 So what is the most secure and reliable investment for your future? And I'm talking about financial investment. That's what I'm going to talk about in this video So first of all, what do you think is the most secure financial investment in your future? Is it the stock market, mutual funds? Putting money in the bank. What is it? Go ahead and comment below I'm curious to know Before you watch this video what that is for you and now I'm going to share with you what my thoughts are about it So let's first begin with some basic personal finance rules and then I'm going to give you an Unusual answer for the most secure financial investment in your future ready. Okay, so the first thing is and by the way I just just to give you some context the reason why I'm talking about this is I was talking with one of my clients Excuse me here. So I'm one of my clients and she was concerned about her financial future She has a couple of months of financial buffer in terms of living expenses, gratefully, and she also has You know some clients right now, so gratefully she doesn't have to worry about some money at this time But she because being an entrepreneur means that you don't have usually you don't have like a pension You're building up from working in a corporate job or something like that You are not responsible for your own financial future. Is that true for you, too? I mean, you know, you're working a job. Maybe they'll they'll add to your 401k or whatever but as an entrepreneur you have to take care of your own finances and You know the you don't have a stable salary anymore. You have to create your own Stable income right so there's a lot writing on you financially as an entrepreneur as a business owner And so she's concerned about her future. She's like, well, what if you know, I don't I'm now And I'm not able to make enough money to save a retirement and I'll be out on the streets when I'm older or whatever You know, I mean, it's not gonna likely be true But there's a concern and maybe you're concerned about that too. Are you concerned? You know, maybe if you're willing to and want to share, please feel free to comment below so So let me first and thank you Linda for joining joining me For for this Facebook live and she said knowledge expertise and content. Is that the most secure investment in your future? You're quite close. You're quite close So let me first share with you the what I consider to be the basic for personal finance rules And then I'll tell you about the unusual tip. Okay, so first personal personal finance rule spend less than you earn spend less than you earn Okay, now that seems obvious if you earn $5,000 a month you should spend less than $5,000. Well, actually if you earn $5,000 a month What do you earn after taxes? You should calculate that maybe after taxes you have $3,500 a month left you should be spending all of your spending should equal no more than $3,500 a month, right? If you you know if you earn only $5,000 a month In income so spend less than you earn after taxes, okay? After a kind of that's number one number two is always keep okay Now there's an exception to number one rule Which is if you're spending all of your time building your business if you don't have a job right now Then I would then there's a justification for Spending money out of your savings to build your business, but you cannot violate the second rule What's the second rule? Always keep a buffer of money for your living expenses How much buffer should you keep? You should keep enough To have the confidence that you can get a job if you need to so for example if you're very confident That within three months you can get a job that's acceptable to you And that will pay all your bills after accounting for taxes Okay, then you only need three months of living expense buffer But if you're not sure it'd be like man could take me a whole year to find a job that is acceptable to me That'll pay all my bills and more Then you need 12 months of living expense buffer. How much money does it cost you to live every month? 3,500 5,000 whatever it is you need to keep that amount every month for at least three to 12 months Usually that's a that's good rule Which also it's not part of my rules here, but you should probably spend less I mean some of you are already quite frugal and that's awesome But some of you spend too much money for example on business training programs, etc Don't buy my stuff if you need to spend less honestly, so Okay, so always that's a second rule always keep a buffer for of living expenses enough to be able to get a job third third rule is when you have extra money in Addition to paying off all your bills and having a little of the fun and Saving for living expense buffer if you have anything left You should pay it towards your highest interest Expend the debt first your highest interest debt first so for some of you that might be I don't know a car Or your mortgage or your credit definitely your credit card that you should not have any credit card debt. I mean Ideally you would not because our credit card debt is so ridiculously high interest to me anything That's more than 3% interest as high interest. I'm very conservative with my finances so Your your credit card debt is probably what 12% 20% some of you so God anything above 3% ending 4 or 5 or more percent. I'm like paying that stuff off as quick as I can so any extra money besides Saving for taxes saving for living expenses Paying off all your bills. You should be paying off highest interest debt Addition and in addition to whatever the month of the month the monthly minimum is more than that. Okay, and then That's the third rule. The fourth rule is never borrow money Never ever ever ever ever borrow money, especially to build your business bad idea Never I should never borrow money unless the interest is extremely low Meaning 3% or less. That's my rule personal rule Okay Never borrow money to build your business. Do not borrow money to build your business. Can I say that again? Do not borrow money to build your business unless it's 3% interest or less I say 3% per year not 3% per month 3% interest per year or less. Okay, do not borrow money to build your business Okay, and All right, so those are the four basic rules. Okay, spend less than you earn Always keep a living expense buffer enough to get a job if you need to Pay off your highest interest debt first. Okay, and then never borrow money unless it's 3% or less Okay, so besides that and I'll tell you why the 3% later, but let me now give you the unusual The unusual tip that you came for your most secure investment Linda had a partly right which is knowledge expertise and content But let me be more specific in that your most secure investment for your future is having a loyal and growing audience Having a loyal