Are you a student of your business?

Whatever you do, you have to be a student of your business. You have to be constantly on the lookout for improvements.

Moreover, you have to be hungry for those little improvements, eager to find them, and dedicated to integrating them into your everyday performance.

The reason I use the phrase, “you have to be” is because if you are not, your performance level will drop off while the performance level of others improves.

Within every business or profession, some people keep getting better while the rest stay the same or backslide.

The ones that keep getting better are those that learn the little secrets of what they do. These achievers are not necessarily those with the greatest talent, but with the greatest commitment to excellence.

This commitment motivates you to learn what the most successful people in your field do and “borrow” some of their ideas.

It motivates you to try enough new approaches to common situations until you find one that works better than the commonly-accepted method.

This commitment pushes you to ask, “Is this the best I can do?” or “What new wrinkle can I add to make this better?” or “What can I learn from this that will make next time easier?”

The essential attitude here is that of a beginner. Not matter how experienced we are in our chosen work, as soon as we think we know it all, we realize we don’t.

Even if we have done a certain work for 20 years, we still find nuances, refinements, and special cases of that work that make us beginners, albeit on a different level.

Whatever you do, be a student of your business.

You will keep getting better and better and it will show.