Reflections on the Last Decade

This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this on the blog. Or anywhere for that matter. Today I share with you my reflections on the last decade.

10 years ago…

10 years ago, Value Investing Journey, the books, courses, programs, the analysis articles, none of them existed.

I had barely begun learning about investing let alone the craft of true value investing.

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10 years ago, I’d invested $0 in real world money and still couldn’t even value an investment.

Most of the time I couldn’t even tell you what terms like Operating Profit, ROIC, or Free Cash Flow meant without having to look them up.

And even then, it was just the basic book definitions… Not what they meant for real businesses.

10 years ago, I also had no kids, had only been married to my wife for 6 months, was still dealing with the extraordinarily horrible dizziness every day that allowed me to do nothing but lay around.

I’d just turned 23 in late December 2009 and had 0 real world skills, 0 hope of ever getting my dizziness under control, 0 dreams of amounting to anything, 0 goals, 0 direction, and 0 idea what the hell to do about anything.

I had 0 control of anything in my life because of the horrific all-consuming everyday debilitating dizziness.

10 years ago, I’d already dealt with dizziness every day for 5 years and around this time it was at its absolute worst.

I felt horrible to the point of almost falling just getting up out of bed, so I spent most of my early to mid-20’s lying in bed all day watching tv.

At a time when my friends were out at college, parties, hanging out with friends, at college, working, whatever, I spent this same time laying around not able to do almost anything.

A slow start, but a start

Slowly, as in maybe 30 minutes, a day tops, around this time, I began forcing myself to read books and learn as much as I could so that one day, I could contribute something to society.

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I didn’t even really do this as much for that reason as to give me something to do to keep my mind away from dark thoughts.

Because of the years-long debilitating dizziness and lack of skills and direction I had extremely low self-esteem, no self-confidence, and was in a deep depression at this point.

Learning in general and specifically about investing and value investing literally saved my life.

The hope of one day helping someone improve their life financially kept the dark thoughts mostly away.

This purpose – even in small 30-minute increments – kept me going.

I needed something… Because at my worst dizziness wise I had no hope of ever getting any better… And every doctor I ever saw either treated me like I was crazy and making the dizziness up. Or said they had no answers to help me improve. Ever.

Soon after this my wife found out we were pregnant with our first child… And about a year after that I was so depressed I thought about killing myself because I thought my growing family would be better off without me as a burden to them.

3 things I dedicated myself to

After I pulled myself out of this darkest period of my life, I dedicated myself to 3 things…

Being the best dad and husband, I could be
Learning the craft of value investing
Improving my mindset

10 years later I’m still mostly concentrating on these 3 things and my life has transformed.

To illustrate this point below is the first ever released excerpt of the upcoming second edition of How To Value Invest.

I’m releasing it today to show you what you can accomplish if you keep putting one foot in front of the other and continue moving forward…

Even if you have debilitating obstacles to overcome.

***

Decade highlights

Context on this part of the book

After finding several new doctors and struggling to improve my dizziness for years, at this point my dizziness is mostly under control unless I move around too much. And I’d just gotten out of a meeting with people who had access to more than $1 billion.

My partner and I had a meeting with them to advise them on a public company they were looking to buy.

Excerpt

Instead of just settling now, I look to push myself as much as I can to see how far I can go.

Here are some of the highlights of the years leading up to and then after that meeting in Saint Petersburg Florida…

Business

Earned my first $100 client, my first $500 client, my first $100 day, my first $500 day, my first $1,000 client, my first $1,000 day, my first $2,500 client, my first $2,500 day, my first $5,000 client, my first $5,000 day, earned my first $5,000 month, earned my first $10,000 client and earned my first $10,000 month
Wrote another book – On Float
Wrote this second edition of How To Value Invest
Earned my first set of long-term students/clients
Started a marketing company with my brother
Started a high-level business strategy and consulting company with a partner
Sold my first home as a real estate agent in 12 hours for just under full price
Attempted to buy my first outside business for $8 million; my first set of apartment buildings for a total of $20 million, my first public company for $20 million, and my first self-storage facility for $6.85 million
I’ve consulted/advised companies worth more than $100 million from all over the world
Helped grow a business in the UAE from a $3.5 million valuation to a $6.2 million valuation offer to buy the company in just 6 months’ time with my recommendations to improve their business
Turned down more than $2 million of personal investment funds from potential investors
Helped feed/cloth more than 500 people in the Philippines
Had my content viewed by more than 500,000 people worldwide
Had my content viewed in 93% of countries in the world

