If you are 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years into your career, now’s a great time to invest in your personal growth. Stop waiting for that next promotion!
Maybe you aren’t the owner of a business, but you’re a director, a manager, or someone who helps move the business forward, or a leader in the organization. There are a few ways for you to take your personal brand, grow it, and actually contribute to your organization and to your personal growth.
You can’t just rely on your company to train you. You are solely responsible for your own growth.
A lot of people today work within an organization where they find a career path, they find something they get excited about or have a passion for, but they haven’t relied on themselves to grow their skill set. What they do is they lean on the training of the company. They lean on the path that has been painted for them, but they don’t go beyond themselves to figure out how to grow and become that next level manager, employee, the person being promoted, the person finding a seat eventually at that core leadership table.
There are a few things you can do. Things that I’ve found along my way that I’d like to share with you today. They are:
- Events
- Networking
- Developing Your Perspective
- Education
- Speaking
As a lot of you know I grew up in the ad agency business right out of college. I studied marketing in college and then immediately jumped into an ad agency job in strategy. They called it media planning at the time. It’s now called brand strategy or a lot of other things. But basically, I worked with brands to develop their stories figure out who their customers are and how to reach them with commercials and media.
There were many stages in my career. I started as an assistant doing a lot of the grunt work where you are filing reports, pulling data, analyzing data, etc. You grow a little each day along the way. You learn some of the tools and approaches which is a good foundation. But looking back at those 17 years, I realize there are some key things that I neglected.
If you don’t take initiative, you won’t ever be training to do the job that you want to be promoted to.
Now that I’ve stepped outside of the box I found that there’s a few things that I really should have spent more time on. But now that I have more time, I’m investing heavily in myself.
1. Events
The first thing I’d love to share with you and I’d encourage all of you to get out there and try to do is attend events. This might be the first thing that you’ve already thought of, but jot down events within your industry.
What are the industry events that you hear everyone going to that only the c-level execs or owners are attending. You should find a way to go yourself to those events.
It might be expensive. Find some way to attend. Buy a ticket on your own. You don’t need your company’s permission a lot of the time to go to these things. You only need their permission to have them pay for it. But if it’s important and it’s a big enough event, find a way to go yourself. Expose yourself to that kind of industry, that type of event, that type of experience.
What you learn when you go to these kinds of things is that there’s a lot that’s happening out there in your industry that you aren’t connected to. There are a lot of trends happening. There are a lot of partnerships you could be developing or people you could be meeting that could advance you in your career. The people you meet are especially important.
Again, think of big events that your company’s already attending or other events in your industry. Google your industry events and see what are the top ones that pop up. Make a list of the ones that really sound interesting to you. Look at their prices and find out what you can manage. Start with trying to attend at least one a year. And it’s even better if you can do once per quarter or once every two months. You’ll be on your way to picking up some of those skills naturally that your owners and managers already have.
When looking at events, look beyond your industry to things that you’re passionate about. For me, for example, in advertising there was definitely a couple of events that were advertising specific, but there were some niches that I’d never thought of. There were events around content creation or video that were definitely trends that I knew the industry was moving towards, but I never went to video specific or content creation specific summit. That would have been an amazing place to meet some of the major influencers in that industry.
When evaluating events to attend, consider your customers or clients and what events they attend.
Some of the clients that I worked with had their own industry events. I worked a lot with restaurant businesses and with retail businesses. And there were amazing trade shows for retail and for restaurants. If I had attended those shows, I would have learned a lot more and likely would have made some friends that were managers at my level or that were higher up. And as I matured in my career, those are relationships that I could have developed and kept developing. It would have been a lot more beneficial for me over time, because you never know when that person gets promoted, or becomes the next CMO. And then they are looking for someone that they trust to be their partner and that could be you.
Make a list of the vertical that you’re in and the industries you touch. Find one event from each of them to start and see where you could go. At least experience it, and then once you experience it, maybe you find a way that you can add value. Maybe you see that some of the speakers that are there are talking about things that you know a lot about. Or maybe you want to practice to try to pitch to be a speaker at one of these conferences. Wouldn’t that be great!
