Personal Development is an area we all know we need to do . . . some day. We tell ourselves, “Let me get my business going, then I will have time to develop myself”. The fact of the matter is, the opposite is true. If we want to succeed in our business, we need to develop ourselves. The level of success of your business is inextricably tied to how well you have developed yourself.
Personal Development is a life long pursuit. The first step is to decide what you are trying to achieve. Looking out a year from now, what do you want to achieve through your personal development?
It is important to understand that improving yourself, in whatever area of life, takes intentional focus. It won’t happen by itself. John Maxwell says in Attitude 101, “… people naturally tend toward inertia. That’s why self-improvement is such a struggle.”
While personal development can be areas such as health (losing weight), here we will focus on the types of skills you will need to further develop that can help your new business grow.
Set the Right Attitude on Personal Development
As stated above, personal growth takes dedicated time, energy and the right focus. There are so many things happening in your life that it is easy for most to only work on their personal development when they have time.
In my opinion, people usually falls into these three groups when it comes to personal development:
- People who don’t know what they would like to do
- People who know what they would like to do but don’t do it
- People who know what they would like to do and do it
To get the right attitude, recognize you are a worthwhile person and one worthy to develop. “Personal Development is the belief that you are worth the effort, time and energy needed to develop yourself”, says Denis Waitley. John Maxwell, author of The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, agrees and say, “if you don’t realize you have genuine value and that you are not worth investing in, you will never put in the time and effort needed to grow your potential.”
It is a Competitive Marketplace
We are rapidly moving towards a winner takes all in the marketplace. As an entrepreneur, we need to keep up with the industry we do business in.
This is especially true of digital products and ecommerce. A good example is Google. Google has far more marketshare and the associated profits ($6.73B USD) in the 3rd quarter of 2017 along by being the number one search engine with 77.43% as of April 2017 according to smartinsights.com. They are followed by Baidu, a Chinese company, at 8.13%. Yahoo has 5.6% of the market. And remember AOL, the company that made headlines in 2000 with its merger/acquisition of Time Warner for $182 billion. Today AOL has 0.04% of the global search market. A few companies make immense profits; the rest fight over the scraps.
Customers demand excellence of their suppliers. Amazon pioneered the 2-day FREE shipping which, in turned, compelled many other suppliers to also provide free shipping. This is to meet the Consumers’ expectations because we have gotten used to 2-day free shipping from Amazon, along with the ease of ordering.
We’ve also come to expect our orders to be correct and packed correctly each and every time. I recently had a restaurant that didn’t prepare my meal properly. The waitress checked the order before giving it to me, but little did she know that the meat dish had no meat. This had happened twice in a short period of time; needless to say, I no longer order from that restaurant. I didn’t complain, I just simply stopped eating there. The bar has been raised and those companies that don’t provide excellence go out of business.
Your customers expect you to be better tomorrow than today. They expect high levels of service, better products and services that enable them to be successful. If you don’t improve yourself and how you do business, your competitor will.
Brian Tracy in Get Smart says, “Today many people have obsolete skills; they are being replaced by people that have better and more appropriate skills that are in higher demand.”
Approach to Self-Development
As an entrepreneur, you need to first understand for what your customers are paying you and what value your business provides. You then need to improve upon those strengths to a level where you do it better than anyone else.
Ask yourself, “What do I need to be really good at to increase my business?” There are a couple ways of doing this. 1) Ask your customers. Find out what they like and don’t like about your product and services. 2) Look at the most successful companies in your target area and see what they are doing to be successful. What are they doing that their customers really like, so much so that they continue to buy from them. Your goal is to see what they are doing that customers really value. Between talking to your own customers and gathering information on your competitors, you will be able to develop a good understanding what your customers want. The key is to not copy what your competitors are doing but rather find a different way to provide it to your customers leveraging your unique skills.
Cal Newport, in his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, talks about having a “Craftsman Mindset”. He defines that as taking an approach to our work as a dedication to deliberate practice. If you don’t take the deliberate practice approach, “… you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better.”
Business writer Geoff Colvin describes deliberate practice as “… above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes ‘deliberate’ as distinct from mindless playing of scales or hitting tennis balls that more people engage in.”
For example, if you are a software designer, your skill is in writing code and it is your application your customer buys. How can you improve yourself as a software designer?
Setting your Goal(s) for Self-Development
As Steve Covey says in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, start with the end on mind. Now that you have researched your competitors and have re-examined your strengths, it is time to set your personal development goal. As with any goal you want to make it concrete. For example, if you are a chef today but want to be a well-known chef in your own restaurant in the future, you have your goal. If you are a writer and want to be on the best-seller list, you have your goal.
Gap Analysis – Where are you at Today
To grow you must know your own current competence level. If you are a writer and your goal is to write a best seller within one year, you must know where you are at in your writing. You’ll need to be honest with yourself and thoroughly examine where you are at today in your writing career. Are you already published or are you just starting out? This will help you to identify the gaps between where you are today versus where you want to be (your goal). Then list all the things/steps that needs to happen to get you to your goal. Using our writing a best seller goal example, here is a sample list of what needs to be done:
- Taking writing classes
- Finding an editor to review your writing. Someone that will provide critical analysis of what works in your writing and what doesn’t
- Publish articles, get feedback
- Find out what is involved in a book proposal
- Write out a book proposal; understand how to go about writing a book
- Write a draft of your book; have it edited
Discuss Your Goal with Your Mastermind Group
While you don’t need to tell the entire world your personal development goal, you do need to discuss it with your Mastermind group (read about Mastermind Group in my blog titled Mastermind Group – The Key to Unlocking your Potential). You do this for a couple of reasons.
