The Unlimited ROI of Education & Experiences – Episode 660

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. We’re going to be talking about the ROI of education and experiences. Now, this is a topic that, Kim, you have a lot of experience because you’ve been involved with strategic coach. You’ve read a lot of books. You’ve been a coach. You’ve helped a lot of things. You’ve guided other financial professionals, experts, clients. We’re going to say the whole mix of that. There’s an ROI when we have investments that’s often clear. There’s an ROI on other things that we do. Sometimes the ROI of education and experiences is not crystal clear. How do you put clarity on that? Well, it’s such a great question. This is, I think, under a category of investing in yourself.

[00:56] And so recently, I was preparing a document to provide to a bunch of high schoolers about the paths to prosperity. And there are so many paths. And we talked about the investing in yourself, which when you go on an experience, even if it’s technically a vacation, that is a way of investing in yourself. If you go to a professional conference, that is a way of investing in yourself. What is not easy to quantify is the value that you give to the experience first and then the value that you take from that experience so that you can go on and do even better things with it. And so I remember early on in my career, I mean, I had a typical college education and I paid for it myself. So there was some investment there.

[02:00] And then early on in my career, I left being an employee and became essentially a business owner. I was under a larger organization, but everything that I wanted to do I had to pay for. And I remember putting on a credit card. One of these experiences I think was like a five-day conference. And so it was so interesting to me now to look back at that. The commitment that I made by physically getting myself there, you know, this was pre-internet, the unbelievable advantage of proximity in that there were other people there that were at various stages ahead of me that were guiding lights for a path forward. And so there’s literally proof that that original five-day event for $5,000 or whatever the number was is still impacting me today.

[03:08] So I’m going to go with the ROI can be unlimited. It can be infinite. It can be never stopping. It can be all of what we think about when we use the term unlimited because it just can go and go and go and go and serve and serve and serve and serve and have ripple effects and ripple effects and ripple effects literally for the rest of one’s life. And so I think because of that, we can just relax into that, not try to calculate it and K&OW that it can be unlimited. If we go to an event and all we’re trying to do is get, then I think it’s potentially a negative ROI. Yeah, I view it taking two magnets, strong magnets. And when they are opposites, the repulsing pushing things away. And when we have that, we’re just doing that.

[04:17] Whereas if we flip it, we’re connecting things quite easily. If we go back into education, I wanted to talk about hierarchies of education, and there was one element that you mentioned, which is in close proximity. So we have podcasts. You have books that you’ve written. There’s courses. Then there are group learnings or group courses that you put together. Talk about the differences there, because a person could argue and say, hey, I’ll just read the book and I’ll get all the information, which you can. There’s other elements. How do you put that in the mix? Well, I think it’s because we are human and because we are social creatures, even those of us that are introverts, which I absolutely am an introvert and I love to read,

[05:09] there is just something about being with other humans that makes such a difference. So I know when I go to an event today, I have to really work to put my hat on, my hat of open-mindedness, of lack of judgment, of being there to contribute, of being there also to learn, of being able to turn my brain on and have a decent conversation with somebody at lunch or at the breaks or in the hallways outside the main conference room or whatever it is. And it is so easy to not put a hat on, either because we’re feeling like we shouldn’t be there, right? The whole imposter syndrome, which is a real thing that people struggle with, I struggle with it, and yet it absolutely must be overcome. And so I think the best way to overcome that

[06:14] is to fall into that give first category, because if we are feeling, oh, you know, I shouldn’t be here, I don’t qualify, I’m not good enough, I’m not big enough, I don’t do-da-da enough, we’re not going to be in a position to give. And if you’re new in the business, oh, my gosh, the thing that you have to give is your perspective that’s so valuable to those of us that are experienced in the business, because the new in the business people, whatever business it is that you’re talking about, have the same perspective that the clients do, or the prospects, so that’s valuable. If you’re more experienced and you just feel like, oh, you know, my career is just flatlining, I don’t have anything to give,

