A short YouTube monologue by Chad Silverstein urging deliberate, continuous learning to improve leadership and professional performance. He emphasizes unprecedented access to free educational resources (online courses, books, talks), advocates studying beyond one's domain—especially given rapid technological change—and frames learning as a disciplined investment that raises individual and team performance.
Chapters
This day reminds me of, I think, about a week ago when we talked about study, learn and apply. And that's because we today have more access to books and courses that are free than ever before in history. I mean, what you can get your hands on to learn, to work on something that you are passionate about has never been made easier. Yet all you hear people say more and more these days is that they don't have time and they'll do it tomorrow. One of the beautiful pieces about the opus is the strategy. And I always challenge people to think about having one of the strategies has something to do with your growth, your learning, what you're doing, when you want to master your craft. And there are so many incredible resources out there. I mean, you literally could take free college courses if you wanted to online. You could take courses on YouTube. You can basically find free books everywhere. Everywhere. And you just have no excuse if you're not doing anything. You know, for a long time, I took the Build to Lead playbooks, and I poured myself into those and decided not to look at any other leadership books because I believed, I loved and I saw it working. So I poured myself into the 12. I poured myself into eight. Now I'm pouring myself into this book. And it's not something that you do to just read. It's something that you do to with purpose, to be deliberate in your learning. And there's something to be said about leaders who are always learning. They're always kind of bringing something new to the table based on something that they learned. And so if you're not a reader, that sucks because there's so much you gain from reading. But if the audio thing is your thing, if you like to watch TED Talks, whatever it is, you want to make sure you're not just aimlessly kind of one earth in one ear out the other, and just kind of like, you know, trying to consume information as much as you are trying to learn with purpose. Something that's going to make whatever you're doing better, whatever's going to help you serve the people that you serve, whether they're customers, whether they're clients, whether it's going to be, you know, a consumer who buys your product, whatever it is, you know, a business that does business with you, something that you can, you know, keep getting better at because you keep getting smarter. There's definitely a correlation between your learning, if you're a leader, and the performance of whatever it is you're leading. There's just no question about it. It's the same thing with professional development. The more you invest in yourself, the more you invest time and money, you'll see performance go up. You'll see the system kind of coming with you. It's just. It's like a. It's a. It's a fact. There's no question. And, and I think if, if you're being held back because you're in a system where you can't grow, then you need to reevaluate your role, maybe become built to leave. And it's important to know that you're in the right place, that you can become and reach your full potential. And one of the ways to do that is to keep learning. So the question in the book today was, what are you studying outside of your domain? And I think that's today more relevant than ever before. With all the AI stuff, with all the new technology, with all the change that's coming in the next decade, there's so much to learn and there's so many people who are going to have to pivot. So why wait? Why wait until you're in a position that you have to. And why not kind of get a head start, pick something that you're passionate about and go learn about it and make it a discipline. It's definitely, definitely something that will not be a waste of your time and will definitely pay off.
