3 Investments That Will Change Your Financial Future
The Hyperfocused Entrepreneur
January 13, 2022
Read time: 15 minutes
Every day roughly dozen people slide into my DMs to ask some variation of this question:
“Should I invest in XYZ Opportunity?”
Sometimes they’re asking about a real estate deal…
Sometimes it’s a stock or a private business…
Sometimes it’s crypto or some forex scheme…
But my answer is always the same:
“Depends. What’s your goal?”
Usually the answer is some variant of:
- I want to make money…
- I don’t want to lose money…
- I want to make the best investment possible…
And really what they’re asking is:
“What’s the best investment vehicle?”
Now, I’m a real estate guy, so most people think that’s what I’m gonna say… but those people are wrong.
See, the problem with real estate, crypto, stocks, bonds, or whatever, is that all of these investments have limited potential upside coupled with a ton of risk.
But there is ONE investment that is clearly better than all the rest.
ONE investment that’s guaranteed to pay extraordinary dividends with practically ZERO downside.
That investment is YOU.
The Ultimate Investment Portfolio
The best investments are the ones you make in yourself, because these pay compounding interest for the entirety of your life.
Your knowledge and skills, when applied towards the right opportunity, have the potential to yield unparalleled returns.
The beauty of knowledge and skills are that they can’t be taxed, diluted, or taken from you.
Now, be honest, how much time have you invested in yourself this week?
If it’s like most people, the answer is: Not enough.
And I get it. Work is grueling. Family is demanding. You’re hustling the best you can, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day, right?
If you want to be average, then allow this to become your mantra:
If only I had more time…
If you’re not content to simply be average (which, judging by the fact that you’re here, I know you don’t), then you have to adopt a different mindset.
You must move through life knowing that more time isn’t the answer.
The truth is, even if you had more time, life would still manage to just get in the way.
The question is not one of how much time you have, but rather, how do you use the limited time you have available?
And this is what separates the truly successful from everybody else.
Successful people are masters of using their time effectively.
And in the grand scheme of life there are few more effective ways to spend your time than by investing in yourself.
The 3 most impactful areas to invest in yourself are:
- Your Health
- Your Knowledge
- Your Skills
Let’s break it down from the top:”
Investing in Your Health
It’s easy to take for granted the miracle that is your body.
It is a marvel of evolutionary engineering… but still, it is a machine. And all machines will eventually break down if they are not cared for with regular maintenance.
The unfortunate thing about your body breaking down is that it’s often happening so slowly as to be imperceptible.
And if you let it get too bad, then there’s no reversing the damage and you’re just stuck feeling like crap the rest of your life.
So, the first investments you need to be making are in your physical and mental health.
Want the biggest bang for your buck? Invest in these three areas:
- Sleep
- Nutrition
- Exercise
1. Sleep
If you’re feeling tired, overwhelmed, easily stressed, distracted, unfocused and scattered, then the first thing you probably need to get sorted is your sleep.
Most entrepreneurs are chronically sleep deprived. Personally, I blame the “rise and grind” hustle porn culture of entrepreneurship.
After all, if you’re not up at 5am getting after it, then are ya even trying?
I bought into this mindset for a long time. And truth be told, in the beginning, when you’re first starting a business, you have to compensate for your lack of leverage with brute force, but this isn’t sustainable.
In recent years I’ve taken a far more moderate approach to this “hustle hard” mindset. These days, I focus more on quality sleep, recovery, and taking intentional time off.
The result?
I feel 100x better and I get way more quality work done.
Win-Win.
There are a lot of great resources out there on the topic of sleep. In particular, I recommend you check out The Huberman Lab podcast.
But real quick, here are the 3 best investments I’ve personally made in my sleep this past year that have paid the biggest dividends:
Brain.FM
I love brain.fm.
Seriously, I’m listening to it right now.
Simply put, it’s science-backed music (binaural beats) designed for focus or relaxation.
Binaural beats are like steroids for the brain. I’m hooked and can’t imagine my life without it.
8 Sleep Mattress
This is the boujiest thing I’ve ever purchased, but worth every penny.
Temperature plays a massive role in the quality of your sleep.
This fancy mattress regulates its temperature to keep you cool throughout the night before warming you up so that you’ll wake naturally in the morning.
The result?
I haven’t slept with an alarm clock in over 9 months and yet I wake up every single morning at 5:15 almost on the dot feeling rested and ready to attack the day.
