1 skill at a time, here’s what it looks like after 10 years…
Hi my name is Connie and I’m 33.
I am a corporate lawyer and an online entrepreneur who monetized more than $1m by learning 1 skill at a time in the past 10 years.
Here’s what it looks like…
1. Learning Notes Making
While at school I wasn't the cleverest bunch but I was smart enough to learn but one skill to survive all my school years: Notes making skills.
I don't take notes. I make notes.
What's the difference you may ask.
Taking notes is like writing transcripts writing down whatever that you hear.
Making note though is creating your own form of structure of the knowledge that you've learned in the class. So you've got to be able to explain what you have learned while making notes. It's not simply transcripting.
With this one skill, I managed to survive law school without ever needing to revise overnight.
In fact I sleep at around 10 p.m every night, and waking up around 7am.
In the final qualifying exam, I only created two pages of notes, while others are bringing a book-thick of notes.
I got the highest mark in the class. And I even got $7000 scholarship out of it.
Thanks to my two pages of notes, and thanks to my notes making skill.
So that was relatively easy.
2. The corporate life - Learning 2 skills
Following the normal path I entered into the corporate world after graduating from school and I learned two skills that allowed me to go from 20,000 to six figure salary in just 8 years :
The first skill is: Interview skills.
I was able to achieve salary jump every 1-2 years and land them pretty good job offers pretty easily.
Here's what my salary growth looks like:
year 1: salary $20000
year 2 :salary jump +100% ($40000)
year 3: salary jump +40% ($56000) + bonus
year 5: salary jump +30% ($72800) + bonus
year 6: salary jump +30% ($94640) + bonus
year 8: salary jump +34% ($120000) + bonus and allowance
To be honest I don't think I have really grow in terms of professional skills that much, in fact I'm doing more or less the same thing in all of these roles, like researching for new laws and analysing them, handling litigation cases, reviewing contracts and documents etc.
The work scope hasn't changed much, the reason for my rapid jump in salary is mainly because I know how to present myself in interviews so that companies want to hire me.
And you know each corporate job has their own salary ceiling and getting promotion would be difficult unless you can prove sufficient significant value contribution to the company.
I figured out that the quickest way to increase my salary is to have good interview skills, and so I learnt and applied the same to go from $20,000 to $72,800.
And then I learn a second skill, which is leadership skills.
Starting from $72,800, I understand that merely depending on interview skills alone it's in going to get me to the next level so I learned leadership.
I started teaching and managing other assistance below me even though they do not report to me in the company's structure. That helps my supervisor and saves some of his time in managing the team.
I would create and share report templates, help developing standard procedure, assist to explain and delegate a task to others.
And I read many leadership books at that time while spending some money to enroll in courses and seminars on leadership.
A year later I again had a change of job and my salary jump +30%, this time to $94640. Two years later my salary has reached six figures to $120,000.
So by learning two skills - interview and leadership skills, I managed to achieve salary jump from $20,000 to 6 figure salary $120,000 in just 8 years.
A summary of my corporate life:
year 1: salary $20000
year 2 :salary jump +100% ($40000)
year 3: salary jump +40% ($56000) + bonus
year 5: salary jump +30% ($72800) + bonus
year 6: salary jump +30% ($94640) + bonus
year 8: salary jump +34% ($120000) + bonus and allowance
And I'm definitely not the smartest bunch, I've seen more clever people, but they may not be achieving such a quick jump in their salary and income.
My law school classmates (one who had overall higher grades, studied harder than me and is smarter than me) is making $80,000 while I'm making $120,000, there is a 33.33% difference!
I absolutely believe that is not because I'm smarter, but because I learn in a way that gets result in life.
3. The side business - Learning sales
While working in the corporate job, I started a side coaching business.
At first I was coaching interview skills, which I've already acquired the skillset and good at it. And I made $5600 in just 7 months running it part-time and half-heartedly.
