When’s the last time you’ve paid good money to purchase a product that will make you a better blogger?
When’s the last time you’ve ordered a book, purchased a training course, or signed up for a program that will grow your knowledge of business, marketing, or entrepreneurship?
How much time do you allocate towards growing your own personal skill set?
If you’re like most people in the world today, you ignore these things completely. And by doing so, you end up like most other people in the world today – unsuccessful, unhappy, and in huge financial trouble.
Now let me ask you one more question – is that the type of life you want to live?
I didn’t think so.
We Don’t Need No Education
It is unbelievable how many people think I’m anti-education just because I dropped out of college and criticized the way some of them operate.
In my book, The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide To Business, Finance, and Life, I discuss the economic reality of a college education in today’s world, and encourage many people not to go unless they fit a very special set of criteria.
The funny thing is, I’m constantly being proven right.
But hey, this doesn’t mean education isn’t important. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve spent thousands of dollars of my own money on books, courses, and seminars in 2015 alone, knowing damn well the value those educational opportunities are worth way more than what I paid for them.
See that’s the thing that you need to pay attention to – the value of whatever you’re paying for. It doesn’t make sense to pay $80,000 and four years of your time for a degree in English, because that degree does not provide more than $80,000 worth of value.
But take one of my courses for example. I generally charge $97 for my courses to James McAllister Online readers. Considering they completely and comprehensively cover the topics at hand, I know with no uncertainty that these courses are worth thousands of dollars for people who will actually take the information inside of them and put them to use.
If you want to be efficient at allocating your resources, you need to be constantly looking for a return on investment. If you invest X amount of dollars and X amount hours into a product, what kind of return is that going to provide you?
Likewise, you need to factor in opportunity cost when it comes to making – or not making decisions. If you decide not to purchase a certain course, read a certain book, or attend a certain training seminar, what would you instead be doing with that time and money?
Really question yourself, because chances are, it won’t be put towards something more effective than what you gave up.
Our Path Is Different
Things aren’t how they used to be, and for us entrepreneurs, our most valuable educational opportunities won’t come from major institutions or colleges – they’ll come from other successful bloggers and businesspeople who are releasing their own products.
It’s still unbelievable to me how awesome the internet is in this regard. We are able to learn from people who have actually gone through and ‘walked the walk’ rather than somebody preaching theory. Just as importantly, we no longer have to pay ridiculous tuition fees to take courses where only small aspects are practically relevant to what we want to do.
Instead, we can now pick up a book for a few dollars that can teach us everything we need to know about a given topic and have it delivered straight to our door, ready to be consumed and immediately put to use.
See: 5 Incredible Books Every Blogger Needs To Read
Because it’s so easy and so valuable, you really have no excuse not to be investing in yourself. It really is the best investment you can make, and the returns will be far greater than what you’d earn elsewhere.
Conclusion
To close this out, I want you to watch the short video below. Don’t be lazy and skip it over. Invest the time into learning what I have to share with you. It’s very important.
Now, I want you to share your thoughts about this topic. Answer the questions you were asked at the beginning of this article. Share with us products you’ve found to provide a great return on investment. Do us a favor and help us all out.
I promise, we will all thank you for it.
James mate, spot on here with this post. Now this could be a complete coincident, but I have two friends that have been to college, been to university and one of them works in our local coffee shop, the other in our main grocery store…
Just saying 🙂
I couldn’t agree more on investing in yourself, something I’ve always known the importance of but something I’ve always put aside. I guess because most of the time I was either building my business up or chasing after my two little monsters around the house lol.
Like you I’ve invested in many books, tools and other stuff to help me with my business and improve mu life as well, but this year is completely different though, earlier this month I invested a few hundred dollars on a couple of iOS 9 developer courses, I want to be able to create apps for businesses, so I’m so stoked about taking the plunge there. I know the few hundred dollars I paid for the course will later on return me well. There’s a few other business courses I have in mind as well before the year is out too.
But love the vibes you’re giving off in this post, invest in yourself, to damn right. Have a great weekend buddy.
Fabrizio Van Marciano(Quote)
Hey Fabrizio! Always nice to see you here man.
I’d say college is a scam but the truth is many people going are just terribly misguided, and forget that your job prospects are based off supply and demand, not just having any random degree. The majority of people I went to school with are still in college now but no doubt I’ll see them working minimum wage jobs in the not-so-distant future.. 🙁
College is supposed to be an investment in yourself but unfortunately if you make the wrong decisions in terms of your major it becomes more of a liability than an investment because it’s so damn expensive. The great thing about owning a business is we can be selective with what educational opportunities we invest in and often times we’ll be able to immediately apply that to our business. Not only is it cheaper, but it’s more effective at yielding a return. Case in point, your developer courses. No doubt if you are serious about developing applications you’ll get more than you gave for them.
That’s good business right there!
James McAllister(Quote)
Hi James,
We know we need to invest to be successful with out blogs and online business.
The question is, what do we invest in? We can buy Facebook ads, solo ads, cool graphics and video production software. All good ideas.
But investing in ourselves is the single most important thing to do. Facebook can change it’s TOS, your videos get outdated… but when you invest in yourself it’s forever. Nobody can take that away, and it will always serve as the foundation from which you can grow.
It’s not about education. It’s about always learning and growing.
