The learning triangle
Find things that benefit each other. It's all about personal growth on steroids. It's about learning.
"How do you get this all done while having a Fulltime Role, your brand, a podcast and a newsletter"
Well, it’s a lot. But it's absolutely amazing. The question is different from how we can get all this done, the question is why this work so well together.
It's like asking a parent "How do you find time for your child next to your job?". The question should be, what can a parent bring to their job that they learn from parenthood? A lot. They improve each other.
My triple role in my career
My goal is to learn and grow as much as I can in an efficient way. The three pillars I have and how they feed into each other:
My Fulltime Role:
This takes the most time out of my day and involves the most people. I try to learn as much as possible from everyone and focus on what is necessary to bring the company forward. The learnings from it elevate my content as I can write about it. They help me in my advisory gigs because I can apply my operational experience there.
My Advisory Gigs:
Gaining experience in other domains, not having to deal with internal politics. And getting paid for it? Yes, please. I usually have 2-3 retainer gigs which are strictly limited in time.
The amount of context that I get from people, their problems, and how I can help is absolutely insane.
This helps me do my Fulltime job better as I start to see issues I may be blind towards otherwise. Obviously also extends my operational knowledge and I can write about it.
I learn in those to make every minute of my focus count for my clients.
Brand, Content, Podcast:
My personal Brand and content take 1 hour per day roughly and it helps me directly to become better and more concise in written communication.
It also helps me in my full-time job, hiring talent is much easier. Candidates often know what to expect from me. My content is driving my inbound leads for all advisory gigs.
My podcast led to me meeting the most amazing people and realizing that we're all human at the end of the day. All of us.
I create this big repository of everything I learned. It's free for everyone and helps me retain it better on top of it all. And often I get challenged by the community and learn as a result.
Try it yourself
Start mentoring people for free internally, and externally. Put yourself out there, understand other people's problems, and try to help them. It's a very fulfilling exercise even without money.
Write about what you learn, share your knowledge, and be vulnerable. You don't need to write once a day, but establish some kind of pattern that you follow.
Trust that learning from others can only lead to good things.
Consistency is king. Trust the process and put that impostor syndrome that keeps you from doing it away.
Press that "post" button. Put yourself out there.
Thanks for this post. I have a very small local community (in Hungary) and I will start mentoring a couple people. It will be a good learning opportunity.