Jenna: Hey guys, it's Jenna. Thanks for joining me on another episode of Elevate Yourself podcast.

So today I wanted to talk a little bit about how to stay up to date with your career or in your industry, how that is so important, and how it links back to your self care.

Basically, like I think we've been doing a lot of talking about burnout and stuff like that. How to find a career you love, but there's a saying that I love. I love it so much and it's “When you're green, you're growing and when you're ripe, you rot” and I think it's so relevant to so many different things. And basically just means that if you continue to be green, and growing, then you're always going to be fresh, and things are going to keep going good for you. You're just gonna get better and better. So after you think you know everything or you become comfortable, you ripen and you think, Oh, I've reached my peak, then you begin to rot. So this is why it's so important, I think to keep yourself on the edge and just to be always up to date with things because it relates back to like just keeping yourself fresh and turned on and feeling like thought about your career.

You're usually also feeling like that about lots of other areas of your life. It just becomes a really infectious way of living. So I think it is just really relevant towards careers and not burning out I think being aware of changes or updates within your industry can help you keep ahead of the curve. By proactively seeking out new information and staying on top of trends. You will begin to arm yourself with learning so you can apply it to your career and you'll be more excited about things too and feel a lot more empowered. Just kind of like looking forward to taking on new challenges rather than being in a place of feeling stagnant and not challenging yourself. That's not a really positive trajectory to get yourself linked into.

I definitely think that staying up to date is just more than just doing better at your job. It's about having that feeling of like being positive and growing always in yourself as well. You'll always benefit from keeping on top of your industry, whether you've just started out in your industry or you're looking to progress within your role.

So you might be wondering, what are some ways that you can keep yourself up to date because sometimes the more advanced you get in your career, especially the harder it is really to think of ways that you want to or can engage yourself in that way because you will be at the level that you are not as challenged as you are once and it's not like everything is new and fresh and you're learning everything. And there's always something new to learn. You will really have to kind of like actively seek it out. I suggest you seek out a mentor or an industry buddy so enlisting the help of a friend or a mentor who works in the same industry gives you a chance to learn new information in a social setting. That's saying that they always say two minds are better than one. This situation takes you out of a formal environment and can encourage a conversational flow with the opportunity to ask questions without judgment. This can help you build up your industry knowledge and see things from another perspective. It can also help you bounce ideas off of other people.

So sometimes this is not only just like learning but it's creating as well because the more you're in industry and professional you get, the more you're on the frontier of knowing all these things, the more you're able to develop that exciting new information or techniques or product lines and stuff like that. Oftentimes those things come out of collaboration, because you might have some idea of the direction that you need to go but you might need to like collaborate with someone else who has a totally separate skill set or like for example a chemist if you're developing a product line or something like that, so that they can really help you grow in the way to shift things into existence that like never really existed before. That would be like definitely our product that we've been working on. It's just been so exciting. Collaboration is essential because you just don't know everything and you're not supposed to know everything but that other person who knows all those things also doesn't know everything about your industry or how they can apply their knowledge to help your industry the best.

So a lot of collaboration does help you to stay up to date with your industry or even be on the forefront of creating something cutting edge or like new in their industry which is really super exciting too.

So further education or training is always like a great place to start with to find like any course you take you're always pulling more out of it, a course can be a great way to refresh your skills and build on things you need for your job, new skills or that can help advance your career path. It's also really builds confidence, sometimes you just need to have someone to work out problems with or bounce off certain ideas or just run through different scenarios to be able to get that next step of knowledge. And lots of the time it's just confidence in the missing key. You might have that knowledge but you might not have the knowledge of how to apply, and how to react to some of the challenges that come up, which is how you create confidence.

So taking another training with someone who's already conquered those problems and in a space where they are competent in the industry can be really really really helpful to get where you’re going. You know what I'm talking about, just to get you where you want to go further.

Online and part time training are great options nowadays. Online training has come so far, since that was the thing we could really do during COVID. For a lot of parts in major universities are really acknowledging it as a legitimate way of training nowadays. It’s even better because you get to really apply these skills. I think sometimes if you go away and do a course for a long time and you don't have to like really apply those things until afterwards. But if there's not enough of a practical application for the throughout the course, we will really not get the most out of it. So online part-time can you really break options if you are working in your career already or your chosen field to try those studies days. Kind of like the best of both worlds. So take a look at what options are out there. You could explore courses directly related to your industry study to help build leadership or negotiation or business. There's just so many courses over there. Like literally anything that you would want to learn.

I guess you just have to do your research and find out what is most appealing to you and then look for the person who is killing it in your industry and the most relevant person you can get to is always best because there are lots of things that you can learn from situations like you might not be always applicable to your location or your marketplace or your unique environment. So always take that with a grain of rice.

But then you can take them to other areas and they can maybe not traveling so make sure that you're picking courses that are really going to be helping move for like where you want to be your career choices.

