Hopefully, throughout this guide, you’ve seen that investing isn’t a lottery ticket.
It’s truly a business if you treat it as such.
While there are plenty of people just like you making money with investing there are way more that aren’t making a dime.
It’s not because they lack intelligence.
It’s not because they lack the skills.
For many of them, it’s because they lack the right mindset.
If you were going to start a lemonade stand you would know exactly how much effort you need to put into it to grow.
You’re aren’t going to take consecutive days or weeks off.
It’s just not going to happen because you need to get the business running.
Dividend growth investing feels different but it really isn’t.
It feels different because all you’re doing is sitting down at the computer and typing things.
Maybe you’re putting a new company through the Dividend Lab Manual system, but everything is done at the computer and it’s hard to tell the effort that goes into things when there isn’t much physical movement.
And yet building a successful dividend growth portfolio shouldn’t be seen as more or less different than starting a brick and mortar lemonade stand.
And yet, most people still treat it as a side thing.
It’s very important to keep in mind that your dividend growth portfolio isn’t being built in a bubble.
You are competing against your best judgment and time.
Always bear in mind the power of the compounding effect.
There is only so much time that you are able to stay invested.
All the while you have to make your best investment decisions.
If I’m working harder than you and doing a much better job with my portfolio than you are with yours, then I’m going to get the edge on compounding.
But what exactly do I mean by “working harder”?
Charlie Munger believes that good investing involves a weird combination of patience and aggression.
You’ve got to defer gratification and you’ve got to aggressively stick to your principles.
So when I say that I’m working harder on my business what I mean is that I’m working harder to defer gratification and live out my principles.
It doesn’t mean I’m working 100 hour weeks.
It means I put more thought and reflection into my relationship with money, paid work, and investment decisions.
It doesn’t matter if you just see it as a side project that you work on from time to time.
With that mentality, you’ll eventually give up because it’s not working out for you.
Unfortunately, when it comes to dividend growth investing you don’t deserve success.
It doesn’t work like that.
Just because you decided to take action doesn’t mean you’ll get rewarded for it.
You have to earn it.
The Simply Dividends Guide was created because I’ve found that when given a specific structure to follow, more people stay committed to the success of their portfolio.
After all, they see where they are going.
It’s hard to maintain focus and see it as a business when you’re just hoping things work out.
So if you’re really going to get started on this dividend growth investing journey then it’s important to make sure you have the right mindset.
I think you do.
You just have to prove it to yourself.
OK, that was a lot to sink in.
But are we done here?
Just one last thing…
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