Home Business Newsletters- Not the Best Way to Learn Home Business Information
I am committed to helping my fellow baby boomers as they hit retirement, look at their dwindled resources, and consider the possibility of starting their own business. One of my “helps” is a Newsletter called “Tips for Growing Your OWN Home Business.” Many other home business entrepreneurs are paying it forward also, offering their own helpful subscriptions and providing useful home business information for boomers. I subscribe to a number of them myself.
But, let’s face it – getting a random “Tip” on a random day is relying upon luck for learning. If you are really lucky a newsletter may provide just what your business urgently needs, just when you need it. More often though, what you need is not what any of 50 Newsletters happen to be writing about on that week.
Don’t get me wrong! I’m glad to have you as a subscriber. You’ll find that Tips for Growing Your Own Business provides valuable information and encouragement to home business owners.
Hit or Miss Home Business Information
It’s just that you really shouldn’t rely on various newsletters for your training. It’s too hit or miss. OK – it’s a step up from straight-out “trial and error learning” – also called “learning by doing” or “learning from your mistakes.” If you ever took a psychology course, you know trial and error learning has been proven to work. Remember the experiments with the mouse finding the cheese at the end of a maze? After many, many tries (and mistakes) the mouse “learns” to find the cheese with no wrong turns. So researchers know -we all know- that trial and error learning works.
But we also know that trial and error learning takes a very long time! In the real-live situation of learning how to start and grow a home business, how many months or years do you have available to “try” before you run out of money? Trial and error random learning is inefficient.
What would you think if our military said to a new volunteer, “Here’s your uniform. You’ll be leaving for the battlefield tomorrow. We expect you to learn how to perform on the job. After you’ve been in the field for a few years, you’ll get the hang of it.”
Ridiculous!
No, we know that a structured way to learn is best in that situation. It works best to set time aside for training (boot camp and advanced special courses) even though the need to get started on the home business tasks is urgent.
Better Way to Get Home Business Information
Starting a home business often begins with excitement and urgency. But too often it ends in frustration. One of the many factors can be the starting assumption that “I know all I need to know.”
Let me share this: I have been in business for over 15 years as an Equipment Training Workshop Leader and Consultant. I picked up a few things about marketing from the random books I read. I thought I knew what I was doing. But I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Every task, step-by-step, just when needed, at my own pace
A second business has been network marketing. As that business was growing, I thought I knew why. Again – I didn’t know what I didn’t know. It was when the network marketing business began to fail -dry up- that I started looking for answers. Eventually I began to seek out structured learning, ie., training.
Now I say, “If only I knew then what I know now!” What I have learned from attraction marketing training programs has been applicable to both my consulting business and our network marketing business.
Random home business newsletters (even my own), random books by business leaders, and random free webinars are all good. Unfortunately the timing and topics are often out of synch with the needs you may have at the moment. But identifiying your home business weak points and getting systematic, self-paced training in internet marketing -and other home business skills- is just working smarter.
Just-in-time manufacturing is a well-known and efficient way to organize the resources for a factory. Imagine just-in-time home business information available online whenever I need it. Imagine that every lesson allows one to go at his own pace. Imagine a menu of hundreds of home business tasks. It’s a style of training that’s right for baby boomers just starting a home business, or for boomers that have existing businesses and are looking to develop new skills.
Such home business training is not imaginary – it really exists through a site known as The Renegade Professional. A membership at this training site is a good investment. It’s possible to get the first month of training for free along with some other valuable materials, including The Renegade Network Marketer, the book that lays the theoretical groundwork for all of the training.
The Renegade Professional is not the only training site available. Your needs may vary. If you want some advice about the best site for you, contact me and let’s set up a time to talk about it.
Don’t build your business on a random foundation. It leaves too many cracks. Investigate the value of home business training.
The Best Way to Learn New Home Business Skills and Information
If self-paced training tutorials are a better way to learn than random learning aids like home business newsletters, what is the best way?
The best way to learn is by combining self-paced training with a mentor who can also provide feedback on your application of the skills to specific feedback. I have promoted the importance of feedback during training for years in my role as a training consultant.
How can the home business owner arrange to have the benefit of such feedback? The answer is to find a mentor. I have written elsewhere on what ”find a mentor” actually means. But the key in this situation is to find someone already familiar with the training program that you are using so that they can serve as a guide and feedback-provider… regardless of whether they call themselves a business mentor or business coach or something else.
The Renegade Professional, mentioned above, has a list of individuals qualified to serve you as a Guide (”Superguide”) and others that are further qualified as business coaches. This is an example of combining powerful learning elements to speed home business owners toward mastery of home business skills.
Summary
- Random learning like Newsletters, webinars and more = sometimes helpful
- Self-paced training with extensive selection of home business information and tasks = good
- Training plus feedback and help from a coach or mentor = best
Maze artwork: purchased from iStockphoto
Photo of soldiers above: CC at Flickr by 82nd Sustainment Brigade, Jason Allgood photographer
Photo of man with computer: purchased from iStockphoto
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Mentoring or coaching is really important. More so now than before as if one decides to work from home using the net, they need a coach to get up and running really fast. The trick is to find someone they can trust and that doesn’t have exorbitant fees.
Marie Leonard´s last blog ..Ten Myths and Realities of Goal Setting For Baby Boomers
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