Introduction
Welcome back to another episode of our Coaching Hive Blueprint series. I am excited that you’re here today and I’m really excited about our topic progress-driven learning. This is, if you’ve been following me for a while, one of my favorite things to talk about because as a psychology professor, I love learning. I love learning new things. I love helping other people learn.
It is just so exciting to think about building your business and all the different things you get to learn. And so today we are going to talk about how to make the most of your learning experiences, knowing that there is a never-ending stream of programs, books, opportunities that you can purchase that could either keep you on track, accelerate your growth or completely derail you or stop your progress.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the fact that not all learning is created equal at every single moment.
If you are ready to get started, grab that notebook, grab your tablet, whatever you’re using to take notes on today, grab your cup of water or a snack, whatever you need to stay focused. And if you’re ready with our theme of simplicity, clarity, and vision for 2022 in mind, let’s jump in.
Choosing the Right Learning Opportunities
This is one of my favorite topics, progress-driven learning. Now, what does that mean? It’s exactly what it sounds like. The learning that you’re engaging in for your business should help drive progress.
It should not just be learning for learning’s sake. Now, my heart shriveled a little when I just said that because, as a professor, as an educator, and as a homeschooling mama, I very much believe in learning for learning’s sake. However, when we’re talking about a business, we’ve got to be super focused. The problem is that there are all of these shiny objects in the form of books, programs, conferences, summits. All of these things that come by, come across our desk, come across our phone and computer every single day. So unless you are independently wealthy, you do not ever need to work another day in your life, and have no desire to work another day in your life you can’t say yes to all of that. You’ve got to weed it out and find the opportunities that are going to drive progress in your business.
That’s why it’s called progress-driven learning. The problem is that there are all of these opportunities. It’s hard to know which ones to say yes to which ones to say no to, especially if you’re looking at a program that only opens up once a year.
For instance, just recently, James Wedmore had his program, Business By Design open for enrollment. This is a once a year opportunity. People wait all year for this.
Amy Porterfield has her Digital Course Academy. Stu McLaren has his Membership Experience. These things open one time a year. Jeff Walker has his Product Launch Formula course. This opens one time a year, which means if you say no right now you have to wait 12 months to be able to say yes.
That kind of pressure can make us say yes to something that we really don’t need right now. Just because we want to have it in our back pocket. But here’s the thing. If you don’t need it right now and you have it for your back pocket you won’t remember it. Have you ever forgotten stuff that’s in your back pocket and put it through the wash, maybe a receipt or a tissue or something else, maybe it’s chapstick or a pen. You forgot about it because it was in your back pocket. Yeah, we’ve all been there. So if you forget about the tissue or the pen or the paper in your back pocket, what’s to say you aren’t going to forget about this digital course or program or summit that is just existing in the ether?
You’re going to forget about it. So you’ve spent money, but you haven’t actually done anything with that learning opportunity. That’s one of the problems that can exist here. Another one is that you buy all the things, even if they’re free, you’re purchasing that free opportunity and you get sucked into this vortex of learning, learning, learning, and not doing.
It’s tricky.
It’s a balance.
In order to learn what you need to learn and say, no, thanks to what you don’t need right now you have to fall back to some of the work we’ve done earlier in this blueprint series, knowing your vision. What do you need to get there? In fact, part of your vision is thinking about what learning opportunities, what professional development do you need to do in order to be successful in your business. So go back to that first and foremost. Make sure that the opportunities that you are investigating and pursuing align with that vision of progress-driven learning.
But what happens when something really interesting comes up and you don’t know if it’s ever going to come back around again? It is part of your zone of genius. You love it. It’s not necessarily that it was on the books for this year or even at all. It’s not necessarily completely aligned with your vision, but man, it’s interesting. What do you do then? Do you say yes? Do you say no? That’s where you have the judgment call. That’s the gray zone, because if it’s something that you have time for and it just really lights you up, we all need to do things that light us up. Otherwise life becomes a little bit like drudgery and that’s not what we want. That’s not what life is supposed to be about.
We should be enjoying life, be enjoying those next steps and enjoying the process along the way. So if you have that once in a lifetime opportunity, pop up, even if it’s not in alignment with your vision completely, maybe you say, yes. That’s the beauty of not overloading yourself with all these other learning opportunities. You’re truly just staying focused on what will bring you progress. Then when those really cool things pop up, there’s still space for them. There’s still an opportunity to experience that once in a lifetime thing.
