For the last 20 years of my professional career, there has been a lot of change around technology.  From the days in computer class using the Apple Macintosh, to my brother picking up the phone (land line) and disrupting my super high-speed connection from dial-up, moving forward today, as we know it, the “information age”.  The speed of technology is impressive from a developmental prospective.  I have recognized the extreme importance of education and implementation of these skills necessary to continue to grow in today’s world.  However, I have not made the commitment of time to investment in my growth.

I refuse to stand still, today I made the first big step in my journey of education.  Our business is in beautiful downtown Plymouth.  Chris Carlson and I decided to block time in our calendar each month to give back to our community.  We joined the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce and a community of wonderful people.  We went to a free workshop about social media last month.  The speaker was a young lady, Heather Doering who is the founder and CEO of Ace in The Hole Branding.  Not to be confused with the hit movie, Ace in The Hole, released in 1951, starring Kirk Douglas, who is a struggling writer trying to make it back to the top.  Heather is Thriving in 2017 and is an accomplished author locally, nationally and globally.  She composed a impactful article called A Nation of Marketers, that discusses the increase of usage for apps on our mobile devices and how it can impact your reach with social media.

At the end of presentation, she had offered additional help in specific areas based on our interest or needs.  Today I could attend a 3-hour class, focused only on LinkedIn.  We covered basic to advanced functions in the #1 social media platform for business.  Before I get into some of the takeaways and how I plan to incorporate them into an action plan.  I learned today that Microsoft has bought LinkedIn and there is a new platform out there now.  They have not made the conversion to all users in effect.  The bottom line is there is change coming and I felt obligated to share, so that users can start to research those changes and how it can impact their future communication with their business relationships.

As with anything in life, trial and error always seems to work well for me.  I feel the same about navigating through LinkedIn.  Once I was walked through every area on the page and the function on the features it gave me way more confidence with their platform.  It’s the small things that make a big difference, for example:  If you send a request out to someone and they accept, send them back a note that says something as simple as “Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your network”.  It’s truly amazing the difference that will make.  I experienced it firsthand today, I had sent out 20 or so request fortunately for me I could content with so great people.  However only one stood out to me, he sent me a message that said “glad to join your network”.  It took him seconds to write that note but he stood out in a major way.

I am very excited to continue my life long journey of commitment to my growth.  I’ve made the decision to spend just 30 minutes a day learning in the arena of social media.  At first when I set this goal for myself, I thought “30 minutes”?  However once applying the compounding effect that is:  one week = 210 minutes; one month = 900 minutes.  This is where its gets exciting: one year = 10,950 minutes: five years = 54,750 minutes.  Imagine if you decided to spend 30 minutes a day to anyone thing in your life, I am confident that you will have a radical shift in that area of your life.

For now, I am going to continue with my awesome day.  My good friend Chris, is studying for his CFP (certified financial planner).  He will take the final exam in March of 2018.  They break the exam into 7 different books and today is the first exam leading up to the final next year.  He has been very disciplined on his daily studies and today is time to just execute, go crush it buddy!

P.S.

Writing has always been a weakness of mine and Chris has encouraged me to start by writing on this blog.  I am happy to be here and hope to inspire others to chase their dreams with fierce intensity.

Chris, thanks for being a great friend!

Cheers!

 

Luke Noble