What do professional motivator Tony Robbins, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and best-selling recording artist Pitbull have in common?
All three businessmen agree that the best investment anyone can make isn't on a stock, bond or other financial asset: Invest in yourself, they say.
"You've got to find things you can invest into yourself," Pitbull said at the eMerge Americas conference in Miami, Fla. on Monday.
He explains that when he makes an album, he's all in. Even though you can never predict the outcome of a situation, such as how well a record will sell, the best thing to do with your money is to put it into something that empowers you.
"It's empowerment," Pitbull says. "You empower yourself financially, you empower yourself emotionally, spiritually, and then you can empower everybody else around you because the decisions you're making, at least to a certain extent, you know the odds on them, and it's not somebody else that is managing your money."
Both Buffett and Robbins can pinpoint specific points in their lives when investing in themselves paid off.
Early in his career, a 20-year-old Buffet was terrified of public speaking. To force himself to face his fears, he signed up for a public speaking course with the Dale Carnegie institute.
After graduating from the course, Buffett went to the University of Omaha and, to fully overcome the phobia, asked to teach a class, recounts Tim Ferriss in his book about the habits and processes of successful people, "Tools of Titans."
Even in the face of his greatest fear, Buffett didn't let anything hold him back. Instead, he faced it head on, something he'd have to continue to do as he built up Berkshire Hathaway and became a visionary to his thousands of employees and fans.
Robbins tells Ferriss he has heard Buffett say that "investing in yourself is the most important investment you'll ever make in your life."
Robbins also attributes his greatest investment to a class: When he was 17 and earning $40 a week, he spent $35 for a three-hour seminar with personal development coach Jim Rohn.
The course taught Robbins that the most important work he could do in his life was on himself.
"[Jim Rohn] made me stop focusing on what was outside of my control … and taught me to focus instead on what I could control," Robbins writes in his book "Money: Master the Game." "I could improve myself; I could find a way to serve, a way to do more, a way to become better, a way to add value."
At the end of the day, an investment in yourself is an investment in your future. If it helps propel you and your career, it will never expire, crash or become redundant.
"There's no financial investment that'll ever match it, because if you develop more skill, more ability, more insight, more capacity, that's what's going to really provide economic freedom. … It's those skill sets that really make that happen," Robbins says.
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