So when I talk about progress driven learning, I’m not saying no to learning for learning’s sake. I’m saying you have to be really thoughtful about it. And if you’re thoughtful about all of the other learning opportunities, when something cool comes along, you get to say yes and know that it’s not going to derail your progress. It may actually end up reenergizing you, getting you excited and ready to go. So when you think about your learning opportunities, is your email box full of free PDF downloads? Have you taken every quiz out there? If your answer is yes, that’s ok. What I would encourage you to do is think about how you implemented those PDFs, those quiz results. What have you done with them to take action? Because the coaching blueprint is all about taking action so that we get somewhere with the business.
As an entrepreneur, we have to constantly be looking for ways to move forward otherwise we stagnate. Business slows, growth slows, and people aren’t going to find us as easily. We’ve got to stay engaged in our business to see it continue to grow, or if you’re done growing and you want to stay right where you’re at because you are really content there, you still have to keep moving forward to keep that momentum going and that level of service and opportunity going.
Action Item
So now onto our action item for the week. We started off by talking about the fact that progress driven learning is; the key to not getting overwhelmed and not getting sucked down the rabbit hole of learning. There are so many opportunities out there. And so the solution to that is truly to identify what you actually need to learn by going back to your vision, looking at what you offer, the products and services that you offer. Looking back to all of this and seeing what is truly going to generate progress in your business.
Your action item for this week is to take a look at what you actually need. Write it down, be very specific. What skills, tools, and other aspects of your business do you need to work on?
And then find those opportunities. Start writing down different potential opportunities that you could use to fulfill those needs. You’re not going to say yes to everything. I would love to see you take it a step further. And every time you’re on Facebook or Instagram, and it says, take this quiz, download this PDF. I would love for you to say, does this help me make progress? Or is it a distractor? And if you answer that it’s a distractor. I want you to keep scrolling, keep moving forward and skip that opportunity for now, okay. Chances are your email list and your email inbox will thank you. It will be happy to not be so overloaded and you will have more time to work on the things that actually matter in your business.
Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully it gives you a little bit of relief to know that you don’t have to learn everything right now, nor do you ever have to learn everything. There are going to be times when a learning opportunity appears and you realize this would help me be more self-sufficient in this part of my business.
For instance, last week we talked about marketing and messaging and I said, you know, maybe this is one of those things that you want to outsource to someone who’s an expert in messaging. Maybe you look at that learning opportunity and say, you know what? I don’t need this learning opportunity. It’s probably better for me to leave this to the experts so I can keep focusing on my zone of genius. So in getting more intentional in choosing your learning opportunities, you’ll actually figure out where you need help faster. You will recognize that you don’t have to do everything alone and that there are certainly options out there at all price points to help you move forward.
As a reminder, this week’s action item is to think about what you need to learn coming up and start looking for opportunities to make that happen.
As we wrap up today, I just want to thank you for being here. We are nearly through the Coaching Hive Blueprint series. We started back, I believe in late April and here we are just moving right along. We just have a few episodes left and I cannot wait to finish this out with you and think about what the next steps are for your business.
If you got something out of today’s episode or any other episode that you might have listened to, would you do me a favor? Would you please rate the podcast and leave me a review? Even just a sentence or two helps us not only to reach more people, but it means that I know a little bit more about what you need, what you like, what you want. I plan the podcast material accordingly so that it truly is a progress-driven learning opportunity for you and for your business.
If you’d like to get in touch, if you were interested in learning more about how to work with me inside the Coaching Hive, whether it’s messaging, building a coaching practice or more about this Blueprint, reach out to me on DM and say “more information”, or if you want to add the word, please, you can do that too, or go ahead over to www.coachinghive.com and click the “apply now” button. You will see a form pop-up, you’ll fill that out, and then I’ll be in touch and we’ll set up a time to get to gather and talk.
I’m here to help. I’m here to help you move forward in your business so that we don’t have the overwhelm of building a business by yourself. No one should have to build a business by themselves.
That’s all for now. I look forward to seeing you back here next week. For another episode of the Coaching Hive podcast, where a focus on mentoring and community removes the overwhelm of building your successful and profitable business and adds in a dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week!
~ Dr. Moira Hanna
