In my final gig, back when I was working for a salary, I was responsible for starting, managing and growing a shipping company.

My owner/boss would try anything as long as it didn’t cost much money.

This forced me to become very resourceful and to think differently. It also forced me to invest in tools and resources to train myself and grow my abilities.

The company didn’t have the money

to buy me any skills, training or books.

So each and every month, I’d take a little bit of my own personal funds and invest in my growth – so that I could be effective at managing and growing the business.

Yup, you read that right.

I invested MY own money to improve my skills to grow HIS business.

But in the end, it worked out fairly well for me.

The company grew and I became an ‘expert’ and it launched my guru career.

Age-old financial wisdom says:

-Save 10%

-Give 10%

To the above I would add:

Invest 10% in your own education, personal growth and development.

Most people think doing any one of these things is impossible, let alone all three.

But few things are more valuable than knowledge, wisdom and marketable skills.

The compound interest you earn over five or ten years of steadily investing in yourself is INCALCULABLE.

So even if you can’t manage the saving and the giving part, don’t stunt your success by not investing in yourself either.

Some food for thought, as you begin the New Year.

To your success in 2012,

Olav Myklebust

What if everything that is happening is happening for our own good? What would happen if we chose to look at everything as a learning experience? What if Everything in this world is Perfect?

As a leader and someone that you team looks to for guidance and advice, has the question occurred to you. What if everything is perfect? What if everything that happens, everything that has happened, and everything that will happen is exactly what had to happen, is happening and needs to happen for your benefit and the benefit of you organization.

Now I’m not asking you to take this on as “the truth,” even though it might be. I’m asking you to take this on for your benefit, as something that will empower you as you move forward in your position as a leader in your organization and in your life. Because to not take this on, what you don’t realize is that you turn yourself into a victim. And I must say that being a victim is a very popular game. Don’t take responsibility; it’s always something or someone else doing it to you. It’s never your fault. You’re just this helpless weather vane in the wind of life. Sound familiar?

Here’s why it’s empowering to act as if everything is perfect: because then you will learn and grow from the experiences of life and constantly become more of who you could be. And, I assert, becoming more of who you could be is exactly what you want to use this life for.

How does this work? First you have to start from the proposition that life and business is not about winning or losing. Rather, it’s about winning or having learning experiences. So you look at everything either as a win, in which case you celebrate the win and learn how to continue winning, or as a learning experience, not a win, in which case you also learn how to do a better job next time so that you increase the likelihood of winning. Either way, you win.

Here is a common example: you have a conversation with someone and it doesn’t go very well, maybe it actually turns into an argument, maybe you leave with your feelings hurt, whatever. From the perspective of a victim, you blame the other, they blame you, you dig deeper into your position and you plan your next attack.

But if you look from the perspective of perfection, you look to see what went wrong in the conversation, how come it turned into an argument, what you did to contribute to that, what you could do in the future so that things like that don’t happen again, and you even look to see that maybe you need to apologize to the other and get the conversation cleaned up.

Trust me on this one and give it a try. You will discover a power within yourself that you didn’t know was there if you look at everything as perfect and take responsibility for it all.

To Your Building Businesses Based on Faith, Trust, Possibility and Abundance.

Olav Myklebust