Let’s dive into the concept of investing in yourself.
Not so long ago, I thought paying a couple thousand dollars for a course, or a couple thousand dollars for a mastermind, or a couple thousand dollars for a conference was just insane. Why would anybody pay that amount of money when you can learn this stuff for free online?
But in the past couple years, my investments into groups like Entrepreneurs’ Organization, which probably costs about $8,000 per year, and Young Entrepreneurs Council, which is like $1,000 per year, have paid off so many times.
Compared to when I first came into Single Grain, I didn’t know a lot of things related to business processes. Basic things around operations, finance, even something like a 10-week cash flow document—I learned all these skills through my EO forum.
I learned all these processes because these guys already had that experience. The guys in my forum are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. They’ve all gone through a lot of these things, and they were able to help me sidestep a lot of mistakes that I would have made on my own. Quite frankly, as a business owner, that’s worth more than a couple thousand dollars, right?
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that without Entrepreneurs’ Organization, my company wouldn’t be around today, because I wouldn’t have been able to sidestep so many mistakes. And it’s not just avoiding mistakes that makes groups like EO worth it—the camaraderie of working with other entrepreneurs who understand what I’m going through is priceless.
Learn More: The Benefits of Joining a Mastermind Group
Being able to build relationships with people, working closely with people in my forum…it’s been a really rewarding experience to do exciting stuff with really smart entrepreneurs and be a part of this organization where there’s 10,000 people worldwide. And they’re all just trying to create great businesses and add more value to the world.
If Young Entrepreneurs Council can get me into even two publications as a contributor in one year, it’s already more than paid for itself, right? But it gives me much more than that. I’m able to drop into Summit at Sea in Miami and text everyone and all of a sudden we’re all hanging out together. That’s powerful. And when I went to San Diego for Traffic & Conversion Summit, I did the same thing, I looked up who in YEC was there and we all got together.
Summit at Sea is anywhere from $3,000-$10,000. But to be able to meet with so many great people on that boat, where I literally want to have lunch with every single person, makes it more than worth it for me. It was like: “Oh, there’s Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. There’s Scott Belsky, the founder of Behance over there. Gary Vaynerchuk is standing over there. And there’s Eric Schmidt from Google.”
So, even though that event was quite expensive, I’ve started to build lifelong friendships from that. And it’s because of those interactions. Same thing with Traffic & Conversion conference. This time, I took my team, because I knew they were going to learn a lot. And we bonded together more as a team and just had a good time together. Whatever they decide to do with their career, I hope this was a good stepping stone for them to learn a lot.
The moral of the story is that a lot of these expensive investments might not pay off immediately for you. These things take time to manifest. Sometimes, it might take a year or two to close a deal. And that’s okay. I don’t go to these events just to say, “I’m here to get more business.”
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Ultimately, at the end of the day, I know that the more relationships I can build, the more people I can help. It all comes back to building goodwill, right? Your compensation in the future is based directly on the value that you’re adding to people in the present.
So I’m not really worried about dollar figures at this point. I’m constantly putting out content all the time, and I know that it’s helping at least one person out there. The unsolicited feedback that I’m getting from time to time for the Marketing School podcast and my Growth Everywhere podcast is all the validation I need.
I’m doing these entrepreneur happy hours once a month, where I’ll pay for drinks and food. And I’ll do these monthly entrepreneur dinners, too. In a sense, I’m investing in myself and investing in the future. Because I know that if I’m able to connect these people, great things are going to happen. Not necessarily directly for me, but there’s going to be great value created. And I just want to be able to facilitate that. I want to be able to create that helpful ecosystem.
That being said, I obviously did the math for how much it costs. This year alone, these expenses are $20,000-$25,000. A few years ago I would’ve thought that that was an insane cost for something that isn’t delivering immediate ROI. But the way I see things now, it’s worth it. I’m enjoying the community that we’re building in downtown L.A. These things take time, just like any kind of relationship takes time to manifest and grow.
So, if you ask me whether you should pay for that $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000 seminar, I’m going to say: if it’s the right timing for you, go for it.
I’ve seen people get massive value from these things. Is it worth it for you to pay $50,000 a year for a coach? Not if you’re only making $100,000 per year. But if you’re in the high six figures and this coach could push you into seven figures? Absolutely.
So take a step back and block out some time for a strategy day to figure out what kinds of conferences make sense. What kinds of events you should be throwing? What else should you be doing to enhance yourself? What else can you do to level up?
