When you think about your career plan there are two main elements to consider.  The first is how to maximize where you are now.  The second is exploring and planning for your next career steps.   Both elements are important for a successful career.  For today, I want to focus just on the first part, making the most of your current work situation.

A great way to grow your business is to take a class or workshop  to increase your skills.   Learning can spark your energy, broaden your perspective, and help you move forward to new levels of business success. 

You have many options for learning…you can attend a class in a regular classroom setting, or you can learn in a variety of other formats. 

Your professional association can be a good source for workshops and classes.  The association meetings themselves often include an educational component, whether it is at a local meeting, or at a regional or international conference.  

Chambers of Commerce are another good learning resource.  Attending classes sponsored by the Chamber offers opportunities to network with a variety of other business owners too.

Local colleges, universities, and Community Education departments are more good sources for learning opportunities.  Browse through their class listings to see if their offering will help you expand your business skills.

Teleseminars, webinars, and home study courses are good options if you want to be able to learn from your home or your office without having to travel. 

You can also create your own classroom on the go, if you have the option to download a recording of a teleseminar, or to listen to an audiobook.   Learning from an audio recording allows you to listen while you are driving or exercising   It also lets you start and stop the recording, or go back and re-listen to a segment for more clarity. 

With all of these options for learning, which format and which topic would most help you to grow your business now?   The most successful people I know are always learning.  I hope you will join their ranks and have fun learning skills that can help your business grow! 

In the last post, I shared the first three tips for including time for technical learning in your week as a strategy for growing your business. I promised more in this post. Here are some strategies that have helped me find greater enjoyment and less resistance to the process of learning tech-y things. See if they might be useful for you too:

4. Ask for a bit of help from a friend, colleague, neighbor, (or teenager) who has the technical knowledge you want to learn. Sometimes they can help you with a quick answer, or they may be able to guide you to a good resource. Be willing to return the favor and help them in some way, or at least express your gratitude and appreciation.

5. Try shifting your mindset. Look at the tech learning process as an ongoing exploration and adventure, part of staying current, a way to keep your mind agile and flexible, and part of keeping your business moving forward.

6. Keep things in perspective. Generally, you don’t need (or want) to be out on the extreme leading edge of technology, but you don’t want to be completely out of the flow either. And it is easier to keep taking small steps forward with your technical learning than to stop and then have to make a big effort to catch up!

So I am wondering…what is the next little tech-y thing you will learn this week? And I would love to know your favorite way to learn new technical things or to stay current with tech-y things! I invite you to share a comment about this.

It may seem like a contradiction, but a great way to grow your business is to include time for learning tech-y things. You might think that you would be wiser to spend your time doing your core work or your regular marketing activities. It might seem like time for tech learning would be a distraction, or just a necessity to be endured. But investing some of your time each week learning technical things really can help you grow your business.

I have to confess that learning technical things is not always my favorite thing to do, but I have found some ways to make it easier. Here are some ideas that have helped me…I hope some of them will be helpful to you too:

1. Choose technical skills that will help you do important tasks faster or easier. An example might be spending a hour or two learning how to use your new telephone and some of its features. You will be able to use the phone more quickly and easily. You will likely feel less frustration too.

2. Choose technical skills where it will be helpful to have at least a broad understanding of what is possible. For example, you may not need to become an expert with Excel, but it can be very helpful to have at least an introduction to the program and to have a sense for what can be done with the program. You may still choose (and perhaps wisely) to outsource Excel tasks to an assistant. But you will have a better knowledge of and an appreciation for what your assistant can do for you with Excel.

3. Start a list of technical things you need or want to learn. Add to the list as more ideas occur to you. Each week, choose at least one item from your list and schedule a bit of time to start learning about it. You don’t have to master it, just take a small step forward in your knowledge or skill level.

Let’s start with these three ideas for today…I will share some more in the next blog post. In the meantime, I would love to know what you would put on your current list of tech-y things to learn.

As you are growing your business set goals to give you something to aim for. It will help you focus your time and energy. It will help you see progress. And it will give you something to celebrate as you make progress in reaching your goals.

Of course you will want to take daily action to move toward your goals. In addition, I encourage you to reach out and ask for help and support from friends and colleagues too. They can play a big part in your success.

As an example, one of my goals is to reach the level of having more than 2000 Followers on Twitter.com. I have been working toward this goal and am close to reaching it. Yesterday, I mentioned it to a couple of people and asked for their help and ideas on ways to finally achieve this goal. They were wonderful and offered to post a Tweet about it on their Twitter accounts. This let their Followers know about my goal. As a result, several more people followed me and I am very close to achieving the goal. I really appreciate this help and support.

And now, I would like to ask for your help and support as I work toward this goal. If you have a Twitter account, I would love to have you as a Follower. And if you are willing, I would really appreciate your posting a Tweet about it, inviting others to Follow me too. Thanks so much for your help and support!

