Teach and be Teachable

How open are you to learning?

When I turned 26, I moved my family to Detroit.  I had been out of school for 8 years and was venturing into a new, but related career.

I made the switch from being on the radio in the programming side, to working on the advertising side of radio.  WMUZ-FM was one of 6 stations belonging to Crawford Broadcasting and I was hired to write and produce commercials and ad campaigns.  We received a weekly sales training letter from Don Crawford and it was the start of being teachable again.

Actually I also became a self taught student too.  I read several books that I sought out on marketing and human relationships including Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout; Harvey Mackay’s books Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive and Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt.

I have had the opportunity to interview hundreds of business people in the course of my work and each person has a nugget of wisdom that I add to my collection of knowledge.

Over the years I found myself teaching others too.  And continuing to learn. A week ago I was in an all day training session that involved online personal marketing and a few other items.

Here I am, the one that others come to for advice on online personal marketing and I was learning too.

We are never too old or too full of knowledge to not learn more and more.

And then as we learn, pass along the knowledge.  That’s one of the purposes of this website.

But being teachable also means that you have to retain a degree of humbleness.

In 2006, the group of radio stations I worked for hired a young man named Ben Saurer.  I was asked to mentor Ben.  After awhile as I was training new salespeople, I asked them to pick Ben’s brain because he had survived his first year and was one of the rising young stars on our sales team.  Fast forward a few years and Ben has been hired away to lead a sales team at WOWO Radio.  He and I stay in touch once a year or so until last year when the opportunity to work for Ben arose, I took it.

Every once in awhile, Ben will quote me, back to me… not something I just said, but something I said a few years ago.  And we both are continuing to learn as the circle continues.