Learning something new is pretty cool. I recommend that you learn a lot and keep learning. The question is though — how are you learning?
What effort are you making to consciously learn something? There are plenty of ways of doing it. For example, while you are on the job, you can continue to test and advance your own skills.
You are an expert. I have told you this before. You probably don’t even realize it, but you are an expert at what you do.
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You could be working in a shoe shop and you may be repairing shoes. That makes you an expert. I can’t do that, but you can.
You probably think that you are not as good as other people you have seen, but to the rest of us, you are fabulous.
You could be working in an office and you are the admin assistant, you are an expert at what you do. The reason that people are asking you to do it is because you are the expert.
It has nothing to do with you being the assistant. You know what you are doing.
Everyone has something to teach, but everybody can improve. Self improvement is good for you.
There are tons of ways to learn and here are a few of my favorite.
Podcasts
Personally, I do most of my learning these days through podcasts and Audible books.
The reason for this is because it is so easy. This is not just a way for me to promote the Marketing for Owners podcast, because you are here listening, so you already thing it’s great!
(If you do think the podcast is awesome, hop on over after the broadcast to marketingforowners.com/freebook and leave us a review and get yourself a free book on us!)
Podcasts can be listened to while driving to work, while you are commuting on the train or bus, waiting in airports, at night right before going to bed, while you are making breakfast, lunch, or dinner — there is plenty of time to squeeze in 5 minutes here or there.
A lot of them are nice and short, about 5-10 minutes. Mine runs about 10 minutes, and some might even run as long as an hour.
Audible Books
Audible books is much easier for me to listen to because I am so busy all the time. Now, I still physically read books, but the fastest way for me is to use Audible.
Listening to a book through Audible is a great way to pass the time when I am sitting in airports, or wherever.
A trick that I use when I read books on Audible is that I speed them up to 1 1/2 instead of their normal speed.
Courses
Online there are courses that you can take for free at places like Udemy (you probably don’t know about all the places that are available for you to learn from!)
If you really want to know, just Google “free online course” and see all that comes up and is available for you.
To find specific free online courses for your business, simply Google the following phrase with quotations around it “Free Online Course” and then right after it, put what you are looking for — examples — shoe repair, baking, marketing assistant, etc.
There is all kinds of stuff that you can learn. You will get it, and you will be better than anyone else when it comes to what you do for your business.
You could offer extra services and charge more for that. You are providing better value to your customers, and they will be prepared to pay you more money.
If you don’t think so, just trust me — you will. Honestly, this is how it works.
YouTube
You can even use YouTube as a great place to learn something. There are tons of “how to” videos that you can learn from every day right at your fingertips.
There are special ways of cleaning things, there are tricks to putting wall paper up, there are little tricks to draining oil from the car.
Then are things at the professional level as well that sometimes lead to paid courses. When you have a paid course, these usually run $30-$100 which is not a lot at all, and you get hours worth of learning all in one place.
You just cannot get that anywhere else.
Oh sure, you could drive to a college, meet people, sign in, have coffee, have lunch and network.
I strongly recommend that you continue to learn and do it the easy way — all online. Try your best not to pay, but if it is worth paying, do it.
If the person has credibility, follow them, do it, and learn something. If they are teaching what they know, and what they are good at, follow what they say.
Friendly Follow
Today is Wednesday which means it is time for a friendly follow. Today we are going to be following @JillKonrath.
Jill Konrath is a speaker and she is also a sales expert. In fact, she calls herself a sales acceleration strategist.
She’s written 3 books and she has a ton of free sales tools.
Her website is JillKonrath.com. If you go to her website, you will find all kinds of great tools and resources.
Go and check her out and let me know what you think. I will talk to you tomorrow.
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What ways are you learning?