Build relationships with the customers or clients so keeping in touch with friends tends to come from related so that customers will tell you what they want clients to do what kind of career to but those two things are telling me from being in the industry, taking the time to be customers. First time customers, clients or rupee clients. Always valuable, right and emerging interest here. So if you want to know what the markets or if you want to know, things in your career, Always talk to your customer or your services. will always tell you what they want and usually the honest, horrible things you can call something out to date than the person who's got that feedback. It's just always the same thing saying well this is how I do it. I don't change this is what it is. So there's not a lot of growth in there. That's a definitely a situation where you're ripe and you're rotting. So become a reader read voraciously. And I would say also become a podcast listener podcasts are the new books. I know some of you are going to be like that is blasphemy. But this is the truth. So we don't always have time. We don't always learn that way either. Some of us are visual and we learn through reading but others some of us are just like really we listened by conversing and by learning from stories and stuff like that.

So Podcasts can be really that way because you're not just like reading in. I don't know if you're like me, I get add and I'm like reading something and I'm like, I'm just like looking at the words and they're not even going through my head. But when I'm engaged in a story, I tend to remember things better because I'm engaged with someone's voice it's not just like my eyes reading some random non engaged comments in the book.

It's not a participatory thing. It's you're just so boring and by yourself when you're reading sometimes I know some people don't feel this way if you're a reader. Good on you. Keep reading. So subscribe to the most credible and digital media outlets and thought leaders to get the best ideas but don't just chase every shiny object like and really ask yourself is this relevant to my business or is this relevant to what I want to learn? Is this relevant to me achieving my goals? How will it help my customers or my bottom line? Just because something's on trend doesn't mean you need it. And something on trend sometimes is not really something that's going to propel you any further or fuzzy to stay up to date because not everything that glitters is gold. Some of the trends are horrible and they should not be trends and that's why they are trends because they don't last very long.

Don't always find everything, where you do your own research to figure out, is this something that is actually good? Is this something that is going to be good for everybody to stay up to date and to grow? You really want to make sure that you're nurturing your environment around you to you can't just grow and step on everything and then just not think about the consequences of the certain ways that you're trying to manipulate a situation perhaps to get in your own personal benefit. It's really important that when you are staying up to date and you're growing in your mindset or the way that you are applying things, that it's a growth that is sustainable for everybody, and that's going to be positive growth for everybody. Because if not, it is just a very short sighted thing that is not going to lead to long term growth and it's another thing where you're like ripe and you're gonna rock. I also would recommend that you become an insider, get familiar with your customers get it's much easier to notice and even lead the creation of trends if you are insider so leave your office or your studio or your house or whatever you need to do and experience with acquaints of emotional tension that exists among your customers clients or I don't know like your doctor, I guess your patients, whatever your career is, get out there. This often leads to like discover new ideas, trends and ways of living. culture doesn't stand still. And we really need to be a part of the culture that we are trying to promote to be able to understand it really lean into your instincts. So trust your instincts, just because no one else is talking or thinking about your idea does not mean I will it might mean it's ahead of the curve. So lean in to that and be the first to break through, not the one behind the person cutting the path.

So really trust your gut. That's very like also the thinking of what I was talking about before about things that are like win-win situations, things that are gonna like stand the test of time. If it's going to be beneficial and cause a positive change. You really want to lean into those things that are really going to feed into goodness for everyone else too.

And you know those things that are going to be just slam dunks and that are going to make such a positive impact on other people. So those are the things work. Trust yourself and give yourself some room to fail to because failure is not so scary. It's just a part of figuring things out. And if you don't ever risk anything, you will never grow so you'll just stay the same and you'll be ripe and rot and stinky eventually. You definitely just have to take those risks sometimes and follow your gut and do what you think is going to be right and if it doesn't work out, you have that knowledge you just your path and you go forward and another way that's going to be even better though no worries onward. And upward always.

So you want to also be watching out for industry organizations. There are organizations that can help you stay in the loop so they can provide insightful journals, newsletters or even events that you can attend to network with like minded people and like another thing would be the podcast to or of industry organizations like you know, certain like social media pages that are always sharing new information and keeping you up to date. Those are always like really valuable too. Sometimes I would be like a little wary of some of the emerging they're like fake certification standards that have like come up. But I see this a lot in the beauty industry. And sometimes they're just basically upheld by themselves and it's not well intentioned. So networking networking, whether it's face to face or online can be a rewarding way to keep updated on industry news and trends. This helps you to build your own network and create networking relationships within your field. So always take the initiative if you're going to some sort of a course or if you're investing in going to some sort of a conference or something that you might not see as a networking opportunity. I guarantee you the relationships you make with the people sitting next to you are going to be invaluable to you that course is going to last for like a snapshot of your life and generally that information will be like added and evolve to and that person that you make relationship with though, can be a much more valuable asset to you enriching your career and staying up to date with things then that course in the future.