This post was adapted from Eric’s Facebook Live videos: Growth 90 – DAILY live broadcasts with Eric Siu on marketing and entrepreneurship. Watch the video version of this post:
I am talking to my book guy in a couple hours and we’re going to review the book I’m writing right now called Level Up.
Every single thing that you do, whether you’re just choosing a business name with a name business generator that provides unique, memorable, and long-lasting ideas, starting a new business from scratch, or coming up with the idea, you have to validate it. You have to do some customer development as well. Maybe you’ll go to LegalZoom and get the right documents in place and get your operating agreement in place.
You have all those things you need to learn, and then after you figure out how to start a business, you need to learn how to actually get customers and build a repeatable process.
Basically, you’re just leveling up over time.
A lot of times, aspiring entrepreneurs will look to established entrepreneurs for inspiration. And they’ll see that everything is perfect on Instagram. Everyone is doing well. Everybody is killing it. They have nice cars. They have such nice lives. Meanwhile, you’re struggling to make ends meet.
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Sometimes, you can look at that stuff and get very envious. This happens to all entrepreneurs. The thing they don’t realize is that this type of comparison is pointless, and actually hurtful. You can’t really compare your chapter 1 to somebody else’s chapter 25, right?
So don’t just look at the present day success and the fruits of their labor—think about the labor itself. When I look at the entrepreneurs that have had multiple businesses or multiple bestsellers, they put in the work at the very beginning to get to where they are.
To give you an example, the billionaire Chuck Feeney (a great guy, by the way), pretty much the father of duty-free shopping, amassed an $8 billion fortune. He was once one of the top 10 richest guys in the world. And he’s well known for giving all that money away, before Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or any of those other philanthropists started doing it.
Here’s what’s interesting. In the book about his life, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t, the first half doesn’t mention his philanthropy at all. Instead, it talks about how cutthroat things could be in the duty-free world, how he had to fight tooth and nail to get to where he got.
What Chuck Feeney is known for today, his incredible philanthropy, came after all that leveling up he had to do to get to where he was as a business owner.
The moral of the story? No one becomes an overnight success, much less a self-made billionaire. You can’t just look at Instagram pics and think to yourself, “Oh man, I can’t wait to get to that point. I wish I was there right now.” You have to put in the time.
You also have to realize that you can’t try to take shortcuts all the time because shortcuts don’t work. Most people who come to me are the people who are looking for shortcuts. They’ll email me or send me a random message. And I’m like, “Dude, you just have to put in the time.” It’s not like anybody else around you is that much smarter than you. They just put in more hours than you have.
You just have to be patient, and you have to focus on beating the current level that you’re at, and then level up to the next thing.
Tony Hsieh of Zappos tells his team, “We’re honestly just trying to get 1% better every single day.” So take it one day at a time. You don’t have to try to do too much in one day. Just think about the 3 to 4-year journey, then the 10-year journey.
Whatever it is that you’re looking for, just be patient and focus on the concept of leveling up. That’s all you need to do. You just need to put in time for each level, learn a lot, take the experience, and then go to the next thing. It’s basic stuff that we’re all taught, but I think we all forget from time to time because we all go into auto-pilot around our daily tasks.
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What are the mistakes I made in the last few years? Sometimes, I’m trying to do too many things at once. This year, I’m trying to say no to more things so I can focus on growing and leveling up the things that I already have. Because I want to play the ultimate game of philanthropy.
Whether you think of business as a game or you think of it as just gaining more experience, you need to level up.
This post was adapted from Eric’s Facebook Live videos: Growth 90 – DAILY live broadcasts with Eric Siu on marketing and entrepreneurship. Watch the video version of this post:
How Truebill Launched on Product Hunt (1k+ Upvotes) And Netted 2,500 New Users
Hello everybody, today we have Yahya Mokhtarzada, co-founder of Truebill, a software service that helps us find, track, and cancel our paid subscriptions.
In today’s interview, we’ll be talking about how Truebill got 10,000 signups without paying customer acquisition costs, why subscription commerce is replacing traditional commerce, and how Yahya saw a pain point in managing the-ever increasing amount of subscription services that people have and developed a product to fix that pain point.
Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: How Truebill Launched on Product Hunt (1k+ Upvotes) And Netted 2,500 New Users TRANSCRIPT
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