and growing fan base With people who like you and trust you if you have enough people like that You will never be in want. You will never lack for anything In the olden days before we had the modern internet and Individualism and individual like everyone has to fight for themselves now in the olden days. We had a community That was your most secure investment is to be a good member of your community good member of your tribe If you ever got kicked out of your tribe, you're done for you know, you're gonna die out in the woods But if you stayed in your tribe, you'll always get taken care of Well these days. We're so individualistic. We don't have a tribe anymore. So you have to build your own tribe You now are responsible for creating your own tribe and That is your most secure investment It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're gonna sell yet Some of you watching this don't know what business you're gonna build. Don't know what your product or service is gonna be Please do not delay in building your own community building your own fan base Dude start today. I mean as an example like I've if you've been watching some of my videos or reading some my articles You know that I started a side business. I called it my side business even though I don't know what I'm gonna sell in that business yet But I at least I'm building my own audience already in my side business and already now that's been Almost five months. I have 2000 people in my side business who have engaged with my content in the last 90 days 2000 people I count it as a 90-day window and I you know on on on Facebook just on Facebook alone Well, it's all I have in my side business's Facebook page So that's it if you dedicate yourself Bottom line the most important thing you do in your business is to grow a loyal and growing audience You can feel secure in your future You don't have to feel like you're gonna be out on the streets when you're old, you know when you're too old to work You will be taken care of by your community of people Why and how is that true? Because if you have a large enough audience of people who trust you and care about you I mean even if you have nothing to sell even if you say everybody I am not need to pay my my next month's rent If I said that today if I said, okay, I've run out of courses to sell you I don't have any coaching to provide to you because maybe I Mentally incapable now of coaching you and helping you and if I said can you please help me pay my rent? You probably would I mean there all of you would chip in you know $10 a month or whatever to make sure George can pay his rent and and his food and I'll I'm sure all you know I mean like I have a large enough audience now now where I don't have to be out on the streets I could probably move in with one of you If I if you you know if I needed to right you don't I mean that's that's an extreme case, but More likely what's gonna happen is you grow enough of the audience where you can then guess what? sell them anything That you believe is worthwhile for them, of course, we would do it authentically But with a loyal and growing on you can sell Anything that you're interested in that you believe is worthwhile to them and they will trust you enough to Seriously consider buying it from you Because most people you just run Facebook ads or a cold audience People who don't know who you are Are not gonna buy anything from you because they don't even give you the time of day to really consider buying it from you You don't even have their trust enough to consider the sale But when you have a real audience and the loyal audience They will do you the favor of considering your product or service whatever it is you're trying to sell to them and by the way You don't even have to create your own product or service if you have an audience Plenty of people will be happy to sell to your audience with your endorsement and recommendation So if you believe in another person's product or service another company's offering You can then partner with that company They can do all the manufacturing or all the creation of the service and you simply Recommend and endorse that company's offering to your audience and your audience will be happy to buy it If it's a right fit for them if you believe it's a right fit and you can make the case is hey I really believe in this offering it helped me out a lot I helped out my you know my colleagues or my friends or whatever it is They will buy it and you will earn money and the other company will take care of all the marketing and all the Customer service and fulfillment etc So in my side business, which I'm spending two hours a week building. I might Maybe I won't ever create a product. Maybe I'll just sell other people's stuff because I only have two hours a week You see So but if I have an audience I can make enough money So that is the most secure. Does that make sense? Let me know if if that makes sense And thank you captain says can you move in with us already? Captain I'll be happy your kids look adorable. Maybe I'll be okay with that So alright, let's now let me now share with you. So so so how do you build an audience? I mean if you're here if your first time you're watching my videos Look back on all my other videos. I talk about audience building in almost every video So I already give you all of that and just give you a quick summary the most the smartest way to build an audience is through focusing on creating consistent Relevant authentic content. Okay, I'll just give you those words You could see all everything else Because if you if you focus on content if you focus on Creating a quantity of content so that you can practice enough to get better and better and better at Communicating and smarter and smarter and smarter about your field Then you'll you'll build an audience that's growing and trust you more and more and etc. Okay, so and then you can partner with other people to You know trade off, you know to cross promote and find new audiences that way or use facebook ads or whatever it is but content consistency relevance and authenticity is sort of like the The bottom line rule for me. Okay, so why did I say 3% remember? I said don't borrow money unless you can get it at 3% or lower And why why should you pay off all of your debt that's higher than 3% you know pay it off as quickly as possible It's because If you can borrow money at 3% or lower Then you can make money by investing In a stock market index fund So so for those of you who don't want to get into personal finance stuff right now you can end this video Thank you for watching. But let me just tell you a little bit about sort of personal finance like stock market investing, etc The first rule of stock market investing Is do and just investing in general Do not pick individual stocks