How many times have you said to yourself a variation of one of the following: I’ll go to the gym tomorrow…I’ll start eating healthy tomorrow…I’ll stop smoking tomorrow…I’ll start that Rosetta Stone course tomorrow…
It’s all too easy to put things off until tomorrow. But here’s the thing: That thing you put off tomorrow often never happens. Or if it does, it maybe happens once…and then the cycle starts all over again.
So to prevent that type of thing from happening, our team at SUCCESS agency makes sure that we each carve out the time to do the things that we value and believe in.
Let me give you an example…
One of our core values at SUCCESS agency is always growing. And we don’t just promote our values…we actually live up to them (or do our best to at least).
So when it comes to always growing, each person on the team is required to spend 10 (paid) hours a month on what we call Intentional Learning—or learning that will help us to grow somehow in our careers.
The idea being that if we don’t actually set aside the time to learn, it’s all too easy to let each day go by and not learn anything. It’s all to easy to say “Tomorrow I will take that SEO course…” and then tomorrow never comes.
To stay focused as much as possible, every quarter we each pick a focus or theme. We take courses, read books, listen to podcasts…do whatever we can possibly do to soak up as much information about that theme as possible.
Then at the end of the quarter, we each present to the rest of the team on everything that we learned that quarter (or the main points anyway).
In case you’re curious, I wanted to share with you a bit on what we each learned in the first quarter of the year.
Stephanie, Executive Assistant to CEO
1. What was your focus this past quarter?
My main focus this past quarter was project management.
2. What are the main things that you learned in the first quarter?
The most interesting things that I learned was the “why” to the processes we put in place. It’s one thing to know and execute processes, but it makes a world of a difference when you know why the process is laid out the way it is.
3. What was your favorite course that you took/book you read and why?
My favorite was a mix between “Project Management Foundations” and “Process Improvement Fundamentals” [on Lynda.com] – it was a mix because although the 2 courses were not connected, they seemed to complement each other, but more importantly, the courses were laid out in a way that made project management and process improvement interesting. I was excited to dig in and implement as I went through the courses.
4. Did your Intentional Learning change the way that you approach your work? If so, how?
My Intentional Learning did change (maybe adjust is a better word for me) the way I approach my work.
For one, taking my time to go through the course and find ways to implement as I go was one of the best things I could have done because I was able to see what I learn in action right away. With that said, I was able to adjust how I approached my work by tweaking and keeping my learnings in mind as I moved through my days.
Going forward, I know I have several processes and templates that help me move faster through my day.
Caleb Stauffer, Lead Web Developer
1. What was your focus this past quarter?
WordPress CLI
2. What are the main things that you learned in the first quarter?
WP-CLI provides developers with powerful commands, via a simple, clean, and fast interface. An action that takes five different steps via the WordPress admin can be completed in a fraction of the time with a single command through WP-CLI.
3. What was your favorite course that you took/book you read and why?
I primarily used wp-cli.org for my reference/research.
4. Did your Intentional Learning change the way that you approach your work? If so, how?
It gave me another approach to completing complicated tasks: if an action has multiple steps that can be automated, custom commands can be created in WP-CLI to automate those steps.
Cody Manning, Marketing Support Specialist
1. What was your focus this past quarter?
I focused on traffic acquisition. I covered both SEO and paid traffic. Though, due to time, my Intentional Learning report only covered SEO.
2. What are the main things that you learned in the first quarter?
As someone who worked in SEO back in 2012-2013, it was interesting to see what is working in 2018. SEO is a constantly evolving practice and there’s no telling when Google will make a change that could leave your months (or years) of SEO efforts futile.
3. What was your favorite course that you took/book you read and why?
For SEO, I took a Digital Marketer course called “Search Marketing Mastery” and then a course by Brian Dean called “SEO That Works.” While both courses were great, I felt that I got a lot more out of “SEO That Works.” Since it was being taught by somebody who actually works in SEO every day, and is considered an authority on the topic by many high level internet marketers, it was great to watch over his shoulder as he took you inside his own analytics, websites, and best practices.
4. Did your Intentional Learning change the way that you approach your work? If so, how?
Absolutely.
This was one of the first times that I was able to take an in-depth training session over the course of a month or so, and then put it into practice right away.
After completing this course, I was tasked with creating an SEO campaign for one of our investors*. While this task is still in progress, I don’t think I would have been able to handle this task as effectively without the tactics learned in “SEO That Works.” I would most likely have been relying on techniques from 2012-2013 that are now mostly useless.
Going forward, I know I’ll be able to use this knowledge for even more investors and hopefully have the skills I need to help grow their businesses with SEO.
*”investors” is the word that we use internally to refer to our clients (the idea being that our clients are investing their resources in us just as they would any other financial investment)
Mary Blackiston (myself), Content Marketing Specialist
1. What was your focus this past quarter?
This past quarter, I focused on content marketing. I learned much more about things like copywriting, branding and persona creation.
2. What are the main things that you learned in the first quarter?
Here are just a few of the things that I learned:
- Having a “P.S.” at the end of an email is a powerful way to grab your reader’s attention
- Every brand should have a story and it’s important to make your customer the center of that story
- Good copywriting requires lots and lots of whitespace…and it’s a good idea to put “easter eggs” (inside jokes) throughout your text to connect with the reader
- It’s best to talk about benefits instead of features
3. What was your favorite course that you took/book you read and why?
My favorite and the most helpful thing that I studied was the book Building a Storybrand: Clarify Your Message so Customers Will Listen, by Donald Miller. I found it particularly helpful and interesting because it provided a unique perspective on marketing/branding—one which I have not really heard about anywhere else.
4. Did your Intentional Learning change the way that you approach your work? If so, how?
Definitely. I have seen myself focusing more on benefits now, as opposed to features. Trying to get inside the head of our buyer personas as much as possible and think about the internal problems that they are facing. I try to write more simplistically, as well, avoiding any fancy jargon that might turn off our audience.
Anish Trehan, Lead Web Designer
1. What was your focus this past quarter?
I focused on a learning path called “Become a User Experience Designer” from lynda.com.
2. What are the main things that you learned in the first quarter?
I learned about how user-centered design gives you a way of adding emotional impact to your products. Collaborative team efforts and team understanding of the project can do wonders. I also learned techniques of user-centered designs, which included buyer personas, ideation, storyboarding, different types of prototyping, and implementation planning.
3. What was your favorite course that you took/book you read and why?
Techniques for user-centered designs was the my favourite course. I learned new ways of approaching a design, when doing from scratch. It introduced me to how a feedback of different team members can make a design much more user centered. I’ve actually started applying it to my workflow as well.
4. Did your Intentional Learning change the way that you approach your work? If so, how?
Yes, it did.
Not just the knowledge i gained from the user-centered design course, but I learned many things about the software I use daily, and through that learning, I became much more efficient in creating and handling projects by cutting down a good amount of time. I was actually able to implement a lot of things I learned from the course into my daily workflow.
Final Words
So there you have it. Now you know a little bit more about our team’s secret ingredient to growth…and how that secret ingredient actually helped us to grow this quarter.
What are your secret ingredients to growth? Share with us in the comments below.
