Curiosity Creates Expertise

This week we’re talking about curiosity and how curiosity leads to learning. What inspired me this week is that I wanted to think about what is it that moves us to get out there and learn something new?

How do we go from being interested in something and thinking vaguely about the idea of something new versus becoming really curious and then taking action? That action can lead to really what growth is in most of our lives.

That practice, that idea, that moment of curiosity I think is really what led me to most of my breakthroughs in my life and in my career.

WHAT IS CURIOSITY?

At the end of the day, I think when you become curious about something, it means that you are inspired. You are inspired about something that has created some kind of a purposeful or passionate movement inside of you that is inspiring.

Curiosity is an interesting thing to study. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Let’s think about the times in our lives when curiosity has presented itself and what we did about it.

I know for a lot of us, if we are on our paths, through our careers, through our lives, we generally make small choices that lead us along the way and create certain types of experience. Certain types of knowledge, certain types of experience builds out your own bundle of things, which are ideas, perspectives, and everything that you can eventually offer later on to other people.

CURIOSITY LEADS TO ACTION

Now, if you break it down simply, I think curiosity (that interest that leads to learning) really only starts to take shape when two things happen.

Either you start to study and learn more about that thing. You’ve decided to take action, to take that curiosity and move towards it to say, “Okay, I’m curious about playing the piano,” for example. That curiosity doesn’t go anywhere until you are so curious that you decide, “You know what, I might try to see what it’s like to study this.”

You might look up some information. You might figure out what it takes. Then there has to be the next step, which is some type of action, some type of putting this into practice. You can learn things theoretically, but that action of putting things into practice is what really brings you forward, which is what really makes you grow.

I think those two things are super interesting because we can think about in our lives, we become curious about lots of things. However, when do we take those steps to study a deeper level of information, to gain more experience in a particular topic? Then when do we put it into practice so that we actually move forward and grow as individuals?

FEED YOUR CURIOSITY WITH OUTSIDE HELP

Now for anyone who’s become a coach or is in the business of serving other people through their knowledge, I think we all have that same moment where over time, we became continually more curious about our field or industry, our field of expertise.

As you dive into your industry deeper, you start to become curious, not just about the big picture, but all the nuanced details of your industry. That curiosity, which leads to study and practice, is what drives your expertise.

There are two ways to get there. You can do one thing for a very long time, or you can become curious about something new. I think that is a challenge for a lot of us. Something new seems daunting because we don’t want to spend 20 years learning something as well as we learned the thing that we stepped into.

GETTING HELP SPEEDS UP THE LEARNING CURVE

For the new things, for us to actually start to study and take action on those, I think we have two choices. Either it’s that we just outsource it and say, “You know what, I’m going to have someone else handle this thing.”

If we want to do it ourselves, we have to take that curiosity and drive it towards learning faster. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you’ve spent 20 years in a certain industry. You started a business, now you’re coaching and you’re teaching. You’re serving people, and you want to grow that business.

There are a couple of things you might have to learn. You might have to learn more about marketing. You might have to learn more about sales, or maybe you need to get your business in order and learn more about finance. Maybe you’re ready to scale and you have to learn about growth.

RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.

BE CURIOUS FOR YOU OR JUST FOR BUSINESS GROWTH

Your goal has shifted to growth or exposure or awareness. Now that you’ve shifted your focus, there you are becoming now curious about that new topic. However, it might not be something you are personally passionate about, but you are passionate about your business and seeing it succeed.

At that point you have to decide, am I outsourcing this new curiosity that’s going to help my business, or am I taking this on because it’s something that I want to have a certain level of experience in?

That’s up to you. That’s your choice. Now, if you take on the outsourcing route, that’s going to cost you a certain amount of money that you have to be okay with putting out there. That can become a recurring cost because you’ve never brought it in-house and it will be more expensive.

Anytime you outsource something instead of bringing it in-house, you’re going to pay for that level of expertise.

FIND EXPERTS TO HELP YOUR CURIOSITY

If you bring it in-house, which is what I suggest for most of these things, do it all yourself, or you gain a level of expertise that you can bring other people into your business at a lower rate or on a project by project basis to have them work on these things for you at a rate that’s reasonable.

Bringing that in-house takes a certain level of study and understanding. To get that base level of knowledge or to be fully immersed and be able to do it yourself, there are two things I think that help you along the way.

DON’T TRUST GOOGLE

One is learning from someone who already knows how to do it the right way, not just researching and reading things on Google. Finding the person you think is the expert that you would look up to, that you would trust, finding that person and bringing them on to coach you and get you there faster is absolutely number one.

It’s number one because you are learning from someone who’s done it before, who knows what they’re talking about, and can explain it to you from top to bottom, without missing any steps along the way.

Because you’re learning from someone who can get you there faster, they can bring you that curriculum in a quick way that doesn’t take you forever.

That focused attention, learning from someone who’s done it before (from a coach or a mentor) is the fastest way to build a new skill.

RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.

CURIOSITY NEEDS ACCOUNTABILITY

The second piece of that puzzle is accountability. Having committed to learning from someone else brings accountability to the table because now you are responsible for meeting with that person, taking on what they are teaching you, and putting it into practice.

Again, as we said, study and practice is the key to learning and growing as an individual. Those two things (either outsourcing or taking it in the house) are going to lead to you executing on that new item that’s going to grow your business. It’s going to take that curiosity and push it forward into the future.

You can apply this to anything. If you want to learn something that’s not business-related, it’s the same thing. Go out there. Hire a coach. Get accountable and move quickly towards your goal. You can outsource if you like, but at the end of the day, it’s a skill that you want to have in your arsenal and something you want to have control over in your business.

It’s something you’ve got to learn and that learning is going to be faster and more effective if you work with a coach or some type of mentor, and you are held accountable to taking action each week.

For me, that was podcasting. That was something that I dove into just like I did with marketing. There have been intricacies after that, every step along the way.

When I wanted to learn how to create a course, I had to go to a course creator expert and learn from them. If I wanted to learn how to blog I would talk to a blogger that I trusted. If I wanted to learn how to do Instagram, I had to talk to an Instagram expert.

My podcast has been a catalyst for me to bring coaches into my world and to meet the right people that helped me move along the way to mastering every different facet of marketing that I am interested in.

I wish the same for you guys. I hope that you can find people along the way that can help teach you the things that you are curious and passionate about. It’s one of the reasons I built the Podcast Branding Academy.

It is there to help people who have built podcasts or who want to build podcasts. It helps them learn how to get there quickly, and then how to grow that, how to take that show and grow it to its full potential.

PURSUE CURIOSITY

Curiosity is something I’m absolutely excited about. It’s the one thing that I think when people ask those questions of how do you find your purpose or how do you find passion to chase your dreams, or what are those things that you want to accomplish in life, it all goes back to curiosity and being able to take action on that curiosity.

I hope you all have been inspired to get out there, chase those things that you are curious and passionate about, find a way to take the next step towards learning and growing and moving your business forward.

MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS

If you’d like more content about how to build your personal brand, check out my free Content Marketing Starter Guide.

And here are some more of my most popular thought leader interviews!

Don’t want to miss the next thought leader interview? Subscribe to the free B-team Insider Newsletter! And don’t forget to leave a rating and review on iTunes.

Talk soon!