What are you doing to invest in yourself?

Investing is an important topic covered throughout your time in business school. But beyond the usual lessons on the stock market, there’s valuable knowledge to be gained about how to invest in one of the most important things that will make you successful – yourself.

We Are Warrington podcast host Andy Lord ends every conversation with Warrington business leaders about what steps they’re taking in order to better themselves. See their top tips for investing in yourself below and check out the rest of their podcast episodes for more insights.

Saby Mitra | Dean, Warrington College of Business

“That’s a great question. Even though my role is mainly administrative at University of Florida, I’m still a faculty member. And I try to go back to the reasons I became a faculty member, which is to do research and to teach. And so even though my role is primarily administrative, and if you look at my calendar today you will see Zoom meetings pretty much every hour of the day.

I still do try to keep up on my research as much as I can. I think it keeps me fresh in my thinking and up to date on current business environment and thinking. I think it also breaks the monotony of a purely administrative role. And I like writing. And usually, I take on the writing part of the research while my co-authors often do the more detailed analysis. I also like the challenge of explaining complex concepts in a clear way. And so, I love to be in the classroom. And while I’m not teaching right now, it would be good to be with students in the future. That’s really why I became a professor, to teach and to do research. And I hope to continue that even as Dean.

And then it’s also important to take some time to recharge. If you’re all about work, I think your work will suffer, and you will be much more productive if you have a few things that you do in your life that you really enjoy doing. So, for me, it’s reading, I’m into cooking, I love to road bike and be outside. And those are things I try to continue as much as possible after a busy day or during the weekends so that I keep myself fresh.”

Hear more from Dean Mitra in his episode: Will data and smart technology turn against us?

Kim Kaupe (BSBA ’08) | Founder, Bright Ideas Only

“Wow, I feel like every couple weeks I try to invest in myself in a small way or a large way. I would say recently I downloaded two online courses that I’m really excited to dig into. One is from a woman called Amy Porterfield and another one is from a woman called Laura Belgray and you can look up the entrepreneurs. I follow them both on Instagram so you can see that I follow them if you’re interested but I’m a big fan of continuing to learn. Like I said, not reinventing the wheel.

It horrifies some people but I actually think it’s the best use of money I could think of. I probably spend anywhere from $500 to $3,000 a year on education, on learning, on courses I find, masterclasses, you know, ’cause to me, I think Mark Cuban said this quote once or it’s either Mark Cuban or Richard Branson said, maybe it was Tony Robbins, ‘I can pay money now and I can learn what that person has worked on for 30 years.’

So, in $500, I can get 30 years worth of knowledge, or for free, I can spend 30 years trying to figure out and make all the mistakes this person made, but I’m gonna spend 30 years doing it. So, there are not many ways in life that we can buy time. I mean, famously Steve Jobs, one of the smartest, wealthiest men in the world, sadly died of cancer. He couldn’t buy more time on this earth. You cannot buy time and that is one of the only ways I know of that you can indirectly buy time because you can buy people’s knowledge who’ve spent decades doing the work.”

Hear more from Kim in her episode: How do you stay motivated in the middle of a pandemic?

Cameron MacMillan (BSAc ‘07, MSE ’09) | Co-Founder and COO, Rotogrinders.com

“Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m big on physical and mental health. I definitely lost [sight of investing in myself], was always big on it early on, but I lost, you lost track of that in the 90 to a hundred-hour work weeks. I gained a lot of weight when I moved up [to Nashville]. The work stress for a 27-year-old managing a 100 people in a startup company where every day is make-or-break is very hard to describe.

Took me a while to learn how to deal with the work stress, and anxiety that comes with being an entrepreneur. I would say often that the EQ is more important than the IQ. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you can’t keep your emotional health and manage a team and keeping that team healthy and leading them, the rest is kind of meaningless. So, I definitely dove in and learned the hard way.

I work with a mental coach on to work with those things, like I love doing it Monday mornings to just goal set and say, here are my goals for the week, here are my long-term goals, and here are what I’m doing to achieve those.

A fellow Gainevillian, back in the day, gave me a good tip. Rich Blaser, who owns Infinite Energy, taught me to treat your workouts like a business meeting. And so, I make sure to add those to my calendar. Everyone who works with me knows that from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. that they can’t schedule a meeting with me because I’m gonna be in the gym. And that serves as both, obviously there’s undeniable evidence on the benefits of how it makes you live longer, makes you look better, makes you feel better, but also, it’s just a great mental break too.

I love the midday workout, too, as almost like a meditation session of sorts too. All right, I’ma take a step back from the office, there’s more important things in life. Focus on just taking care of myself for an hour and then go back.”

Hear more from Cameron in his episode: Leading the way in fantasy sports.

Rachelle Antoine | UF MBA Full-Time student

“I would say one of the first ways I invest in myself, which I think a little bit might be counterintuitive, is first by resting. I realized if I try to work seven days a week and try to keep myself always busy. It’s not the most productive for me. The thing that I do to invest in myself is one, rest, which sounds counterintuitive, but it really helps me take my time.

When I’m working, I’m fully there 100%. And then when I’m not, I have time to really breathe to really think. And then secondly, I love reading different books. I have audio books because they’re the most efficient. If I’m on a long drive, one of the books I’m reading now or through audio book is “How Brands Grow”. Someone recommended that to me and I love it. And so, for me, really keeping audio books on. I love podcasts. I don’t know, all those things. So those are kind of my top things that I do to get information and invest in myself.

I figured out my rest systems. I think a lot of people when they hear rest, they’re like, yeah, you just do nothing, but actually rest for me is filling. If I do the things that I love. So, a perfect rest day for me would be I would wake up late, probably nine or 10. I’ve made myself breakfast. If I was by a beach is what I used to do in West Palm. I’d go to the beach in the morning. I would go to a gallery and walk around and browse it. I love museums. Then I would journal, maybe write a spoken word, do some poetry. And by six, the end of the day, I might read a book as well, but by six then I’d hang out with friends.”

Hear more from Rachelle in her episode: From classmates to alumni, relationships matter.