From 2010 to 2019, Netflix stock yielded a 3,726.2 percent return, making it the most profitable stock in the past decade.
If you were to invest $1,000 at the start of the decade, without putting any additional money in, you’d end up with a little bit over $37,000. If you knew that investing $1,000 now would give you $37,000 later, you’d probably find a way to come up with the money, right?
What if I told you that I personally made an investment that yielded a 5,000 percent return?
Would you believe me? Because this is exactly what I did.
I’m being serious when I say there is a form of investment that will help you generate a higher return than any stock on planet earth.
If you learn how to use this investment properly, you can transform your entire life. I’m going to tell you the story of my 50x return, and by the end of this post, you’ll realize that I’m not exaggerating when I talk about this form of investment.
This seemingly gimmicky headline and introduction will make perfect pragmatic sense.
I Rolled the Dice, and It Worked
I have many stories of being broke and trying to figure out how to escape the rat race, but this is my favorite one. The mother of my child was pregnant at the time. We were living in her parents’ basement paying them zero rent so we could save enough money to move out of the house.
I’d started writing about a year prior — practicing, getting my footing, and trying to figure out how to begin to plant the seeds of a career. I considered the idea of writing a book. I’d tried and failed a few times already. Eventually, I came across this online course that taught you how to publish your first book on Amazon.
Price tag? $1,000. I forget exactly how much money I had back then, but let’s just say it was a significant portion of my net worth. I must have visited the sales page a few dozen times.
You know those sales pages for online courses. They make the process seem so easy and they fill you with hope. But in the back of your mind, you’re worried about either being scammed or just not following through with the information. I was new to the concept of online courses altogether, so I was really skeptical.
Eventually, I pulled the trigger. I pulled the trigger because I figured getting scammed out of $1,000 was worse than having to think $1,000 was a lot of money for the rest of my life. To date, I’ve made more than $50,000 of profit from my three books combined, a 50x return, or a 5,000 percent return on investment.
The ebook portion of my income is currently one of the smallest ones.
I make six-figures per year writing on Medium. and have various other income streams that make for a healthy living. I can credit a number of investments I’ve made over the years that gave me the skills and knowledge to build said income.
‘My Portfolio’:
- Books – The ROI on books is insane. Great books should cost $1,000 or more, not the $10-30 they go for. Ideas from books can literally help you make millions, even billions, in the future. Just ask serial readers like Warren Buffet or Charlie Munger. Reading doesn’t cause success, of course. But it correlates well with it.
- Online courses – At this point, if I see an online course that will help me solve a problem or shortcut my learning curve, I’ll buy it. I have many courses sitting in the background that I haven’t fully gone through yet because I thought they were valuable enough to buy during the launch window.
- Coaching – I paid a coach $1,100 a month to talk to her for an hour and a half each month. This has already yielded a positive ROI and will almost certainly help me add another six-figure income stream to my business.
The best investment you can make is the investment you make in yourself.
Charlie Munger has a quote:
I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.
Investing money into resources that help you become a learning machine will, in the long-run, yield a high ROI. Of course, you have to find the right information and build the right skills, but taking the time and putting some financial skin in the game to your own learning can transform your life.
You don’t even need to invest money either. You can simply invest your time.
Another quote:
The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.
Get out of your own way and realize that you’re only a handful of skillsets away from being able to do pretty much anything you want.
Start Building Your Wealth Today by Betting on Yourself
I have multiple products and programs, but I’m not trying to sell them to you right now.
I only want to sell you on the idea of investing in yourself.
Ramit Sethi has a good saying:
Show me someone’s calendar and their spending, and I’ll show you their priorities.
Think about what you tell yourself when you spend money on yourself. Also, think about what you tell yourself about yourself when you freely spend money on everything else but get cold feet when it comes to furthering your knowledge and building skills.
You second guess buying that business book, but gladly spend the same amount to buy a burrito at Chipotle.
$500 for an online course gives you pause, but $1,000 for a phone is a no brainer.
Maybe the biggest swindle of all, many of us have spent tens of thousands of dollars to get degrees and get fancy jobs to buy toys, but hesitate when it comes to investing in a self-taught education.
I’m not telling you what to do. I can only tell you my experiences. I’ve never once been scammed. I’ve made money on every one of these ‘investments.’
When you think about it, these types of investments truly can, and often do, perform any other type of investment available to you.