My best investment advice

It’s an age-old discussion. Should you invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, or what?

I’ve said repeatedly: Invest in yourself first. Raise the value you contribute to the world and you raise your earning power forever.

I walk the walk.

Last week I spent a half-day with an expert I’ve been following for 15 years. It cost me the equivalent of three months’ salary of what I was making when I first signed up for his email list way back when. And it was a steal.

He’s seen hundreds of businesses like mine up close, and I know from reading his emails and watching his videos that his values match up with mine. Getting his direct input on my work and mindset was like having someone come back from the future and say: “You can wander around trying all the stuff you’re thinking about doing for five years if you really want to. Or you could just focus on these four things and they will bring you the highest return.”

I knew it would pay off because my earlier investments in his consulting already have. It was a gradual process though. When I was starting out on my quest for self-improvement, I had been taught that “gurus” were scams and that knowledge had to be hard-won from years of poring over books. That’s what teachers and professors have been telling us, right? After college, I looked at training opportunities as expenses, not investments.

And now, it seems like there’s so much free advice on YouTube and blogs, why should anyone pay hard-earned money for it?

My hard-earned answer is: you get what you pay for. There is in fact great information for free online. But you may need to “pay” hundreds of hours sifting through it to find the key elements that are what YOU need right now. For example, I’ve analyzed dozens of free tutorials on media pitching online. About half of them do a good job hitting the same 8-10 key points (the other half do a poor job hitting those same points). If you were serious about learning how to dominate the pitching game and you relied solely on that info, it’d be like looking at the world through blinders that only allowed in 10 percent of the available light.

After I returned from my session with my business mentor, I held a call with one of my new coaching clients. Together we uncovered an insight that’s going to allow her to double her rates overnight. It’s value she has already created, but she couldn’t see it by herself. The investment she made in her professional development has already paid for itself several times over.

Invest in yourself. Raise your earning power just one percent a month, and the compound interest on that is astronomical.