First invest in yourself
Benjamin Franklin once said ‘an investment in knowledge pays the best dividends’, and I must agree with him.
Blogger: Matthew Bateman, Property Mentoring Professional, The Property Mentors
If you are just starting out in your investment journey, or even if you have a few properties in your portfolio already, it may seem counter-intuitive to focus your next investment not on property, or shares or other investments such as businesses, rare metals, or collectibles … but on yourself.
The simple fact of the matter is that you are going to pay for your financial education, one way or another. The choice all investors need to make is: do you pay a fixed and known price up-front for that education; or do you pay whatever price the markets demand from you?
Let me explain what I mean here.
In all investment markets, money consistently moves from the uneducated to the educated.
When I started on my investment journey, I am not too proud to admit that I lost bucketloads of money.
I had two things going against me right from the start.
- I honestly didn’t know what I was doing.
- I did not have a clear strategy or plan.
Because I didn’t have a plan I just chased every shiny new investment strategy or system out there, often those with the promise of a quick buck or accelerated return.
Being uneducated and naive, I put my trust in the wrong people (largely because I didn’t trust myself to make the right decisions) and I simply didn’t know what questions I should have been asking of my professional team.
So after losing literally hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as years of investment time, I finally woke up and made an important decision: I was not going to continue to throw money at the markets with the vague hope or prayer that I was going to be able to make some back.
Instead, I made the conscious decision to invest my time and my money in becoming financially educated.
No longer would I blindly follow the lead of investment advisers or so-called gurus, who I now know were often receiving sizeable commissions for said ‘advice’.
I would pick asset classes that I could understand, that I was passionate about and that I could add value to via my skill and knowledge.
I then spent many years, and well in excess of a quarter of a million dollars, on my own financial education.
Perhaps like some of you I read everything I could find, including property articles, magazines and books.
I became a seminar junkie.
I paid what I thought at the time was large sums of money for private mentoring and coaching, building up my library of knowledge, which in hindsight would become the platform for all my future success.
While I personally chose business to provide me with an income source and chose property as my preferred wealth-building asset class, that is not to say that will be the right mix for you.
However, once I had my strategy I systematically went about creating the financial results I desired.
This is the same strategy I still use today, running multiple businesses as income sources while I continue to expand and grow my property portfolio.
I am sure you will agree there is a stark difference between someone simply buying an investment property and someone becoming a professional property investor. If all you want to do is buy an investment property, there are plenty of people out there who will happily take your money to show you how.
The most important thing to understand here is that the catalyst for my success was the conscious decision to invest first in my education and second towards creating a financial blueprint and sticking to it!
