You are your biggest investment. Don't be cheap when it comes to education, health and self-improvement. Continuous improvement is of paramount importance when it comes to your success in business or in life in general.
The best way to invest in you is to always spend more than you think you can afford on education, including degrees, online education, books, audio books, podcasts etc (whatever it takes). You do have time to read. Yes you do; you can listen to audio books during your commute to work or at the gym.
1. Watch, Read, Listen and Learn:
Most online lectures are free and my favorites are inspiring Ted Talks. If you have Wi-Fi and a stationary bike at home you can watch online courses on Udemy or even on YouTube.
Be a voracious reader. Read as many books as you can on successful business people and humanitarians. What are their secrets? Learn from them and watch your career take off.
Invest in a subscription to Audible.com for $15 per month and listen to biographies of successful entrepreneurs. I recently listened to audible books from Marc Benioff, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and many more.
I have always been a voracious reader of biographies of successful people. I love learning from them. What are their recipes for success? How did they do it? Did they lead a well-balanced life on the road to their success?
2. Follow Your Heroes:
Use Twitter to follow your business heroes. They often tweet incredibly motivational quotes that resonate well with me. I love their short snippets of optimism, hope and best practices.
I find it incredibly motivating to know as much as I can about these successful people as most of them came from very uncompromising backgrounds. I love the poor, smart and hungry rags to riches stories. I feel empowered when thinking about them; there are no limits to what you can achieve. These people are no smarter than you are.
I Have Never Met a Successful Person With...
You will never meet a successful person with a negative attitude. If they didn't believe in themselves and in their goals, then they would never have been successful; the quintessential example of this is Richard Branson. I just finished his latest audio book and my goodness does he ever have an amazing positive attitude.
What I have learned from most of the audio books that I have completed on successful people is that the secret of their success is that they all believe that there are no limits to what you can achieve! Keep a journal and write down what made them successful.
3. Write Down Your Goals
The probability of you being incredibly successful rises materially if you simply write down your goals. I write mine in my calendar application on my iPhone as a 6am repeatable calendar entry. When I wake up every day, the first thing I see on my iPhone is that 6am goal calendar entry which makes me want to jump out of bed and have fun working towards achieving my goals.
Successful entrepreneurs have their partners and employees also document all of their goals. A great example of this is Jeff Bezos as he has all of his product managers write a press release that will not be published for at least a year. This way his product managers can focus on filling the gap and making the press release and their goals a reality.
There are countless other amazing examples of simple goal setting strategies from successful people; my favorite one is from Derek Jeter. My son is a huge Derek Jeter fan (I love the Blue Jays but heck Jeter is a great role model). My son read Jeter's book called "The Contract." In the book he wrote that the reason for his success was that his parents made him write a simple one page contract every year from a young age.
Jeter's Contracts with his parents included basic goals, like "I will do well in school, I will do my chores, I will practice baseball, etc." My son has his goals on his wall now. My wife was even cool with the scotch tape he used on the wall!
The most important investment you will ever make is you! Write down your goals, be a voracious reader of published works, watch online videos and follow twitter feeds written by or written on your business and humanitarian heroes. Follow their success blueprints and one day others will follow and read about you as part of the most important investment they ever make.
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