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Learning and personal growth are an essential part of being an entrepreneur. Back when I decided to go into entrepreneurship full time, I realized I will not be able to move forward, if I don’t embrace the constant learning process. So, I decided to take one day a week to learn, re-learn and educate myself on marketing, entrepreneurship, and self-development.

I dedicated this week to working on myself. There are two big milestones coming up for me next month, and I want to make sure my mindset upleveled to meet my objectives, and actions. For February (next month) I decided I will be hosting a live Facebook group training, and a live webinar about Pinterest marketing for brands. I know it sounds a bit mundane, but up until this month (January 2019) I was very scared of being on video, and just one month later I am about to do live videos.

So, here’s what helped me uplevel this past week:

1. The Book of Coaching: For Extraordinary Coaches

I decided to read Ajit Nawalkha’s Book of Coaching hoping to learn about new mindset exercises that will help me in my own coaching practice. I learned that and so much more. In fact, this book has helped me up-level my confidence, and mindset too, not just my methodology, and while it’s a good read for the beginner coach, I would recommend it for entrepreneurs as well.

To be a great coach, you need to constantly do the mindset work to up-level as a human being too. To be a great entrepreneur, you need to constantly do the mindset work to up-level your life.

The book touches base with mindset limitations that entrepreneurs face too, especially in the early stages of their business journey. There are chapters and exercises to help you get unstuck, crush fear, stop comparing yourself to others, redefine your goals boost your motivation, and self-confidence.

Here are a couple of highlights:

• Motivation work: track your behavior for a couple of days to find out what motivates you, what makes you lose your motivation, and what will keep you going no matter what. Answering these questions will help you identify triggers that kill your drive, and solutions to staying productive through the hard times

• Your growth as an individual decides the growth of your business. Your power to get over yourself ignites the customer to create results. Deal with your fears to help people achieve the change they want.

• Create a morning routine to start your day in a high-peak state and nourish your mind, emotions, brain, body, and spirit. This works very well for me.

• Redefine your goals, and what success means to you. It’s not about the goal, but growing to become the person who can accomplish the goal.

• Picture your life in 3 years and set goals for your Vision of Life. This will help you define who you want to be, what you want to be known for, and the set of experiences, milestones you aim for, in order to live a happy life. Visualize where and who you want to be in various aspects of your existence (health, intelectual, spiritual, and emotional lives, character, relationships, social and family life, financial and career etc)

• Identify your major needs and figure out how you react in relation to your need for love, belonging, worthiness, enoughness, and validation.

There’s a lot more to discover in the book:

• What is the difference between fractured time mode and deep work mode

• How to get into a state of flow and achieve the perfect balance of challenge and skill

• How to shine a light on your authentic skills and chart your path to success

• 2 effective tools to goal-setting so you can actually achieve your goals without frustration and anxiety

• How to reach the peak of 4 states: Mental State, Brain State, Body State, Spirit State

• The 4MAS Method which helps you quickly reach a high-performance state where you are focused, present and productive

I recommend getting both the audiobook and the ebook or hard copy. The audiobook is easy to listen while traveling, while the ebook or hard copy will help you assimilate the information in-depth. Or at least that’s how it was for me.

Learn more at Evercoach, The Book of Coaching or buy the book on Amazon.

2. Business Planning Challenge with Anna Runyan, Classy Career Girl

I love the first part of the year! It’s a great time to set up goals, and get more and more clear about what I will create in the upcoming months. So I jumped to the occasion to join hundreds of women all over the world, in a five-day challenge with Anna Runyan, from Classy Career Girl, aimed to help female entrepreneurs figure out five essential aspects of their business.

This was a very useful journaling exercise that helped me become a lot more aware of what motivates me as an entrepreneur, more clear on who my ideal client is, of how important it is to be visible, and finally, of how I can achieve my financial goals.

You can sign up for her business planning challenge here.

3. Developing Your Personal Brand on Instagram with Amanda Bucci

I must confess… I don’t really enjoy using Instagram in my marketing, because I don’t have the time to create daily content, publish stories, follow, and unfollow, and all that jazz. However, I do look for ways to make it easier for me to use this channel, and one of the best Instagram resources I have found lately is Amanda Bucci’s course on developing your personal brand using Instagram to market yourself.

Here are a couple of highlights from her Instagram video course:

• Research what type of content is doing well on Instagram (and in your niche) and replicate the recipe

• The picture and piece of text displayed before the Read More button should grab your viewers’ attention

• Use the text before the Read More button to summarize the post with an eye-catching headline

• Build a network of people with more fans than you, and find a way to have them leave comments on your posts to increase engagement (60-min engagement pod)

The course is available with MentorBox’s Entrepreneur Academy. Btw she is also running a branded course of her own on Instagram marketing. It’s called Insta Impact. I haven’t had a chance to take the course, but it’s on my list.

If you want to read more posts from my One Day a Week series, click through the list below:

• ODaW #6 Best Of Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals For Digital Marketing

• ODaW #5 One Day A Week Is All It Takes: How To Read More Books

• ODaW #4 One Day A Week Is All It Takes: How To Learn Anything & Facebook’s Explore Feed Feature

Need help with your visibility strategy?

I have been working in digital marketing for almost a decade and more than half of that, I was in a marketing manager role. I can help you figure out new visibility opportunities for your business or personal brand, identify mindset limitations that keep you stuck and silent (and ways to fix them), as well as assessing your existent visibility channels and optimizing them to better serve your objectives. Reach out to me here to book a free visibility coaching call.

Hi there! My name is Monica. I am a visibility coach and content marketing specialist who creates blog & Pinterest strategies to generate website traffic and leads.

Check out my marketing blog to learn more