 Let's talk about money and investing. Wouldn't it be nice to not have to worry about the ups and downs of whatever, wherever you invest your money, whether it's cryptocurrency or stocks and bonds or even real estate, right? So, four and a half years ago, almost five years ago, I wrote a piece that I will link to below this video about why I don't like cryptocurrency investing in it. And I encourage you to read it. And I recently revisited it and I'm like, I still agree. Now, I have to say I have family members who are very much into crypto and friends and clients who are very much into it. So, I wanna tread lightly here. And I'll just say that I still don't invest in crypto. Not really. I think I have like $500 US dollars total. Last few years I invested in Bitcoin, especially recently with a huge downturn. But I still, it's a gamble. I look at it as gambling. Yes, I think cryptocurrency is, and some way that people invest in stocks and other things are basically gambling. I mean, I said, well, crypto. George, I only invest in the crypto that has some use to it, some utility and it'll be able to build project and things. Okay, really, all right. How is it going? Did you just start yesterday? Or have you been around for several years? And I mean, again, it's like some people make it work. Others just learned it's a good skill to learn to deal with the ups and downs. There's good emotional regulation there. But I think that just think about all the time. And for those who are doing crypto stuff, just think about all the time and energy that goes into learning that stuff and watching the charts. And all that time and energy could have been done something else that's even more valuable. So I wanna talk about that today in this video. The best investment for life is not in any smart financial instrument. The best investment for life is in your own monetizable skills. That's the best financial investment. I'd say the best spiritual investment is in your personal growth and all that's involved in there and that. But the best financial investment for life is in your own monetizable skills. Because when you, let me explain, not just in your own skills because you might be learning some skills that are not going to be monetizable in a few years. And so you always have to keep up with what is monetizable now. Well, how do you know what people will pay you for now? Well, you try, you put a lot of different things out there and you try. So let me explain what I mean by monetizable skills, right? So first of all, actually before I get there, I wanna briefly review my basic rules of personal finance. There's only just four quick rules I wanna share with you. One is to spend less than you earn. And there is one exception which is when you're starting a business, you have no job income. That's a unique situation but you still have to be really careful not to be spending way more than you're earning which brings us to the second rule. We just always keep a buffer of money for living expenses. So which gives you enough time to get a job if you need to. So let's say you're confident about getting an acceptable job in three months that will pay all your bills. Then you just need three months of financial buffer. Please do not eat into your life savings to build your business. It's, that's not a good idea. You really should be building your business out of play money, money that you don't mind losing. That's the money you should be spending into buying my courses, into buying Facebook ads, Instagram ads, not your retirement savings. Please, please, please don't do that. So that's the second rules. Always don't, never touch, I should have added this rule but never touch your retirement savings, number one. But number two, don't always keep a buffer for living expenses. Number three is with the extra money. If you have any extra money that you earn beyond your three months, six month buffer you pay off the highest interest debt first because high interest debt is like a reverse investment. Think about it. If something is, you have credit card debt and it's taking you 10% a year in debt interest, that's like if you had taken the same money and invested in a 10%, it's like you're losing, it's like you took that money, you invested it in investment and it's taking 10% from you, from your own bank every year. It's crazy. So please pay off your high interest debt first before buying anything from me or any other business coach or marketing sales person that you encounter. And number four, never borrow money unless it's for your mortgage, that's acceptable. But unless it's a house you're living in, please do not borrow any money. So anyway, those are my four basic rules of personal finance and I apologize as some of you are already like in despair. So take some deep breaths. You're going to, now that you know these four rules, just do your best to climb yourself out of the hole if you are in one. I hope you're not, but take baby steps, that's how we climb ourselves out of debt, et cetera. So let me now get into what I think the best investments are. I'm not gonna talk about crypto, stocks and bonds. I'll just give you one single tip. If I were to give you one tip on actual financial investing, it would be to invest in the total stock market. Vanguard's a good way to go. Fidelity's fine too. Charles Schwab, whatever you wanna do is fine. But invest in the total index fund of the total stock market, weighed more heavily towards US stocks. And maybe something like 70, 30 US stocks to world stocks, non-US stocks. But if you do that, studies have shown that you'll do better than most hedge funds and mutual fund managers just by doing that because it's like more than half, it's like something like 70% of the smartest, Wharton train, the most, the smartest schools, they come out of smart schools, they know how to analyze all this stuff. 