Don't listen to anybody who says oh my god, this company is doing really well. You should buy their stocks Mistake, I don't care what company it is. Okay. I don't care because Do your research on this anybody who picks stocks like you know, I'm smart enough to say that I'm going to invest in these 10 companies Because they're doing really well. I'm going to invest in these 20 companies these five companies Will always lose to the market in the long term Yeah, you might like oh my god. See I made money george. I invested in that stock and next month I made money And then you get all your hopes up and you think well, maybe I'm a smart investor I'm going to try investing in different companies that have different If you look at your five to ten year track record, you will have lost money You will have made less money than you would have if you had simply invested in a stock market index fund What is an index fund and this fund is a a a mutual fund that basically takes all the companies in the whole market It's called putting your eggs in many many baskets instead of one basket or five baskets or 20 baskets I don't care you should your your your basket of mutual funds should be like at least Hundreds of companies hundreds of companies not not a few dozen Okay, and it should be dozens of industries not three industries that you invested in. Okay So Yeah, anyway, I I later on Well tomorrow when I post the article In companion to this video I'll give you a couple links to research further But do not pick don't think you're going to be winning the market by picking stocks In the short term it looks like you're winning in the long term if you if you do the math you'd be like So so the the the typical stock market return historical returns Basically have been about Seven to ten percent Seven to ten percent and I like to say five percent is the super conservative average So if you invest in a stock market index fund, which is basically all the companies s and p 500. Okay s and p 500 Index fund you're going to earn basically seven to ten percent a year if you average it out over five to ten years You earn seven to ten percent Reliable secure that's been the history for I think it's they've tracked it for like a hundred years or something like that, right? so if you then Take out the money you pay for taxes Right, you'll earn at least five percent after taxes After taxes you're well depending on your country. Some of you are in europe and the taxes may be higher I don't know what the taxes are are in europe, but in the u.s The taxes are 15 percent for capital gains for stock market, you know returns So 15 off of seven percent is five point nine percent So you earn about six percent, but I just like to be conservative and say fine I'm going to count four to five percent four or five percent returns after taxes on on an index fund And by the way, I use a socially responsible index fund So you might want to look that up So instead of just investing in the s and p 500 You should you know if you have certain values about the environment about society You look up socially mess socially responsible index funds And find one that has several hundred companies At least over a hundred companies or at least a few dozen industries maybe over a dozen industries But you should again diversify diversify diversify, okay? But they they still follow some social Social guidelines like they're good for the environment or at least they don't they're not terrible for the environment And they don't have like slave trade going on They don't have they don't sell tobacco or firearms. They're the most basic stuff, right? Anyway, so that's why I said you can borrow money if you can borrow money at three percent or less That's might be smart borrow money at two to three percent and it invested in the stock market index fund and you'll earn you'll earn money You'll make money by doing that, right? but Long story short, I'll end the video now because I'm not a personal finance advisor So don't make any decisions per finance decisions based on what you what you learned from me I'm just you know, kind of giving you my personal opinion on it But I'm a marketing advisor and I can tell you that from a marketing side of things The most reliable investment you can make is growing your own trusting and and and loyal audience You'll never be in want you can always sell something that that they appreciate that they'll buy, okay? So I wish you well. Thanks for watching and let me just thank those of you who are here live Alejandra, thank you Andrew, thank you captain and ross and linda Thanks so much for joining me. Those are the ones I'm seeing right here on the screen right now. So I hope you will make wise financial decisions Remembering that the wisest decision you can make besides the four rules that I said Is growing your own audience because then you'll never be in want and if you and one more thing I should say I should I should have mentioned this My facebook ads Are returning me 90 percent return on investment 90 percent Let's compare that to the stock market, which is seven percent seven percent stock market 90 percent return on facebook ads Which one is smarter? So that's why if when I have extra money instead of Putting in the stock market now I've paid off my interest debt thankfully and now that I've done that My my money is going into facebook ads because it's 90 90 percent return Now let's say that I had a really bad year and it was like a third of that 30 percent return is still higher than the stock market of seven percent. It's still several times higher So that's why to me facebook ads right now in 2018 2019 probably Is still the highest return on investment of anything out there But you need to learn how to use it well that you can't you know, you can't just mess around with facebook ads either So you got to learn learn to use it learn to do it well and it'll be and when I say 90 percent return I'm talking about all of my facebook ads not just the ads where I sell my courses I'm talking about ads where I just promote my my content that has no call to action I'm including those ads too the ads that put my videos out there put my articles out there I include that expenditure plus the ads I sell my courses that you put all of it together and then Look at how much I make in terms of my courses just my courses not including my I'm not even counting my one-to-one coaching and my master heart my group coaching program I'm just talking about selling my courses. I get a 90 return on investment considering all my facebook ads Amazing right so there you go. That's just because that's an example of what how great of investment it is to build your audience all right Blessings to you and I will see you in the next video and thanks gord for joining me as well Take care