Self-education for entrepreneurs: why is it important?
Self-education for entrepreneurs is the ultimate advantage because contrary to what most of people believe, what separates successful entrepreneurs from the others who struggle, is their decision to constantly improve their knowledge.
I am not talking about general useless information!
High achievers’ entrepreneurs consciously decide to develop strategic skills to expand their comfort zone by sharpening their skills and therefore achieve the success of their company.
Successful entrepreneurs recognize their entrepreneurial education experience as a key factor in their success, De Hoyos & Figueroa (2011).
Entrepreneurs who learn and develop their self-management and self-monitoring skills have more opportunities to enhance entrepreneurial knowledge and experiences in the entrepreneurial development process. Self-directed learning has emerged as an important area of inquiry in relation to entrepreneurial learning, as well as entrepreneurial performance, Tseng (2013).
If you want to scale your current business or start a new one and you understand the relationship between your own growth and the development of your business, you should continue reading this article.
I am going to give you some useful insights and practical tips regarding the importance of self-education and the skills you need to master in order to make your business successful.
Here are my tips:
1 – Model leading entrepreneurs and learn from them
2 – Learn how to become more productive
3 – Stop making excuses and take action!
4 – Define your self-education learning strategy and sell your expertise to other people
5 – Start small and grow big
6 – Make self-learning a new habit
7 – Choose your learning format
8 – Learn to reinforce your mindset
9 – Fully apply what you learned
10 – Spend your money wisely
11 – Learn how to market your business
12 – Don’t be influenced by negative people
1 – Model leading entrepreneurs and learn from them
If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you should learn from people who have already achieved what you are looking for.
One way to self-educate yourself and never stop learning is by imitating the habits of leading experts in your field or in other domains.
For example, you can learn their lifestyle habits that allow them to be productive.
You can also model their marketing strategies and adapt them to your business model in order to scale more rapidly.
This is probably the fastest way to make progress for yourself and your company.
Successful entrepreneurs such as Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi are convinced of the value of self-education at the point that they strongly believe that self-education will become the new norm. If you are serious about growing your business or creating a new one, you should consider their Knowledge Broker Blueprint Course.
Another alternative is to find a mentor that you can meet face to face and get directly her or his business wisdom. In that case, you will probably need more time, energy, and work in order to find a more suitable person in your area.
(Auken & al., 2006; Fellnhofer, 2017) show that role models can influence entrepreneurial intention if they can change their attitude and self-efficacy about the ability that a person feels to become a successful business owner.
Now let’s go to the second tip regarding what you can do to grow as an entrepreneur, that is by becoming more productive.
2 – Learn how to become more productive
Getting what you want does not depend only on hard work.
You can achieve your goals by becoming more productive.
But what does becoming more productive really means?
It means you learn the best strategies to get your work done by functioning at your best level possible.
One way of doing that is by working on your most important tasks when your energy levels are at the top.
Another useful way of achieving your most important goals is to plan your work week in advance because this way you can start working on your most important task without delay.
A good way, that I personally use in order to be extremely productive is being 100% focused on the tasks I planned at a given time and not allowing myself to get distracted by less important tasks.
That requires me to stick around to my scheduled tasks despite distractions, fatigue, or any other reason. This is also an effective way to improve your self-control and self-esteem.
If you want to learn more about how to become more productive, you can read my article 14 tips to be more productive at work and in your private life in which I provide you with all you need in order to catapult your productivity to the next level.
But having the best tips to become a productive entrepreneur is not enough if you do not use them. This is precisely my third tip for you, which is to take action.
3 – Stop making excuses and take action!
You surely have issues in your personal or professional life but at the end of the day as an entrepreneur, it is all up to you.
When you become aware that the stories you tell yourself prevent you from getting the results you want, you will find a way to make things happen regardless the current obstacles you may face.
This way, you will transform not only your profession but your whole life by understanding that you are responsible for your own happiness and success. You will also stop blaming others and you will begin to forgive people easily.
Your own transformation will benefit your and other people’s lives because you will become a better human being.
If you have procrastination problems, you can read two articles I wrote about this topic, that is 10 outstanding tips to stop procrastinating and 11 tips to fight against procrastination at work and at home.
