MBA1084 Why You Need to Become a Better Teacher

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 RBA show, the business podcast that's all lessons and no fluff, just the good stuff every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson, you will learn why you need to become a better teacher. Teaching is the ultimate form of communication. It's basically brain surgery. You're taking one idea from your brain, you're taking a skill, you're taking some sort of concept or mindset, and you're trying to put it into somebody else's brain. Teaching is also the ultimate sales tool. Educating your customer on why your business, your service, your product is right for them and allowing them to make the decision to buy from you, to do business with you. That's some powerful stuff. So in today's lesson, I'm going to explain to you why being a better teacher is so important for your business. And what are some steps you can take to become a better teacher every single day so you can use your new powerful skill to increase sales, to get more customers, to improve your team, and a whole lot more. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode is supported by Cronos. No one compliments you when their paycheck is correct. But make one mistake and you risk alienating your entire workforce. Cronos makes sure that your payroll is done right the first time. From punch to paycheck, embedded checklists, simplified workflows, a single source of truth. Hr, payroll, talent and timekeeping in one unified system. All with a proven implementation approach and simplified transparent pricing. Learn more@kronos.com payroll that's K-R-O-N O S.com payroll Kronos Workforce innovation that works. Believe it or not, you probably teach a lot during your day, whether it's through text, whether it's through verbal or email. The question really is, how good of a teacher are you? Every time you give instruction, every time you explain something, every time you're selling something you're really teaching, or at least you should be. A great sales page really teaches educates your customer on why your product is a good fit for them. Running a meeting in your team, there's going to be a period of time in that meeting where you're going to be some sort of teaching, some sort of explanation. And the better you are at that, the Clearer things will be for your team, the easier it will be for them to do their job. Now, for those who don't know, I've been teaching all my adult life. I have a master's in teaching. I taught at the high school and university level. I taught in classrooms for 13 years. I trained teachers for a living. As a teacher trainer, I had to write curriculum, I had to write training materials on how to make sure comprehension is actually taking place in the classroom. But that was another life. But when I left teaching, I carried on a lot of these concepts and these skills into my entrepreneurial career. And, boy, does it make my life a whole lot easier. The first thing that teaching does, it doesn't assume anything. When you're in a teaching mindset, you never assume people know what you're talking about, understand the things the way you understand them. So when you approach a subject, you're not making assumptions, you're asking some questions and finding out where the level of the person you're speaking to is. And this goes for anybody on your team. Like you're working with your teammates or even with a customer. Say, for example, you're on a sales call. A great teacher finds out what the level of the student is, finds, hey, where are you with your business right now? What are you trying to do? What are some of the issues that you're experiencing? You're trying to ask some questions, find out their needs. They call this a needs assessment. And then from there, when they give you some answers, you can address their needs with your product. Showing them or teaching them how your product can fulfill their needs can solve their problems. Being a great teacher also makes you a fantastic public speaker. Teaching is basically conveying ideas and making sure people can comprehend them and take them away and use them in their own lives. That's the formula of a winning speech. When people go away from your speech and feel like, wow, that was useful, I totally got it. I was engaged the whole time, and it was super useful. I'm ready to take action. Have you ever sat through a speech where you felt more confused after the speech than before the speech? Then you know for sure that teaching was not being taken place. Maybe a bunch of stats were thrown your way, maybe some convoluted talk. Things weren't congruent, you couldn't comprehend it, you couldn't make use of it. An idea is absolutely useless if you can't communicate it properly, if you can't actually get people to understand what you're saying. This is where being a great teacher really counts. And that also goes for your videos, your podcast episodes, your blog posts, any of your sales materials, sales videos included, your webinars. Right? All this stuff gets better and better when you're a better teacher. So here's some simple tips to keep in mind to become a better teacher every single day. Number one, don't make assumptions. Don't assume that somebody understands something or is at a certain level of understanding. Ask some questions at the start. Get them to talk about what they need, what they want so you can be able to provide the right information, not just a whole bunch of information. This could be in rhetorical form. If you're doing some sales copy, ask some rhetorical questions at the top of your sales copy. Now, I put this step, do not assume. Don't make assumptions at the start. Because it's probably the most common mistake people do or mistake they make. And I'm first to say, I still make this mistake sometimes, and I have to stop and correct myself and say, hey, I'm making some assumptions about the person in front of me or the people in front of me or the audience in front of me that could possibly not be true. Tip number two, use the input output method. Teachers do not give monologues. Don't go on a monologue and talk and talk and talk for a long period of time and then stop and say, do you get what I'm saying? Do you understand this whole concept after I spoke for 10 minutes? No. Use the input output method, meaning do a bit of teaching. See if there's comprehension, check if there's comprehension, check if they get