One of the best ways to increase your income is by leveraging your usefulness to the world. The more that you can provide to others, the more that you will in turn receive! Many entrepreneurs stress this notion as they have realized that this is one of the keys to generating income. Because of this, investing in your own skills and increasing your capabilities could potentially be a greater investment than real assets.
We’ve heard about the importance of having multiple income streams. The last thing we want is for our main source of income to run out and be unable to quickly fill that revenue source with something else. Realizing this, having a tangible skill which can be used to quickly generate money is an important aspect in creating a secure financial foundation.
“But what could I possibly do in order to generate more income? I’ve been doing the same type of work for years now, and I don’t have any other skills easily translatable to another occupation?” I’m glad you asked.
With the online marketplace being more accessible now than ever before, it is equally as feasible for you to gain skills which have nothing to do with your current occupation. Through the strategy of investing in yourself before other assets, you can develop skills which can be used to generate new sources of income and in turn become more financially free!
Why You Should Choose Yourself BEFORE Your Assets
As investors, we create an obsession with obtaining assets which generate us the most income with the least possible risk. Most financial books have come to the conclusion that the best possible investing strategy for the common investor is to invest in index funds over the long term through dollar cost averaging. Yes it is important to invest and secure financial independence in the long run, but it is equally as important to create income streams which allow us to make those investments.
Entrepreneur Alex Hormozi famously says that he would choose to invest in the S&”Me” rather than the S&P. He knows that as you invest in yourself, your earning capabilities also increase. An example that he gives to support this is if you have $500 saved, you could spend that on a course to learn a useful skill like video editing, then use that skill to pick up editing jobs and double the money which you invested in yourself.
Realizing this creates a very important idea which should be considered if you are at the stage of life where you are trying to find ways of creating more income streams. Maybe the question shouldn’t be “What assets should I invest my money in?” but instead , “How should I invest my money to become an asset?”.
We send our kids to school to make sure they gain an education in order to go out in the world and have a general foundation of knowledge which can be used to gain skill in a craft. The only problem is that most students out of college only have just that, knowledge. They haven’t developed any type of real skill unless they have worked on something outside of their normal education. This can leave people unprepared and devoid of any real wealth generation abilities.
If this is the case, we should be equally as supportive in investing ourselves in different ways which can allow us to become especially useful in today’s workforce. Luckily, the world we live in today makes it easier than ever to turn yourself into a money generating machine.
Rules to Follow When Turning Yourself into a Money Generating Machine
Now that we understand the importance of investing in yourself as an asset, it is time to develop rules that you can use to gain skills that create revenue sources. Let’s first visit our previous example of creating a new revenue stream through gaining video editing skills. By investing an initial principle of $500 in a course that someone who is REPUTABLE created, you could gain a majority of the experience that person has in a matter of anywhere usually between 10-40 hours.
I think about this as if you were reading a book. An author spends their lifetime exploring an idea and pouring their heart and soul into a 200-300 page novel which we can easily pick up and read within a couple weeks time. Information transfer like this is extremely valuable because it allows us to save time learning things that have been already discovered by others and instead gain a foundation of knowledge at an expedited time.
Think about courses, seminars, or workshops in the same way. Being able to spend a couple hundred dollars on a product like this is extremely valuable and can slingshot your earning capabilities to new places like never before.
Now of course we are talking about the internet here so we need to be weary of the “gurus” who are trying to scam you and take your hard earned cash. Because of this I have developed some rules that you should follow BEFORE deciding to purchase someone’s course, seminar, workshop, PDF, or book.
- Be familiar with that person’s work and what their motives are for creating it
This can be a great way to prevent being scammed by someone who is promising you some quick way of gaining a new skill and then becoming an overnight millionaire. Make sure to follow that person’s work and see what their philosophies on life are in order to gain a better understanding of who it is that you are deciding to learn from.
Maybe they have some sort of YouTube channel or podcast that you can follow which has displayed a portion of their work. You wouldn’t purchase a video editing course from someone who has terrible editing skills would you? Absolutely not! You want to make sure that whomever it is that you are learning from is a master at their craft, and understands what they are teaching you through and through.
Do your research, make sure you are learning from a good teacher. - Spend a couple of days to think about your decision
Make sure that you are not impulse buying. The last thing you want is to think that you were motivated to do something, only to find out that whoever sold you the course was a very good salesman and only made you feel a specific way. By taking a couple of days to yourself and reading reviews of the product, you can make sure to prevent a purchase which can be detrimental to your bank account. - Look to others around you who have created extra income streams
Yes the internet is a great resource for information, but it’s not the only one! Networking is one of the most important aspects of business for a reason! Find friends and family that you look up to and see if they have an information to gaining a new skill that you would find interest in. Tell them that you would be willing to pay them a specific amount if they would take time out of their day and teach you how they have found success in whatever it is they’ve been doing
Some Examples of Investing in Yourself to Get Your Gears Turning
In order to have the best chance at experiencing success from this strategy, you need to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Understanding that a traditional job is not the only way to create cashflow is a critical point in being able to find OPPORTUNITY all around you.
With that in mind, here are some examples of how to invest in yourself to generate new revenue streams.
- Provide lessons for others in a skill that you are particularly knowledgeable in
This has a lot of opportunity paired with a small amount of overhead. If you have a particular skill that others would be willing to pay for you can fill that need by investing in yourself to gain that skill. Look at things in your life that people come to you for advice for. Maybe you know a little more about nutrition than others and you decide to pay someone else to gain a better understanding of how to create nutritional plans. From there you can market to others around you that you are selling nutritional plans for a set amount and can help guide someone to their goals. - Learn to create a product which can be sold to your network of friends and family
This is an especially exciting way to invest in yourself to generate more money. If you are someone who is intrigued by establishing your own physical products this is a great strategy to tap into the market. For example, you can spend a couple hundred dollars learning about a craft such as leather-working. After you have acquired this skill you can then translate that to creating products which can be sold online to others through the many e-commerce sites available. - Acquire a skill which others need in the current marketplace
The current marketplace has specific needs and is looking for people to fill the void! You would be surprised by the opportunities there are out there. There are people who make a very comfortable, full-time income as voice actors and pick up jobs on freelancing websites like fiverr. If you were to invest a portion of your money in yourself to gain a skill like that and then translate it into a full-time income, you would be making that money go much further than it would if it were sitting in your bank account.
These are just a couple examples out of a larger collective which can prove to be very lucrative. The idea here is to realize that $500 can easily be translated to something much larger by investing that into something which can generate income. Not only is this a reality, but it will also help expedite other parts of your finances by providing more of a resource pool for you to use.
Take control of your finances by keeping the money you earn instead of losing it. Investing in assets like yourself is a much better use for your money than investing it in liabilities which only drain you of your earnings.

Andrew Martinez, owner and writer of Minerva Money
Instagram: @andrew.martinez__
Twitter: @andrewmartine_z
YouTube: @andrewmartinez