And while running this side coaching business, I realized that sales skills is really important and so I start the learning sales.
I was at a loss when I first started to learn sales because there are so many different sales strategies and styles and I don't quite know who to listen to.
It appeared that the extroverts version of sales would work very effectively but I'm not an extra word and I really can't do what they do.
So for almost a year, I didn't make any real progress.
It was the first time in my life where I found learning difficult.
So I took a stop back and reflected on how I learned a law school and how I learned in the corporate life - enough discovered a pattern and a framework that I unconsciously followed to learn and achieved results in life.
The framework consists of:
(1) input
(2) output
(3) monetisation
It was still quite a vague framework that I had at that time, but it was already giving me some idea for Profitable Learner.
So I followed the same framework and continue to learn sales.
I even signed up to become a fundraising volunteer for an animal charity organization to test my sales skills, which required to me to sell products with animals images on the street.
Within 7 months, I broke the record of raising the highest amount of money in a day for the animal charity organization.
So I go back to my coaching business and offered to coach on sales, made $20,000 in 25 months (counting from the time when I started learning sales) .
It was time that I really consolidate and developed the monetizations system for profitable learner.
4. Learning investment
As my salary increases radically throughout the years, and my side business makes some extra income, I was having ample of cash in the bank.
I was eager to invest and at the time and I got introduced to a UK real estate investor about real estate development projects.
I got greedy and was too proud to think that I knew a lot - I put all my savings at that time into the project, because numbers are really lucrative.
Unfortunately covid hits and the real estate company had serious cash flow issues when constructions projects in these two be extended.
In the end the company needs to be liquidated and as an investor, I got nothing back but a few broken bricks.
I was in a slump and I blamed myself every night for making such a poor financial decision and putting all my savings into this highly risky investment.
I didn't dare to not my family know, I don't want them to worry about me, but I was crying a lot privately.
In my previous 20 something years I've never faced such a big failure like this.
So it was a blow to me, mentally and financially.
I thought I was smart enough and I had good sense of confidence from all my previous experiences of
- not having to study very hard to get awesome grades and scholarship ,
- being able to go from $20,000 to $120,000 in just 8 years, and
- making good progress in my business,
but then life slammed me on the face.
I criticised myself, I blamed myself, I couldn't regret more. Yet there is no turning back time.
I stopped operating my side business, just continuing the minimal corporate work to survive.
I read a lot of psychology and spiritual books at that time, which gives me some relief.
Time really heals all wounds.
It took me two years more or less to pick myself up and learn investment.
This time round, i'm more clear about what I really want in terms of investment:
- my risk appetites has been hugely affected by the failure and so now I'm looking for something that could give me reasonable return with acceptable risk so that I will be losing sleep at night. I definitely stop looking for crazy, promising, high return.
- I know that I want to focus my time and energy on building the business more, so I wouldn't be spending a lot of time on my investment. So it needs to be passive enough that don't require much active management on my part.
Based on this new understanding of myself, I learnt about index investment and passive investment, which was great.
So I went from losing almost $1m (all my savings at that time) in investment (in 2020) to having a $500,000 portfolio consistently making 8-12% compounding annually with only 5 mins a month (by end of 2023).
5. Learning how to learn in a way that makes money
After I lost my million which I saved from my hard work and side business almost overnight, I was back to square one and I asked “what is the quickest way for me to stand back up?”
And I found “learning”.
Not just reading books, attending courses, but ACTUAL LEARNING – BEING ABLE TO INTERNALIZED KNOWLEDGE AND CONVERT IT INTO MY EXPANDED ABILITY.
Back to where I got results, this is the basic ability that has allowed me to grow the most.
Through learning and sharing about learning,
- I accumulated 500 instagram and 200 medium followers who are also eager to learn,
- I recorded growth in more than 5 journals,
- I built a knowledge system of more than 800 notes,
- I rediscovered what I like (and don’t like) and a new-found self confidence to explore unknown territory and breakthrough comfort zone
- I finally free myself from all the self-blame and anxiety about money, because I know I can get money as long as I'm packed with valuable skills - and I can learn.
