Formal Education and Getting Better, what are some options? - DBR 021
Episode 21
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