PRACTICAL EDGE
Sign Up for the Class
This one comes out of my conversation with Tobi Oluwole. If you want to get good at something, do not figure it out alone. Sign up for a class, a seminar, a cohort, or a coach. Pay for it. Then show up.
WHY IT WORKS
A cohort gives you people who are doing it with you, which builds in accountability. It also costs you money, and once you have invested, you spend the time.
The trap is the half measure. You start posting without understanding that there is a machine and a process behind it. A class teaches you the process and holds you to it at the same time.
Tobi added one more. A good coach can save you five or ten years, "because this person's mistakes are not going to be your mistakes."
THE DATA SUPPORTS IT
Tim Theeboom, Bianca Beersma and Annelies van Vianen at the University of Amsterdam pooled 18 studies of coaching inside organizations for a 2014 meta-analysis in The Journal of Positive Psychology. Coaching helped on every outcome they measured, and most on goal-directed self-regulation: setting a goal and moving toward it.
Accountability holds up too. Benjamin Harkin at the University of Sheffield and colleagues reviewed 138 randomized studies covering 19,951 people in Psychological Bulletin in 2016. Tracking progress helped people reach their goals, and it helped more when it was reported to others or made public.
So does putting money down. In a 2010 study in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Xavier Giné, Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman offered smokers in the Philippines a savings account they would forfeit to charity if they failed a nicotine test after six months. Smokers offered the contract were 3.3 to 5.8 percentage points more likely to pass, and the effect held on a surprise test at twelve months.
HOW I USE IT
Around 2014 we took a Dale Carnegie class. We were founding a company and had no time, and I went in thinking it was a huge waste of time. We went twice a week, every week. It covered public speaking, how to structure a conversation, and how you actually make friends and influence people. Somewhere in there I started loving it. It was one of the better things I have done. Little did I know how much of my job would end up being raising money.
I think, like anything, a class makes you do two things. You invest in it, so you spend the time. And you have a trained professional teaching you. If you want to get good at anything, hiring a coach, taking a class, or joining a cohort is a great opportunity. There are a lot of them out there. You have to find the really good ones. That one was an example. Tony Robbins is another one I found extremely powerful. Even his online programs are great. I have not been to one of his seminars yet, but that is on my bucket list.
I think about coaching the way I think about sports. My six-year-old daughter is just starting basketball, and she has a coach. LeBron James has a coach. LeBron's coach would not work for my daughter. Both get value from one. Then you start a business and decide you can skip the coach. There is always someone a level above you who has already played it.
THE CHALLENGE
Pick something you want to do and have not done well yet. Research it, find a great class, and sign up before the end of the month.
→Pay for it. The cost is what gets you there the week you do not feel like going.
→Calendar it. Put every session on the calendar the day you sign up.
→Tell someone. Tell them what you signed up for, and tell them again when you finish.
If you want to build your LinkedIn and build a business on LinkedIn, Tobi is a great candidate. Sign up for his Founder's Blueprint.