Or you might just meet a lot of people that you could bring back to your organization and share with them some of the contacts you’ve made. I bet you’d move a lot faster in your corporation in terms of getting promoted if you brought some of that value to the table.
2. Education
The second thing to help in your personal development is education. Yes you’re going to learn a lot on the job.
Yes we learned a lot at school but there’s nothing better than finding things you’re passionate about learning for you and investing time in it.
So the first place you start is your specific industry. Find the topics that you’re doing the most work on. Educate yourself by following what’s trending in the news and by reading articles. And then dive deep into the people that know the most about it and look at their content. Study their content . Look at what they’re actually deploying. Look at what the best companies that do what you do are doing. And see if you can learn something from what they’re doing. Bring those ideas into your organization.
Beyond your industry, there are also things that you could work on in terms of your skills. Maybe it is your ability to speak, to network , to write, to create content, or to have conversations that lead to partnerships. Whatever those things are that nurture your growth.
Everyone has skills they can work on as a person that they haven’t tried yet. Maybe you need to learn how to write a little bit better or record audio so you can hear how you talk. Maybe you need to do better at interviewing or at coaching. Maybe you should be learning from other people on how best to get your employees motivated or your team motivated to produce better work.
There’s a lot you can work on. Make a list. Chart out the key components that are successful. Look at your criteria for your job evaluation. If you had to grow to be two times better or ten times better in each of the categories that you are evaluated on and you have to do that on your own, what would you do?
If you had to invest 20 hours into each of these topics, what would you do with that time? Would you buy a course online? Would you go to a meeting where you meet someone that does this or you go to someone’s conference? Would you need to read a book about that particular topic? Do you need to find a mentor to help guide you through that? Do you need someone that you’ve worked with that you respect to come in and coach you?
What are the things you need to do to grow your education? It’s important to answer these questions for yourself.
On that note, personal growth outside of your organization and outside of your skill set is really important as well. Think about the things that you bring to the table every day. How are you motivated? Is your mindset right?
The way you communicate with people, manage your relationships, manage stress, manage finances and more are all things from your personal life that come with you into your business and come into your overall success in life.
So I encourage you if you can find ways to invest in yourself, start now. I know it sounds hokey and self-help, self-development, and personal development have become buzzwords to the point of almost being corny. But if you find things that you are passionate about, that you are interested in, and that help you develop as a person, invest time into those things. And even better, think about all those internal, subconscious things that affect your performance that you can build better habits around. If you put in the work and strengthen those things, you are going to be unstoppable.
So find a couple self-help style topics that seem right for you. That make you think “oh yeah, I could work on that”. Look at podcasts too. Is there anything that you want to listen to? Try out one episode of a couple of different very popular inspirational mindset or personal growth coaches and see what they have to say. Maybe you’d find something that you really find interesting . Maybe you want to try to get out there, feel out the waters, experiment, and see what you like. You might find that education has been right there at your fingertips. Your development and really changing how you can contribute to an organization is all right in front of you.
Once you start growing as a person, once you contribute and invest in your own personal development, suddenly your job and your life become way more satisfying because you’re growing.
Something about developing and growing and feeling challenged and feeling like you’ve reached new heights in your life and in your career is really rewarding. It’s not that you’re making more money or that you got the promotion. It’s that you’ve grown, you’ve learned, and you can feel it when you’ve developed and you’ve come up with something new in yourself. And other people see it too.
That’s what contributes to confidence and charisma and all those things. And that’s something you can learn about too. I really want to be more charismatic . And there are books on that. There are podcasts on that. One of the first things, I started listening to when I began my journey was a podcast called “The Art of Charm” because I knew that I really needed to be better in meetings. It helped me develop a deeper understanding about body language and people, and psychology.
