During the entire time of our formative years, school and college takes up the lion’s share of our mind, time, and effort. The pathway chalked out for most of us is usually a job and a few brave souls take to entrepreneurship only to discover that entrepreneurship is no different from a job, except that you are answerable to yourself.
As a result, the flame of happiness wears out. Nothing seems to happen. Burnout is inevitable. If you are young or if you have young ones, remember these few things that should be planted early in life for these efforts to pay off later:
As many skills, in as little time as possible
Skills make money — that’s the simplest and the most profound lesson I’ve learnt as an entrepreneur. Depending on where your interests lie, pick up those related skills fastest. Then move on to where you haven’t ventured before; pick up skills you never thought you needed.
Try something new. It not only makes you multi-skilled (and hence put you in a position to make more money) but also keeps you active and fills your life up.
Invest money, the sooner the better
Forget about all those different ways of making money. If there was one, cocksure way of making billions, start saving small and early. A disciplined investment habit into the right investment vehicles — and for a long time left for the money to grow — should allow you to rack up millions.
This is where your money works hard for you. The biggest open secret is that you have to start early. Very very early. The earlier you start, the more money you make. Not doing this is one of the biggest mistakes parents can do. Are you listening?
Start building assets
From the very start, work on building assets for yourself. Like homes, properties, commercial properties, etc. A huge account balance, plenty of money invested in different investment classes should do the trick. Don’t rack up liabilities though.
Expensive cars, for instance, are a huge liability. Don’t buy expensive cars. Use debt wisely.
Work on building a residual income
One of the best things you could do with your life is to spend all your time trying to build up one or several sources of income that are residual in nature — be it businesses that pay you continuously, income from capital gains off stocks, rental income from property, etc. If there’s one thing you should start early, and well, it’s to build a residual stream of income. You should start early simply because it takes a lot of time.
I’ll cover a few more things you’d need to do early on (like, right now) in Part 2 of this post.
