5 Things To Learn After You Know It All

‘It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.’ Anon.

I noticed this quote the other week as I drove past a local church and smiled.

I remember thinking when I was married at the age of 25 how much my dad had learnt since I was 18. Oh how wonderful is the arrogance of a youthful mind.

Throughout the past two to three decades I have gone through so many career and business changes that I could be mistaken for a chameleon or a yo-yo. In fact, there was a time when my parents watched my life and probably got dizzy.

It was many years later, with some significant success under my belt, that they finally understood the nature of an entrepreneur.

So please allow me to share with you just the five things that I’ve learnt after I thought I knew it all.

1. Be The Eternal Student

The very fact that I have owned and operated businesses in the music, cleaning, publishing, web design and hairdressing industries can tell you one thing. I had had to learn about diverse industries..

That reality in my life has been translated into a life that is constantly learning.

The thing that makes my life so exciting is that I am constantly learning something new.

While many of my peers are preparing for retirement in the next decade, I’m just getting started – because for as long as I live I want to be the eternal student.

2. Choose A Mentor

My first significant mentors appeared in books.

When I discovered a book by Peter J. Daniels – a fellow Australiam who drove a gold Rolls Royce – I locked myself away for 3 days in a motel room with his book, a journal, the Gideon Bible, and a pen. It was there that I designed my future life.

Some years later I stumbled across the original editions written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the basement of a local university library. I returned there day after day for weeks to study words that changed my life.

Then when I start my web design business with the intention of franchising I hired a business coach and met with him once a week for 12 months. My understanding of business operations was revolutionised and I doubled my income the very next year.

Then when I decided to create a profitable and pre-eminent blog I hired a blogging coach that positioned me to then go and grow my database by 1500% in just 6 months.

3. Support Fellow Travellers

I have realised that I can become successful by simply helping others to become successful.

If my focus is on helping others I find myself helping myself.

I have found this to be true for my clients, my customers, and with fellow bloggers, that the most important word in the English language is YOU.

It means that I must resist the temptation to think only of myself, and start thinking of how I can add value to the lives of others.

4. Walk In Humility

Failure has actually been my best teacher.

Success taught me only really one thing, and that was that I must always walk in humility.

If I am to share my successes it is to be presented in a spirit that can inspire others to pursue and achieve their own success – not blow my own trumpet.

In fact my message should be: ‘If I can do it, then you surely can.’

5. Teach Others

There is a wonderful thing that happens when I begin to teach others. What I teach is crystallised in my own mind, and I begin to understand the lesson or the concept that much more clearly.

This is why I am always teaching.

The more I teach the more I learn.

We have a responsibility as achievers, no matter how small and incremental our achievements may seem to be, to share the lessons we have learnt with others so that they can be better equipped to achieve their own success.

And the great thing about teaching is this, that the more you give the more you will receive to give yet again.