Don’t Miss Out on Your Best Investment: This ROI Beats Any Stock

As a high-performance coach and speaker, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, founders and C-level executives who are well-versed in the concept of investing. Most people think of investing as taking a risk and making a commitment today in exchange for a bigger reward in the future. But investing is not just about stocks, bonds, property, or other financial assets. The best investment you can make is to take ownership of your life. Be the CEO of your life—not an employee.

What does it really mean to adopt a CEO mindset for your life? From my experience, it means that you’re in control of your destiny. You’re willing to make the toughest decisions that most people aren’t quite brave enough to make. Your greatest ROI is waiting on the other side of the change you’ve most resisted.

Instead of the traditional idea of ROI, I call this concept “Return on Courageous Investment,” or “ROCI” (pronounced “Rocky” like the boxer). Let’s look at how to generate “ROCI” in your career and personal life.

What is Return on Courageous Investment?

Investors and entrepreneurs and CEOs take chances every day, by deciding where to allocate time, money and resources. Not every investment will pay off, and some investments are riskier than others. But as an investor, you typically want your ROI to be as high as possible. Most people would love to invest $1,000 in a stock and have it grow 10x to be worth $10,000 in a year.

Well, it’s the same with high performance and personal transformation. Where can you invest your time, energy, and resources to get the most bang for your buck? I’ve seen my coaching clients get their biggest ROI by embracing the idea of “Return on Courageous Investment.” It takes courage and Rocky-like guts to confront the thing that you most want to avoid confronting. But that’s where the big returns are.

With Return on Courageous Investment (ROCI), people who are serious about investing in higher performance dig deep and find the courage to change one big thing that’s holding them back in life. This isn’t easy. Not everyone chooses to do it. But the ROI (“ROCI”) can be priceless.

Finding Your Courageous Investment  

Why is ROCI so hard to achieve? Because we all have some kind of baggage, bad memory, negative self-image, or mental hangup that’s holding us back from being a better version of ourselves. And from my experience as a coach, and in my own personal life, this One Big Thing is always hiding your biggest flaw or weakness. Always. That’s why you don’t want to go there.

It takes courage to face up to this big flaw or weakness or uncomfortable truth. Most people would rather not face up to it. It’s easier not to change, it feels safer to stay stuck in your usual routines and ruts. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.

Here are a few examples of powerful realizations and Courageous Investments that you might want to make to unlock ROCI in your life:

• “I am drinking too much, and I would function better at work and with my loved ones if I was sober.”
• “My friends are too negative and pessimistic, and they’re holding me back from doing important work to reach my goals.”
• “I am sacrificing too much for this job that pays too little, and I want to start building my own consulting business on the side.”
• “My diet and lifestyle are unhealthy, and I need to lose weight and get in shape so I can be around to meet my grandchildren someday.”
• “I am not having satisfying relationships in my dating life, and I want to get therapy and improve my communication skills so I can find a healthy, happy, committed long-term relationship with a life partner.
• “I am spending too much money on expensive stuff that doesn’t matter, and I want to aggressively save for my retirement and my family’s future.”

Do any of these sound familiar? Maybe a little too uncomfortably on the nose? Don’t worry, I’ll share one more example from my own life.

How ROCI Changed My Life and Launched My Career

When I was in my late twenties, looking at my life from the outside, a lot of people might’ve thought I was having a great life. I was working hard, staying in good shape, making decent money, and going out with friends all the time. But drinking with my friends was a big part of my life. Too big. Nobody was better than me at motivating people to stay for one more drink or hit up one more bar. Anything to keep the fun going.

My big Courageous Investment realization was that alcohol was holding me back. Drinking had become excuses that I used to avoid admitting that I was unhappy with my life. Drinking was causing me to avoid pursuing the big dreams that scared me. What if I gave up drinking and still failed at starting my business and still struggled with money? Because of these fears, I fought, made excuses, and did everything I could to work around not giving up alcohol.

But here’s what I realized: quitting drinking was the biggest ROCI that I could’ve received. Drinking hurt my health, drained my money, sapped my will, ate up my time, and kept me looking forward to just two days of my week. Without drinking, I had more energy, more time, and most importantly: more clarity of purpose. By making this one big Courageous Investment, I finally could get the momentum to get serious about starting my own business, building my base of clients, and launching a more vibrant, happy and successful life.

What’s the “one big thing” that’s holding you back? If you’re honest with yourself, I’ll bet you already know. Embrace your ROCI. You really do become a new version of yourself when you find the courage to finally open that locked door—when you finally show up to Toastmasters or finally sign up for a dating app. I’m not saying you change overnight and everything’s cool (there’s still work to do), but something clicks. You’re different. You’re in control. The Wicked Witch is dead. You’ve already done the biggest, hardest thing. You’ve stepped into your own CEO mindset, and any change becomes 100 percent possible.

Ready to learn more about how to become the CEO of your life and generate “ROCI” that pays dividends for years to come? Check out my new book, Uncomfortable Either Way: Why Choosing Easy is Making Your Life Hard.

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