the forgotten investment class

Prime Future 191: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

“If you see a book you want, just buy it. Don’t worry about the price. Reading is not a luxury. It’s not something you splurge on. It’s a necessity. Even if all you get is one life-changing idea from a book, that’s still a pretty good ROI.” - Ryan Holiday

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time — none, zero.” - Charlie Munger

Like most of you, I've always been a reader. Growing up, I would get in trouble for staying up past bedtime reading. One time a teacher even called my parents because I’d rushed through a math test so I could get back to a great book (and yes I’m still salty about it).

And do you remember when the book fair came to elementary school? Inevitably, my book appetite was larger than my budget. I'd do extra chores (if you've never sheared sheep for book money, then idk what we even have in common?), but I'd still have to leave some books unbought.

I hated leaving books behind.

All that to say, one of my favorite things about being a grownup is that I have a No-Budget-On-Books policy. If I see a book that might have something to teach me, I buy it. Even if I already bought ten that week month.

Before I shifted Prime Future to a paid subscription model last year, my assumption was that most W2 employees would put the expense on their corporate credit card.

But a friend pointed out that some people might be hesitant to ask their manager for approval to expense something for professional development, whether an online course about AI, a book on something relevant to their role, or a pertinent newsletter subscription like Prime Future or Upstream Ag.

My first thought was 'that's silly, no way people would be hesitant to ask to expense a legit learning expense'.

….then I realized that I also haven't asked my manager if I could put job-related learning expenses on the corporate credit card.

Which made me wonder, why not?

I work for a fantastic company with great benefits, yet I couldn't tell you our policy about learning/development expenses. I simply didn’t know it.

I wondered how many people were like me, completely oblivious to potentially untapped resources. So I took the super scientific approach to data gathering and ran a Twitter poll:

Clearly, there's a wide range in how companies handle development expenses, but given that most companies handle these requests on an ad hoc basis, my bet is that the limiting factor is typically on the part of the employee, not the employer.

Specifically, the limiting factor is likely some combo of:

1. Lack of creativity to identify high-impact development opportunities

2. Lack of courage to ask

I originally started down this path with the somewhat (ok fine, very) self-serving intent of putting a $9/month Prime Future subscription into the context of investing in one’s professional development.

But as I thought about this more, it led me to 4 takeaways that are relevant for anyone getting a W2 (and way bigger than Prime Future):

(1) My employer should not have unused allocated budget dollars for my development.

Neither should yours. Leaving development dollars on the table is no less egregious than leaving 401k match dollars on the table.

So step 1 is finding out what the corporate policy is on available development dollars, step 2 is finding high impact ways to use them.

(2) If you don't get an occasional no, you aren't asking for enough.

There's so much value in learning to be comfortable hearing no, but most of us have to proactively seek out a no.

For crying out loud, if we aren’t asking our companies to invest in development expenses that will help us get better at our j-o-b, how on earth are we going to ask the customer for the deal, the investor for the funding, or the top talent to leave their current job to join our teams?

(3) I believe most innovation comes from connecting existing dots in new ways.

And if I believe that, I better find ways to continually expose my brain to new-to-me dots. Which takes intentionality.

This reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci’s learning lists, where he literally wrote out things he wanted to study further. Sometimes, they were big topics, but often, they were incredibly granular, specific, and narrow. I want to get better at this habit.

The flip side of having a list of what I want to go learn, is to actually write down what I am learning, or have recently learned.

Whether that’s a quick 15 minutes with the Notes app at the end of the week/month, talking it through with the team, or whatever else works to make it a habit. I have a standing monthly call with an industry friend; the calendar invite literally says “10x learning call” because we both believe that capturing and sharing our learnings helps us move faster.

The format isn’t the compounding part; the discipline is.

(4) There’s zero value in learning signaling.

Learning investments should generate returns in better thinking, mental models, processes, ideas, articulation of ideas, and results. That’s the end goal, anyway.

None of this is for the sake of some certification you can share on LinkedIn because, my brother, no one cares about that. N-o o-n-e.

Anyway, if my manager is reading this, be prepared for some asks in 2024😂

Two questions for you:

1. How do you optimize your investment in the learning journey?

2. What was the highest ROI investment you/your company made in your development along these lines?

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