Sleeping Mask
This is gonna sound silly obvious, but it’s easier to sleep when you’re in the dark.
Not just dark.
But dark-dark.
We used to have black out curtains in our bedroom (which are awesome), but we recently moved and haven’t had an opportunity to install new blind, so in the short term I’ve started wearing a black out sleeping mask.
And I’ll be honest…
It’s awesome.
Seriously, it’s a dark private sanctuary.
I’m not sure I’m gonna give up my mask even after we put up the black out curtains.
A cheap solution that delivers exceptional results.
2. Nutrition
As software engineers say:
“Junk In, Junk Out”
That is, if you put garbage into your body, then what’re you really expecting to get out of it?
Surely not peak performance.
It would be unreasonable to pour unleaded gasoline into a fighter jet and expect it to take-off, right?
So then why do most of us treat our bodies this way?
Well, there’s two simple answers:
Eating garbage is easy and it tastes good.
Problem is, it not only compromises your performance in the short term, but it’s also putting your long term health at risk.
Nutrition is the area I struggle with most, so I’m not gonna get on a high horse here and tell ya what you should do except this:
Of all the things you spend money on in your life, don’t be afraid to spend more on eating well.
In the end, it’s worth it.
3. Exercise
The human body seems to defy physics in a lot of ways.
One such way is in how expending energy actually is a catalyst for creating more energy.
Have you ever noticed how energized and amazing you feel after a good workout?
We could chalk those up to endorphins, but the truth is there’s a lot going on inside your body after a good hard workout.
Things that generate better mental clarity, more energy, and feelings of happiness.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
This is why I encourage you to prioritize exercising every single day for at least 30 minutes.
Two types of exercise in particular I recommend: Cardio and Lifting Heavy Stuff.
Cardio is obvious. It’s good for your heart and blood-flow.
Lifting Heavy Stuff, though, is maybe less obvious, but here’s the thing… There’s a ton of science showing that if you want to stave off the effects of aging (loss of strength, coordination, bone density, etc…), then the best thing you can do is regularly lift heavy things.
Crazy, but true.
So, invest in a gym membership, a treadmill, those running shoes, some weights, whatever…
This is not an area to skimp on. You deserve it.
Investing in Your Knowledge
People say that Knowledge is Power… but that’s wrong.
Knowledge is only Potential Power.
If we don’t apply our knowledge, nothing happens. The world doesn’t change.
Bummer.
But with that said, before going out there and just “doing stuff”, it’s helpful to have a baseline of knowledge from which to direct our actions towards meaningful goals.
So, step one is to invest in filling your Knowledge Tank.
Quick Sidenote: Your Knowledge Tank will never be full. It’s a magical tank. The more you fill it, the bigger it gets. Keep this in mind as you start moving towards your goals.
The quest for more Knowledge is never complete, and yet at a certain point we must not allow consuming more information to be the thing that stops us from taking meaningful action.
What’s the correct balance between Learning and Doing? Hard to say (and honestly, that’s a topic best left for a future article). For now, let’s just focus on the best investments you can make in filling your Knowledge Tank.
Books
The number of successful people I know who do not read books is absurdly low. We’ve got to be careful we don’t equate correlation with causation, but the correlation is impossible to ignore.
I think the reason for this is two-fold:
First, the process of writing a book is slow, cumbersome, and very time consuming. This forces the author to really master their craft and the domain upon which they’re writing.
The result:
Books are the densest sources of specialized knowledge in the world.
Second, the process of reading a book is slow, cumbersome, and very time consuming. This means you have to really wrestle to get the words and concepts from the page into your brain. Generally speaking, the more effort you put into a thing, the more you get out.
The result of putting a lot of effort into reading a book? Deeper understanding.
Moral of the Story: Read more books.
Here’s a list I recommend starting with.
Videos
Now, I’m not just saying this out of bias, but I think YouTube is the greatest platform on the internet.
It’s the second largest search engine and, in my experience, the best for education.
Seriously, there’s nothing you can’t learn, for FREE, on YouTube.
Here’s the problem: Because it’s so easy to create and publish a video (by comparison to a book), that means there’s a lot of crap to sift through.
Always be careful who you’re learning from.
There’s another problem with YouTube: Because there’s so much information, it can be overwhelming and hard to know where to start.
Still, despite these downsides, YouTube is still my preferred learning platform.
Podcasts
I love YouTube, but I can’t be bothered to watch a 2-hour long video in most cases. I get bored and distracted.
On the other hand, I can easily listen to a 2-hour long podcast over the course of a week as I walk the river, drive to jiu jitsu, or clean the house.
Podcasts are a fantastic way of immersing yourself in a topic.
The weakness of podcasts is there’s a lot of fluff and they’re generally not a great way of learning a targeted skill.
I prefer podcasts as part of an immersion strategy to learning. Simply put, I’m exposing myself to the information so that I can generally increase my comfort with the topic, terms, and lingo.
If reading requires the most effort (and therefore rewards you with the most learning), then podcasts as a result of how passively they can be consumed, lead to the lowest amounts of learning per unit of time invested.
Networking
Surrounding yourself with experts on a topic is a tried-and-trued way of leveling up your own knowledge.
You’ve heard it said that you are the average of the five people you associate with.
If you hang out with five alcoholics, you’ll probably become the sixth.
If you hang out with five millionaires, you’ll probably become the sixth.
In my eyes there is no quicker way to level up your life than to level up your network.
It’s seriously a cheat-code.
With that said, when you’re just starting out on the journey of “learning” or “growing” how do you get in the room with people who are where you want to go?
It’s much easier to find five alcoholics than it is to find five millionaires, afterall.
So how are we to get in the room with these badasses?
Here’s how:
- Find where they hang out
- Do whatever it takes to get in the room
Okay, here’s a harsh truth:
It usually costs money to get in the room with successful people.
Why?
Because successful people are busy and they don’t typically waste time going to “free” events or hanging out in “free” masterminds.
The problem with free is it tends to attract the type of people who can only afford free.
Successful people don’t care about free. They care about value.
So these people are typically willing to pay good money to ensure they’re spending time with other vetted-successful people.
This is why country clubs can charge upwards of $100k/year for membership.
If you’re just starting out, this poses a problem, because you probably don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to drop to get access to these groups.
The truth is, you’re gonna have to build up to it.
Listen, you don’t just jump to the top of the mountain. You get there one step at a time.
Along the way, you’re gonna meet a ton of interesting people. Sometimes these people start out ahead of you. Sometimes you pass them.
Your goal is to keep moving forward and to constantly reassess who are the people further ahead on the path than you and what can you do to get around them?
Here’s two free resources I’ve found incredibly valuable for “getting in the room” with amazing people:
1. Twitter
There is no better platform for getting access to world class experts and all-around badasses.
My recommendation:
Create a Top-100 List of people you think have something they could teach you. Then, go follow them on Twitter. Next, regularly engage with their content by asking questions and leaving comments.
Do this on a long enough timeframe and there is a very real possibility that you’ll develop a pseudo-relationship with these people.
I can’t tell you the number of people I now have access to as a result of simply engaging with them on Twitter (and this predates me having any sort of social media following, so don’t let that be an excuse).
2. Beyond the Apex Community
We recently launched this free community and I’m so psyched about it.
Beyond the Apex is filled with hundreds of people all committed to maximizing their Return on Life. They come from all sorts of backgrounds (entrepreneurs and creatives), but one thing they all have in common is an obsession with chasing their greatness.
A couple other things you’ll get by joining Beyond the Apex:
- Exclusive Content
- Behind-the-Scenes Sneak Peeks at cool upcoming content and product
- Access to a constantly expanding library of “Crash Courses” around Hyperfocus, The 4 Spheres of Influence, Entrepreneurship, and Investing
- Discounts on future product launches (including the upcoming Decision Journal)
This is my attempt at creating a community of greatness (and it’s completely free).
Here’s a link if you’d like to join us.
Psst…
Did you know we just launched the The Hyperfocus Masterclass?
This is everything I know about resisting distraction, overcoming procrastination, and eliminating needless busy work to develop laser-like focus.
These are the exact frameworks and systems that’ve helped me turn my ADHD into a super-power.
If that sounds like something you could benefit from, then click here and come join the community!
Investing in Your Skills
With the right skills there is nothing you can’t accomplish.
And the beautiful thing about being a human is that you are a skill-acquisition machine.
There is practically nothing you can’t master with enough dedicated focus, time, and feedback.
How cool is that?
Well, despite being one of the coolest parts of being a human, most people never bother tapping into this superpower.
As a result, they have low-level skills that have a low-level impact on the world.
If you don’t want to be one of these people, then you have to get serious about skill-acquisition.
Here are 6 skills in particular worth mastering if your goal is to make more money:
Now, of all the ways you can invest in acquiring skills, here are three of my favorite:
1. Courses
Online courses get a bad wrap.
The logic you’ll hear people spouting online (especially when it comes to making money) is the following:
“If you were really so good at *insert skill* then you’d just be doing that to make money rather than teaching it.”
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why people do what they do.
Sure, there are charlatans out there just trying to sell you on the next get rich quick program, and if you’re not careful, they will separate you from your hard earned money and leave you with nothing to show for it.
But these courses are often fairly easy to sniff out with just a bit of due diligence and critical thinking.
Now, in my experience having spent literally over $100,000 taking courses over the past few years, I’ve found that the reason most people start selling courses isn’t actually for the money (though that certainly doesn’t hurt).
The reason most successful people create courses is two-fold:
- To master any activity you must Learn, Do, Teach. It’s in the teaching that you develop true understanding of your craft. If you can’t teach it to a 6-year old, then you don’t really understand it.
- Money stops being a motivating force after a certain point. After winning the money game (or, just reaching the point of enough) most successful people start looking for ways to give back and make a positive impact on the world. It’s the “paying it forward” philosophy of entrepreneurship.
One other argument you’ll hear from the “anti-course” group is this:
You can find all the information on YouTube or Google for free.
And this is a good point.
In fact, I strive to put out all my best content for free.
But the problem with this is that people don’t really pay for Information.
They pay for:
- Organization
- Implementation
- Personalization
- Accountability
Courses are great because they organize information into logical, chronological sequences that save you time and energy so you don’t have to go and piece everything together the hard way.
Now, if you’re broke and can’t afford to pay for the course, that’s no problem. You’ve got time on your hands, so use it to dive into YouTube and Google to learn what you need to learn the hard way.
2. Coaching
A great coach can be one of the greatest investments you ever make. They can not only save you time and energy, but also heartbreak.
I tell my students that my primary job is to give Perspective.
From my vantage point (further down the road or higher up the mountain), I can see the pitfalls and obstacles you’re likely to encounter.
Not only that, but because I’ve been where you are, I’ve figured out how to overcome those obstacles.
As a consequence, you can duplicate my results in a fraction of the time.
**Full Disclosure: I am not pimping my coaching services here. I only take 3 students at a time, and my roster is currently full with a deep waitlist.**
But here’s the thing about coaching:
Most people waste money on coaching.
In fact, I’ve personally wasted a TON of money on coaching because I didn’t understand these four things:
3. Doing
And finally we arrive at the most important thing you have to do if you want to master ANY skill:
The Doing.
See, you can’t learn how to ride a bike by reading a book.
And no amount of watching people do pushups on YouTube is going to help you until you get on the floor and start… ya know, pushing.
A question I get frequently is:
“How do I know when I’m ready?”
Truth is, you’ll never be ready.
So ya might as well start now.
From what I’ve observed of the world, to be successful, it matters WHEN you start more than WHERE you start.
So stop delaying, get your butt in gear, and start DOING.
One last note on the topic of DOING:
Do more than you think is necessary for longer than you think is reasonable.
People vastly underestimate the amount of work and repetition it takes to get great at a thing.
The most sure-fire way I know of accelerating your progress towards success is to simply do more.
A lot more.
And if you do a lot more for a lot longer than everybody else, then I can all but guarantee you will find extraordinary success.
So what’re ya waiting for?
You now know the 3 best investments you can possibly make… go get compounding interest on your side and get started.
Until next week, my friends,
Stay Hyperfocused,
AV
From The Podcast This Week:
I Wasted $100k On Coaching So You Don’t Have To
Want more? Here are some ways to go even deeper:
1. Unleash your hyperfocused mind to dominate life, business, and everything in between? Here’s how:
→ The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the exact system I used to overcome ADHD, write a bunch of books, build some successful businesses, and acquire a whole lot of real estate. Join now!
2. Learn to passively invest in commercial real estate with better returns, less risk, and zeo hassle.
→ Invictus Capital: my real estate private equity firm.
→ Multifamily Investing Made Simple: Top Apple Podcast.
→ Passive Investing Made Simple: Amazon Best Selling Book with 100 5 star reviews.
3. Want more like this? Check out these 3 popular articles from the vault:
- My Simple 3-Step Framework For Making More Money
- These 6 Skills Will Make You Millions
- It Never Gets Easier, You Just Get Better
4. The Amplified Impact Podcast: A daily podcast for those in relentless pursuit of Less, but Better:
