Your Business Tip to
Work Smarter not Harder

5 Things You Need To Know

To Take Your Business To The Next Level

One of my favorite things I help business owners with is guiding them to turn their dreams into reality.

Big dreams and goals are scary and that's why many people don't pursue them.

What stops most of us is that we don't know where to begin.

Let us start with a simple formula... Dream x Goals x Plan x Action = Success

What is that multiplier?  It's our learning.  What we learn...helps us dream.

But now we have to ask ourselves what do we need to learn to turn that dream into a goal? Or our goal into a plan? Or what do we need to learn to take our plan into action?

In business, we will grow to our level of incompetency and stop. 

Let's take a look at the process by which learning actually happens.

The whole process of learning is, well, let's start with timing - how far ahead do you need to learn something?

Do you need to learn it the day before you need it?  No, you need to be learning stuff at least a year prior to needing it. You need to learn stuff at least a year before it is something that you have to turn into reality.

Why so far in advance? 

Well, let's start with this simplistic view. If you're going to use that knowledge to create your plan and you're going to do the plan, you're not planning something the day before it happens, right?

You're planning stuff at least 90 days before it happens and maybe 6-12 months before it happens.

So let's say I have a goal to achieve something in two years’ time, you need to be studying that right now - today!

So we need to think about our timing of learning. 

Let's say you have a goal, for example, five years from now. It is not a bad idea to start studying those things now.  Or at least start determining what you need to learn.

If you want financial freedom, you got to study it today if you want it in 10 or 20 years’ time.

The timing factor of studying is really important. 

My point is we need to study something before we need something. Does that make sense?

If you wait too long, when you need it, it's too late time and you're behind the 8 ball.

The second factor we're going to be looking at is how much do you need to study something.  How much do you need to understand? Do you need to be an expert? 

Let’s look at this from a simple perspective.

Are you going to do it yourself? Or are you going to employ people to do it?

If you're going to do it yourself, then obviously, you need to study it to a level of mastery. You need to study it to a level of level 10,000 hours, as Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Outliners.

You need to study it to a level where you're great at it and you're not just okay at it.

I want to let you in on a secret.  If you're going to employ someone to do stuff, then you just need to know enough about it to determine whether the person you’re employing is actually good at that job. 

Too often we employ people who have never studied or know much about the position.  If we're employing a salesperson, we need to know enough about sales to ask them enough questions to determine if they're going to be a good salesperson or not.

This is an important factor for all of us to understand.

Is it mastery, or do we need to know enough to employ someone with that knowledge…that's the second point about learning.

Next, you need to understand how you learn best.

Do you learn best by books, reading or listening, by seminars - live or recorded, or by having a mentor? Do you learn best by watching videos, like TED talks or my business tips videos? 

What is your best learning methodology? Because the speed of learning determines the speed by which you actually get your results. So the faster you learn the faster you get results.

Now for me personally, I'm better at learning when I have someone personally teaching me. I like watching or reading about something but I need to discuss it with someone for it to stick. 

So I like having mentors or coaches helping with that, but of course, the more individualized your learning the more of an investment it is.

Online videos and books are obviously the cheapest because they are the lowest level of learning.  Why? Cause there's no individualization of what's going on.  So you've got to think of how to apply knowledge to your business or life.

You need to choose what learning methodology or methodologies suits you best in your speed and your budget. 

Now, the fourth thing we need to understand about learning is that…there is learning to add skill and there's learning to add mindset.

Some learning is about getting better and getting better at doing this sort of a thing like sales. It might improve a sales technique like asking questions and that sort of thing.

But then on top of that, you need the mindset of learning stuff.  Mindset learning is really about believing in yourself. 

The same as believing in the ability to achieve stuff and looking at it from that perspective.  You want to have a balance of the two.

You want to have some of your learning that needs to be skill set and some that needs to be about getting your brain in the right place. 

Certainly, make sure that you're doing a balance of those two learning aspects.

And finally, the fifth thing we have to do about learning is understanding that learning is uncomfortable.

Learning is about growing.  Learning is about getting somewhere new. You won't be applying this new knowledge perfectly the first time, like, if I go and take a golf lesson. I'm not going to be immediately hitting the ball like Tiger Woods.

When we learn something new and then we then begin to apply it, it's not always easy and we may fail.  This is where we are now expanding our comfort zone as we begin to change.

So the best way to cement that learning in is to have a coach or to have someone with you, a mentorship group or something like that, to hold you accountable to applying your learning.

You are required. You are accountable and therefore you get results.

As Jim Rohn would say... The more you learn, the more you earn.  The more you learn, the better you become at something. 

If you want to be the best parents, then read more books on parenting. 

You want to be the best leader or you want to be the best manager, you got to keep studying, keep learning about it. 

Even if every book, video, or coaching session only gives you one idea, that's one more idea than you had the day before to build upon.

So if this resonates and you want to turn your dreams into reality schedule a free strategy session with me to begin to unlock your knowledge and potential.