Although I’m a huge fan of learning for learning’s sake, I don’t believe that business training programs should pull you out of your working life and distract you from your current priorities.

Ever had that happen to you? Pulled out of your groove to focus on something that’s interesting but not a core priority in your business?

I’ve participated in more than one business development program where the training is delivered intensively over a couple of months. To make the most of my time, I’ve set aside a good portion of my schedule to focus on everything I needed to learn.

But too often, very little implementation time is built into such programs, which means that when the program ends, I always found myself in a time crunch. I had to catch up on all the things I had put aside to focus on the program, plus I now needed to find time to implement what I’d been learning.

That’s a recipe for wasting significant amounts of time and money and arises as the consequence of:

1. Not knowing what to prioritise in your business, and
2. Educational models that are focused on sharing information but not on what you actually do with that information.

When I created Women Speaking Up, I wanted to create a different sort of educational experience.

OVERCOMING BLOCKS TO VISIBILITY

I knew that prioritising visibility was one of the essential ingredients to building a business.

BUT… I also knew – from personal experience – that it’s easy to tell yourself it’s something you can focus on later. (Only to find yourself disappointed with the revenue you’re making and wondering why your business isn’t growing.)

So, first and foremost I knew that visibility block clearing needed to be a part of the program. Without the inner work, it can be very difficult to put aside all the shiny objects and focus on visibility.

The reality is that there are often more fun things to focus on than visibility, but there are few things that are more important. (If you’re unsure if that’s true, think about all the most successful business people or creatives or not for profit organisations you know. Then think about how many people in your industry know about them. Success and visibility go hand in hand.)

CREATING TIME AND SPACE

I also knew that I had to create a visibility container with lots of time and space. I knew I had to create an environment where people could learn progressively and where the learning took no more than a couple of hours a week.

To ensure that people would really get the most from their time with us, I also wanted to offer the opportunity to work in cycles where people could learn and implement, clear some blocks, then learn and implement some more, clear more blocks, implement some more, and learn, and clear and implement again.

FOCUS ON IMPLEMENTATION

Finally, I knew the program had to explore any inner resistance that might arise around implementation.

So after addressing the environmental considerations (by offering a longer program with more implementation time built in), I also wanted to offer the deep inner work needed to overcome implementation resistance.

And that’s the kind of experience we currently offer at Women Speaking Up.

We’ve created a 12-month container rather than an 8-week program so you can settle in, take the time you need to build out your visibility strategy, implement it with the support of the group, and keep doing the inner work at the same time.

Starting in June, we’ll also be working to 90-day cycles to align the program with your business operations.

At the beginning of each cycle you’ll have the chance to:

• set a clear visibility intention for the upcoming 90 days,
• prepare all of the visibility related content you want to roll out in that cycle (be that social media posts, emails, podcast episodes, or video scripts),
• identify and work on one big visibility project each 90 days, and
• overcome any hurdles to implementation.

In these ways, and so many more, Women Speaking Up acts like a visibility support team that wraps itself around you and your work.

So if you know that working on visibility on your own isn’t going to get you where you’re hoping to go in 2021, the doors to Women Speaking Up are open for just this week.

Click here to learn more and to join us.

And, as always, hit reply if you’ve any questions