Do you groan at the beginning of the Continuing Professional Development year? Now you’ve got to trawl through the post graduate courses from the array of providers to find something that will give you maximum points for your bucks?
Or at the end of the year, do you struggle to find those last few hours and grab some local Osteopaths for a spot of ‘learning with others’ down at the coffee shop?
It’s surprising that some people look at getting their continuing professional development as a complete nuisance. But despite it being obligatory in most countries, it’s worth looking at it as an opportunity rather than a bind.
For me, having spent over six years living in Greece (2002-2008), I returned like a foreigner to my own country! The life there had been far less automated and people were still queuing up in the phone shop to pay their bill with cash and travelling to the council office to pay their local tax. Actually though, they had the business of collecting the TV licence fee sorted in the most brilliant fashion. It was collected simply by adding it to the electricity bill. So no electricity; no TV. Genius!
When I moved back to the UK, I felt like a complete dinosaur in the shops as they kept handing my card back to me and telling me to put it in the card machine myself and enter my PIN. They would look at me with that ‘is she the local mad lady’ question in their eyes. I felt like the old person where technology had passed them by.
Returning to live here abruptly as I did (my young son Toby had suffered heart failure and a stroke in Athens),I needed to set up a new life in London very rapidly. However, it quickly became apparent that I really was way behind in the technological world – and I really couldn’t stand it! If you had mentioned SEO, WordPress, CRM or autoresponders to me, I would have given you a vacant look!
So I began investing in myself, upgrading my software skills to all the latest versions of Excel, advanced Word and Powerpoint presentations. I took endless online courses to take advantage of how marketing could be applied across many different media to grow a business fast.
I started part-time work with The Rollin E Becker Institute (REBI) in 2010 and every time I came across a gap in my knowledge, I sought out answers. To that end I’ve invested thousands of pounds now and built upon all my previous marketing experience and knowledge to bring me bang up to date.
No matter what the CPD rules are in your part of the world, I believe that continuing investment in yourself and your skills is the very best investment you can make. Bar none.
The Lecturers and Tutors at REBI have completed the OCF Foundation Course up to as many as nine times! And they’re passionate about how much they continue to learn on a deeper and more intuitive level every single time. They tell me that the level of competence you can achieve is infinite.
Depending on where you are in the world, you may well find that working with me to build your business will also give you valuable CPD credits. Worth a thought…
