“Hey man, you know what? I meant to ask you since I did this last gig and I got a few extra $$ to invest. I got plenty ideas, and I’d like your opinion on that. Did you hear about this drone frenzy thing? It’s easy money, and there’s not much work to be done. It’s supposed to be a walk in the park, we only gonna need a few thousand dollars to buy the drones and then sell them, and there you are. Easy Money. So what do you think?” He asked full of hope and enthusiasm.
“Well, I don’t know man, do you know anything about the drone market?” I said.
“No, I don’t.” He replied.
“Hmm, okay, what about sales and marketing then?” I asked again with my hopes slightly chopped.
“Well, not really, I mean, I’ve sold a few old furniture to a friend of mine once, but you know…he was poor and I got a big heart…I basically gave them to him.” He replied giving me those puppy eyes.
“Okay, I said, let me see. You said you got some money right? Do you also have a few hours a day to spare?” I asked.
“Yes, and yes, lot’s of free time.” He said with a big smile on his face.
“Right, I got the perfect investment for you then! You’re gonna invest in the “Yourself Co.” right away.” I suggested with a big smile.
“What the hell are you talking about bro? Never heard of this company.”
“Oh boy, this is the most valuable company in the world. It’s kinda small now, but you can make it grow into a behemoth. All you have to do is start reading a few books, articles, take some coaching possibly and then some focused action. Then as time passes, you’ll see the “Yourself Co.” grow and become great. This great company is you, my friend.” I said.
“Uhh, I don’t know man, I don’t really enjoy reading and to be honest I don’t have that much time either. Besides, I really need some cold hard cash right now.”
“In that case, I can’t be of much help bro, sorry about that. For me, investing first in yourself is non-negotiable.” I said, and I changed the subject.
And in fact, it is non-negotiable.
My 2-year (limited) experience in entrepreneurship, has shown me that if it weren’t for the initial (and continuous) investment in myself, none of my accomplishment would have been realized.
“Coincidentally” these were the same words, my dear friend and mentor Ilias Tsagklis had said to me a couple of years back when I first met him.
“The key to success is knowledge.” He has said. And boy he was right.
[bctt tweet=”The key to success is knowledge.” username=”projectbebest”]
Fast forward almost two years ahead and even at my level of accomplishment, I can totally vouch for that. Knowledge and investing in yourself first is definitely the way to go.
So what I’m gonna do today is explain to you, why investing in yourself is essentially the only thing you need to do, through some real life experiences from this two couple of years.
Investing in Yourself Co.
Every opportunity, small or big has risen either directly or indirectly through my knowledge and the investment of time and money in me.
Here are some of the most representative examples I had up to now.
Example #1
Even from day one, you cannot simply go wrong with investing in you. Like I said, when I first met Ilias, and after we said a few things about our businesses, his parting piece of guidance was: “Read these 5 books, and then we can take it from there.”
*Thank God* I did, and here we are today.
We are partners in two online businesses, and I’m also going to coach him on Kindle Publishing as well – meaning more moneyyy.
This fact alone shows that if I hadn’t taken the opportunity of reading these books, he wouldn’t be able to help me any further and most probably we wouldn’t want to spend his valuable time with me.
A few months later he admitted, that this is his way of filtering which is worthy for a “2nd coffee” with him and more advanced discussions.
Takeaway
To achieve any result in any area in your life, try to model the people who have done it before you. I was lucky enough to have Ilias in my proximity to help me start.
I was mature enough, to grab this opportunity. Don’t make the mistake of losing a good mentor or potential business partner because of your limited short-term mindset.
Example #2
Very often people ask me, how I came up with the idea of Kindle publishing. Despite the fact that in 2016, publishing eBooks on Amazon is kinda growing, back in 2014 it wasn’t all that well known – especially here in Greece.
But like I said, almost every opportunity that came to my life was directly or indirectly related to my eagerness in investing in myself first.
So this idea was 100% directly to that. After finishing all the five starter books I mentioned earlier, I was fascinated with the “Millionaire Fastlane.” I am a huge fan of MJ DeMarko as well and after finishing his book, I logged into his forum here.
I was simply thrilled to read the stories of other aspiring entrepreneurs and their ideas on how to make money and grow their businesses.
After spending quite a few hours in there, it just “happened” to read a thread about a guy who was starting with Kindle Publishing. He said he had made it up to a point where he was making about $1.5k a month.
After reading the whole thread and the comments, I decided to look more into it. The idea of online publishing seemed absorbing to me and after spending investing a few more hours in my research, I came up with a few starting points.
The rest is history.
Takeaway
To most of you, this might seem like pure luck. I bet you’re thinking: “Okay, you read a book, and then a forum thread and it happened like that. I might read a ton of books and forum threads and nothing good won’t come up.”
I’m sorry to tell you, but this is a loser and a lazy person’s mentality. What I have seen time and again is that the harder I try the luckier I get.
If it weren’t for this thread and this book, another opportunity would have risen. I’ve already read many books, packed with tons of business ideas and opportunities.
But as a wise man would say:
“Ideas are cheap. Execution is worth millions”.
Which brings me to my final example for today.
Example #3
After a couple of months into Kindle publishing, and while I was making about $1k per month, I’ve heard about an opportunity of making my transition to fiction publishing.
I’ve heard about a coach that was supposed to be a guru on online fiction publishing and that her coaching would cost $1000.
Because of my overall approach to reinvesting everything back to my business, at this point, I had nearly zero money to spend.
Not only I couldn’t afford such an expensive coaching, but I was also in debt because of a loan I had already taken to start my brick and mortar business (yes seriously) and an extra loan to start my publishing business.
If you knew me, you would know that I am not such an avid risk taker, and the last thing I wanted was to get another loan on top of the existing ones.
But at that point, I made up my mind, and I said to myself: “This is my business, this is money invested in me and my knowledge. Even if the plan fails, I will acquire more knowledge about online publishing.
And so I did. At this point, I couldn’t take another load, so I had to rely on my good friends to chip in.
Well; this was most probably the best decision I’ve ever made. The coaching was good, it showed me a whole new niche of publishing and how this works, but most importantly it brought me close with a few very successful publishers with whom we later formed an advanced Kindle Publishing mastermind group.
After participating in this mastermind, and after I gave my 100% to this business, it finally paid off. As I said during the last month I made over $5000 from my online businesses and during this month, I project to make more than $8000 between Kindle publishing, and coaching.
This $1k loan from my friend not only paid itself but eventually made me earn multiples of that.
Who knows what might have happened, if I had chickened out in this call, and instead had chosen the “safe” way of not investing some more money in me.
Takeaway
No matter what the cost is (monetary or time), investing in yourself can never go wrong. This is the most robust type of investment there is. This was the best $1k I’ve ever spent on anything, and it paid me back multiple times.
Don’t be afraid to spend a few lousy dollars in acquiring a new skill that might take you months to learn yourself. Time is our most precious commodity and the only one we cannot buy back.
Sure, there is the remote possibility that I could have learned all these techniques myself if I had spent countless hours (and much more money) into trying things.
But is this the correct way? Hell no!
I wouldn’t trade one second of my life for something that I can simply pay to learn it fast, and so you should do as well.
So, back to the story of my friend; My last intel is that he’s currently working in a garage as a mechanic, making $800 a month busting his ass for 12 hours a day.
He needed cold hard cash; he didn’t have time to read…
*As a final note, because you often ask me what is the exact methodology I use, the authors, the designers and the exact promotion techniques I utilize, I decided to put together a thorough program, in which I explain in every detail (videos, scripts, resources), the exact same method I use to get these results.
In case you are interested, this is the program I have put together. Thanks!