- Your mastermind group can provide valuable feedback on your idea. They understand you and your strengths. They can help you determine if this goal will move you forward in your business or is taking unnecessary focus and energy away from your ultimate business goals.
- By understanding you and your performance to date on your goals they can also help you set a realistic goal, if your timeline is too aggressive. You want to stretch yourself, but not set yourself up for failure by setting an unrealistic goal.
- Your mastermind group can provide suggestions on steps you can take to meet your goal.
- They may know people that can provide expertise on how to go about achieving your goals (e.g. talking to a writer that has published books; finding an editor).
Once you have discussed with your Mastermind group and solidified your goal, is it time to determine where you need to gather information to aid in development of your Action plan.
Resources
- In some cases, Youtube can be a valuable starting point, depending on what you need to further develop. I won’t go into detail here on Youtube, but have found it to be a valuable resource for “how-to’s” material.
- Magazines from the library. As a blogger, I need input of the latest ideas and trends in business. Many libraries today allow downloads of magazines to electronic devices (I read them during my train commute). Magazines such as Inc., Entrepreneur and Fast Company are great sources for my writing. And it is free.
- Books – you can find millions of books at Amazon but don’t forget your local library. Books 24×7 are online books that many libraries carry. Whether you want to get a certification as Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) or a Cisco certification, the library has the study materials and of course it is free.
- In the same vein, the library has online courses for such areas as Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint). While it is unlikely you need to take these courses to enhance your strength(s), depending on your business, they may be worthwhile.
- Many libraries have Lynda.com, with free online courses. I found a couple from my library, such as how to become a 3D Visual Specialist (53 hours of course material) and how to become an Android Mobile App developer (24 hours of course material). Again, these are free.
- Online courses from companies like Fizzle ($35 a month), where you will learn all aspects of online business.
- Conferences and Seminars can provide the latest information/techniques in your area. It is also an effective way to make connections to other like-minded business owners and meet experts in your field (speakers). Take the time to plan out what you want to get from the conference including a list of who you want to meet. We’ll talk in more detail on conference strategies in a future blog.
- The final area is mentoring and coaching. The best way to excel in your goal area is through hiring a coach or finding a mentor. The money that will be spent, in the case of a coach, is a direct investment in yourself. To find the right coach, you’ll need to not only define your goal for the coaching, but also make sure the chemistry of the partnership works.
There are other low-cost ways to develop your skills. My wife and I subscribe to the Harvard Business Review (HBR) at a cost of $99 a year. We have found the magazine to be great input for our business careers and along with the magazine there are videos and other materials they provide to subscribers. Split the cost between us and it comes out to be about $1 a month. Well worth it.
Once your data gathering is complete with details on the different methods, you are ready to create your Personal Development plan.
Develop a Plan – Budget
First set your budget for self-development. If finances are tight, use a no-cost or low-cost method, at least at the start. I detailed the library information above, but there are other free resources that you may want to check out before taking the monetary route.
Determine how much you are going to invest in yourself this year. Make a conscious decision to set aside the money. I recommend putting it into a savings account and only use those dollars for self-development. This can be conferences you attend, books you buy and/or coaching.
Develop a Plan – Write it Out
With Christmas around the corner and the New Year coming, it is an excellent time to detail your personal development goals and plan.
Write out what you want to have achieved by the end of 2018. Commit it to paper and review it each week. You should have a monthly goal of what you what to achieve that month in personal development so that you achieve your goal for the year.
Develop a Plan – Schedule it
- If you are going to a conference, put the conference in ink in your schedule and plan your various activities around it so you don’t have to cancel the conference at the last minute. Put together an agenda of what you want to achieve from the conference (new contacts, etc.).
- Your yearly goal should be broken into monthly goals (milestones), so you can stay on target. Your monthly goal should be broken into weekly goals and from there you schedule in time each week for your development. For example, if your goal is to read one business book a week, schedule time each day for reading, such that you will finish a book a week. In the 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John Maxwell says, “Rework your calendar so that you have an appointment with yourself for personal growth every day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year”.
Accountability to your Mastermind group
Utilize your Mastermind group to keep you on track in your personal development. Be consistent in updating your group at each meeting as to what you have accomplished in your personal development.
For example, if you plan to attend a conference, tell them what you plan to learn at the conference and who you plan to meet at the conference (other attendees, speakers). When you return, provide details of what you have learned and whether you have met the people on your list.
Providing whether key insights to your Mastermind Group you’re your learned from a book or a summary of the latest course you took, can also help them learn from you. They may decide to check out the resource for themselves.
Apply what you Learn
Knowledge for knowledge sake isn’t much good. It is the application of knowledge that moves your business forward. Talk to your Mastermind group about ways you can apply what you have learned. The more you apply this new knowledge, the more this knowledge becomes internalized. You will see yourself grow as you put this knowledge into practice.
Actions:
- Commit to Personal Growth.
- Determine what your growth goal should be for this coming year.
- Determine where you are at today in that skill.
- Identify the gaps between your current state and your desired goal.
- Develop a plan.
- Work your plan.
- Share with your Mastermind group and keep them apprised of your progress.
Question:
- Is there anything keeping you from developing yourself?
- If so, is the obstacle internal or external?
Drop me a line at alan@babyboomercashnow.com. I am interested to hear of any challenges/obstacles you may have in your journey to develop yourself.