Why Teaching Is Good For Business

One of the biggest challenges I face as an entrepreneur is deciding which way to take my business whenever I begin a project I haven’t mastered yet. Every single day is an unknown, until you’ve gone through it, or you enlist the mentorship of someone who has.

We live in a world of constantly changing variables and fast-paced iterations in technology, customers and trends. As an entrepreneur, sometimes I feel like I’m figuring things out for the first time every day. As much as I try to plan my day, it feels like whenever I walk in the office or open my inbox, something unexpected shows up. How do I get through it? How do I find a path through the unknown every day? The reality is most days I don’t have the answer. Most of the time, I haven’t yet been down the path I’m walking, it’s a brand new experience in an ever changing world. And it gets pretty intimidating if you don’t have a place to turn to for guidance.

Thank goodness for the internet, right? There’s answers for everything, from how to tie a full windsor knot to where to buy fireworks in Tijuana. But seriously, sifting through all that information can be just as intimidating as trying to figure things out on your own. I taught myself how to sew once because I was too lazy to read how to do it, but I made a lot of mistakes and eventually gave up. I later taught myself Visual Effects for video, and religiously studied and practiced countless online tutorials and training videos. I’m certainly not a master yet, but I get better every day and am able to confidently make all kinds of stuff blow up (on screen of course).

Through the years of running my companies, I’ve been blessed to have a number of bright-eyed and talented interns come to study with me. Through taking the time to distill what I’ve learned carving out my path in the video arts and in business, I’ve been able to help these interns hone and develop their skills to become rockstars at what they do. And every single one of them teaches me, while helping to deepen my understanding of what it is I do on a daily basis. To be brutally honest, occasionally it isn’t until I actually explain to my interns what our plan for a project is, I don’t fully understand all the levels or nuances of it. It’s as if they are helping me figure out in real-time what it really means to run a company. Because they are there to learn, you bet they are going to ask those really insightful questions that sometimes we skip over as business owners or project managers.

But why is teaching important anyway? Wouldn’t it make more sense if I used that time to just get better at what I do instead of teaching someone else? Aside from the satisfaction of helping people learn new skills and save time figuring things out on their own, there’s a few reasons I believe teaching is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves.

Teaching allows you to position yourself as an authority figure so that more opportunities come your way. If you’re like me, trying to do “outbound sales” is a frustrating and intimidating process. I would much rather have sales and opportunities come to me. I heard a story about an agent at a top firm once, and although I forgot who told it to me, the story still resonates with me. My friend was looking for representation and got a referral to this top agent. The agent looked at him and said, “Look, I can tell you’re talented and you’ve got a big future with a young agent who can pick up the phone and promote you. But I’m not that guy. I don’t want to pick up the phone to call people anymore. I just want to be the guy who takes calls now.” If we take the time to establish ourselves as a teacher, we’ll begin to create opportunities instead of chasing them. With every lesson that we teach, course we produce, or article we write on our subject we are leaving a legacy for people to find and trace back to us.

Teaching coupled with intentional practice is the fastest way to mastery. I tend to procrastinate or make mistakes whenever I do something I haven’t built a routine for. If I have outlined a clear roadmap, with a plan and a predetermined outcome, I am equipped to fly through my tasks without distraction, because I’ve been here before! Because I know what to expect! Now sometimes, I may have done a task before, but not taken the time to create a system or a blueprint for how to do that task… and guess what! It’s even harder than the first time! It’s hard to find the initiative and the inspiration to carry through. But if I am forced to teach someone how to do said task, suddenly I am required to figure out a systematized roadmap to help them succeed at the task. Furthermore, if they have questions along the way, it will help me wrap my head around how to do that task even better. And then suppose that I am required to teach another student the same task? That system gets more refined, more clear, more foolproof. Pretty soon, in helping the students understand the path, I have become a master at the task. And because I’ve taken the time to create the system, if ever I forget how to do the task, I can always refer back to my manual I’ve created. As Aristotle puts it, “Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.”

However, in my opinion, the real king of benefits comes from this incredible ability for the act of teaching to scale. With investing the time to distill our knowledge, workflow, insights, pitfalls, and best practices, we’re able to create… you guessed it, a product that can be leveraged and scaled. Whether you write your expertise down in a series of operating manuals and white sheets, or record them as video tutorials, once you record that information you can use it again and again to train future employees, interns, students. You’ve suddenly multiplied your time and reach. Now that you’ve prepared your training materials, your students can hear your voice and learn your process while you can be sipping mojitos on a hammock in Playa del Carmen. If you invest the time to teach effectively, and then create a scalable product out of your teaching, you will begin to “multiply” your time, and as Rory Vaden eloquently states, “You multiply your time by spending time on things today that will give you more time tomorrow.” Whether you intend to sell your teaching as a product, or simply improve the operations of your company and staff, investing the time to permanently record the information will save you countless hours down the road.

To sum it all up, I’ll refer to Dr. Maya Angelou: “When you get, give. When you learn, teach.”

Project Spaghetti Wall

Noah Scott
Director, LA REELS