How I Would Invest $1000 If I Were Starting Over

Most people have no idea what to do with a thousand dollars. Should I save it? Should I invest it? Should I buy a course? In fact, the most important thing is that the first thousand dollars is more than just money. It's a chance, a legit chance to prove that you can do so much more with it. And today I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. Hey, my name is Sharan Srivatsa. And if you don't know me, I had a chance to build $2 billion businesses. And I was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. And today I'm the CEO of Acquisition.com, where I work with my partners, Alex and Layla Hermosi. And we talk to entrepreneurs all day long, but every entrepreneur started with something, their first thousand dollars. And I want to show you exactly how I would invest my first thousand dollars today, which could probably help you as well. The first thing that I would do is not buy a stock or a mutual fund or an ETF. The first thing that I would do is I would think about the one hour question. And what is the one hour question? And that is to put a sense of constraints into however you think about everything, which is, let's say you had to generate $500 a month in a business, and you could only work on it for one hour a day. What would you build? This is a chance where somebody, a venture capitalist, you are investing this thousand dollars in your own business, but you can only work on it for one hour a day, and it has to generate $500 a month. What would you do? And that's what forces the constraints for you to actually do something very specific with that thousand dollars. There was this really great story that happened at the entrepreneurship class at Stanford. And the teacher split up the class into a bunch of groups. And she said she gave each group $8,000. And she said, your job is to figure out how you can turn this thousand dollars into more, right? And how you can get the highest possible ROI on the thousand dollars. So the entire goal was that they would have to, each group would go, deploy the thousand dollars as an investment and figure something out. And they would come back and present to the class on exactly what they had done. Well, you had the first group that said, hey, the easiest way to make more is to buy something for a thousand dollars and flip it for more than a thousand dollars. Well, that makes sense. The second group said, maybe we should go build something. Let's use the thousand dollars as raw material to figure out what we can go build. And then maybe we build that. And then we sell it. And then we sell it. Sell that. The third group said, maybe we build some software. And then let's actually figure out how we can pre-sell some software. And then once the software came out, maybe we can do more with it. The fourth group said, well, maybe we should just take on some debt. If we give somebody a thousand dollars, would they be able to give us some more money? And maybe we can take more money and then create some income with it. They thought they could use leverage. But the fifth group was the one that won. They did something extremely unique. And what they did was, instead of building anything, instead of flipping anything, instead of creating something, they came up with the constraint. They said, what if we could not spend this thousand dollars at all, but still make more than a thousand dollars? They changed the question itself. They created a constraint around the question. They gave themselves the one hour question. They're like, how do I do something with this thousand dollars? And what they did was, since every team had a chance to actually come back in front of the class and pitch a thousand dollars, they did a pitch to the class on what they had done. That presentation, they realized was an asset. So they went and sold advertising commercials in that presentation to local businesses that wanted to reach Stanford students. Now, they didn't even spend their thousand dollars. They established that constraint and they made more than a thousand dollars and they were able to get these businesses to talk to the right demographic. Now, I'm not telling you that you need to go do something like this, but what I am saying is, it is, instead of taking a thousand dollars, taking the thousand dollars and saying, what do I do to invest in this? You want to ask the one hour question. What can I work on for one hour a day that will allow me to create something with this thousand dollars? Because it's not about the thousand. It's what the thousand can enable you to actually do. Let me give you part two of this. I call this the learning dividend. And the learning dividend is, what is something that you can invest in that will give you a skill that you can make more than a thousand dollars in your lifetime? What is one lifelong skill that you can learn? So I was talking to my partner, Alex Ramosi, and he was telling me how a lot of people want to make more money, but they then say, well, maybe I should just work harder. Maybe I should just make more hours. Maybe I should just make more phone calls. Maybe I should just put more effort in because yes, more effort will give you more, but a little bit of better skill will give you significantly more. He researched, that just by taking a $500 certification, you can become a phlebotomist, you know, a person that draws blood. And that increases your kind of income by three to four fold compared to the baseline. If you don't have that skill, that's a learning dividend. What it did is you spent a little bit of money up front, and then you're asking like, what skill can I invest in that will give me a, that will pay me for life? Now, this was more than a thousand dollars, but let me tell you a story. I paid Tony Robbins's speaking coach $50,000 for three hours. And during that time, all he did was watch me speak and ask me questions. He sat there for three hours, just grilling me and trying to help me become a better speaker. And I will tell you that I had no idea whether that was going to work or not, but I realized that if I could make this investment that, and I could become a better speaker, it would open up doors and create this learning opportunity forever. And I will tell you that my entire quote speaking career or presenting career is everything that happened before I met Richard Green and everything that happened after I met Richard Green. And it's really important to think about that because that one skill that I got to invest in was a learning dividend for me. I never have to invest in that skill again. I, yeah, sure. I keep getting better. I keep getting feedback, but investing in that one skill paid for it for life. So the question I would ask you is one skill that you can invest in that will pay you for life. Now, my next door neighbor, he was telling me the story about how he wanted to, uh, many years ago, by the way, he wanted to make more money. And so I said to him, well, how much money do you want to make? And he's like, well, I want to make a million dollars. And I said, well, okay. And I said to him, I said, do you know anybody that actually makes a million dollars? And he said, yes, I have a friend who is a salesperson and he makes a million dollars. It's like, well, that's great. What skill does your friend have that allows him to make a million dollars? He's like, well, he has the ability to present himself. Well, he has the ability to memorize scripts. He has the ability to answer questions