Habit #9 — Invest in Opportunities for Growth
Two weeks ago my wife and I made the decision to invest in a membership to Michael Hyatt’s subscription site Platform University. The cost isn’t outrageous, only thirty bucks a month, but it was still a financial investment into learning how to start and grow an online business and a substantial fraction of our current disposable income. That’s why I’m making my next habit to spend at least two hours a week learning this new material and putting into practice (on top of what I’m already doing with the blog).
Why on earth would I spend money on that?
There is a ton of great free information out there. I can learn a lot by scanning the internet, reading blogs, and listening to podcasts. Beyond that I work in a library. Aren’t there tons of free resources available there for me to use?
Clearly I haven’t exhausted all of those resources.
I have a library book checked out right now, and my library has two others from my reading list this year. I have tons of unheard Michael Hyatt and Pat Flynn podcasts downloaded (not to mention unrelated ones such as Mark Driscoll, Freakonomics and Stuff You Should Know). To top that off I haven’t even begun to finish reading all of the information on Copyblogger, Problogger, Quicksprout, or Smart Passive Income (although I have at least scanned every one of Michael Hyatt’s posts).
So again, why would I spend money on information that I could clearly get elsewhere?
1. To save time. There is a lot of great information out there for free. The only problem is that it takes a huge time commitment to track it all down. My membership allows me access to focused information on exactly the subject I want to learn about. Now I can spend the time I had been spending browsing websites looking for relevant information and use it on learning and implementing instead.
2. To increase my level of commitment. I’ve been on Platform University for less than a month and I can already see this in effect. I already have dozens of pages of notes from the different sessions, and still more from the conversations I’ve had in the forums. The number of pages of notes I have from all the blogs and podcasts and library books? Maybe four or five.
Once I made a financial commitment to access the information I raised the stakes. Now I’m not a passive viewer, I’ve got some skin in the game, and I have to get my money’s worth out of what I bought. This has caused me to be much more intentional in how I’ve approached Platform University as opposed to other great resources out there. I have made an investment in this product, and I need to get as much value out of it as humanly possible.
3. To network. I have one friend who is working on the same sort of thing, building a platform and trying to get the message out about his book, and his friendship and camaraderie has been invaluable as we work on these projects together. But he’s the only other friend I have who’s working on something similar, and then our topics are quite different.
One of the features of Platform University is member forums where members have the opportunity to network and connect with one another. The minute I joined, my circle of connections in this world grew from one to a few thousand. That is priceless.
4. Because of Michael. I trust Hyatt to provide me with great value and great content. I do so because he’s consistently done so both through free resources (such as his podcast and blog) and through paid resources (like his book). When he said that he’d be building and expanding on the concepts of his book in Platform University, I knew that he would deliver on that promise.
These are the four reasons I purchased a membership to Platform University. The last one is pretty specific, but the first three could apply to any investment for any dream. In what dream do you need to take the leap and make a financial investment into achieving? What tools and resources could you invest in to make moving forward in that dream a possibility? Let me know in the comments!
