Are you educating yourself?
I’m a firm believer that you never stop learning and that if you think you have nothing to learn, you’re pretty much stagnating. This is true for life and for business as well. As a business owner, one of the values I stress for myself and my clients is education. This is why I attended the National Speakers Association Fast Track program, because I knew I would learn a lot about business and not just the business of speaking, but business in general. Last night I finished the program and I’m really pleased, because I learned a lot in the last 9 months about myself and my business.
I’m also an avid reader. I read between 5 to 6 books at a time. One of those books is usually mind-candy reading, a fantasy or SF book, but the rest are educational in one way or another. Some books are on finances or marketing, or social media, while other books are on meditation and internal work, another value I’ll write about late. I’m feeding my head and I’m feeding it with a lot of different material.
Why 5 to 6 books? I personally find that I like variety in my reading and that something I read in one book will provide insight in another book and help me apply both more meaningfully to my life and business. The differing perspectives provide me insight into my business and into the people I’m working with.
You never stop learning. I love learning because it challenges me to grow and become better at what I do, but also become a better person. What about you? What are you doing to educate yourself about business and life?
You’re never an expert: The Value of Training
On Monday, I started the Fast Track program with the National Speaker’s Association. It’s a program focused on teaching you how to become a paid speaker. Needless to say that’s one of my goals, so it made perfect sense to start attending the class. While there, we also got some recommendations for books that we might want to read and I ordered them from the library on Tuesday night.
Something I’ve always found important with anything I do professionally is the value of getting additional training on what you are doing. The truth is you can never really be an expert on a subject, if you’re really serious about that subject. And I say that because if you feel that way about the subject, you’ll always be trying to learn something new about it, or experimenting with it, or getting training on it, because you want to see what other people have to say.
Something I do on a fairly regular basis is attend seminars other people offer on the subjects I teach about. I want to see what they have to say about the subject, and I always learn something I didn’t know about the subject that I can take back to my clients to help them, as well as continuing to develop myself as a professional.
Getting additional training is the mark of a true professional. It says this person believes in the value of getting more education about the subject s/he is an “expert” in. It shows that s/he is willing to go the extra mile to learn new information and keep updated and informed about the topics and subjects important to his/her profession.
At the very least I think it’s important to be reading up on the subjects you teach on, or offer services and products in. I’m always reading at least one book on a subject related to business at a given time, so that I can learn more about what I’m teaching others. I don’t feel this makes me less genuine. If anything it shows that I want to provide the best information possible to my clients and recognize to do that I need to learn more.
When you start thinking of yourself as an expert, do a humbleness check on yourself and take a class, read a book, or do something where you learn from someone else about your field of study. Challenge yourself to learn at least three things from the class, book, etc. Doing that will keep you humble and also help you learn something new about what you love doing.
