As a dedicated business owner, you probably spend much of your day focusing on how you can help your clients. Bravo! This is what you should be doing as a human being anyways, helping others as much as you can. However, some of us get on a path of helping others through our businesses and just keep rolling along with the same mentality. But as much as we applaud helping others, we also strongly suggest that you help yourself.
Along with your business, you also need to invest in yourself. A proper education will ultimately enable you to help a greater number of people to a greater degree. Think of it this way. Let’s suppose your current business is like Charlie from Flowers for Algernon before the procedure. The poor guy had a big heart and great intentions, but he couldn’t even beat a mouse in a maze. But afterwards, he was able to actually contribute to society. Not that we’re saying your business is mentally challenged, just that no matter how well intentioned your business pursuits are, you’ll always be able to offer a greater degree of help to others through continued education.
And if you’re one of those number-oriented people who goes to sleep by the sound of your ROI ticker, then your educational pursuits may require an extra degree of patience. Self-edification doesn’t always produce immediate, perceivable results, but trust us, your clients will see the difference and you’ll build their loyalty on a foundation of marble instead of balsa wood.
Besides, never before have we had access to so many experts and such powerful materials as we do now. From a full master’s program to a community college course, and seminars to certification courses, there are plenty of education avenues that will suit even a bootstrapped budget. And with the Web providing thousands of new articles on a daily basis, you can take the completely free route and hold yourself to reading one or two new articles every single day. Create a cranium-cramming schedule and put aside a certain block of time every day for your personal edification. To not keep up with what is out there is causing you to miss a lot of amazing breakthroughs. In addition, the trend has been that with the more knowledge we have, the easier things tend to be later on. If you put some front-end time and effort towards investing in yourself, then things will get much easier down the road, unless you regress like Charlie of course then you’re just plum out of luck.
The power of personal development is infinite. It’s amazing how set some of us become in our ways. Not necessarily in a stubborn manner, but because we become programmed to go on autopilot, functioning in ways that are familiar to us. We don’t even realize that we’re capable of so much more because we haven’t challenged ourselves in such a long time. Pursuing personal development open’s our minds to the limitless possibilities within us. Become a better you, and your bootstrapped budget will become a bad ass boot-up-the-competition’s-butt budget, or something like that.
Here are some of the programs that I am currently investing my learning dollars in.
You make a great point. You can continue to help your customers in the same way you always have or you can hold yourself to a higher standard – which will ultimately bring your business to the next level.
Of course, my next comment depends on the field you’re in, but I would venture to guess that going the free route may be even more valuable than traditional education. B-schools, for example, will teach you hard lessons but won’t necessarily help hone your instincts. Reading other’s opinions, hard-learned lessons, etc. will. And in my mind, instinct (especially in fields like marketing) is the core characteristic of a great professional.
Yes Tracey you are completely correct. We are very lucky to be living in a time where we have so much access to great teachers and information that is being handed to us.
We just need to take the lessons, clear out the noise and run with them.
Thanks for the comment.
Cheers,
Derek
Hi, I am now following you on twitter because of this post
Actually I wanted to say that it is not selfish to invest in yourself as your own welfare should be your number one priority.
But to not share it will be selfish. I think we should invest in ourselves in order to share the wealth with others in turn allowing others to invest on themselves and reciprocate it.
jonatsgonats’s last blog post..8 Ways to Reduce Stock Market Stress
Thanks for both the comment and the follow. I appreciate it very much.
Yes, it is almost like the fisher price slogan right now (forgive me I have a 5 month old) “Live, Learn Grow”. In my opinion, growth comes giving or at least it should. If not you are not playing the game for the right reasons.
Cheers,
Derek
This is very hot info. I think I’ll share it on Facebook.
Your blog really made me think of the difficulty that can happen when someone tries to help someone else. Now, don’t get me wrong, but people seem to be very suspicious nowdays!
I’m a professional woman, a psychotherapist. I guess that I’ve always wanted to “help.” I’ve been helping people for years and will continue to do this while I raise money for animal rescue’s. It’s always been my passion and I am developing a secondary source of income so that I can donate a portion to help animals.
I am a very above board person who is not “scamming” people. I just wonder where does all of the closed mindedness and suspicion come from? Where are openminded, helpful and caring people?