Emma: [00:00:00] I was talking with a client recently, and she asked me if she should get some further education. This This client was a coach, had coaching qualifications already, and worked in the corporate space and was on some preferred supplier lists. We kicked around what it would mean, and I posed a number of questions to her and to everyone.
Whether or not getting an extra qualification, would one get her more business? and if anyone else cared, the answer was a hard no. I also have not had anyone ask me about my qualifications as a coach. I do have qualifications as a coach. Just to be clear, I trained with the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership.
And for full transparency, I am a snob when it comes [00:01:00] to coaching qualifications because the coaching industry is so unregulated and that worries me a little bit. so depending on the industry will depend on how they see extra qualifications. A lot of the time entrepreneurs do have a Learning on the job and they also have this beautiful attitude or figure it out as I go, which is why we're entrepreneurs, right?
What point should you think about a more structured further education and do you even need to consider it? You see most industries require you to do more learning whether that's reading of research papers writing of research papers, attending conferences in their field, attending workshops. And I think entrepreneurs can sometimes forget that they're only going to be as good as what they know.
that old adage, you don't know what you don't know, which means that you can be a bit left behind in your field and fail to innovate if you don't keep up with what's happening in your target market. But the coaching, [00:02:00] the professional development, it looks different from a corporate environment to having your own business.
When we hit the entrepreneurial world, we have to find the time to invest. And Lord knows running a business is hard work and there's a lot of balls to juggle already. We need to find the time to invest. We need to find the right thing to invest in. We need to make sure that we get our, the best bang for buck, right?
There's so many things. Here are my top tips, tools, and resources that I recommend that I either currently use myself or have used in the past, and they've really helped me in staying ahead of the curve. And that means I am adding more skills and more knowledge to my business offerings. I'm always learning, but it wasn't always this way.
I'm not a natural learner. So I have had to try and build this muscle of learning over the years. So, my top tip. Set aside dedicated time each week to focus on professional development. Whether it's reading industry news, attending [00:03:00] workshops, or reflecting on how to improve your offerings. You know, step back from your business and think about what's working and what's not.
As I said, I'm not much of a learner and I wasn't much of a learner at school. Unfortunately, school just wasn't my vibe. But when I started my business, I decided to become a reader. Yep. I just decided like that. So now seven years later, I read a book a week. Actually, I read three books a week. I don't finish three books.
I just have three books on the go. I have Some kind of work book that I like to read. I've just finished Who Not How, great book. I have an audio or an audible book on the go, and I have a nonfiction book on the go at any point in time. If you're thinking, whoa, Emma, you're on steroids. I don't have the time.
Just start with 10 minutes a day. Everyone can find 10 minutes a day, just 10 minutes a day. And for me personally, rather than just signing up to a thing, I work out what I'm going to need and find that person to [00:04:00] help me to do that. I'm a one on one girl through and through. My latest learning was, you would have heard recently I ran a day called day with the queen.
We had 120 beautiful business owners in the room. And I was doing the first keynote of the day. I love to facilitate groups, but a professional speaker, I am not. And so I needed to go and find someone to help me pull the keynote together. Do the, look at the PowerPoint slides, make sure I was on track and help me prepare as much as I possibly could.
So I went out and I found a speaking coach. If you're listening to this, AG, shout out to Andrew Griffiths. He's also written an amazing book. Someone has to be the most expensive. Why not make it you? Great book. AG helped me to prepare my keynote, sort it out in my head, work on my framework, uh, helped me to develop slides.
We had a lot of laughs and I then rehearsed my little tush off. [00:05:00] So, something else that you may or may not know about me is I'm all in when I'm all in, I'm all in. You've all heard me talk about my 20, 000 steps a day. I am all in 20, 000 steps a day. It is since January. With this, it was no different.
Once we had it, I rehearsed it. I rehearsed every single day for six weeks and AG helped me to do that. And I knew that that skill would hold me in good stead and the learning from that for years. Into my business. So the tools that I love are obviously Audible, love Audible. I love my Kindle, didn't think I would, but I love my Kindle.
And I love using something like Feedly or Google alerts. So they basically grab the content, they aggregate it up to give you data that's relevant to you, articles that are relevant to you, trends, industry. News all in one place so you can stay easily updated. As you may or may not heard on my previous podcast, I don't actually listen to the news.
So I need to really make sure that I've got somewhere that I [00:06:00] can grab the news if I need it. The other resources that are out there, which are incredible podcasts. Everyone has a cool podcast. You're listening to one now. Thank you for listening, by the way. But is there any other cool podcasts that you could listen to, to increase your skills, Knowledge and experience.
LinkedIn learning is great. LinkedIn have so many cool tools on their LinkedIn learning site. And depending on your target market, when I worked in corporate, I would subscribe to Harvard Business Review. They offered so many awesome in depth articles, case studies, and expert advice on the latest trends in business and leadership.
So as you can see, I think when we run our own business, the professional development opportunities are one endless, but also two very different from how we worked in corporate. I do have a funny story to tell you though, to finish off. So on my LinkedIn profile, If you follow me, if you don't follow me, go and connect with me.
I am Emma McQueen at LinkedIn [00:07:00] and I am Emma R McQueen at Instagram. On my LinkedIn profile, it's quite pink. I'm a pink girl. make no bones about it. You wouldn't tell from what I'm wearing today, but I am a pink girl through and through. Someone gave me some delightful feedback, which was, you're so pink, I can't take you seriously.
The only reason that I looked deeper into your profile is because you had a certain set of letters after your name. Interesting feedback. Thank you so much. Now the letters after my name were G A I C D. And that means I'm a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. I did their course many, many years ago.
It was a delightful course, very governance focused. Uh, I don't really use it in my business anymore, but I've kept the initials after my LinkedIn profile. And I thought, hilarious, someone is sitting there judging me on how pink I am, not even bothering to look for my profile until they saw the GAICD.
Hilarious, [00:08:00] hilarious. We get people judging us all the time. The question is, do we want to work with those people? That is the question, right? I couldn't care less about the feedback. I was delightful and I thanked them for their feedback and I went on my merry way. It didn't matter to me. I know who I am.
I love pink. I bring joy and I happen to have a series of letters after my name. So what? And maybe you're the same, maybe you don't care or maybe you really do care. So you need to decide what it is that you actually care about. Hey, thanks for sticking in with me. Tell me what you think about this episode and how you're investing in your own professional development.
Of course. We always have our thriving women community, and that is a big investment in your own professional and personal development. So, you can jump on our website at emmaclean. com. au and check that out. Otherwise I will speak to you next week. [00:09:00]
