When You Learn You Earn
As you grow your small business the lessons you learn as you scale and grow your business are never ending. They come in formal settings when attending seminars or webinars or other online learning programs, from coaches and mentors. The majority of your learning, 70% is from your direct hands on experience.
Learning from your successes and failures is your greatest teacher. Knowing this it is important to identify each quarter where the additional 20% from coaching will come from and where you will focus the additional 10% of your time dedicated to structured learning.
In our very digitally driven world there are endless opportunities and courses and people to take them from. Don’t get caught in the trap of because she/he seems interesting and you’ve been thinking about learning about their topic, does not mean you need to take action, yet.
So, how do you discern what learning topic and from whom is the best fit? Here are 3 things to consider before you make your next learning investment:
Do you know what your next move is? Just because you want to learn about Instagram Stories does not mean a wise investment for you in time and dollars is to sign up for a six part training on it. If your next move in the next 30-60 days does not involve the topic(s) you are considering learning about in your course then don’t take it. Why? You are less likely to retain what you learned if you are not applying it as you go. And please don’t get caught in the trap of, “It’s such a good price - I’ll get it now and come back and go through it.” No you won’t.
Do you have the time to commit to the course? You must factor in more than just the class time. You must also include any time for homework from the course. I tell clients minimally, to add an equal amount of time for homework as for the class. If the courses are 60 minutes in length you can expect at least 60 minutes of homework. If you are well organized it might be slightly less and if you have to “catch up” just to complete the homework it could be twice as long. Want to play it safe? Split the difference. For every 60 minutes of curriculum plan 90 minutes of homework.
What make the person you are considering giving your hard earned dollars to, qualified to teach what they are teaching? If you want to learn how to create marketing automation funnels to capture your ideal clients, you won’t hire me. While I have marketing automation funnels, I hire other people to make them for me. However, if you want to understand the step by step system to grow your revenue and double your business profit then I could totally be your coach and you’d learn a LOT in my trainings. Why? Over 20 years I have used the tools and techniques that I teach my clients the way that I have grown, scaled and sold two businesses. One was well over 7 figures. 😲
If you are like most small business owners I meet, you have a finite amount of dollars to spend on your professional learning. Make sure those dollars are wisely invested and line up with your immediate initiatives, that you have the time to do the work and that the person you are engaging with knows not only what to do but will show you how to do it as well.
Want free learning? Join my weekly training inside The Women’s Business Profit Lab, my free online community where I show you how to keep more of the money you make. Every Thursday from 12:15pm - 12:45pm Pacific I conduct a free training to grow your business.
