By Mike Pallin, Floyd Wickman Team LLC “Take your losses short and fast, and compound your gains energetically.” –Wall Street wisdom

That’s great advice from investors on Wall Street. Some things pay off and others do not. You win some and you lose some. Notice that there are two strategic parts to the advice.

First, be willing to get out of a loser quickly. Second, stick with a winner. It sounds simple and makes very good common sense, but when there is risk involved, as there always is on Wall Street, it’s not that easy to confidently know the difference.

Just like in real estate, in the investment world we are all independent contractors.

The agents we train and coach report that they get constant solicitation calls from companies wanting them to invest in something: technology, lead generation, marketing services, information services, the latest gadgets and the newest shiny stuff.

What do you invest in? What is your strategy? How do you decide?

Floyd and I would like to suggest that the best investment independent contractors can make is in themselves. If you agree, let’s take a look at a self-improvement investing strategy that works with your individual strengths and weaknesses.

Does it make sense to invest more of your time, money and energy into capitalizing on your strengths? Or in improving your weaknesses?

It’s not an either/or strategy. It’s a both/and. You can do both at the same time, but remember that Wall Street wisdom. Look at your weaknesses as things that are not paying the kind of return on your investment that your strengths do.

What if you invested more in strengthening your weaknesses? Wouldn’t the end result be a whole bunch of strong weaknesses? Identify your weaknesses. Acknowledge them, because there’s no use trying to change something you don’t admit is a weakness. And put a system in place to make measurable progress with them. Automate what you can. Delegate what you can. Eliminate doing things you don’t really need to do to hit your goal.

And then focus on what you love to do. Focus on what you are really good at. Focus on the highest priority. Combining those three ingredients is called compounding your strengths.

If you’ve been ‘Wickmanized’, you are skillful at lead generation, lead conversion, presentation, pricing, hesitation handling, negotiating and relationship building.

Investing in your skills is the surest way to get the maximum return.