I also read a couple books, such as Dale Carnegie’s “How to Make Friends and Influence People”. My industry didn’t nurture these skills. These may be skills that are standard if you are a sales professional and then you may have heard of books like this. But I had to go out of my way and explore to find it. These weren’t things that people were talking about so all these lessons about how to really make an impact when you are at an event or make a difference when you are meeting someone in terms of how they respond to you. It’s all out there. The education is vastly available and it’s not something we tap into regularly. And it’s not something you can expect all companies to encourage us to tap into in a way that motivates us to do it. So invest in yourself.
3. Networking
Third thing on the personal development list is networking. I’ve peppered that in throughout, but the reason you go to the events and the reason you work on how you can be a better communicator is so that when you are out there meeting new people, you have the skills you need to develop relationships. I know networking is a word that people don’t like to use. It’s a little buzzy and has connotations to it. But think of it like this.
You’re not trying to meet people to get something out of them, you’re trying to meet people to develop relationships.
If you lead with the idea that you are just trying to meet as many people that you can help as possible, that eventually will turn into relationships that are beneficial to everyone. You never know who that person is going to be that changes your life. The smallest seed you can plant may develop into a beautiful relationship.
Work on the networking skills. Practice networking. Go to those events with the idea that I’m going to do things that are uncomfortable. We’re going to go booth to booth and talk to everybody. Just see what they’re about and what they’re hoping to accomplish when they’re at this event. Sometimes, they have these quick networking sessions too. They had a speed-dating style session at this small business networking conference I attended which was great. It was three minutes per person. You sit down. You talk to someone. You listen. If you don’t have a story to tell, listen to see what they have to say. See if there’s some common ground or something you can help them with. Or at least you can find a way to keep in touch for future opportunities.
The only advice I have with networking is don’t give a sales pitch. There were a few times I sat down and it was a hard pitch. The person sat down, had a sales pitch in mind (sometimes not even a good pitch), and they jumped right into it. The hard pitch is a big turn off.
When you set out to network, lead with being curious. Lead with being interested in meeting that new person, and hearing what they have to say.
And pay attention to your body language. Don’t be closed off. Make sure you are welcoming and leave your opportunities open to talk to new people. There might be things that you didn’t even know you were doing that are keeping people from wanting to introduce themselves to you. Make yourself available. Go to some of the lunches or after parties. Bring a friend if you need if that makes you more comfortable. Or go by yourself. This might encourage you or force you to have to talk to other people. You have common ground if you are at the same event, just ask them why they are at the event. You’re probably all there for the same purpose.
4. Developing Your Perspective
The next thing to invest in your personal growth is to work on developing your perspective. The thing that I learned pretty early on is that a lot of people want to know what you have to say. When I was in a more corporate environment, working at ad agencies, we work with clients directly and get asked a lot of questions. We learned the right things to say and how to evaluate opportunities, but a lot of the time it wasn’t necessarily coming from my personal perspective. It was coming from what I’d been taught over time.
So if you get out there and you want to come up with your own voice or your own perspective, I’d say start writing. I know that’s a little funny to say. And I’m not talking about journaling (you can do that too). If you are comfortable speaking, record yourself speaking with audio or with visual media. If you prefer to write, start writing. Write a couple of articles on topics that are top of mind or that you are interested and have an opinion about. And if you can get yourself to write once a week, or once a day, do it.
Get into the habit of writing your opinion down on things regularly. You’ll realize that you start to find your voice in the things that you’re passionate about. And for the things that you’re not as versed on, if you’re passionate about it, you’ll be interested in doing research to learn more. That curiosity will be spurred, and you’ll then have a more developed opinion about something.
Don’t underestimate the power of having your own voice and putting that voice out there so that when you are being put on the spot to have an opinion its developed.
You don’t want to have to come up with perspective on the spot. You want to have that as a practiced skill that you can turn on because you’re an expert in your industry and you’ve been doing it a certain amount of time. That’s what changes you from being a worker in the industry or a manager to being a leader.