So networking and like swapping phone numbers or connecting on social media can be just like best thing. Do you have that personal connection of meeting in one place or another that moves me on to social media? Social media has become one of the best up to the Minister of Industry news. By following experts and industry leaders on channels like Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn you'll absorb the latest information and opinions will you get your daily social media fix.

It's really easy way to digest new content for your career. But also take it with a grain of salt. Not everything you see on Instagram is going to be real. Not everything you see is going to be accurate. And there's a lot of just straight up BS on there. So maybe just take that one with a grain of salt forms can be a good way to same thing with that though. Just really watch what you learn there because lots of the states can just say anything so it can be a treasure trove of information though on topics and industries. You may just need to sift through and find the information and opinions that strike your interest or seem the most reliable and the demand really, so take the opportunity to contribute to these discussions as well as absorbing new information. And once again, networking is going to be one of the main things really.

And lots of the times you can bounce ideas off of colleagues if you respect them and if they have like a genuinely educated and informed opinion. It's sometimes super invaluable to connect with those people. Just have like a little relationship where you can bounce ideas off. Blogs are also really great, I think the blogs or the yester years of podcasts though, so I would recommend podcasts or blogs myself, as you probably be more inclined to listen to them more often. while you're driving. You can't read a blog while you're driving.

You can like do a million things to improve your life and your self care while you are you listening to a podcast but when you are reading a blog that's pretty thick, you can't really do much else for yourself. So in terms of like prioritizing your self care and like thinking about this from a self care perspective. Podcasts are the new blogs. So if you're still looking at blogs, let's get on to the podcast.

So how will you take this knowledge into the workplace after you share the news with your coworkers, you can become a change leader so devoting some of your day or taking out time for your week to hold meetings can be a positive change in the workplace is sharing your opinion could sometimes be inspirational to people and sometimes being annoying. So you just really want to make sure that you're not coming off as being annoying. But if you are always that person who's like coming up with the awesome new ideas that make everyone's lives better, you will be seeing a lot of positive effects and it's really a good feeling to be able to help people in their careers because it will come back to you in different ways that like transfer of positive information. So attending into industry events as a team to can be great. When being in the know of the latest industry updates. You'll be more aware of trade or networking events occurring so you can harness your industry knowledge and by encouraging those within your team to go to events with you. You can all learn at the same time. So definitely, I think a great way as a team to build your camaraderie and the networking within your team to knowledge sharing is essential for business to run smoothly. So valuable information can be exchanged among employees that can enhance both team processes and performance. It's also really great for creating health professional relationships, you might not always get the chance to interact with specific teams within the company. But by actively seeking this out, you can increase the industry knowledge shared and stay up to date and all person industry so when you understand how everyone's jobs affects each other, then you can really be better in your role and you can be better in supporting other people in their roles too. And just seeing the overall project through in a way more efficient and cohesive manner. That let's take for example, my studio when we all get together, you know girls don't necessarily know what lash girls world is like, and vice versa and we might have similar but different challenges or opportunities.

And when we like share that experience and we really are able to build off of each other's knowledge and adapt these things and grow in both of our industries to improve our customer experience and just gain insight in all different kinds of things and how we can help clients and even how we can help with for example like consultations and stuff like that.

So if you relate that to any industry, I would assume very similar like if you were a dentist like meeting up with a dental assistants like would be super key. Any other industry like really a teamwork makes the dream work. So everyone's experienced, essentially creating the experience and if you're trying to stay up to date and evolve within a career, it's definitely important to be mixing with those teams so that you are able to elevate and evolve and grow instead of turning ripe and rotting. So I hope that this has helped you in some way shape or form. I hope I didn't make it too connected to the self care beauty industry because I know a lot of people worked in different jobs, careers, but I think it's like, universally, transferable, translatable way of thinking and if you can harness it in your work life, you will be way more happy you'll be more fulfilled.

I promise you you'll be making way more money makes a better lifestyle. It also is so infectious. So easy to do, I think at work because being paid to do it. And sometimes money can be a really good motivator for change. But once you start thinking like this and shifting your mindset in your career, which is like where we spend such a ton of time, you're going to be set up for so much more of a positive thinking and when you do that it's infectious with the rest of your life.

So you'll see a lot of different things turning around for you and improving because once you start looking for that growth and it starts feeling really good, you're not going to want to be in that stagnant, stale position, or you're ripe and you don't see a future for things and you don't have hope and you're not excited the way more excited to like learn things and grow and look for new experiences and take advantage of those opportunities that are possibly in front of you so that you don't feel like those shitting negative things the way that we get stuck somewhere. I really hope that you found some valuable information in this podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us on another episode of Elevate Yourself podcasts and we will see you again next week. Love this episode head over to iTunes to subscribe rate and leave a review. Don't forget to join us next week for another episode. Thanks for listening!