The greatest investments you will ever make will be in your Self.

Not stocks.
Not Bitcoin.
Not gold.
Not real estate.

You.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve dedicated time and money each year for investing in my Self. Sometimes it’s professional—my CFP,®, the CIMA® designation I allowed to lapse, my RLP®, currently the IWA®, and working with my coach. Other times it’s personal—a personal trainer, a drawing course, a DJ course (later this year), a writing course, and a coach to learn how to make beats.

Most of the time, there is a little discomfort about the financial responsibility of investing in my Self, but I revisit my plan and reaffirm that the investment not only fits our financial plan, but my life plan—meaning it is aligned with what is important to me and will help me grow in alignment with my Authentic Life.

Not once has an investment in my Self not been worth it.

Many of them I can directly attribute to business growth and could calculate an ROI if I wanted to, but I never have and never will. I don’t need to confirm that my investments in my Self have a positive ROI because even if on paper there was a “loss”, the experience and wisdom from the investment would have been worth it. Because I’ve made so many investments and have seen how they’ve paid off, it becomes easier to make future investments.

Don’t become attached to obvious financial returns on your investment, because sometimes the return comes in the form of new relationships, new ideas, a new way of seeing something, new skills, and other non-financial rewards that lead to financial returns down the road.

If you are thinking that would be nice, but I don’t have the resources to invest in my Self right now, I’d tell you that you’re wrong.

If you don’t have the financial resources, I’m sure you can create time to make an investment in your Self. There are plenty of free courses available where your only real investment is your time. And many of these free courses offer very reasonable upgrades that will likely fit within your current budget and enhance the overall value of the investment.

For example, my friend Jay Clouse is running a free three-day Summit on building a membership business (aka a community). It was free. All you had to do was show up for three days at 1:00 EST for a couple of hours each day, and you could learn from one of the best community builders and creators in the world, along with some of his friends. If you weren’t able to make the 1:00 time, for $49 you could become a VIP attendee, which provides replays of each day, and on the fourth day, a private live Q&A with Jay—a small cost that I’d argue most people could find $49 to make sure they could attend the Summit and possibly get a question answered by Jay. Now, you may have no interest in launching a community, but this is just an example of the type of opportunities that exist.

And don’t forget YouTube or even your local library.

Take a look at your average daily screen time. You have time to find free or very low-cost opportunities to invest in your Self.

If you are uncomfortable allocating resources to invest in your Self, I will share from my experience that the money aspect sorts itself out, especially when you are living in alignment with your Authentic Life. The more aligned you are, the more you will find that money allocated towards your Authentic Life tends to take care of itself.

When I decided to work with my coach, it was the biggest financial investment I had ever made, aside from starting my company. I committed to working with my coach, even though I wasn’t looking for one and didn't even know how much it would cost. When he told me the monthly amount, and I did the annualized investment, it made me a little uncomfortable—it was almost $30,000 a year. I was sure I could make it work, but I kept thinking about what I could do with that money today or this year with my family, or even how to invest it in my investment account.

But it felt right.

And the investment in my Self with my coach was more than worth it—I didn’t even think twice about re-upping for a second year.

My experience with the coaching investment in my Self is a big part of why I decided to include coaching with the AlignedLife+ relationship I offer at Santiago.

It can be scary or even feel selfish to think about allocating money to invest in your Self. But if the investment aligns with your Authentic Self, I have the utmost confidence it will be worth the time and/or money.

It is worth noting that it is very easy to waste time and money by lying to your Self when you are investing in ways that are misaligned or just get-rich-quick schemes that, deep down, you know aren’t really going to help you. If you hope the investment will work, it's probably misaligned.

In order to grow and evolve, you will need to invest in your Self, and that investment doesn’t have to be a huge financial investment. But it does need to be a meaningful investment of time and energy, aligned with your Authentic Life.

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See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC