Invest in yourself

Hi, Team Massive Result’s Thursday’s Thoughts

‘Invest in yourself’

This week I had to take myself outside and give my head a shake! I found that I almost made the same mistake as I find so many other people do. You see for the last ten years I have happily and consciously invested heavily in my own education and my own development. I buy books constantly; there are now over a thousand of them in the library. I read every day, in a wide range of subjects. I have trained in half a dozen different disciplines and I am qualified in a good number of them. I attend courses and conventions whenever I can and have been known to jump on a train on many occasions to go and hear a great speaker, wherever they might be on stage. This week there is the Gazelles global summit in Las Vegas and I hadn’t committed to go. It is a special event that happens every year. 150 of the world’s best business coaches get together for four days of learning and recertification training to keep the standards as high as they need to be and in the middle of that there is the Business Growth Summit. Two days of some of the world’s best thought leaders and authors in front of a live audience of about 1500 to 2000 business leaders and their teams many of whom are already Gazelles clients. The speakers are truly world class. Last year’s speakers included Steven Covey who wrote “The Speed of Trust”, one of my top ten all time favourite business books, and Tony Hsieh who built a billion dollar business in 9 years and sold it to Amazon for over a billion dollars. He was chatting away last year just days before his 40^th birthday! Even so over the last few months I found myself saying what everyone else says. It’s a long way to go. It will be expensive. I don’t have the time. I have other things that I must do. I can do without it. I had a few other reasons of course; like the fact I have been unwell, and it is difficult to sit on a plane for 15 hours and in my case that I really struggle with Americans, (other than they make me look slim and svelte of course). Now all of these things are true. But I was fortunate. I had a phone call from another coach, who knew exactly the right questions to ask to get me to consider my decision in a different light and with a lot of teamwork from Team Massive Results and Jayne and Charlie in particular I was able to give my head a shake and not only reconsider but put plan B into action. At the end of the day if you don’t believe in investing in your own skills attitudes and behaviours what does that say about you? I absolutely know that the investment that I am making in myself will pay huge dividends for my clients, my family and my business not to mention myself. Now as I write this I have been in the air for about 12 hours, I am sitting next to a guy who clearly has never been taught how to use a handkerchief (what a lovely old English word) and I am quite obviously losing face in the tech battle because I have never seen so many Mac’s and iPads and iPhones  in one area before, but I believe the hardship will be worth it in the end. Postscript: – I have just attended the first day and I know that I have picked up enough learnings and ideas that, as long as I turn them into actions, will pay for the trip within weeks and then give me a return on my investment every month thereafter. We have a couple of events coming up which will mean that you can invest in yourself without spending a dime, sorry, a penny. All you need to do is commit a little bit of time. There is my regular monthly seminar on 04/11/2014. Please come along and bring a colleague or business friend. In January we are looking to stage a big kick off to your 2015, and there is also a series of seminars from my associated company Dynamic Financials the details of which can be seen here.