I’m uneducated in a lot more areas than I’m educated in. Yes, I’m masterful in a few things (and I do mean a few), good at a number of others, average at a lot more and utterly ignorant and useless in most.
But in some areas I simply can’t afford to remain uneducated.
Neither can you.
Not if you’re to make a success of the career choice you’ve made. Not if you’re to enjoy significant wealth in your life. And not if you’re to become all you’re capable of becoming.
Success is a strictly personal thing. What it looks like for me isn’t what it looks like for you. Whatever it is for you, I do know this: it’ll take money.
Like it or not, money matters. I’m not suggesting you can’t live successfully without a lot of it, but I am suggesting you’ll never live as successfully as you could have done if you had a lot more of it.
Fact.
Money’s the great enabler. It allows you to express more of your potential, to live your values and to “self-actualise” as Abraham Maslow put it.
97% of the working population are employed. If you were to ask the average employed person what drives entrepreneurs they’d say money. Not true. We entrepreneurs are driven by freedom; money is simply the enabler of it.
So why are so many business owners struggling?
Why are so many “just getting by”?
Why are the vast majority of business owners no better off (or significantly worse off in many cases) than they would be in a job?
And why is financial certainty and financial independence only a reality for such a small minority?
There’s only one reason; IGNORANCE.
Most people are NOT educated in matters they can’t afford to not be educated in. And the only reason for that is they’re not aware of just how poorly educated they are in that particular area.
Fact.
Take me for example. Recently I invested my oh-so-precious time (this took me away from a weekend with my kids – the holy grail of my week) in a 3-day seminar to improve my financial education.
Not only that, I committed an eye-watering amount of time and money in the mentorship that followed (because I know it takes a process not an event to become truly educated in anything).
All this was within a couple of weeks of already investing another eye-watering amount of time and money in getting educated in the same genre on the other side of the pond.
Why?
Because some months ago, I became acutely aware of just how financially ignorant I was.
I’d done what every person who is not financially educated does – blindly handed over a significant amount of cash to a “financial advisor” who is NOT financially free (in fact, he’s nowhere near it) – in the hope he’ll make my money work harder for me than I could.
It’s lazy.
And it’s dumb.
So life dished up yet another opportunity to wake me out of my slumber…and finally, I got it. Finally I became consciously aware that I’d NOT been equipped by my environment and so-called education to make financial freedom a reality in my life.
I very much doubt you have too.
Here’s the interesting thing. Recognising the significant shortfall in my financial education wouldn’t have even registered if I’d not, at first, got educated in how to build a successful and profitable business. If I hadn’t learned how to generate more income into my life through my business, it wouldn’t be on my radar.
That’s why Aristotle’s, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know” comment resonates so strongly.
Stick with me here because, if you grasp what I’m doing my best to convey, it’ll make the all-important difference to you, your thinking and your quality of life.
It dawned on me that if I continued to express the same mentality – the same consciousness – that sponsored “X” amount of earnings in my life, it’s utterly futile and nothing short of idiotic, to expect to achieve “Y”.
“X” type belief systems don’t sponsor “Y” type results.
Yeah, I know, blindingly obvious now, but when you don’t know what you don’t know…you know no better.
And it shows – in results.
The last thing you can call ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is expensive. Horribly expensive. Particularly if you’re ignorant in areas you can’t afford to be ignorant in.
For example, if you own a business, you can’t afford to be ignorant of how to ensure your business is an increasingly and outrageously profitable concern. And if that’s going to happen, you need to be educated in how to make it so. Most business owners don’t bother. How criminal is that? Is it any wonder they struggle? The very oxygen a business needs to survive and thrive is denied or at best horribly constrained by the crippled thinking of its owner.
Is there a more important topic for a business owner to master than how to attract an endless and ever-increasing stream of loyal, engaged prospects and customers to your business – people who value you and what you do…and are happy to pay whatever asking price you demand for the product or service you provide?
Aside from the constant need for self-improvement, I think not. This is entrepreneurial education 101. And most of us don’t get it.
At all.
That’s why I made it my business to learn from extraordinary successful people who’d already made it happen in their own businesses, rather than the plethora of pretenders and so-called “experts” posturing on Facebook.
Christian Simpson is the UK’s leading coach and mentor to business owners and entrepreneurs. For COMPLIMENTARY ACCESS to tried, tested and proven entrepreneurial success strategies, click here
