Home Business Training - Why "Training" Needs to be Part of the Way You Learn to do Your Home Business

Training is organized learning. Think about it. You can learn a lot of things on your own by...

• conversing with others that have home businesses.


• reading articles in home business magazines.


• listening to feedback (for example, from customers, or, if you are in network marketing, from upline leaders).


• reading comments by other entrepreneurs in an online forum.


• reading books, listening to tapes, etc.

People can learn from all of the above methods. What do they have in common? They are informal and learner-initiated (mostly) - these are good things and are helpful to learning. What else? They are "hit or miss" and inefficient - these things are not helpful.

Training is different. It is not hit or miss. Training is deliberately created to focus on what successful people do in the performance of certain jobs and tasks. (Trainers use the word "job" to refer to a collection of "tasks". Create a Squidoo lens is an example of one of many "tasks" that make up the "job" of marketing.) The creation of training follows a process that begins with job and task analysis and ends with a series of lessons. The lessons can be provided to a group (class) or in a one-to-one setting (coaching); they can be presented "live in person" or through media (eLearning or webinars).

Well-constructed training includes, among others, these characteristics:

• There is a lesson reflecting every task that had been identified as an important skill for success


• The lessons are organized into the best sequence for learning.


• The sequence provides choices so that pre-existing abilities are taken into account.


• Each lesson includes appropriate practice that contributes to competence and confidence.


• Practice includes feedback to the trainee so they know how they are doing and how to improve.


• Each lesson includes enough relevant information and demonstration, so that a trainee is able to do the lesson practice successfully.

Key point: There are many ways to learn how to do the things that bring success to the home business owner. However, hit-or-miss learning results in a huge number of people that mostly miss the learning and fail, with only a few that stumble on it and succeed. On the other hand, well-constructed training expedites and condenses the learning process. Because it accelerates the curve to productivity, it can very well make the difference between significant profit and significant debt.

I want to be clear that training alone will not guarantee home business success.

Your mind-set is a major determinant for success in business. Among other things, a proper mind-set includes belief in yourself (confidence), belief in the value of others, gratitude, and valuing constructive criticism. Actually, gaining skills through training can build self-confidence and impact one's mind-set in other positive ways. At the same time, your mind-set will determine your receptivity to different aspects of training and your ability to focus upon and persevere in the training (ie., your intrinsic motivation to learn).

Your personality profile also plays a role in your success in business. Among other things, your personality profile looks at where you fall along the extrovert-introvert continuum. It is important to recognize your strengths and weaknesses and to focus on business activities that relate to your strengths. Personality traits can impact mind-set and can be a factor in the type of learning that works best for you. At the same time, your mind-set and training, working together in a positive way, can significantly reduce any limitations of your personality profile as well as further empower your dominant traits for purposes of productivity.

The home business owner is faced with a huge array of areas in which training may be desirable. For example

->Inter-personal skills development: active listening skills, mentoring skills, etc.
->Marketing tasks: develop a customer list, create a web presence, etc
->Oral presentation tasks: create and deliver a product testimonial, etc.
->Selling skills: answer objections, close the sale, etc.
->Financial tasks: recognize and record business expenses, etc.

Where would you begin your training? Answer: Since your most pressing goal is likely to make money as soon as possible, select training that will best enable you to get customers to buy your product or service.

OK, then- what training will best equip you to do customer acquisition? Like all businesses, as an internet business professional, you must identify your target market. The other part is knowing enough about different marketing strategies so that you can choose a strategy that is most likely to be effective considering your product, your strengths, your customers, and your resources (including your budget).

Consideration of marketing strategies is a bit more than can be included in this lens topic. However, in comparing just three possible strategies, I recommend an Internet Attraction Marketing strategy because the potential target audience is huge, the cost is reasonable, and it is relatively easy to learn with effective training (see table below). Click here to obtain a free eBook that describes Internet Attraction Marketing.

Key point: I strongly recommend that a marketing strategy be the area in which to begin your training for a home business. And the most useful strategy to study, in my opinion, is the Internet Attraction Marketing strategy.

As it happens, there are many books, CDs, coaches, guides, and web sites that offer to teach you how to do Internet Attraction Marketing. In other words, there is a lot of information available, with some sources better than others. Here again is a link to a free eBook, The Attraction Marketer's Manifesto, that describes Internet Attraction Marketing. It is not the only excellent resource, but it is one of them... and it is free.



However, while you can learn about attraction marketing from The Attraction Marketer's Manifesto, and several other excellent resources (along with many poorly prepared materials), none of these things can be considered training!

I only know of two places (both are web sites) that offer a series of lessons designed to improve your performance in the required tasks for internet marketing / network marketing/ attraction marketing. Of the two, the training resource I recommend is the Renegade Professional. The tasks are so well selected and the lessons are so-well constructed that your competence in the required skills (tasks) is assured. A number of people have described their successful performance in attraction marketing as a result of the lessons available from the Renegade Professional in a free 42 page eBooklet. Even more individuals were interviewed and their success stories were recorded which you can listen to here. Incidentally, while many of the stories are provided by home business owners that wish to apply these skills to network marketing, you should understand that the lessons are applicable to internet attraction marketing for any type of home business.

The Renegade Professional training begins with a series of some dozen introductory lessons that are intended to lay a foundation. This is followed by scores of subsequent lessons set up on an elective basis which focus on social media such as the appropriate business use of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, and many other tools.

The Renegade Professional occasionally provides free sample lessons in order to get an idea of how the entire training program works. Check my free resources page for more information on current availability.

If you decide to follow my recommendation and look into the Renegade Professional, there are two things you should know:

1. A key part of training (as listed earlier on this page) is to receive feedback on your practice activities, or at least, your first projects. However, feedback is NOT included as part of the Renegade Professional training. You will need to arrange for this separately. The best bet is to use one of the coaches available from the Renegade Professional sponsored program called Coaching Cognition. Don't forget to do this in order to receive the full benefit of the training!


2. There are now over 200 video tutorials available in the Renegade Professional program. A recommended starting point is the free enrollment in the introductory course called the Renegade University.

Key Point: Of all the possible home business training available, the most useful and profitable is that which builds your internet attraction marketing skills. The best place to do that currently is the Renegade Professional.