.

What’s on your “too much” list right now that used to be on your “someday” list?

❣️ Thamina’s Top Picks

💬 I’m co-hosting a workshop on how to build a personal brand outside your 9-5 while still working a 9-5 (watch me spill all the tea)

🫶 Non-Sexual Things Emotionally Safe Men Do

🏘️ Capitalism destroyed the village and then sold it back to us

👜 I recently bought this relatively inexpensive bag and I love it because it looks expensive and can fit two laptops

✨ This week’s Moodboard

Post credits go to Hamna,💗, Chelsea Phillips, Juanita Castro️

💸 Cooking up Wealth

Earlier this week, I had dinner on the patio at Joanne Trattoria, Lady Gaga's family's restaurant. It’s an event I'm still thinking about.

When you live in New York, Broadway has and (hopefully) always will be at the center of the cultural zeitgeist.

So when a friend and previous collaborator, Catherine Gray, Executive Producer of Show Her the Money, reached out and invited me to a private dinner to learn more about the opportunity to invest in a specific Broadway show, I couldn’t say no.

And let me be honest and lead with the numbers.

The minimum check size to invest in Broadway is $25,000, often $50,000.

I’m not writing that kind of check.

I could, technically. But I'd have to sell a meaningful chunk of my vested stock to do it, and I'd be putting that money into a risky asset class.

So I'm likely not doing that this year unless a lower entry point was offered to me.

So why am I writing to you about a deal I'm probably not doing?

Well, first of all because Broadway is short on real women’s stories. Not because audiences don’t want them. But because of who writes the checks.

A new Broadway musical can easily cost anywhere between $10 and $25 million to put on. That money usually comes from private investors.

So a small group of people decides which stories get built.

Which get staged.

Which get licensed, toured, and performed by every high school theater program in America for the next thirty years.

Culture gets funded before it gets watched.

My friend and co-host of the event Catherine put it like this: "This is our golf course."

So how does investing in Broadway actually work?

1) You buy a unit in an LLC.

2) You have to be accredited. Net worth over $1 million excluding your primary residence, or income over $200,000 individually (or $300,000 with a spouse) for two consecutive years with the same expected this year.

3) Every profitable week pays investors first. After operating costs, 100% of weekly profit goes to investors until you've been paid back in full. That moment is called recoupment.

4) After recoupment, the split flips. Net profits are typically split 50/50 between producers and investors, and investors usually share in ancillary income too, such as merchandise, licensing, touring.

The long tail is real, and it's the upside case. A show that recoups and then licenses out can pay for decades. Wicked investors have seen returns above 1000%. That is the exception, not the expectation of course.

And once you’re “in”, you’re in.

There was a woman sitting at my table who had just invested in her 6th Broadway show and she shared that once she had made her first investment, other opportunities started automatically come her way.

I’m sharing this because the big lesson here is: You have to get in the rooms before you can afford the deals.

I didn't get invited to that dinner because I had $25,000 to deploy. I got invited because I've spent years putting myself around women who build things.

The deals came to the room. The room came first.

Dinners. Masterminds. Investor communities. Founder events. Go while you're pre-accredited, ask the questions that make you look like you don't know anything, and learn the mechanics before you have the money.

Because the women who get offered these opportunities at 40 are the women who were sitting quietly in these rooms at 30.

The show itself?

Millennials Are Killing Musicals. Book, music, and lyrics by Nico Juber. Directed by Tony nominee Kristin Hanggi, who directed Rock of Ages.

Written by women. About women. For women.

The big takeaway: Get in the rooms before you can afford the deals.

In abundance,

Please note that I may receive commissions for some but not all my recommendations. I will never recommend something I don’t actually genuinely believe in or haven’t used myself.