Invest In Yourself Heavily - The World Needs You, Badly!

I have the most supportive spouse in the world.

She's incredible.

I'm not just saying this to hopefully have this post get back to her and earn some brownie points.

(Someone please forward this to her, LOL)

If you knew what I spent our family's money on over the last 15 years, you'd understand...

Here's just a sampling:

1. $3,500 U.S. on "coaching" provided over the phone to teach me how to build an online business... This lasted about six phone calls before I gave up in the embarrassment of my achievements and stopped doing the calls.
2. $1,500 to fly to Red Deer, Alberta to attend a conference to teach me about becoming a millionaire. Burning vacation time to do it.
3. $500 deposit given at that conference for myself and my wife to attend the follow-up session.... That we never attended.
4. One of my ALL TIME personal favourites... $5,000 U.S. for a box of tapes on real estate investing. A box of tapes!!! It arrived at our door and I had to buy a ghetto blaster thingy and countless D batteries from Zellers to listen to them in the car because my Honda Civic had a CD player and not a tape player. (P.S. I already knew about 95% of what was on those tapes but learned some cool stuff about public speaking which I put to use at an Oracle Corp. sales gathering that same week).
5. $100/month for several years to listen to conference calls on personal development.
6. Several nights each month travelling to a conference of some sort.
7. $8,000 on real estate coaching that included a mentor I was not allowed to call... He would call me once a month for the next six months on a private line for 30min each.
8. $25/week forever for books.
9. Hundreds of dollars on random personal development programs each year, CD, tapes, etc.
10. Taking vacation time from my job to NOT go on vacation and get my real estate license by driving to London, ON every day for a week, while we had moved into a new house and she managed the kids and painted the garage door.
11. Together with Nick, borrowing $30,000 to buy a box of marketing material and real estate systems that arrived at our house and was left in front of the garage doors unattended.  $30,000 U.S. for a box that was abandoned on my driveway unattended... You can't even make this stuff up!
12. Going at least $80,000 into debt with Nick to start this business.
13. Quitting my job while Carol was at home with the kids (four-year-old son and a ten-month-old daughter) and a mortgage on the house.
14. Borrowing more money to pay for our first real estate office within a brokerage... A converted broom closet (it was the cheapest).
15. Over the last few years going on countless masterminds, conferences, events all over North America.
16. And again, ongoing spending on books and more books.
17. Ongoing travel to events, masterminds, etc.
18. A whole host of other "investments."

How my amazing wife let me get away with this is simply amazing.

This must be true love 🙂

Nick has a similar list.

I vividly remember sitting next to him in one of those U.S. based travelling real estate millionaire seminars, when he stood up during the sales pitch and spent $10,000 on a week-long course.

I almost fainted seeing him do that.

But looking back, I strongly feel that all of those items had a profound effect on my current life.

And it's strange, sometimes an idea or principle from a $20 book would have a more profound impact on me than the $1,000 event I attended.

You never know where you'll pick up something that can change the course of your life.

And all joking aside, that $5,000 box of tapes that I purchased transformed me in a lot of ways.

I was fairly shy, not a confident speaker, and pretty anxious around the idea of quitting and going out on my own.

Those tapes helped me take the next step in my own journey.

Even that event I went to in Red Deer, Alberta, had an impact on me that changed my thinking about my own future every so slightly.

All of these little changes compounded together, I'm 100% convinced, have benefited me hugely.

And this is where YOU come in...

If you are reading this and trying to figure out what you're higher calling is, what your purpose on this planet is, what you can give to the world...

KEEP GOING.

Please, keep going.

We ALL need you.

You have a very specific gift to offer the world and we are all waiting for you to figure it out and share it.

If there's anything we can share from our own, ongoing, never-ending journey, it's this...

Invest in yourself.

Read the books.

Go to the seminars.

Hang out with the proper friends.

Put yourself in uncomfortable positions.

Stretch, grow, reach for the stars.

Things are not always going to work out, but every little failure along the way is another step to your own personal success.

We need you to make those failures.

We need you to trip, and more importantly, we need you to get up again.

Nick and are both 100% convinced that we all have something very special inside of us to share with the world, and if you feel like you're not living your true potential just yet, that's OK...

... Just keep going.

Read, listen, study, research, explore, travel, and be open to it.

Listen closely...

If two Mississauga boys can figure out how to quit their jobs and go out on their own, so can you.

Looking back, we feel very fortunate to have the upbringing we had.

A mix of construction sites on March Breaks and meditation camps on Summer Breaks.

A mix of harvesting potatoes and loading them on donkeys in Europe, and also, visiting Disney World in Florida.

(How's that for polar opposites... Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

Your own journey shapes the way you're going to speak to the world, it's unique, it's rare, and we're all here waiting for it.

So if you're out there on your own, please know there are others.

We're all going down this path together, one-half scared and the other half petrified, of the journey.

But there is one thing we know for sure...

The investment you pour into yourself does pay dividends.

The way you look at the world.

The way you understand money.

The way you affect the people around you... All comes from how much you invest in yourself.

So don't be shy to invest into your most important asset... YOU.

Sometimes the results are not immediate, but each small change in yourself compounds and builds and snowballs.

And before you know it, a momentum builds and you're unstoppable!

Keep going, we're excited for you. You'll make the world a better place.

Until next time ... Your Life! Your Terms!