Investing in your own learning is the habit almost every leader agrees with and almost none of them actually plan for. We nod along at the idea. We tell our teams that growth matters. And then we let our own development fall off the edge of the desk while we deal with the things that feel more urgent.
Every year around this time, while everyone else is buried in receipts and end of financial year admin, I sit down and ask myself one question.
What do I want to learn this year?
Notice I don’t ask what I need to do. I do not need another to-do list! I ask what I want to get curious about. That distinction matters more than it sounds, because a to-do list is about survival and curiosity is about growth. One keeps the business running. The other moves it somewhere new.
Why growth gets swallowed by the urgent
I’ve been running my own business long enough to know exactly what happens when I leave my growth to chance. It doesn’t happen. The urgent always wins.
There’s always an email that needs answering, a client who needs a quick call, a fire that needs putting out. Learning rarely feels urgent, so it gets bumped to next week, and next week never really comes. Before you know it, you’ve spent a whole year working in the business and none of it on yourself.
This is why I map my learning out the same way I’d map revenue or a launch. I decide, ahead of time, what I want to develop. I block it in. I give it a place in the calendar so it can’t be quietly deleted the moment things get busy. If it’s not planned, it’s not protected, and if it’s not protected, it’s gone.
The double standard leaders have about investment
Here’s something I’ve noticed about leaders, and I include myself in this. We’ll happily invest in the business without a second thought.
A new system that promises to save us time? Yes. A new hire to take work off our plate? Absolutely. A new piece of software, a new tool, a new subscription? Sign us up.
But the moment it comes to investing in our own development, everything changes. Suddenly there’s no time. There’s no budget. There’s no permission. We can justify spending thousands on things around us, yet we hesitate to spend on the one asset that actually runs the whole operation, which is us.
And then we sit there wondering why we feel stuck.
The truth is that a business can only grow as far as the person leading it. You can buy all the systems and tools you like, but if the leader stops developing, there’s a ceiling on the whole thing. Your own growth isn’t a nice-to-have sitting somewhere below the “real” business investments. It is one of the real business investments.
Treat your learning as a line item, not a luxury
The leaders who keep growing over years are the ones who treat their learning as a line item, not a luxury. They plan it. They protect it. They put it in the diary and defend that time the way they’d defend a client meeting or a payroll run.
And they extend the same thinking to their people. A team only grows as far as its leader is willing to. If you’ve stopped learning, don’t be surprised when your team plateaus alongside you. But when you model curiosity, when your people see you actively developing, it gives them permission to do the same. Growth becomes part of how the whole business operates rather than something that only happens by accident.
This is also where community matters. Some of the most useful learning I’ve done hasn’t come from a course at all. It’s come from being in a room with other women in business who get it, who challenge my thinking, who spot the blind spots I can’t see myself. Learning doesn’t always mean a formal program. Sometimes it just means putting yourself somewhere you’ll be stretched.
Two questions to ask before the new financial year swallows you
So here’s my nudge for you this July. Before the new financial year swallows you whole and every hour disappears into admin and to-do lists, sit down and answer two questions.
- What do I want to learn this year?
- What do I want my team to learn this year?
Don’t overthink the answers. You’re not building a curriculum. You’re simply deciding, on purpose, that your growth deserves a place in the plan.
Then put it in the diary like it matters. Because a year from now, you’ll either have grown deliberately, or you’ll have let another twelve months disappear into the urgent. One of those is a choice. The other only feels like one.
If “what do I want to learn this year?” is a question you keep meaning to answer but never quite get to, that’s exactly what Business with the Queen is for. It’s a room of women who treat their growth as a line item, not a luxury, with real support and accountability to make sure it actually happens. If that’s the kind of year you want, come and have a look.