The next thing I would mention is to get out there and create. Your life is where your perspective comes from. Each day, you’re networking, you’re experiencing new things, you’re coming up with a voice. So create something. Come up with something you want to talk about. It could be your career. It could be other things. But start developing content that you’re proud of. At first you’re not gonna be proud of it. It’s going to be hard to do. It’s going to feel unnatural. But in that process you are practicing and you are learning how to develop your own voice. Moreover, you are finding your own style, in your own platform, for your personality.
The funny things is, everyone has the same knowledge base to pull from. And we might all come to the same answers, but your personality is what makes you different. And people like to connect with those kinds of things. So if you put yourself out there authentically, be true to how you like to communicate, save all that information, and put it out there on all platforms that you’re comfortable with. You’ll start to engage with people and they’ll start to relate to you.
You’ll start developing those relationships beyond in person. In person will help and then also online. That’s where people communicate today. So you having that content created online helps.
Think about this. Today’s resume isn’t what it used to be. Just sending a LinkedIn profile and hoping to get a job out of it, will not work. If you truly connect with people, that’s where a lot of your leads are gonna come from. But then if people hear about you and look you up they’re gonna find your reputation that speaks for itself. You’ve been creating all this time and now they know what to expect. They know that you’re the real deal. You’re not just the three sentences that they can find on your LinkedIn profile.
How much are they really supposed to learn from three sentences in a LinkedIn?
Or in a one-page resume of your 20-year career, your 10 year career, your five year career, even two years, it’s hard to squeeze on one page if you really want to talk about the value you created. You’re going to look like everyone else unless you’ve come up with your voice, your content, your point of view, and you’ve put that out into places that represent you in an authentic way.
5. Speaking
The last thing I would say to truly invest in your personal growth is get out there and speak. Speaking is hard. It’s the top thing people are afraid of doing. It’s the hardest thing to get comfortable with. The more you can get out there and speak the better. If you start on camera that might help you to be in a room by yourself. But also give yourself opportunities to speak in front of rooms. Bring your team in. If you have a team of people, bring them in and set up an education session, where you talk to them. You’ll be getting practice and they’ll be getting something valuable out of it too.
Get involved in your local associations and clubs and find ways to talk within those groups. Not only are you going to suddenly find that there’s new people that want to talk to you (and that makes them networking a lot easier) but you’re developing your reputation. And you’re practicing speaking at the same time! It’s not going to be great to begin with. But you do it a few times and you’re ten times further than you were before. Then you do it a few times after that and suddenly it’s comfortable, its rhythmic, and it has a pattern to it that you’ve become comfortable with.
You don’t know what your voice is until you use it. Get out there and speak and suddenly that reputation starts to precede you.
And then you get more opportunities to get out there and put yourself out there. Think about how you’re developing yourself, how you’re showing up when people are looking for you, and the work you’re doing on yourself. All of this work contributes to what will come across as confidence and you’ll gain respect because you’ve done the work to develop your reputation over time. The speaking, the creating, having a point of view, the networking, the relationships, the education, and the attending events all contribute to your growth and success.
I wanted to recap these things because I didn’t hear it a lot coming up. I may have heard it in pieces but not like this. So if I have to encourage the people that are coming up now in the industries that I grew up in, I’d say invest in yourself. To those people wondering how they can stand out, grow, have a seat at the leadership table, I’d say invest in yourself. Take some of these lessons to heart.
Find ways to invest in yourself. Find people you can grow with. Invest in them. Have them invest in you. Contribute to each other. Develop a group that you can use to bounce ideas off of and grow.
The best advice I can give you is to get out there, learn, grow, and don’t rely on a company to teach you everything you need to know to take it to that next level.
You’ve got to invest in yourself. Specifically, invest in the things that help you grow as a person and as a leader.
I hope these ideas help. I’d love to hear your ideas. Share this with your friends if you found it valuable. I’d love to hear your opinions thanks for listening.
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