The Importance of Training & Development

A lot of times when we go out and start our business, we're starting it out of pure passion and excitement. Sometimes you just see something. Maybe you had an amazing thing happen to you. Maybe you saw an opportunity. Maybe you were kicked off of your job. Now, you have a business plan with $50,000 saved in the bank and at this point, you know all there is to know about this business. You've learned. You've read. Finally, you go out and start a business, and within five years, you’re a millionaire. However, it usually doesn't work that way. Most of the time, no matter what the catastrophe is in your life or the shifts and changes that come in your life, that make you go into entrepreneurship, most of the time, it's not perfect.

What happens next is that we get stuck in that space. We start off with that level of passion. We start off with the motivation and we think that that's going to take us to the top. One of the things I want you guys to think about this week is training and personal development as it pertains to growing your business. Yes. Maybe your love for fried chicken has made you say, you know what? I want to open up a restaurant, I want to be a caterer, or I want to cook my own fried chicken and sell it to other people or place my recipe in stores. However, when you start to get out into the business world, you start to see that it's not that simple. Now, you’ve moved past your friends, family, co-workers, and church members.?You are putting your business in front of people who are really going to critique you.

They are going to say I’m from an entirely different state, or an entirely different side of the country, and we cook our fried chicken differently. We don't like our fried chicken the way you prepare it. We don't like that recipe. You were not aware that people in Louisiana eat fried chicken differently than people in South Carolina or New York City. You are just excited! What happens is that once enough people tell you that negative response, you quit, you give up, and say you don't want to do it. The key missing ingredient was the training and personal development. Yes, the passion was okay for you to get out and start your side hustle, but when you decided to make it into a business, it was totally your responsibility for you to get better and for you to grow. Just because you’re the best on your block and the best in your city, doesn't mean you’re the best in the world. It takes work. It takes growth.

I remember my first real business; it was a commercial cleaning business. But it wasn't commercial at the time. It was residential. I was peeking at the commercial side for a little over a year. Eventually, I did it and I had an opportunity to move to Maryland. I was able to work with someone who took me under their wing, and I learned the commercial business way more than I would've ever learned on my own. Together, we had an opportunity to work with a 300,000-square-foot church and I learned everything that you could have thought of in commercial cleaning. We had to do it all. Everything from cleaning high windows to outside cleaning, to the inside cleaning different floors, and anything else you could think of I learned. Because I took one year and learned and grew in the space of commercial cleaning the very next year, I was able to step out into a six-figure contract.

I know for a fact that I would not have been able to do that if I didn't grow in my training and in my development. I was humble enough to take that opportunity to work for someone else even though I was working for myself at that time. I could have easily said, no, I have my own thing, but I understood that I hadn’t touched certain levels yet. I wanted to go to higher heights. Why wouldn't I go behind him and learn what I needed to learn? It was only a year, and a year goes by quickly. Maybe that's not your path. You don't have to work for someone else, but there are enough seminars, training, opportunities, and enough books being written about almost anything that you are doing. You can go to?YouTube University?and you can learn how to be better at what it is that you love and what it is you're passionate about.

The quickest way to kill your passion is to experience rejection. Once you decide to get better and not just stay at the level that you are, the more you are going to grow, and the better you are going to be. Look at kids that play sports, they may be the best in their high school, but then they go to college and play on a team with a bunch of kids. For all intents & purposes, they are the best in their high school.?Playing on a college squad, they might not be as good. If they go on to enter the NBA or NFL, it gets even harder. The higher you go, the only way to prevent failure is through personal development and constant training. The other thing you can have and be sure about is that as you go through that process, I’ll be right here in your business corner.

"The platform you leap from is more important than the one you land on." ~?J Haleem?