in a very articulate way. He has the ability to frame problems and solutions. He has the ability, this natural ability to handle objections. I said, do you think they teach those skills at school? He's like, no, no, no. He clearly did something to learn those skills. I said, well, if you had those skills, do you think you would be able to become better? He's like, yeah, if I had those skills in my job, I would definitely make more money. What was I trying to do there? I was trying to show a skill gap. And that skill gap, if you can find that skill gap in your life, you start to realize that, wait a minute, if I can actually invest in this one skill, I can actually make more money. So the question I would ask you is this, if between now and the next 90 days, if you could magically, the matrix style, acquire one skill was somehow rammed into you, you quickly learned it. And if you got the skill, would it change your life? Would it change your income? Would it change your relationships? Would it change your happiness? Would it change your body? What would happen? Because if you know what that one skill is, something amazing can happen. Now, I will tell you, most people don't even need to go out and invest in any of this. Instead of even spending the $1,000, what you can do is you can take on a weekend sprint. Well, what is that? It's a learning dividend. Instead of spending the $1,000, you're actually spending your time. And let's say, for example, you wanted to become good at social media or become a better copywriter or become better at investing. What you would do is for a two-day period, for a weekend, for a full weekend, you would just say, hey, you would just binge all the YouTube videos and all the podcasts that you could find for two full days and just make notes about it. And I will tell you, at the end of those two days, you will have more information than most people have working in that field. Because in a concentrated amount, you have figured out exactly what you need to do overall. And it's a really important thing to figure that out because nobody is willing to even spend 15 to 20 hours to get mastery on a very specific topic. And if you can just do that, the learning dividend will pay you for life. So number one, is the one-hour question. What constraint can you put on to actually get you the result that you want? Number two is the learning dividend. What can you invest in with that $1,000 or maybe a part of it or just a weekend so you don't have to spend that that can change the very trajectory of your life based on the one skill that you learn? And the third is I actually believe that you are your best investment. Let me explain what I mean by that. This is not a fluffy thing related to, oh, my gosh, you should just invest in yourself. No, I'm not saying that at all. I want to explain exactly what this means. So let's just say, I'm going to invest in myself. I'm going to invest in assume that you were a venture capitalist, you were an investor, right? Would you invest in yourself today? Or would you invest in yourself 10 years ago? I'm going to wager that you would invest in yourself today. Because in the last 10 years, you are probably better, right? You are probably more experienced. You're probably smarter. You're probably sharper. You have figured out a lot of things. Well, what got better in the last 10 years? You got better in the last 10 years. You make less of those mistakes. You have a new skill. You have a new experience. You have the ability to deliver something that was very hard to deliver before. I have a story to share with you. When I was a child, my mom and dad ran an advertising company. And it was just them. They ran a small business. And so that would mean that whenever I was with my mom, or dad, they would have to take me everywhere they want. Well, the crazy part is, wherever I went with my mom, just like any other child, if you have children, you know exactly what this is. Wherever I went with my mom, I would ask for something. If she went to the grocery store, I would ask for an apple. If she went to the bookstore, I would ask for a book. If she went to the hardware store, I would ask for a pipe. If she went to a restaurant, I would ask for food. Literally, wherever my mom took me as a kid, I would ask for something wherever she took me. And I just realized that she would always say no. And it was very demoralizing. But one day, my mom said yes. And she said yes when I asked for a book. And I thought, huh, that's interesting. So the next time we went to a store, I would first started asking for a toy. Then I would ask for clothes. Then I would ask for candy. Then I would ask for a pipe. Then I'd finally ask for a book. And my mom would say no to everything. And then she would finally say yes to a book. And I realized, that my mom was trying to teach me something. She was trying to teach me that me investing in myself, me learning, would take me to more places than I ever thought. Well, fast forward to when we had children. When we had children, my mom pulled me aside one day. And she said, hey, do you remember when you were growing up that I didn't say yes often to toys or games or clothes or candy, but I always said yes to a book? I said, yeah, I remember. And she said, you need to promise me something. You need to promise me that with your children, you're going to give them an unlimited learning budget. An unlimited learning budget. And I thought that was extremely powerful, because my mom was telling me something that was really important, where she was trying to show me how it was that we have to invest in myself. She was showing me what good looks like when I was growing up. She was defining the right way to do the thing. And I owe my mom a lot for that, because she helped me with a lot of things. She helped me with a lot of things. And I owe my mom a lot for that, installing me this idea that I am my best investment. And as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as highly successful people, as you watching this video, it is very hard for most people to think about the ROI in themselves. It is very easy to say, man, I'm going to go invest in this stock, or invest in this bond, or invest in this mutual fund, or invest in whatever, and the S&P 500 gives you a 10% return year over year. Well, it's easy to say that, because you can see the ROI. The ROI that you cannot see is the ROI in yourself. And because of that, we find it very hard to invest in a course, or invest in a set of books, or invest in a mentor, or invest in a coach, or invest in going to an event. And the reason we can't do that is not because we don't believe in any of these things. The reason we can't do that is because we can't see the impact of the ROI. So I just want to explain to you how important it is to invest in yourself, because it is hard for you to see the ROI, but always look back. Look back five years and say, man, I was that guy, I was that gal, maybe I can do significantly better for all the experiences that I've had. So my bonus tip for you in all of this is, please don't take your $1,000 and try to buy Nvidia, or Apple, or Google, or some stock, or some ETF. Please don't look at an online influencer and say, man, I'm going to put this in a meme stock, or buy Dogecoin, or Bitcoin will always go up. The goal for your $1,000 is not to take your $1,000 and make it into a million dollars. That is not the goal. The goal is to learn the skills so that you can make the million dollars over and over again.