Sometimes, your limiting stories come from the past, for example:
- your past failures
- your parents’ limiting beliefs
- the culture in which you grew up
- your past self-limiting beliefs
- the person you think to be
- your teachers’ limiting beliefs regarding your abilities
Other times, the stories you create come from your present, for instance:
- not having enough time, money, intelligence
- not living in a good area
- not having experience
- not having the support from your loved ones
All these reasons have one thing in common, they will prevent you from getting what you want.
So it is up to you to manage your stories and rewrite the most powerful ones that allow you to become a better person and consequently a greater entrepreneur.
Now that you understand the importance of overcoming your limiting stories and taking action, you can move to my fourth tip, which is defining your self-education strategy.
4 – Define your self-education learning strategy and sell your expertise to other people
You cannot learn everything at once.
In order to grow your business, you need to prioritize the skills, you want to learn.
This choice depends on your own situation and differs for every entrepreneur.
First, define the most important competence you have to master this year in order to expand your business, and then invest in yourself to learn it the best and the fastest you can.
An alternative way of identifying the most important expertise you should develop is to understand what already brings you good results so you can become even better at that. This way you will double down your effectiveness.
By contrast, be aware that you cannot learn everything all the time and that sometimes you can go faster by delegating some of your work to someone else.
Second, choose the best program, online courses, seminars, or books you think will help you achieve the skills you need.
Third, buy the program and schedule in your to-do list your learning time according to your preferences.
Fourth, immediately apply a bit of what you have just learned to your current business.
Fifth, measure your progress and perfect your knowledge by closing the gap you found in the program you bought.
Sixth, create a better program and make more money by selling it to other people.
Now that you understand the importance of defining your self-education learning strategy, you can move to my fifth tip if you feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you need to learn, that is, starting small and growing big.
5 – Start small and grow big
Many people get discouraged when they measure the amount of knowledge and skills, they have to master to launch a new business or grow an existing one.
Instead of being overwhelmed by that, you should begin with just one learning goal.
For example, if you need to learn marketing, you can start by learning just one little chunk of this subject, for instance, you can decide to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Then, you can plan daily actions in order to learn as much as you can to improve this skill.
For example, you can watch one YouTube video a day related to SEO and then apply your learning to your current website.
By taking constant action you will get momentum and you progress very quickly.
As long as you get some results, you can decide to invest in a course in order to improve your knowledge.
The goal here is to do something even small every single day and don’t find excuses to procrastinate and do nothing.
As for any other competence, daily practice will create results, self-confidence, and momentum.
Now that you understand the importance of being consistent you are ready to go a step further, that is making self-learning a new habit.
6 – Make self-learning a new habit
In the past articles, I wrote about the importance of creating new productive habits in order to maximize your success and generally speaking to get what you want.
Intrinsic motivation is important but when you lack motivation you can always rely on your habits.
So the question is: how can you develop the habit of self-education?
As for any other habit, the main way is through repetition of the same behavior.
Unfortunately, sometimes this is not sufficient to create and keep a new habit.
One way of dealing with this issue is to use the power of contextual factors, that is to say, elements that facilitate the execution of a given behavior.
For instance, if you are a freelancer or an entrepreneur and your goal is to learn marketing you could:
- schedule to learn something precise every day at the same time each day
- create a motivating learning environment
- set a daily goal you want to achieve
- set a reminder so you don’t miss your learning appointment
- switch off your mobile and your laptop if you don’t need them
- congratulate yourself when you stick to your plan
- measure your progress daily and record your progress
Those are only some examples of what you can do to make the changes you need easily and effectively. Repetition, using contextual factors to facilitate your new behaviors, and having a proactive strategy is key to make self-education your new habit.
Now that you understand the importance of automating your learning process, you can move to my seventh tip, that is choosing the learning format that best suits you.
7 – Choose your learning format
According to NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), some people are more visual, while some others prefer to listen or directly do something when it comes to learn something.
Adapting your learning to your own inner preferences can dramatically improve the quality of what you learn and therefore the results you get.
This way, you will not only better learn the things you need, but you will also make your learning more pleasurable.
That tip alone will strongly increase your motivation to keep on your learning habit.
The modality you enjoy the most is generally the best to learn better and faster.
When in doubt, just try them all but be aware that in order to acquire some skills, doing things is generally the best way.