You, too, can ask for help and support with achieving your goals. Just ask. And be willing to help or assist the other person too, if you can. You may be surprised, but many people like to help other people succeed and would be glad to help you succeed.

Every couple of months it is smart to take a look for another task or two that you could outsource. Even small tasks can make a difference, because it frees up your time and energy for your core business tasks.

There is another, sometimes unexpected, benefit to outsourcing some tasks, and that is the mental relief or even the excitement you can feel when you get some help with tasks that are not your best or favorite things to do yourself.

Take a look to see if you have some tasks that would be good outsourcing candidates such as data entry, submitting articles to article banks, organizing papers, phone calls, email, follow-up letters, cleaning out old papers and magazines, shredding, etc.

You can often find good people in your local area who can help you with these tasks. Ask colleagues if they know someone who could use some extra work. Perhaps there is a retired person or a stay-at-home mom in your neighborhood who would like some freelance work. Or there may be a reliable college student would like some extra work.

Even two to four hours of help from a freelance assistant can help you grow your business! What task can you begin to outsource this month?

An excellent technique for growing your business is to find one or more business colleagues to mastermind with.  Choose people that you like and trust.  This is important so you can be open and talk about your business and your goals and your challenges.

Choose a regular time to mastermind together, perhaps once a week or every two weeks.  You can meet in person or by telephone.  Be sure each person has the same amount of  time to talk about their goals and to get ideas and support for moving forward.

Believe in each others’ goals the ability to achieve them.  Help each other with ideas and encouragement and suggestions about people and resources that may be helpful.  You can be accountability partners for each other too.

Between mastermind meetings, hold a vision of your mastermind partners’ success, just as you envision your own success.  Keep your eyes and ears open for information or resources that may help your partners.

Express your appreciation for your mastermind partners, celebrate wins, and cheer each other on to new levels of success.  Having a mastermind partner can be a big factor in your success!

One of the most important things you can do to help your business grow is a somewhat indirect action. And that is to keep your heart and soul nourished with inspiration….

Inspiration to keep taking action to move your business forward every day.

Inspiration to try again when the first attempt didn’t work out quite as well as you had hoped.

Inspiration to persist in the face of difficulties and even failures that are an inevitable part of running a business.

Inspiration to dream bigger and to take action on those dreams even when you are not yet sure how to do all that will be needed to reach your big dream.

Inspiration to take a day off on the weekend for rest and re-energizing yourself, even when there is a lot of work waiting to be done.

Inspiration is vital to the success of your business.  Especially when you are a small business owner or if you work at home as a solo-preneur.  One of my favorite resources for this is short inspirational quotes. I like to print them and put them where I can see them during the day.

Quote from your favorite business author or from historical figures are great. I love quotes from Jerry and Esther Hicks. Quotes from your preferred spiritual books and teachers are excellent too.

I would love to know what your favorite sources of inspiration are…I invite you to write a comment to share one of your favorites.

Another great way to grow your business is to speak for groups. You can often get this marketing strategy started in your local area.

Many business and professional groups need a speaker at every meeting. You can be that speaker! Whatever your area of knowledge or expertise, there are groups that would enjoy hearing about it. Even if you speak on a topic that doesn’t seem like a business topic, many groups like to offer a variety of programs.

To find groups to speak for, start with the groups you belong to, or that you know about. You can also ask friends and colleagues about groups they know about.

Ask to find out who the person is who is responsible for finding and coordinating speakers and programs for the group. Call and ask them if they could use another speaker to help fill their calendar. Find out if your topic would be of interest to their group. Offer to speak for them. If they say “yes” coordinate the date and time and location with them. Then plan your talk to provide lots of useful information within the timeframe they allow for speakers. Practice your talk, create a handout that includes your name and contact information, and have something to offer as a way to stay connected with people in the audience who may be interested.

Bottom line…speaking is an excellent way to increase your visibility and to meet new people who may be interested in what you do. And this makes it a great way to help grow your business!

One of the challenges of running a small business can be a bit of isolation. This is especially true if you work from home. When challenges or just a low moment happens, it can really help to reach out to ask for help or support. Or to offer help and support if you know that a colleague is experiencing a tough time.

A smart strategy is to develop relationships with a few business friends that you can call when you need that extra word of encouragement or a caring ear to listen. And of course it is good to return the favor when your colleague needs a bit of help or encouragement too.

1. Think of two or three people who could be this type of person in your business life. Choose people that you feel you can trust with your thoughts and feelings and who understand what it is like to be a business owner.

2. Call and talk with them about this idea, to see if they are open to it and willing to be this type of resource person for you.

3. Stay in touch regularly with these business friends during the good times too, not just when challenges arise. Develop this type of business friendship–it can be rewarding and enjoyable for you and for them. Look for ways to encourage and cheer each other on to achieve success.

Having someone to talk with about the ups and downs of business can help you to grow your business…it gives you a way to talk things through, and someone to listen with a caring heart that can help you move forward.

I would love to hear if you have these types of colleagues in your business life already. You can post a comment below if you like.