When I read the 4 Hour Workweek I immediately started day dreaming about living on a nice beach with my trusted laptop. I also soon began to read many make money online blogs, lifestyle design blogs and what not. As my list of must read blogs went way over 100 my learning curve started pointing east.
Less is more also in learning.
I had very ambitious goals of becoming a super affiliate and I chased every shiny new object out there. But I didn’t even got to try any of those before starting to read about another one. I had become a learning addict.
Not so soon I realized I had quite a amount of shreds of knowledge of many things MMO (Make Money Online). But I also realized that it’s not such a bad thing. I got involved in a new startup and started doing basic internet marketing for small companies. Now I get to put all those pieces together I gathered in my learning frenzy – and I’m starting to connect the dots.
It also helps to have a background of working for 9 years in an offline marketing company (we planned and organized face-to-face promotions in events, supermarkets and cities).
The change has also made me learn something new about myself; I like analyzing stuff. In the previous company we measured lots of things, actually quite more than the average competitor of the company even does today, and made comprehensive reports on what festivals our clients should avoid next year and where are the best places to put your stand in a trade fair.
E-marketing provides me with even more information to give my brains to chew on.
But how does this plethora of information has anything to do with technical skills?
No matter what more advanced gurus say, it takes a lot of time to learn how to tackle with all this tech stuff that floats around in this e-marketing space. The first time I saw the text ”then you just have to setup your dns servers and you’re ready to rock” I realized that it’s going to be a rocky road. Analyzing the Analytics account has become way faster for me now and I’m sure I can start churning out new brilliant insights for our customers benefits.
But it’s like eating an elephant – you start with a spoon. Or maybe a butcher’s axe.
The further I’ve ventured, the more I begin to understand technical language describing the necessary tasks and it’s not a totally foreign language anymore. I’m also pretty good with my meta learning abilities, i.e. I know how to learn effectively, and that really helps me along.
But I totally understand people who have done all their niche research, written even all their sales material and are pretty much ready to start testing their own Muse – but halted when it came to putting up a simple WordPress site selling it.
One way around it is to partner up with a more tech savvy people who know that side of the business. Because that business is at its core; partnerships and division of labour. You have something that is providing value to your business partners and your company has something that your customers need.
I’m not saying that you don’t need to know anything about WordPress templates or plugins. In fact, it’s very effective to know a little bit of technical stuff on the side since you can try things on your own before introducing unprepared ideas to your colleagues. The more I learn how to [insert technical term here] the more I get to bring my other expertise into the mix. And that creates even more value which will in the end result end up benefiting everyone around me.
What about my must read blogs?
Now I actively read about 10 blogs. The information in the rest of those 90 or so blogs is patiently waiting for my hungry brains whenever I need it. I’ve learnt that now.
P.S. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t ever sneak in to read a few posts.