what you're saying. If they're still on board, ask some questions to see if they are. So instead of going on for 10 minutes, 2 minutes, break, ask some questions, have a discussion about what you just talked about. Talk again for two minutes, engage with them. Now, it's called input output because you're inputting information and then they output some information, showing that, yes, I do get what you're saying. The last two minutes make sense to me. So before going on you're getting some output, let me give you a quick example of the input output method with a very simple exercise like teaching somebody how to write an email. So the first step of writing an email is to write the email address of who you want to send this email to. So who do you want to send this email to? See how I'm asking a question. And the person might say, my Aunt Margaret. Great. What's your Aunt Margaret's email? All right, let's put that in the to field aunt margaretotmail.com the next step is to put a subject in the subject line. A subject is a short explanation of what this email is all about. What are you going to be writing about in this email to Aunt Margaret? Again question. Getting the output from the actual person in front of me, the student in this example, and they would tell me what they would be writing about and we would come up with a subject together. You get the point. Input Output Tip number three Tangents are your worst enemy. Stay on point when you go on a tangent. When you have a side story. When you're not staying focused on what you're trying to convey or to teach, people get lost and it's hard to get back on track because you forgot where you were. So don't go on tangents. Tip 4 Be concise as possible Be economical with your language, especially if it's written language. But even if it's verbal, like I'm doing right now, I want to make sure I'm using the minimal amount of words to convey what I'm trying to teach. One of the best ways to do this is to record whatever you're teaching. So if you're giving a tutorial to your actual team in a live, let's say meeting, record the meeting and then you can listen back and critique yourself. Oh, I could have said that in a much more concise way. Give yourself some time constraints. How long is this meeting going to be or this training? Let's try to keep it under 10 minutes or 5 minutes if you can do it. Be concise. The faster they can get it, the faster they can put into practice. The longer the lesson, the harder it will be to remember it. I got more on today's topic, but before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Support for today's show comes from wgu. WGU is an online university that's changing lives by changing higher education. Its innovative competency based learning model was designed specifically to fit the lives of busy adults like you and I. WGU is non profit and surprisingly affordable, offering Bachelor's and Master's degrees in business, IT teaching and nursing. Study anywhere. Anytime your schedule allows, you can move through the material you already know and spend time learning what you don't. Which means that the faster you demonstrate what you know, the faster you finish. I love this. WGU works with employers to make sure your degree is current and relevant. Still get the skills and credentials employers are seeking. It's also about half the cost of most online universities, so you can graduate with far less debt or none at all. At WGU, you get personalized one to one full time faculty mentors from day one to graduation. Get your $65 application fee waived at WGU edu100mba that's WGU edu100mba to learn more and get your $65 Application Fee waived at WGU. Again, that's WGU edu100mba Here are a few more hidden benefits of becoming a better teacher in your business. Number one, it's going to save you a ton of time when you get great at this point, when you're a good teacher, you don't have to repeat yourself over and over. People get it the first time. Another hidden gem is that when you're a good teacher, you become an example. People learn from good teachers how to be good teachers. So your teammates are going to learn from your example and they're going to be able to communicate better with their teammates. They're also going to be communicating better with you in correspondence, whether it's through email or through your project management tool. And teaching makes you a better salesperson because you understand in order for somebody to be convinced of something, to buy something, it can't just be an emotional decision. It also has to be a rational one. And in order to make a rational decision, you have to be educated. You have to be educated on the topic. You got to have some sort of discussion in your head that says this is a good idea because of what I learned, what I know. And if they don't know anything about your product, if they haven't been taught, then you're in trouble. So this is definitely going to help sales in your business as well. That wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Tomorrow is Q and A Wednesday where we answer a question right here on the show from you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me@omar mba.net and I'll answer your question right here. I dedicate a whole episode for each question. Tomorrow's question is from Felicia and Felicia asks, should I Invest in a $10,000 business coaching program? Big question and I can't wait to answer it in tomorrow's episode. So make sure you hit subscribe so you do not miss it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things a lot of new entrepreneurs do, especially if they're transitioning from an old career, is they just neglect their past. They say, you know, I was an accountant before. That's who I was before. Not anymore. Now I'm an entrepreneur. Or before I was a developer. I'm not a developer anymore. Now I'm building businesses. No. Leverage those experiences. Use them and leverage your strengths in your business. And that's what I did with my teaching career. I had a moment where I wanted to deny my past, but I said, that's not very smart. I can use this to my advantage. How can I become an entrepreneur that leverages teaching? Well, for one, you can create a podcast where you teach every day. So you get the point. Don't neglect your past. Those are great experiences that you've had in your life. Use them to your advantage. Alright, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of sam.