My level of motivation and focus has been soaring these days, because I have been investing in myself and realizing new strategies to implement to get me to the next level.
Why You Need to Invest in Yourself
Invest 3% of Your Income into Yourself
While I was on a cruise going from Hong Kong to Taiwan, I checked out a book at their library called “No Excuses” by Brian Tracy. One of the lessons it taught was to invest 3% of your income into your personal development. I love how the book quantified that number as that percentage is a good guideline for how much you should be investing in yourself. For example, if you make $100,000 a year, you would spend $3,000 a year investing in yourself and learning new skills, or whatever is going to progress you in your journey. This 3% can act like a solid starting point because you can continuously add onto it if you find that this concept delivers results. In the book, he mentioned one of his followers implemented this practice and ended up increasing this 3% to 10%, and ultimately went from making $20k per year to $1 million per year.
If you want to get to point B, but you’ve been stuck on point A, doing the same stuff over and over again obviously isn’t going to get you to point B. Like Albert Einstein says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
This is why it’s crucial to invest in resources that may take you on a path towards your goals, and this is why most successful people read a lot. If you’re dreaming of being an accomplished entrepreneur/business owner or have other lofty goals, it is unreasonable to complain about not reaching those dreams if you’re not putting in the time and money towards success.
Difficulties around Investing in Yourself
I used to have difficulty when it came to investing money in myself because I’m very financial freedom-focused, which made me conscious of lowering expenses wherever necessary. I kept feeling like I could get away with not having to spend as much money on learning when there were so many free resources out there.
Back in the day, June 2016 at a cafe in Athens, Greece
Another reason why I avoided investing in courses was that there was a lot of stigma around the idea of so-called “gurus”. There were many cases in Chiang Mai where these “gurus”would teach you how to make money but don’t actually know how to do it themselves. However, they would profit from selling courses. That was a big reason why I stayed away from paying large amounts of money on courses, as it was unclear if they were going to be scams or if they were actually going to provide real value.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there are tons of course reviews with actual case studies proving that many of the existing courses are very beneficial and should be looked into. When I bought Learn Plan Profit, for example, I wanted to see if I would learn new nuggets of knowledge around stock market day trading. I ended up really benefiting from the course and felt like the money invested was worth it. So after that realization, it made me want to spend more money on building my skills and learning the exact strategies around creating a strong brand.
My Goals
Now that I’ve been making consistent passive income through Etsy and Amazon, my focus is to build my brand to teach people how to do the same so they can live financially and location independent. And for me to do this I’ll have to master the art of bootstrap marketing for my blog and building a brand. I have a good overview but investing in courses from successful people will make sure I am tackling all the methods recommended. There are many different components when it comes to building a brand, that there are still some areas around sales funnels and affiliate marketing that I could improve on. And for me to get to that next level I need to see what successful people are doing and emulate those strategies.
My Realization
Now that I’m working full-time as well as making income from my passive income on the side, it’s more reason to put that money back into the business as well as into my own learning. There’s no reason for me not to invest that money because I’m not using it anywhere else right now. I don’t really spend too much as I save a lot of my income.
I realized I have been investing more into my business rather than into myself. I purchased a professional camera, which is helpful for creating video content for my businesses (and for my music), and I also purchased help when it comes to getting writing and social media work outsourced. But I wasn’t purchasing enough courses to really progress me to the next level for marketing and building a brand. It is crucial to invest in your business, however it is equally, if not more important to invest in yourself cause you’re learning what you don’t know.
I decided I would purchase courses to further understand how to monetize my blog and actually push myself to do it. The next problem I had was I didn’t know which courses to actually buy. Some of the previous courses I had bought were from random Google searches of best marketing courses, best blog courses, or best real estate investment courses. Every time I bought from these links, the material wasn’t good enough to change the game for me.
Then I decided I should find successful bloggers who I trust and figure out the courses THEY recommend or perhaps check out any courses they had launched themselves. That led me down a rabbit hole of looking for influencers and finding the right courses that would benefit me.
My Latest Investment (Pinterest Traffic Avalanche)
I spoke with my friend who is a full-time blogger, Jason from Frugal for Less, and he talked to me about Pinterest being a huge traffic driver for his website. That sparked my interest, and it made me realize that I haven’t been doing much at all on the social media end. This led me to come across Pinterest Traffic Avalanche and this course was created by a couple who started their blog about 3 years ago and worked extremely hard on their Pinterest strategy. They ended up making an income within a few months time and now after two or three years, they currently make around $160,000 a month. All they focus on is organic traffic from Pinterest without much attention on Google SEO. All of this drove me to buy the course after reading a few more reviews.
I am about 80% finished with the course, and it has already driven me to revamp my entire Pinterest strategy. I’ve started investing in Pinterest schedulers like Tailwind and using photo edit tools like Canva, as well as implementing a lot of the techniques that the course talks about. I realize how I’ve been doing it all wrong when it comes to Pinterest. I redid all of my boards and my pins and have figured out bigger picture what things I need to focus on and what I shouldn’t have been focusing on.
My current goal for 2018 is to increase my site traffic by at least by a multiple of 2, and increase my Pinterest viewers by at least 4x. The course also gave me understanding of why scheduling is crucial to Pinterest. Initially I didn’t want to pay $10 a month for Tailwind to schedule posts, because I didn’t know if it was actually going to save me that much more time. But after hearing about how Tailwind is an absolute necessity for Jason and other bloggers I know, I decided to invest in it and I realized how much time I have been wasting without using it.
Update: Since writing this post, I have started seeing results with Pinterest:
I used to have 0 referral views from Pinterest but it looks like one or two pins hit and gave me 71 views without much work! The great thing about Pinterest is its post lifespan is a lot longer than other social media channels. We’ll see if this continues and grows, and check out Pinterest Traffic Avalanche if you want to start getting results with Pinterest.
Ultimately this course has now changed the way I’m doing things, and it led me to buy two more courses another one by the same couple – Six-Figure Blogger – as well as another course, Blogging and Affiliate Marketing by Pajama Affiliates. I’ve only just started Six-Figure Blogger and haven’t checked out the other course, so I’ll keep you guys posted on how they are.
How Investing in Myself has Impacted Me
These courses have already changed the way I’m doing things, has helped me think smarter, and has helped me understand how to build my blog. And the books I’ve bought this year have already changed my perspective on life and business. Investing in yourself is sort of a life hack, because sometimes one sentence from a book or one small lesson from a course can change how you approach things. I’m learning this first-hand, and I honestly regret not purchasing courses earlier in my digital nomad journey because I would have saved a lot of time and approached my blog differently. But anyway, better late than never! Hope you guys enjoyed this post and let me know if you have any comments below.
Resources I mentioned in this post. If you’re looking for courses to invest in for your own businesses I would recommend these:
- Learn Plan Profit – This is a stock trading course. You can check out my review of LPP here.
- Pinterest Traffic Avalanche – Great course on using Pinterest as the main focus for marketing your blog
- Tailwind – Saves TONS of time for Pinterest
- Six-Figure Blogger – Course about monetizing your blog. I’m just starting it.
- Blogging and Affiliate Marketing by Pajama Affiliates – I haven’t started this course yet but I heard it’s good and advanced (but disorganized). It was only $97 when I bought it so I figured why not.
- Sony A6500 Camera – Camera recommended by friends that I’m currently using
Note: This post contains affiliate links, meaning I would receive a percentage of the products if you purchase through my links, but at no additional cost to you. I do this to help finance the free content that I publish on my website, so I appreciate your support! I only recommend products that I have used and can stand behind.
