Philip VanDusen 🔥

As a podcaster and YouTube creator with over 290k subscribers and 500+ videos, I can attest to the fact that YouTube is one of the best platforms to use to learn about entrepreneurship. I've been creating videos on topics revolving around entrepreneurship, creative professional careers, branding and marketing for over 8 years, sharing everything I've learned over a 30 year career of working in global agencies and corporations with the Fortune 100. I don't share this to crow about myself. I share it because I'm just one of dozens of professionals on YouTube doing this. It's all there - available to anyone who wants to learn - for free. We truly live in the "Golden Age of Self-Education".

The value of mentorship cannot be understated in educating yourself as an entrepreneur. It cuts the time it takes to make real headway dramatically, and reduces the dead-ends and false starts along the way by having someone giving you advice who has "already been there, and done that". Group coaching communities and mastermind groups are also a great source of mentorship. The educational value is geometrically multiplied through having a wider range of active participants - who are all seeking to learn and grow. The energy that is created from a group mentoring experience is self-perpetuating and compounds massively. Individuals succeed faster in mastermind groups than they ever would have been able to on their own.

One of the often overlooked aspects of online courses that is massively valuable are the assets that often come with them - as bundled value-adds. As the creator of an online course on the basics of brand strategy, not only is the education that's available online highly valuable, but the associated resources that can come with them: in the form of downloads, templates, tools and digital assets, can often save you tons of time and resources compared to having to create them on your own. And they can immediately be put to work in your business.

Very few careers are perfectly linear. It is often that a great career looks ‘more like a web than a ladder’. Meaning, that as we progress in our careers, there may be side-jogs or pivots that we must make along the way. It’s important to consider the range of skills that you are developing, and how those skills might be leveraged in another way, or in a slightly different space in your category of business. How are they ‘transportable’ to another type of role? Increasing the number of skills that you have in your tool kit can mean the difference between feeling boxed in when unexpected change happens in your company or career, or feeling like you have options or alternate directions you could explore.

Volatility in your employment or in the company you work for is something that no professional should ignore. One of the best things that you can do in your career is to work diligently at expanding your meaningful network. One of the best ways to do that is to join a mastermind group of 8 to 10 professionals within your industry who are at your level or above. By meeting regularly with other professionals, you can support each other, set goals, and hold each other accountable for achieving those goals. Masterminds also help you stay abreast of the most current professional practices and processes in your industry. They act as a ‘safe space’ for you to ask for help and support in your professional journey.

There have been studies that have shown that up to 80% of your success in your job is due to how much exposure you get to upper management. You would think that your success would hinge on the level of your skills the quality of your work, etc. so it is distressing to many professionals to find that so much of their success and promotability are driven by how visible they are to executives who could positively affect their career trajectory. So it’s very important to accept every opportunity and project that comes your way where you can be ‘seen’, to leverage this reality.