How do you Choose who you Learn from?

How Do You Choose Who You Learn From?

As business owners, we need to continue to learn to improve. We need to learn skills we weren’t taught earlier in life. We need to learn new skills based on changes in technology and the way businesses operate in today’s’ world.

There are three levels of learning when it comes to business skills. This includes both soft skills and hard technical skills that are industry specific.

LEVEL 1 – ENTRY LEVEL

When you’re looking to learn the basics of any skill, you need to find trainers that cater to your lack of knowledge in the area. They need to explain the concepts in simple, easy to understand language and allow you time to absorb the information.

LEVEL 2 – DECISION-MAKING LEARNING

Once you’ve got the entry level learning under your belt and feel reasonably proficient with it, it’s time to add another layer to that knowledge. This will provide you with the tools to apply it to different situations in your business, to make decisions based on the learning.

LEVEL 3 – THE BEST OF THE BEST LEARNING

Once you’ve got all those skills covered, the only people who will enable you to improve further are the best of the best. Finding these people can be a challenge, and sometimes those who appear to be the best of the best aren’t.

IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION

I’m a firm believer in the absolute importance of education, full stop.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about school education, career education or ongoing education. Or if we’re talking about soft skills, new technology, or skills needed to do a different job in the future. 

It doesn’t matter how old you are or how young, education is paramount.

The challenge through all the learnings is finding the best teachers, the best trainers, the best coaches, the ones who will give you the information you need at the time you need it. So you need to make an informed decision when you to choose who you learn from.

MY EXPERIENCE

I’ve spent multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars just in the past eight years on learning. I’ve learnt been about marketing, technology, writing – both books and articles, soft skills, high performance, presentation skills, vocal coaching, stagecraft and the list goes on. 

I started with the marketing training and each year build more and more on top of what I already know. I started there because I knew nothing about it at all. It was a whole new world of amazing opportunities that I could implement into my business to enable it to grow.

In more recent years, I’ve been focussing on presentation skills, vocal coaching, stagecraft and the like. Why, because I’m doing more speaking gigs and presentations.

As I’ve developed these skills, I’ve chosen to seek out the best of the best, but I didn’t start with them. I’ve built up to them.

Once you’ve done hours and hours of training and you’re looking for the best experts to learn from, it can be difficult to identify which courses or programs will provide you with the learning you need given you’re starting from a higher starting point.

OTHER PEOPLES’ EXPERIENCE.

Interestingly, in some cases, there are students in the group who are learners, those who don’t have the basic or core skills in this area. These expert, top of the tree best of the best are having to dumb down their information to the lowest capability in the room. 

I worry about these people. They’ve spent significant sums of money to attend these events, and they’re getting the basic information from an expert at the top of the game. As the Cash Flow Queen, it doesn’t make sense to me to spend that money to learn the basics.

Even today, at a training session, a few of us were talking at the break about one of the exercises that we’d completed, and a couple of us provided feedback. The person was blown away with the insights provided. That information was basic level learning.

When you’re looking for training on any topic, consider what your current level of knowledge is and look for training that is at that level. Otherwise, you’ll be spending more money than you need to get the basic training,

So when you’re ready to choose who you learn from, remember to look for the right training to match your desired outcome.

Originally published on www.smallville.com.au