In the last post, I talked about Just In Time Learning. This is something that I’ve been learning quite a bit about recently.

Before I was focusing on building New Inceptions, I would always just listen to whatever the influencers had to say. Many times just because it was actionable information.

But, I never took action and therefore it was really just entertainment.

Once I did start focusing, however, I was able to actually apply what I was learning. And then I would naturally have more questions that needed answers. And the process would keep going.

This process has lead to me mastering skills and abilities that I didn’t know I’d even have before starting on the journey of building a business.

Want to know my strategy for mastering parts of my business? Here you go:

Step-by-step process: How to Make a Personal Development Plan for Your Business that You’ll Be Sure to Stick To

I’m going to walk you through all six steps here. Follow along and do what I do.

Step 1: Brainstorm

Using a mind map, I want you to think of 10 to 15 things that you believe that you could that could take your business to the next level.

Before you think of those items, I want you to give yourself 4 different categories that will help you with your thinking.

These 4 different categories are things that would help your business grow. So, for example, here are 4:

1. Speaking opporutunities
2. A website
3. Products
4. Engaging with potential clients

If you’ve never heard of a mind map, here’s what one might look like (via Pat Flynn in this 2008 post).

These are examples of things that Pat could make money from.

This mind mapping process can give you a much clearer sense of what’s important and you need to be focusing on next.

Step 2: From Your Mindmapping, preferably pick skills and topics that are in the Personal Development Sweet Spot.

Meaning that:

1. You have a competency in or can perform it.
2. You have a passion for it (or it’s existence will help your passion).
3. Other people will want it.

Here’s a visualization of where you should be working:

Step 3: Prioritize – which of these chosen skills or actions will have the most impact on your business?

Now that you’ve brought this list down a bit, let’s see if it makes sense to do them right now.

First, do any of the items that you’re thinking about working on fall into one of the 6 Cornerstones of a Successful Online Business?

For example, if one of your items is learning how to use a certain type of social media (because one of the 4 topics we listed was engaging with potential clients), then you’d learn that social media, when it comes to business, is a form of marketing.

However, another one of our topics was “a website”.

Would it make sense to market your services first or have a place on the web (or in the real world for that matter) where people can find out more about you?

That’s where a website is needed. Marketing and engagement should come after actually having somewhere for people to find out more about what you’re doing.

Again, get the 6 Cornerstones eBook to help with this part.

Step 4: Evidence of Accomplishment

So let’s say that you pick doing a website now because you accept what I said in the last step.

How will you know that your website is done enough that you can start marketing it?

What does “Done” look like here?

That decision is going to be up to you. You might just opt for a long one page solution. Or, you might feel that you want to create different pages that that have different jobs. What’s best for what you’re wanting to do?

You have to start with the end in mind of what you want to achieve before you go looking for how you should do it.

Examples of things that might be considered “done” in my book would include:

1. My New Product is available.
2. I have a landing page for that new product.

Or if I wanted to work on traffic and leads:

1. How many new followers do I need to have in order to get X traffic?

Knowing what you’re looking for will help you do the next step…

Step 5: Find and List 10 Resources or People That You Might Be Able to Learn it From

Ok, so how do you find someone that has the knowledge (free or for a premium) that will help you do what you want to do?

I have 5 suggestions you can to with increasing cost to get what you’re looking for:

• Search YouTube – You’ll find the free options here. Many times, though, they’re previews of the main course.
• Subscribe to Fizzle – Only $35 a month and it covers all the bases of what you need to know at any given time while building a young business. (Use this link for 2 weeks for free!)

Here’s the main page of Fizzle’s library of courses. Now you see why I recommend them!!

• Go to a site like Lynda.com or uDemy to find specific skills for your business.
• Buy a big ol’ course from a lead influencer. These usually have the best results because they’re so rich in details, but you will be paying through the nose for it. (These can typically cost anywhere from $500 – $5000 per course!!) You’ll hear about these courses from big mediapreneurs like Pat Flynn, Jordan Harbinger, and Lewis Howes.
• Buy a course from a lesser known person through a site like Producthunt.com. Results might definitely vary here, but you might find a bargain!!

Step 6: Implementation through Accountability

Learning about some new topic, strategy, or skill, won’t mean anything unless you put what you’re learning about to use.

Some people like to buy the higher cost courses just because the higher cost will keep them more accountable to implementing what they’ve learned.

However, many of those courses are time sensitive and will expect your full focus right away. Often times you get to meet others through these courses and help each other accomplish more together.

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Side Note: If you’re wondering how much a product that is currently being hyped will cost – the more hype combined with the more results a free portion of the product will yield, the more you can expect the final program costing.

So a great example of this was the recent Ryan Levesque’s Ask Method. He was on several shows giving great quality in-depth pointers in how to actually do something. He was also mentioned several times in email campaigns by other folks as affiliates. The actual cost of the program is unknown to me, but I would go out on a limb and guess it was easily $2000 to $5000 per participant. And if people wanted to work with him in a small workshop type of function – that could easily start that price at $10k for the entry price.

Personally, I’ve been through two programs like this: The John Maxwell Team Certification Program and The Foundation. My networks have blossomed greatly because of my involvement with both.

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Other resources that are available all the time won’t require as much focus and chances are their price points won’t be in the thousands.

However, you won’t be getting built in accountability with it.

If you have a network already in place of people who are ready to be accountable with you in whatever you want to work on, then you don’t need that extra price

If you’re just getting starting on your business, here’s my suggestion: Hop on Fizzle and make use of their Roadmap or if you’re a reader, read Pat Flynn’s book Will It Fly?

Action Steps:

Here’s my challenge to you.

Pick 5 topics or skills that you’re going to learn about within the next month or so by the end of this week. Then start learning about the first one next week. It might take you longer than a week to learn and do as much as you can for each one. How quickly you learn them is completely up to you.

But you’ll have focus because you’ll know what you’re supposed to be learning about!

And, of course, the bright side of that is that you won’t go crazy trying to convince yourself you need to be doing 20 different things!

Let me know how it works out for you below!