#15 - Never Stop Learning

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I can’t imagine why someone would want to think of themselves as a number. You may have an employee number, a student ID, and of course a social security number – but if you’re reading this series, you should aspire to be more than just a number. Like I wrote in #12 and #6, you need to be able to

1 - Sell yourself

2 - Be valuable.

Sounds good right? Great.

Now how do you get there?

Like anything that matters, how you go about being valuable or selling your skills matters just as much as what skills or value you provide. The way I see it, this begins from adopting a culture of continued learning. The schooling system in the United States can leave one with the impression that what you will learn starts in the fall semester of kindergarten and ends with your bachelor’s degree; I could not disagree more. Not to be too pedantic, but there is a difference between learning and schooling. I am not someone who excels in a regimented school environment, but I am someone who has adopted a culture of continual learning that has outlasted the time I spent attending class. In the 21st century with podcasts, unlimited data plans, and $50 tablets at Amazon the barrier to entry has never been lower if you want to learn more. Put another way, whether you want to paint a picture or change the oil on your car the journey to your answer begins the same way “Google it”.

In business as in life capital investments pay off, and adopting a culture of continual learning is how you make sure your human capital has a return. I knew very little about sales when I took my first job in retail, but by being open and committed to learning I grew and developed a talent I claimed to have. When I started my career in the machine/tool world I could tell you a lot about how a suit should fit and what kind of tie to wear to your brother’s wedding, but I knew next to nothing about cold sawing.

Now? I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve achieved an understanding of my new world that helps me serve my customers. Every time you learn a useful skill, your human capital increases. The best part is you don’t need to spend years in school to do this. Here’s a great example, I recently purchased a license for the doodly software. It’s a video editor that will draw scene you create that can be used for instructional videos or advertising. This past Saturday, instead of watching a movie or playing xbox to unwind, I spent four hours teaching myself how the software works making a two-minute video. I will be honest with the reader; it didn’t turn out amazing and the last 30 seconds are better than the first minute as you could imagine. It doesn’t matter whether I “failed” or “passed” my first attempt at making a video – that’s for school. It matters that I’m learning a new skill, and in the near future be competent in something that can help my personal brand, my business, or both!

Ask yourself, what’s stopping you from learning more?