What’s my Personal MBA?

What do I want to learn? What outcomes do I want to have here? 

1. Profitable Business Building – I need to learn how to build a business. Identify a product, validate it, build it, market, sell, managing those businesses and owning the business instead of working on the business.
2. Networking – I need to learn how to network. How to build relationships that I want to be in and enjoy the process. Surround myself with people who are doing what I want to do. Saying no to people who take me down. Doing a 80/20 analysis on those in my life. Taking courses on relationships (Tony Robbins), leadership and management (Dale Carnegie), speaking (Acting, Improv, toastmasters), and then putting the skills to use every day. Going to places and speaking for free
3. Investing – I need to learn about how to invest my money, tax shelters, dividends, index funds, real estate, real estate law, rentals, rental law.

Why? (It’s important to have a really good why and remember it daily! This will give you the motivation to keep on doing this) I want to build wealth so I can live free from a 9-5 and support my family and my interests without the need to work at a job I hate for lousy pay. So I can travel the world without fear of losing my wealth or my health, or being detrimental to my savings and my life.

I would spend approximately 100k on a business school MBA. But from my time in school so far, I realize that it will not get me where I want to go. Nor as fast as I want to go. It is not dynamic, it is not flexible, and at the end of the day I do not want to be working 10-12 hour days with an MBA behind a desk crunching number to make a fraction of what I could make with my own business.

So then, What’s the plan?

Time is limited and I want to do only the things that matter. 20% of the work for 80% of the spoils. Yup, got it. But how do I make that call. I believe the just in time approach to learning is the key here.

Business Building

1. Read (what are the top books and blogs I need to be reading and why?)
   1. Four Hour Work Week
2. Take courses (Zero to Launch, Dale Carnegie, Amazing Selling Machine, and any and all smaller courses)
3. Take action. If you would be spending 100k on an MBA, put 33k into building your first business.

You probably have no idea what to do, that’s okay. Everybody starts here. Just take one ridiculously tiny micro-step at a time. It will add up before you know it, but you have to start and you have to do. Less analyzing, less thinking.

I write my big goals down. Then I read them everyday. Then I visualize them everyday in as clear of detail as I can. Every single day, morning and night.

You have to guard against too much information. There is so much out there, and so much crap, you have to find one source and cut everything else out. For me this was Ryan Moran and Freedom Fastlane, Then with the Amazing Selling Machine course. Focus. Do.

Networking

1. Get confident (take an acting class, and an improv class) learn to play a character and think on your feet.
2. Speak in front of people (join a toastmasters class, and a dale carnegie class) learn to organize your thoughts and give a good presentation. I love adrenaline sports and so I think about public speaking as an adrenaline sport. It’s so much better!
3. Learn how to manage your emotions (Tony Robbins), Read people and listen.
4. Learn jokes
5. have 3 stories to tell
6. Have a business card ready and an elevator pitch ready
7. Chat people up
8. Learn sales (memorize the Little Red book of selling). It’s about relationships, and being likable and enjoyable to be around.
9. Do a relationship course (Tyler Tervoorten sp?) has a great one on coach.me
10. Go to conferences and meet
11. Host dinners
12. Go to friends dinners
13. Meet at your ultimate frisbee team or wherever…
14. Do a mastermind group
15. Put 33k into going to conferences, meals, courses, books, outings and looking good. Appearance matters.
16. Appearance Matters, build your personal brand, your personal person, think of yourself as an actor playing a part. What part do you want to play? How do you act, speak, present yourself? What is your persona? Learn it, do it, become it.
17. You need to learn how to reach out to people, how to reach out to people where you want to be, learn how to ask good questions.

Investing

Take 33k and invest it. I would put 20k down on a multifamily house and get income coming in right away. Then I would reinvest that income into the house for tax reasons. For the remaining 13, i’d invest in dividends and index funds. Something that pays out and increases in value.

1. Read (only these three books to start)
   1. Tony Robbins – Money Master the Game
   2. The intelligent investor
   3. Rich Dad Poor Dad
2. Invest in multifamily real estate
3. Join Wealthfront and invest through them
4. Invest in index funds, then dividends

But I don’t have any money yet! Well, then you better get your butt to work.

Step 1. Get between 1-5k to start your cash flow business (fund product, marketing, shipping, etc…). Borrow (family, P2P lending, Credit Cards, friends, whoever), or get a better job and save to get the extra cash.

Step 2. Build your cash flow business. Get on the Amazing Selling Machine and follow the plan.

Step 3. Invest. Buy a multifamily and rent it out. Dividends on Wealthfront.

This process will likely take about a year or more to see yourself at step 3 depending on how fast you move.

To move faster you need to exercise every day, eat well to stay healthy and fit, meditate daily for focus, get grateful for what you have to stay sane and not get pissed off by trolls, visualize what you want so you get ultra clear, talk to your friends and family every day so you have a support network, take a day to rest for a few hours and dine with your family and friends (preferably daily if possible, lunches are great times to meet up if you still have a 9-5). Cut out alcohol, this slows you down and makes it easy to forget what you are learning and harder to visualize what you want. But most importantly, work on your business every day!

But I have no extra time! You may be right. I thought that too. But then I cut out TV and that gave me a couple hours a day. I woke up an hour earlier 5:30 am so I could meditate and visualize and work out before my job. I read and study on the commute. I use my lunches to meet people. It’s just a little bit extra (3 hours) and using slack time to study. But it helps, and it’s doable.

Suggested Reading:

• Four Hour Work Week
• Money, Master the Game
• Intelligent investor
• Robert Collier Letterbook (Copy Writing)