-Donna
Donna Merrill(Quote)
Spot on Donna!
In the end we need to realize what’s truly going to provide us the greatest return on investment. I think back to the first book I ever read on entrepreneurship, which introduced me to ideas that ultimately changed the entire course of my life.
I would’ve paid a million dollars for all the training I’ve received in my life because I know it’s going to yield far more than that over the long-term. Like you said, this type of investment lasts forever. That’s what makes it so valuable. Regardless of what happens to my situation, my business, whatever – the investments I’ve made into myself will always allow me to rebuild quickly.
Let us all remember that we must never stop learning and growing!
James McAllister(Quote)
Well…
I can’t totally disagree with your assessment about college; I can’t totally agree with it either. All I’ll say about this first part is that without having a degree, I’d have never been allowed to get as far as I have in my present career as a consultant because I’d have never gotten the particular job I did when I was 23 to be able to learn what I did and progress as I did. That and the income difference of around $18K between millennials with degrees and without… well, that could be considered significant to some, especially since that figure drastically changes over time.
As regards your main point, I can honestly say that I’ve spent some money on products to learn some things about internet marketing and marketing in general over the last 15 years. Unfortunately, the majority of what I’ve purchased has been quite deficient. My belief is that if I pick up a book on sales techniques that’s what I’m going to get, not a book on sales psychology. I mean, if some of those books had even 2 or 3 tips, maybe you could say they at least delivered something.
Since that’s not the case, what we’ve run into is what I call the “lack of trust” factor. A lot of bad eggs ruin it for the rest of us who try to make a little chunk of change by selling things we’ve created. Can there be value; absolutely! Is value prevalent for a lot of these things; nope. Should we give up? Nope. Should we hope to find someone we can trust, someone who others have said “Hey, this actually told me something I could use” and share it… yup.
This has turned into a blog post so let me close by saying I applaud you for finding your entrepreneurial spirit when you did and not having to go to college to figure out your career. I think it would behoove a great number of people to read something like Rich Dad Poor Dad before heading to college to see if there might be another way to live their lives. College debt is a major deal; I was lucky that when I went, to a state college, it was relatively inexpensive. These days… whew!
Mitch Mitchell(Quote)
Hey Mitch! Long time no see, hope you’ve been doing well.
Nothing against college at all, people just need to take a look into their future and see if it’s going to actually provide them some sort of benefit. Your degree allowed you to get a job you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to get, which did lead to huge tangible benefits in other areas of your life as well. Unfortunately this isn’t the case for many college graduates today. They have a degree, but the exact same job prospects they had beforehand. Only now, they have debt they have to pay back somehow.
I too have noticed the lack of trust factor, and was actually discussing this with somebody over on the Warrior Forum earlier today. It sucks. It hurts us bloggers working in the health / wealth / dating marekts the most because this is where it’s most prevalent. The good thing is that when we finally do win over a buyer, even though we have to spend additional time warming them up and building credibility, they tend to be more likely to purchase over and over again if our products deliver the value expected. Why would they want to risk gambling on some other marketer right? This is why I always overdeliver with my products, even though I don’t need to. I could be ‘good’ just by not being bad. But ‘good’ isn’t remembered, exceptional is. Catch what I’m saying?
As entrepreneurs we need to capitalize on the opportunities given to us by our situation, and the fact that so many marketers in our space deliver crappy products does have benefits, it’s just up to us to draw them out.
Every time I see somebody’s purchased a copy of my book I feel great knowing I saved another soul. 😉 I know a lot of people are buying copies as gifts so I can only hope those reading it take it seriously and really think about which direction is best suited for the lifestyle they want. I may not be able to end all suffering, but I can do what I can to lessen it for the people I manage to reach. And that’s special!
Always love seeing you here Mitch, the amount you put into your comments with your additional perspective helps out all of us and I thank you for it.
James McAllister(Quote)
Hey James,
You are spot on my friend and I can also verify that going to college doesn’t promise you the salary in your future.
I skipped college but my brother and sister both attended. Are they doing now what their degrees produced? Absolutely not and neither are a lot of my other relatives. They couldn’t get jobs in their chosen profession or the money wasn’t there. In my mind that’s time and money wasted but as you said, that’s not always the case for every career. It just was for these instances.
We have to invest in our own education in order to continue moving forward. I invested in coaching last summer which helped me really hone in on my business. I invested late last year on another course that is helping me define my brand more so we have to continue learning, growing and expanding. You are absolutely right about that.
Great message James, keep up the excellent work my friend and have a glorious week too! 😉
~Adrienne
Adrienne(Quote)
Hi Adrienne! It’s great to see you here again.
So sad to hear about the situation with your siblings and unfortunately this is only getting more and more common. Time, money, opportunity, all gone. My peers criticize me now for my viewpoints but it won’t be long before they see that I’m right. This is just the reality of today’s world. Sadly, so many people either don’t know or choose to ignore it.
It’s always nice to hear when something goes right, and in this space where so many people seem to be ripped off by subpar products it’s fantastic that you’ve found 2 winners. I know you’re a smart buyer and that sounds like a course I could learn a lot from myself. I may end up asking you about that sometime in the future because that is a very important topic that I need to work on.
Always nice to talk with you Adrienne, here’s to us learning and growing a bunch in 2016!
James McAllister(Quote)