The Best Investment You Can Make
I'm not going to say what you think I'm going to say.
I get at least one or two emails a week from young people asking me about investing advice.
Today, I will be writing directly to these young people. Investing looks a lot different for people under 30 than it does for people over 30.
So, young people … do you want to know what the best investment for you to make is? Here’s my answer.
INVEST IN YOURSELF.
Yes, I realize how cliche that statement is. But I need you to understand the return on investment when you start investing in yourself at a young age.
What does it mean to invest in yourself? I will talk specifically about 3 different personal assets. They are …
your skillset
your brand
your reputation
Let me explain.
LFG. 🔥
Invest In Your Skillset
When I was 24, I got sober. It was then I decided to build an SEO business in the behavioral health space. But there was a problem, I didn’t know anything about SEO. I had to teach myself.
Every day, I would …
read Copyblogger
Read Britney Muller
Listen to Hack The Entrepreneur
I invested all my time, money, and energy on becoming the best lead generation expert in the behavioral health industry possible. For the first 5 years, I had almost nothing to show for it. But eventually, my investments started to pay off.
I’m now 38 years old and I can confidently (and I hope, humbly) say that I’m probably the most well known digital marketing and lead generation expert in the space. There are obviously other professionals in my space that are well recognized. But the point I’m making is that the early investment I made on developing my skillset is the investment that has generated the most compounding returns.
My advice:
take courses
hire a coach (I have a business coach and a fitness coach)
read everything you can
practice and fail in public
do more
It will pay off. I promise.
Invest In Your Brand
This is my favorite definition of a brand.
“Your brand is not how many people you know, but how many people know you.”
Your brand isn’t your website or your color scheme. It’s definitely not your logo. Your brand is what people think of when they hear your name.
As much as I acknowledge my love / hate relationship with Gary Vaynerchuk, it was he who taught me the value of brand and the importance of building your online reputation through sharing your ideas.
I chose to share my ideas by writing long form content. These days, I also engage more on social media and YouTube. But 15 years later, I still generate a huge majority of my business by writing my daily newsletter. (Yes, the on you’re reading now).
The game hasn’t changed much. I continue to share my ideas in public and as a result, some of my ideas spread and turn into relationships, opportunities, and money.
A lot of people know who I am. This is especially true in the healthcare space, which is a space that isn’t as infatuated with social media, likes, and follows as is the creator space.
But if you count my social media presence, my influence has grown at an insane rate. This sounds simplistic, but the truth is that I stated publishing blog posts in 2011. I made an intentional decision to invest in my brand, and again, the return has been 10X.
Invest In Your Reputation
One of the well known secrets of successful business owners is the value of referrals.
Ask any business owner who makes serious money. They will tell you that the majority of their deals come from personal referrals. Contrary to what all the internet gurus tell you, advertising and Instagram will not create the majority of your growth. True success comes when customers tell their friends about you.
So how do you manufacture referrals?
By doing great work.
It’s incredible to me how many terrible DMs I get on Twitter from people trying to sell me something who don’t have any credibility. They usually don’t even have a good headshot.
Life, wtf is this?
If you’re young and you’re building your business, my advice is to focus 100% of your energy on doing great work, and then asking your current customers to tell their friends about the work you did.
Obviously, you will need to beg borrow and steal in order to generate your initial revenue, and of course, you may have to send a cold DM or do some networking on social media.
But the point I’m making is that your reputation is just another word for “do you do what you say you will do?”
Don’t fall into the trap of “marketing.” Your reputation is the best marketing asset you will ever own.
This Is The Advice You Don’t Want
I know you want a short cut. It’s so much more gratifying to discover a hack or a framework to success. But in my experience, there is no such thing.
You build your business one deal, one client, and one step at a time.
I’m not saying that you should totally ignore the stock market and you should put all your chips in on whatever business you’re growing. I advocate anyone start dollar cost averaging into the stock market as soon as possible.
The lesson I want you to walk away with is how important it is to develop yourself as a formidable person in your field. If you know what you’re doing, then you are un-fuck-with-able.
But that level of authority does not come for free. You must put in the hours. You must make the personal investments (time, energy, and money) into becoming the sort of person that gravitates success to you.
Start now. Your future self will thank you.
Enjoy the weekend. Love you guys.
Tim
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