70% of them, the mutual fund managers don't do as well as the S&P 500 or the total stock market. Basically, S&P 500 is very similar to the total US stock market. So just put your money into the index fund of a total stock market and you'll do better than 70% of the smartest financial managers out there. Done. Crypto, you can play with it. That's a gamble. You could do it as a hobby if you want to, but please don't invest your life savings into crypto. I think it's quite dangerous and who knows what the future is gonna be like. So now let's talk, I still think what I'm about to say is really the best financial investment which is in your own monetizable skills. So let me list what three monetizable skills are that are worth putting your money. Again, if you have life savings already, don't touch it, but in the new money that you earn that's beyond paying off high interest debt and living expense buffer, the rest of that play money or disposable income should go into the following three. Number one, your core craft that people are willing or love to pay you for. Some of the things, to be honest, right? We have some skills that people just aren't willing to pay for because they can easily get it for free elsewhere or it's just not in demand. But notice among your skills, the things that you love to do, the things you love to study, things you love to provide services for, what do people love to pay you for? Some kind of consulting, healing, coaching, some kind of service, some kind of freelance service that people love paying you for, what is that? And you could comment below if you want to start getting the conversation going and if more of us comment below, we can help each other with ideas. So comment below among all the skills that you provide that maybe you've sold some of those skills, some of the skills you haven't sold, what do people most love paying you for? What aspect of your healing services? What aspect of your coaching or consulting or freelance services to people love paying you for? Because that, if you invest more money into getting even better at that, that slice of your skill set, not all of it, because sometimes you study things and you pay for training programs and you take courses and go to retreats and stuff for things that people don't want to pay you for. They're just really, really hard to get people to pay you for it. You've tried, right? So of the, you know, 85 skills you have, what's like the three skills that, or the way that you apply your healing, you can apply your healing modality to so many, to 85 different areas. What are the three areas you can apply your healing or coaching to that people most want to pay for? Comment below if you'd like to, and it'll be helpful for others just to see your ideas. And who knows, you might get a client or two from your comments below. So what do people love paying you for based on how you apply your skills, okay? That's number one, invest more money in getting good at that. Because if people love paying you for, chances are people will, especially when it comes to healing, coaching or consulting, these kinds of things cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence anytime soon. It takes too much human touch and human creativity and presence and intuition and spirit led, you know, beingness for robots and AI, which we really should be concerned about because that's gonna take a lot of jobs, but sort of spirit led, intuitive, creativity, beingness with a client, that's gonna be very, very hard. It's gonna be decades before AI gets close to replacing that. So of all these skills, what are people most enjoying paying you for? Comment below, that's number one, invest more of your time, money and energy into getting good at those tiny slices of skills that you're already seeing people love paying you for. Okay, that's number one. Number two, monetizable skill is your ability to be joyfully productive. It is a whole suite of skills. Now, I'm biased here because I have been working on that for decades and it's changed my life so much. It's made me into, if you've seen me, if you follow people always say, George, you're extremely productive. You're able to put so many products and programs out there and still respond in a timely way to emails and be balanced with your life and rest and play. Like how do you do it? Well, it's joyful productivity and most entrepreneurs, most business owners, most service providers are terrible. I've seen, I mean, what I've seen as I just, you know, people start working with me. Most people are really bad at joyful productivity. They're bad at time management. They're bad at energy management. They're bad at managing information and clutter and overwhelm. My email inbox is zero. Right now it's at zero. It's zero at most days. Yes, my email inbox is not at 85,000, which I know some of your email inboxes, but it's at zero, at least several times a week. I've responded to all the emails and, you know, and so it's, if you can improve your skills of joyful productivity, you will rise above most people in your industry, most people in your field, really, because most people are really terrible at it. So, well, and then I am biased because I actually teach the stuff now. So, but I teach it because I believe in it and my students who learn it can see that the difference it's making in their ability to excel in their