FAMILY & HOME
Invest in Yourself,
Invest in Others
By Donald Broughton
"AN INVESTMENT IN KNOWLEDGE PAYS THE BEST INTEREST." – BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
T
hough I have an undergraduate degree in accounting,
truth be known, I hated studying it. In practice, the use
of accounting and finance skills can be very interesting
and highly lucrative, but studying accounting is painfully
dry, gruelingly boring.
So why study it? Because without studying it, without understanding
the intricacies of what double-entry accounting is capable of, you can’t
fully appreciate the financial implications of your decisions (business
or otherwise).
Each time you study a new field or expand your knowledge in a field,
you increase your ability to positively change the world around you.
What’s more, each field of study complements, in some way, your other
fields of study. I could be a financial genius, which I’m not, but without
the ability to compose a sentence, I would not be writing this article.
Conversely, most writers die penniless.
Point being, if you want to build wealth, start by making yourself
more valuable. Take a class, read a book, listen to an online lecture,
attend a seminar, watch a TED talk online. Expand your understanding
of a field of knowledge you already know something about, and expand
your knowledge about something you don’t already understand. You -
and everyone around you - will be richer as a result, which leads me to
my next point:
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." – Benjamin Franklin
I’ve been blessed. I am privileged to work with colleagues that I’ve
worked with for years, some of them decades. Many of them, I first
hired, then trained, and now proudly call my peers. We should all
invest in ourselves, but should quickly try to teach others what we are
learning, too.
I first began to completely understand higher-level accounting when
I was tutoring my fraternity brothers who were struggling through
the basic accounting classes. You can’t teach a subject unless you really
understand it, but it’s more profound than that. In teaching or coaching
someone, you will expand your insight and understanding of that topic.
The people you are trying to teach will inevitably ask questions
that force you to consider the subject anew, take a fresh approach to
that which you thought you already understood. They will challenge
you and send you back to the textbook to more thoroughly relearn the
subject matter. And then, things start to get interesting.
My most trusted colleagues know my flaws and shortcomings. I
know theirs. We trust each other, we respect each other, but we test
each other’s ideas. "How do you know?" "Are you sure?" are the most
common lines of questioning. For instance, when trying to predict
the future of the economy and the financial markets, we often quickly
establish what we agree and disagree on and then spend most of
our time asking ourselves, "What are we missing?" "How could we
be wrong?" Net result, we make each other smarter, hold each other
accountable, and have an intellectually stimulating and entertaining
time doing it. Bottom line: Educate yourself and never stop expanding
your fields of knowledge and interest. Build a group of people, surround
yourself with people that you can do this with, and your life will be
more productive and more enjoyable.
As founder and managing partner of Broughton Capital, Donald Broughton is a frequent guest on CNBC, “Nightly Business
Report” and Fox. He is regularly quoted in The Wall Street Journal, where he is also recognized as a top stock picker, as he is by
Fortune, Zacks and StarMine.
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GAZELLE STL