[06:57] dig and find one thing to give, and bring that to the space of education, and bring that as your give first arena, along with what we’ve talked about on other podcasts, a positive mind, positive words that come out of one’s mouth, and then also your physiological state. Go to the place and have a smile and sit up and contribute, and stop being on your phone if it, you know, if you can, if it’s not part of the whole event, which obviously there’s times when you have to do or check or whatever, but it’s such a space that you can make a choice in. And I’ve been there, I’ve literally gone into the women’s restroom sometime and just, ah, I just want to hide because, you know, whatever I was feeling at the time

[07:49] and realize, you know what, this is doing me no good. So put your shoulders back, do jumping jacks, or do a sprint, or do whatever you need to do to change the physical state. That’ll change the mental state. That’ll change the look on your face. Put a smile in the mirror and go, because you can’t die in the restroom. It isn’t going to be good. You know, I got a visual of you sitting there looking in the mirror and just like having this pep talk of, come on, we’ve got to do this. And it’s just like, all right, go. And the door flies open and it’s just go time. And that’s what happens. So we started with the ROI of education and experiences. You’re leaning towards the unlimited ROI on it. And again, like, we don’t know what business deals we put together.

[08:47] We don’t know what techniques, insights, wisdom, knowledge, all of that happens. That’s so true. So the final question is this, today or very soon, because Kim, you just went through a reset because of the storm that happened in Texas, what are you doing to put an ROI for education in your personal bank? Give us a couple of things. Well, I always have a lot of calendar control in my life. And so at the beginning, actually towards the end of 2025, I pull out the 2026 calendar. And I have been doing this for decades, literally, probably close to three decades. I have done this with a calendar. It’s a single piece of paper. It’s the entire year in the 12 months. And then each month has a block for each day.

[09:43] And I get colored highlighters out. And I mark off, and Dan Sullivan taught me a lot of this, all of the free days first, because free days are my connection to my family. Free days are the time that I get extra spiritual elements in my life. Free days are completely disconnected from business activity. So I block all of those off. I do pink for personal, right? Block all those out. And then I’ll use purple or orange, and I’ll do all the conferences, picky about conferences that I attend. I don’t have a lot of energy for conferences, but I’m well aware that I need to be at some of them, sometimes for my own growth, sometimes to help other people grow. So I block those out, and I make sure, and I run the calendar for me and Todd together,

[10:30] I make sure that we don’t have too many or that there’s none, you know, that any conferences is not back to back to another one, because we always need to be home and kind of get the farm to keep moving, et cetera. We have people that care for the farm and the dog, et cetera, when we’re gone, but we can’t leave them for two weeks, for example, or we try not to unless it’s vacation time. Then I block out what Dan Sullivan calls his buffer days. So Monday and Friday for me are typically buffer days. These years, sometimes I’m having a third buffer day on a Wednesday, but I protect those so that I can get things done. It’s like if you’re an athlete, you have practice days and then you have game days.

[11:08] So then the last part, the game day, if you will, is called a focus day according to strategic coach, and I block those out all in green, of course, for good, right, and for the color of money, because money is needing to be moved in our worldwide economy, in our U.S. economy, in our own community, and obviously in our family and in our businesses. What’s important is that you are purposeful around calendar control. And so then I know that I have the right amount of time for education and for educating, because like you and I are doing today, I consider our podcast a space where I can educate others. And so it’s important to do that, and it’s important to mix that in with downtime as well. And so that calendar control, that 2026 calendar is so, so valuable.

[12:07] I usually block out the first half of the year, maybe even seven months. I know super solid. I may not know the last half of the year yet. Like I’m just looking at mine right now. It’s still kind of fuzzy in the latter half of the year, but I stay a good six to nine months ahead of it. And actually within another month or two, I’ll pull out 2027 because I’ll get a date of something that somebody wants me to attend or somebody wants me to do something for, or I want to go myself and I will start to fill that in so that I’m ahead of the game and not locked in or not being purposeful about the time around shun. That was an absolute master class. That was so good. For every one of you listeners, myself included,

[12:59] this is like one of those moments where we’re looking and we already have natural momentum and fuel for the year. And this makes it so that we can say, okay, a level up on clarity, a new habit, a new thing to put in place to be a lot more purposeful with what we’re doing. So good. That was great. And that what you just spoke about because you took something you learned from Dan Sullivan. You made it your own. You changed it up a bit. You showed the unlimited ROI on it. Tim, thanks for sharing your wisdom on this episode. Thank you.