Formal Education and Getting Better, what are some options? - DBR 021

Do Busy Right

Is more education the only way to get better? The thing I want to get to is this notion of getting better and improving what you do and, and really drill down on that because I think most of my listeners are interested in that right. I mean, it's not just a question of being able to handle your stuff. It's a question of getting better at work. It's a question of getting better at our tasks. It's about making more money and being more effective in the world. And creating more value and all these exciting things. And I also want to motivate some inquiry into how how do I go about motivate some, you know, hey, I need to be constantly improving on this front. And if I want to get better results, I got to be a better worker. And how do I do that? So I think there's two primary choices. So we'll assume that we've already asked the boss. Two (or three) paths to improvement

• One is MBA (I think this is the ‘big business’/‘promotion’ path)
• Two is producing more value or use less time/attention (I think this is the entrepreneurial path)
• This is work ON your job, rather than AT your job
• So, work to use less time/attention on what you’re already doing
• How does having ‘free’ time help me be successful – three possibilities
• Using the ‘extra’ time - spending spare time in client acquisition
• Using the ‘extra’ time – more value per customer
• Using the ‘extra’ time - raise your prices
• How do you decide – it starts with awareness of options

The new mindset

• Evaluating options – what do we actually mean by ‘getting better’
• The new mindset – four ways to improve
• More knowledge, more specialization – MBA path
• First flavor – technical specialization
• Second flavor – tightening your niche
• Look at a model that makes sense for you. What do specialists actually do in your field?
• I’m not sure specialization - like medical, CPAs, lawyers - works everywhere
• Creating more widgets
• Raising prices
• Looking at the numbers when raising prices –
• we've got 10 customers producing $1,000 a month in revenue. So that's 10,000 a month. We asked for a 10% price increase, and we get it from nine of our 10 customers and the 10th customer goes away. So now we've got nine customers and we're making $1,100 off of each one - that’s $9900 per month - we've lost $100 a month rather than having lost $1,000 a month. So that's that's how the math works. If you can get a high conversion rate, you don't lose the whole $1,000 because you do get your price increase on some of your other customers.
• Don’t sleep on simply saving time - that's a good reason
• Summary of this section (ways to get ‘better’)
• Recap so far #1 – promotion/certification
• Recap so far #2 – niche / raise value per customer
• Recap so far #3 – more throughput
• Recap so far #4 – harvesting time for other pursuits
• Make sure you know your path from the above options

Results

• Work ‘athletics’
• How can you be more athletic?
• Twofold result – 1) more balls and 2) more practice
• Knowledge work athletics – task and attention management (first among others)
• Think about how you produce
• Example – this podcast: Could I shorten it
• Look at your own workflow
• results, visibility, more instances of production
• Outgrowth of getting better = more confidence about doing it
• The result is more done in less time

Tools

• What are some tools
  • A few low hanging fruit – keyboard, operating system and other software, communication & public speaking
• Tool #1 – categorization of ‘what does getting better mean’
• Tool #2 – think about ‘specialization’ vs ‘niche’
• Tool #3 – think about collecting more value per instance of delivery (raise your prices)
• Tool #4 – look at your process to produce more deliveries
• Taking less attention per instance of production
• Analyze the ‘mystical’ process
• Create a process and begin to understand
• Don’t overlook the simple stuff (software, automation)
• Attention compass

Spend time thinking through your definition of better, using the examples above. Consider what your own approach might be, don't just default to getting more certification/education. That may not work well in your business and it's an expensive experiment. Think about getting better in process-oriented ways. Ways that save you time, increase your output, or improve your value proposition. If you need help understanding why to postpone work and how to do it well, hit us up at dobusyright.com/tickler-file for a free download about the best way to manage reminders and postponed work.