How much are you investing in mentors?

Five years ago, 28 year old Singaporean Entrepreneur, Justin Sun, started investing to be with the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Last week he invested a record $4.57 million for lunch with Warren Buffett.

Starting with nothing but his time, how has he turned investing in his No.1 Asset (himself) into over $200 million?

In 2013, when he was 23, Justin was hired by Ripple Labs founder, Chris Larsen, to be Ripple’s first employee in China.

Justin got the chance to learn first hand from one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the last decade. Ripple has gone on to become the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap ($16 billion) behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.

What did Justin do with that knowledge? He learned enough on how to launch a hyper-growth company to launch Peiwo, China’s version of Snapchat. With his first millions, he gave back with a $3 million to the Blockchain Charity Foundation, which helps fund the UN Global Goals.

What did Justin do next? While other 20-somethings would be happy to have created the biggest voice live streaming app in China, Justin wasn’t done learning.

So he returned to school and last year Justin became the first millennial to graduate from Alibaba Founder Jack Ma’s university for entrepreneurs, Hupan University.

Justin’s graduate thesis was titled “The Birth of a Decentralized Internet”. With what he learned from Jack about thinking globally, Justin launched the Tron Foundation. Tron has now become one of the top ten largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, and is today worth $2 billion.

A year after being personally mentored by Jack - China’s richest man - Justin is now worth $200 million. And he repaid Jack for his support with a $1.5 million donation to the university.

Justin’s appetite for mentoring has grown yet again. Last week he outbid everyone to win lunch with Warren Buffett with a $4,567,888 donation to Warren’s charity, Glide (The number is a lucky number to Justin - Triple ‘8’ is a symbol for ‘triple fortune’ in China)

This time, Justin is hoping to educate Warren about cryptocurrency (Last year Warren called Bitcoin “probably rat poison squared,”) as well as learn from him.

How expensive is that lunch? Imagine you stretched that lunch to a 2 hour meal. That would make it a lunch costing $38,000 per minute.

That’s $115,000 per bite.

But the way Justin sees it, if he gets the same return for his money that he got from his $1.5 million donation to Jack Ma, the lunch should be worth $600 million to him…

How about you?

Are you investing in mentoring and getting a 10x return?

(Or if you’re like Justin, a 100x return?)

Are you learning from the best, and seeing yourself as your No.1 Asset?

Or are you saving your money and learning through trial and error instead?

Figuring it out on your own may feel 10x cheaper, but it’ll lead to success taking 10x longer.

As Benjamin Franklin said “The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance.”