There are so many opportunities to grow your knowledge and collections online without having to spend. The July challenge on Equus-Blog is to make use of these free resources to better yourself.
Let’s focus on this in 3 particular areas:
- Networking – work to build up connections that have the potential to be beneficial to your career over the long term. Connect with people that are in the industry you’re in, the one that you aim to be in and the industry/ies that you’ve been in and can offer advice about.
How to do this? Consider the likes of LinkedIn, Horse Networking, Facebook and/or Twitter. You can set up a profile and start to promote yourself and your skills, whilst also connecting with people that have similar interests or career aspirations. All of these have free account options – what have you got to lose? - Educate yourself via free resources and groups that you can join. Not every piece of advice or information online is worth taking on, but there are some great resources out there to educate and inspire you. I have some free resources (and some paid ones) that relate to equine educational resources over at TeachersPayTeachers. The resource category on this site has posts that detail free fact sheets, webinars, electronic resources and more – and the best bit is that they relate to horses and horse business!
- Share advice and resources that have benefited you. Don’t focus solely on what you can get for free; become that person who gives to others because it will benefit them, too!
Over time people will look to you for advice and seek you out, because you’re recognised as a person who is keen to help, generous and able to provide sound feedback or advice. This is a great way to continue to build up your network of contacts and have people share with you, other beneficial resources they’ve come across.
So what could your goals be for this July challenge?
- Create your online profile/s now!
- Reach out to people in your industry or the industry you want to enter – set a goal of a certain number of people (say 7 people a week / 1 a day) to try to connect with.
- Make a note of any advice or resources that you have found beneficial and start to promote them to others who you feel would also benefit from them – again, do this as soon as you find the resource and share it openly/publicly or set a number of people to share it with.
As per usual, make sure you set deadlines, tell someone about your goals for the month and get started 🙂
