Yasmine Khater is the founder of the Sales Story Method and the Host of the Sales Story Podcast.
For the past five years, she’s been helping senior leaders in over 75 MNCs, governments, and entrepreneurs use stories to stand out, attract more customers, inspire their team, and grow their business (and careers).
Armed with a degree in psychology, Yasmine is an aspiring “armchair” neuroscientist who loves to study how to improve sales by applying discoveries about the brain.
She comes from a mixed heritage, having lived in seven countries and traveled to nearly a quarter of the world. Crafting and sharing stories have helped her sell her ideas, crowdfund, land speaking engagements, and press appearances.
“You can do so much more if you just work in small challenges and constantly stretch yourself to get a little bit more uncomfortable every single day.”
Yasmine Khater
Worst investment ever
What do I do with all this money?
When Yasmine started working, she suddenly found herself with more money than she knew what to do with. She just couldn’t spend it all, so she figured she could invest it.
Admittedly, she was clueless about investing. This was something she had always figured was supposed to be done by a man. So she never bothered to learn how it worked. Now here she was with lots of money that she wanted to invest but no man in her life to handle it for her.
Letting others decide her investment move for her
Yasmine did what she thought was best. She walked to her bank and went straight to the first bank teller that she saw. The bank teller talked her into buying a mutual trust.
Four years into it, Yasmine realized that the trust was making money, but she wasn’t because of the high bank fees she was being charged. Even though she kept investing a chunk of her change into the trust every month, she just kept losing her money. Yasmine decided she was done and stopped investing in the mutual trust.
Ignorance makes her lose again
Around the same time, she was traveling in Bali and went to this event where they were talking about Bitcoin. Attendants were asked to invest $100 to buy Bitcoin. At the time, each Bitcoin was less than $1. Yasmine, still ignorant towards investing, decided Bitcoin was not for her.
Fast forward to a few years later, and Bitcoin was selling at $20,000. Imagine how much Yasmine would have made had she invested the $100 to buy Bitcoin!
Well, her ignorance saw her make her worst investment ever. She, however, figured it was about time to learn how investing works.
Lessons learned
Learn how to do the things you avoid doing
The same way you learned how to deal with challenges in your life and to overcome something, is the same way you can learn how to do the things you avoid doing. If you avoid investing, learn about it, and you won’t have to avoid doing it.
Success starts with believing that you can do it
If you keep telling yourself that you can’t do something, then you’re just going to keep finding ways to prove yourself right.
You don’t need to be a math guru to start investing
You don’t have to breathe math to begin investing your money. Simply understand the mechanics of business, profit versus loss, and you’re good to go.
Andrew’s takeaways
Investment doesn’t have to be overwhelming
For many people out there, the concept of learning how to invest is just overwhelming. However, there are simple ways to understand investing for beginners. Find these simple courses and start learning.
Let go of the phobia of numbers
Most people, women, in particular, are incredibly negative about numbers. The phobia of numbers is what holds most people from investing.
Invest a little over time.
Investing in stocks for beginners can be scary, especially when the stock market seems to be crashing. The truth is that the market won’t stay down. Get started by putting in a small monthly contribution and build wealth over time.
Actionable advice
Commit to learning about investing. Whether it’s picking up a book or signing up for a course, just challenge yourself to think about what needs to get done. Once you learn how to do it, you’ll get the peace of mind of knowing at least one aspect of your life is covered. And that comes from starting.
No. 1 goal for the next 12 months
Yasmine’s goal this year is to help 1,000 people to get more comfortable with getting uncomfortable. She just launched her 30 Day Fearless Challenge and will be doing a company diary to go along with it, and also a course to help people become better at telling their stories.
Parting words
“Have fun, learn, put yourself out there, and invest. It’s amazing.”
Yasmine Khater
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