Personal, including family

Learned my life goal of helping the 100+ million orphans worldwide.
Took over my parent’s retirement funds and more than tripled it after years of negative returns from their Certified Financial Planner
Built courses, resources, and programs to help people learn value investing from anywhere in the world
I now have 3 kids

Assisted in coaching my oldest daughter’s soccer team to her local championship
Helped coach my middle daughter’s soccer team to her local championship
Gained true confidence and belief in myself and my abilities

And more…

What am I still doing

I’m still building, learning, helping, and improving every single day so much more is still to come.

Even though I’m still technically disabled because the dizziness is still there – I no longer use that as a crutch.

I push myself as hard as I can – often too hard still – to continue helping as many people as I possibly can while working toward my goals and dreams.

If I can do all this with my massive health disadvantages… Imagine what you can do with your health.

If I can go from zero knowledge and thinking about killing myself because I’m in such a deep depression to advising companies worth more than $100 million and helping people all around the world imagine what you can do without these things.

If I can do all this without ever taking one college course on valuation/finance/business/investment and having no personal mentors or connections in this arena when I started; imagine what you can do with your degrees, connections, and the help of this book and other value investing resources.

If I can change my mind and mindset completely from self-pity, doubt, low confidence and no skills to doing the things above; imagine what you can do if you don’t completely have to rebuild your mind.

You can do anything you put your mind to.

And I wrote this to prove it to you.

The above are things from my life. But this book is your story.

Get started on your goals and dreams today.

How to get started

Stop delaying…

Stop worrying about what others think…

Stop worrying about the negative things your mind is saying to you…

Stop using health and mental issues as an excuse…

Get to work today. Even if only for 5 minutes.

At the end of that 5 minutes you’ll be 5 minutes closer to your goals and dreams and 5 minutes smarter. That also means. 5 minutes further away from despair, doubt, and worry.

Then push it to 6 minutes, then 7, and so on.

It all starts slowly… But the power of compounding is amazing. And not just with money.

I started with as little as 30 minutes a day of self-improvement/learning and you see the results of this above.

I’m nothing special…

I have a great family structure that supports me… But as you saw above also some major disadvantages that robbed me of most of 12+ years of my life.

And it still robs me of moments to this day 17 years after this issue started.

I made a decision

But I made the decision to become better – both health and mindset wise.

It’s still a struggle some days to keep this positive mindset and continue pushing toward my goals… Especially when I have a bad dizziness day… But I quickly remember that if I quit pushing, I may do something far greater than not reach my goals.

I’d be quitting on myself…

I wouldn’t reach my full potential…

And I wouldn’t be helping people across the world I can help.

This is even worse than dying or dizziness.

Suffer now to enjoy later and have no regrets.

You can do anything you put your mind to.

I’m proof of that – and so are you with everything you’ve overcome up to this point in your life – get to work today.

Always in your service,

Jason Rivera

End of Excerpt

***

A decade after

My 23-year-old self and my 33-year-old self are two completely different people with two completely different mind sets.

At 23 I had zero skills, zero self-confidence, a horrible mindset, zero quality of life outside of my family, helped no one, and was deeply depressed and pessimistic due to debilitating health issues.

At 33 I’ve developed skills, confidence, the proper mindset, quality of life, am incredibly optimistic and happy, have helped people and businesses all over the world, and still have debilitating health issues.

You can transform your life too…

Keep taking small steps forward every day to improve yourself and your mindset and your life will transform before you know it.

I’m working to make the next decade my best ever and want to help it become yours as well.

My goal is to help you become a world class value investor within the next year so that you have the rest of your life to profit off your knowledge and skills and purpose.

Knowledge and skills and purpose that saved and then improved every aspect of my life… And I know they can improve your life as well.