Learning is the single most profitable skill you can acquire in this day and age. (Even with ChatGPT, you need to learn to instruct and prompt AI).
As you can see from my life path,
(1) one doesn't need to learn a ton to grow
In total, I only learnt 5 skills so far to get me to my 30s:
- notes making
- interview
- leadership
- sales
- investing
(2) learning a lot ≠ growth
Have you read a lot of books and fail to apply the knowledge within? Or even don't remember what the books talks about?
Have you ever invested much money on courses but unable to obtain results as claimed?
Do you want an income boost but not sure what you can do except working harder? (tips: working harder is almost NEVER the solution)
Do you want to hustle on the side to make a second income but not sure what you want do? (tips: regardless of what you want to do, you NEED to learn)
Do you want to become an expert or consultant or coach but don’t know how to turn knowledge to cash?
Are you always interested in personal development but over the last few years, you don’t seem to achieve your goals and wondering where is the breakthrough?
Well, I've faced all the above.
I too fall into the trap of buying many books, buying many courses and thought that I acquired the knowledge by owning / reading those books and attending the courses once.
I too faced struggles in my own learning process.
But I also have some strategies that work really well.
The truth is: learning a lot ≠ growth
In order to get results in life in order to really grow as a person professionally financially mentally, we don't need to learn a lot, we need to learn the right way.
Learning effectively and efficiently is what brings the breakthrough and results that we're looking for.
What I found is that there is a closed loop system for learning:
Input + output + monetisation
Our school system focuses mainly on input.
The corporate world Focuses mainly on output.
Businesses Focus mainly on monetization.
We have never properly learned how to learn the way that produce results in life and makes money.
That's why I came up with the PLP (Profitable Learner) framework, for each of us to achieve growth with learning right.
(3) how to learn in a way that can escalate one and change one's life for the better is a fundamental skill for all
Learning is a core skill to have that will benefit you regardless of your role and position, no matter where you are in the world or what you want to do with your life.
Learning how to learn properly will help you to breakthrough your old, existing self and bring a whole new level of confidence and freedom to you.
Once you master the skill of learning, there is no place you cannot go and no things you cannot do.
I always believe that "The efficiency of your income depends on the efficiency of learning".
But not just financially,
Learning is what allows me to escalate myself,
- not only professionally (become more skillful and competitive),
- financially (just look at the growth in my income within 10 years)
- but also broaden my horizon (of what's possible and all the different approaches and perspectives),
- network (dealing with more powerful and smart people),
- and mentally (growth in confidence) .
IMAGINE:
✔ a new confident you knowing that nothing can be too difficult for you to learn since you know exactly what and how to learn in the most efficient and effective way by following a proven system from input to output to monetisation
✔ you are making some extra thousand on the side, or even double or triple your current income as your ability and skills increases
✔ you didn’t think you can achieve your goal but here you are, after learning and expanding your comfort zone bit by bit, you’ve reached your goal, what a journey!
✔ you can work anywhere you want and free to choose from a variety of jobs because of the diverse skillsets you acquired (feel free to jump increase your salary!)
✔ you are forever free from worries and anxiety of not making money because with the skill of learning, you can learn anything and turn the knowledge into money-making powers.
✔ you will live your life filled with curiosity like a child, and you’d be able to discover a lot more interesting things and principles that will help you to make better decisions in life
That is the magic of learning how to learn and the reason why I share and offer the Profitable Learner program (PLP).
PLP is the complete system of mission-based, closed-loop learning which is the most effective, easiest and fastest way to learn and apply and monetise anything.
6 Future outlook
I don't intend to stop learning and so I know the growth in my income and other aspects in life will continue in the next 10 years in my 35-45.
To your success ,
Connie