Now that you understand the importance of choosing the most suitable learning format, you can move to my eighth tip, which is learning to strengthen your mindset.
8 – Learn to reinforce your mindset
As an entrepreneur, you have a large choice of subjects you need to learn and one of the pillars of your success is improving your mindset.
You can have all the required knowledge to correctly run your business, but if your mindset is not strong enough you will fail.
Why?
Because when problems will come, you will find many reasons to give up because of your poor mindset.
But, if your mental attitude is robust enough, you will thrive even though your entrepreneurial knowledge is just average.
Combining tactical business strategies with the appropriate mindset is key for every entrepreneur.
If you are interested in acquiring these competencies, you can have a look at the Knowledge Broker Blueprint Course provided by Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi.
There are many ways to reinforce your mindset, you can for instance:
- focus on your major results
- learn from your past mistakes
- read self-development books
- become more competent
- acknowledge and reward yourself when you keep your commitments
- take notes of your progress
- visualize yourself successful
Summarizing, working every day to reinforce your successful beliefs is extremely beneficial if you want to increase your chance of becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Now that you understand the importance of enhancing your mindset, you can move to my ninth tip, which is fully applying what you learned.
9 – Fully apply what you learned
This is an obvious tip, but it is extremely important.
You can learn the best business strategies and the perfect mindset tips but if you do not apply to your business what you learned, you lose time, energy, and money.
In order to achieve this goal, you need to improve your time management skills, overcome procrastination, and be clear regarding what you want to achieve by learning this topic and why this is so important to you.
You should manage your time using a to-do list in order to set a learning, an implementation, and an evaluation time.
In this way, you will get better results faster.
If you don’t know how to create a to-do list, you can read my article about how to write an effective to-do list.
Realize that even if you apply all you learned in the best possible way; the results you expect can take longer than you think.
In brief, learn also to be patient and accept that your assumptions may need more time, practice, and also more skills.
In summarizing, fully apply what you learned and be patient.
Now that you understand the importance of fully applying what you learned, you can move to my tenth tip, which is spending your money wisely.
10 – Spend your money wisely
Before deciding to buy a face-to-face course, an online course, or a coaching program, you should always take the time you need to decide if you really need to spend your money.
That because as an entrepreneur, it is not only about the money you make but also about the ROI (return on investment) you get.
If you want to spend your money to self-educate yourself, make research on the internet to be sure of the value of your investment.
Then, do the same for other stuff you would buy and compare them with each other.
This way, you will be able to make a more rational decision regarding your expenses.
This previous method is particularly important if you are an emotional buyer and you often spend money on things you don’t even use.
To summarize, do the best you can to evaluate more rationally the value of the money you are willing to spend for your self-education.
Now that you understand the importance of spending your money wisely, you can move to my eleventh tip, which is learning how to market your business.
11 – Learn how to market your business
You can be the best at what you do, but if you don’t learn how to serve the people who need your expertise, you are going to fail.
Marketing is a very big topic and I cannot cover everything you need in this paragraph but, there are some skills that are essential if you want to get results for your current or future business.
Here are four skills you should focus on to develop your business:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Copywriting
- Video creation and editing
- Email Marketing
These competencies are essential especially if you run an online business, but they are also extremely important if you have a conventional business.
If you want to improve your marketing skills, the Knowledge Broker Blueprint Course provided by Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi is currently a solid solution for any entrepreneur.
12 – Don’t be influenced by negative people
Some people are very good at criticizing things to the point that it becomes a part of their personality.
If some important people in your life have this kind of behavior, that can really affect your commitment to self-education.
It is possible that in the past, you deeply regretted the decision you made because you decided in accordance with the opinion of this person.
You can also be influenced if you talk to people with an entrepreneurial aversiveness mindset.
Some others had bad past experiences and project their fears on you.
In a nutshell, understand other people’s emotions, but don’t allow their perceptions to prevent you from success.
Conclusion regarding self-education for entrepreneurs
In this article, you learned the importance of self-education for entrepreneurs.
By following these strategic and mindset tips, you will increase your chances of becoming a successful entrepreneur.
If you want to benefit from the expertise of a time management coach or a marketing coach, you can write us through our contact format.
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Français : Comment réussir en tant qu’entrepreneur : le guide ultime
Italiano: Come diventare un imprenditore di successo: la guida definitiva