industry. So number one was your core craft that people are willing to pay for among all the skills. And number two is the skills of joyful productivity, which has about 24 that I've kind of listed out, but anyway, you can start with my articles about joyful productivity. If you're interested, I have a joyful productivity course that, you know, goes into all of these 24 skills. So number two, number three, number three, very monetizable skill is your ability to grow a true fan audience. In other words, your skills of authentic marketing. So let me explain more about this. So imagine you get to a point in your life when you need a lot of support financially and just maybe physically or all of us will, right? At some point in our life, need a lot of that kind of support. How can you be supported when you are down and out, when you are really needing help? The one asset that can be most counted on is a community of people who love you, right? Because with a community of people who love you, all your problems that these physically are solved, they can send you money, right? Donate, go fund me, whatever, right? They can send you money. They can send you tools or items that you need. They come and visit you and physically support you if needed. So this is what I hope for everyone who is watching this is like, I want you to have a community of true fans from around the world because then you could move to somewhere cheaper and still have true fans there, right? Like a community around the world that has benefited so much from what you have put out there over the years, all the content and the offers and your presence and your care over the years that when you need help, they come to your aid. That's better than just having money. Sure, having money is nice because you can hire people but who knows what's gonna happen to money, right? In the future, right? As we all, right now when I'm recording this, we're at record high inflation in the U.S. and many parts of the world. Right now as I'm recording this, the stock market has been crashing for six months or cryptocurrency just went through a giant crash. I mean, who knows what's gonna happen to money in the future? But what we know will always be true is that when you have a community of people who love you, a large community worldwide who love you, you'll never be in want. Think about some of your heroes who are still alive today. I mean, I know a lot of you enjoy like Brene Brown or, you know, yeah, so like, you know, authors or even just friends, beloved friends, right? Who have a lot of friends. It's like they'll never be in want whenever they need help. You can just, hey, folks, I need, I can't pay rent this month. Can anybody help? I mean, if Brene Brown literally said that, she would have millions in donations like overnight. Do you see what I mean? Like, we all, that's the most reliable asset that we can invest in is our own audience. So, which means if you get good at authentic marketing, which I write and talk so much about authentic marketing is the skill of knowing how to explore and communicate your passions and your intuitions and your experiences, right? Alongside doing that while you're also serving the audience, serving the audience without always trying to, you know, every post you're trying to sell them on something. No, just serving them while you're exploring the most important values and experiences and passions and interests that you have. And skills that you have. And that intersection is authentic marketing. And the more you learn how to communicate and do all these things, the more, guess what? You grow a true fan audience, but number two, you become more authentically powerful, right? Whether it's on video or it's in writing, you just become more authentically powerful as you keep doing authentic marketing and grow an audience. And, you know, you'll be set for life because no matter how you're doing financially, if you have a true fan audience, you can always create and sell something and they'll buy it. Or you can recommend someone else's product that you believe in and they'll buy that and you get commissions from it. Or you can simply ask your audience for financial support. I mean, an audience is the most reliable, I guess, if you wanna say asset or, you know, security blanket that one can have. You know, not the government, right? Not even stocks and bonds or crypto or even money in the bank these days with the inflation, but it's a community of people who really have benefited so much from you over the years that they feel indebted to you, they would be happy to support you if you were asked for it, which is why authentic marketing is so important. And part of that is I invest a lot, invest a lot in ads, Facebook, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads to continue building out that audience of true fans. So I feel like ads are a really good place to put your money, especially these days with inflation and with everything else, ad dollars is really smart investment because it grows your audience and it grows your future security. So I hope this is helpful and give you some food for thought. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for being part of my audience. I think a lot of you know me well by this point. Some of you are maybe watching me for the first time or you're new and welcome to you. So as always, you feel free to comment below. Any questions, if there's quick questions, I'll do my best to answer, but certainly share your reflections for others who are watching to be encouraged by it and to get some ideas. So thank you so much. See you in the next video.