In this episode, we discuss how a professional can save an amateur 8 hours because of their experience.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how professionals see what is invisible to the amateur. I’m a big believer that you have to be a professional in the career that you choose. I don’t really care what you’re profession is, just a long as your a professional in it. You just have to be okay with what professionals make and the lifestyle it gives you if you choose to be in that field.
But being a professional is so needed. I hate when I go to someone and they don’t know everything about their job where I feel like they should know something or be able to find the answer within a short period of time. I get it if I go to a doctor that specializes in back surgery but then I’m asking questions about my skin. That is not the person I should go see. If I go to a personal trainer, I should feel confident that they know what they are doing and are constantly improving their skills so that they become good at their job.
Now becoming a professional takes time. For every job I started out in, I was an amateur in my skills but I made sure that I trained like a professional. I read books and ask people how I could do better. Plus I just tried to make sure I got as many reps as I could. Then I say about after a year of putting in the work, you really start to see a lot of the same cases, and you can start doing your work really fast.
Then a nice by-product, is that you start to see what is invisible to the amateur. I know after four years as a financial planner, I started to see the whole picture a lot more clearly and if someone came to me, I would ask them if they also thought about X, Y, and Z to make sure that they didn’t make an irrational decision. There is still a lot of things that I don’t know because there is a lot of little nuances to know about financial planning that you might never come across but you do come across something, then you get a suspicion that something is not correct. You know that that there are income restrictions on certain things but you’re not sure so you go research the topic.
Then once you learn about the suspicion, then you just store it in your memory bank and can use it in the future. When you get enough of this experience in your bag, then you’re going to be unstoppable and this is what we should strive for in our profession. To see how good we can get. I remember there was this once financial advisor in my last company that was good and didn’t really take the time to learn all the new things that had to happen. So then once he was retired, the entire office has to white hand glove the situation to say that he didn’t do everything he could. There was one client that I had from his that I had to clean up the mess for and it caused me a lot of stress and it really made the client upset too. It was fixed but it took a lot of my time.
If you can focus on being a professional in the field that you choose, then it is your duty to do so. And you don’t need to know every single thing, I’m a big believer in just in time information and not striving for just in case information. You should know the key concepts for your field and when that rare thing comes up, you can either be like that is not what I focus on because it doesn’t really fit what you do or you can quickly find the answer because you know where to look.
This is just going to make you very valuable as a person. I know as a financial planner, I’m way more valuable now than I was five years ago. This then gave me the confidence to start my own thing. I just have more options as a person know because I can see what is invisible to the amateur. Like I said in a previous podcast, you want options in life so you don’t become stuck and being someone that people can rely on, will give you more options in life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, professionals see what is invisible to the amateur. If you play against a chess master, they know that board inside and out, and will know what they’re next five moves will be based on your first move. If you’re not prepared for that, then you’re going to lose. This is the same mentality you need to have, when you see something, you’re able to quickly put together a winning strategy while your opponent is trying to figure if the move they made was a good one. Then once you start winning more games than you lose, that is when you start to move up the rankings. You don’t have to be the number one person in your field, but you should strive to be the top ten percent in terms of your skills. This will just give you more options in life so you don’t become stuck and you don’t want to become stuck in life because that is where misery lies.
So in your journal, ask yourself, how can I be a better professional in my career? Who can I ask for feedback? What are the books I should read? The YouTube videos I should watch? Or the course I should take? There is always something that you can do to improve your skills immediately and it is an auxiliary skill like learning to type faster or read faster. Then go and learn those things. I would highly recommend that people take an improv class and this skill has improved my life tremendously since I’ve taken level one. The choice is yours, do you want to be a professional or be an amateur and have that lifestyle.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
