When I started Beetle Press in 1998, I was a writer, editor and graphic designer, and I had to admit there were things I didn’t know about running a business. But I didn’t admit this easily, and as a result, I didn’t grow or develop my business skills—and my business—as quickly as I could have.

It’s critical that we continually engage in educational exercises—whether that’s reading about what’s new in your industry, taking a class, signing up for a coaching session or simply listening to someone speak with intention on an unfamiliar topic. There is no shame in educating yourself on a new level.

Lately, I’ve committed myself to learning more about politics and current events because we are at a time in American history where we all need to pay attention and be present.

In the past few years, I have engaged in intense learning around my work. I signed up—and greatly benefited from—business coaching with Val Nelson. I entered into a collaboration called The Creative with Ruth Griggs, a marketing strategist, and Maureen Scanlon, a designer. Working with them has been like enrolling in an MBA program in terms of what I have gleaned.

I also learn from clients, like Linda Edwards of Glenmeadow, a life plan community in Longmeadow, high on the list of people who teach me without knowing it. Linda is Glenmeadow’s marketing director. She brings a passion to her work as well as a standard for top quality, and I take a lot of pleasure in watching her, and listening.

I am trying to teach my grandson that it’s exciting to grow and develop, that it’s a sign of intelligence to say, “Oh, teach me more about that.” He has the mindset I once had that if you admit to not knowing, you are not bright.

“I know that,” he says often.

“And if you listen, you will know more,” I tell him.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t always need a reminder that I could keep quiet and acquire a new piece of information. Sometimes I have to learn the hard way.

Like last fall, when I pulled my boat out of the water at Sportsman’s Marina and, as I do every year, spent hours cleaning the filthy bottom.

About two hours in to my work, two men happened along and began to tell me about a product called Slimy Grimy. I insisted I’d used it before and that it didn’t work. I even had a brand new container of the stuff in my car. They praised the virtues of Slimy Grimy. I insisted it didn’t work. They gave up on me.

But 30 minutes or so later, another guy came along with the same message, “Oh, if you used Slimy Grimy, you’d be done in 15 minutes. You just wipe the side of the boat with your sponge, and that black stuff comes off, white as the day you bought the boat.”

I argued. Told him I’d used Slimy Grimy before. He did not let it go as easily as the first two want-to-be mentors. He asked me to get the product out of my car, and I did—because it was clear he was not going to go away. He asked me to mix a batch up, and he told me the trick I didn’t know, because it’s not on the directions: You need hot water, which I fetched in the marina bathroom.

I mixed a batch, and, satisfied he’d changed my life for the good, the guy left to pull his own boat out of the water on his trailer.

My first pass with the sponge, soaked with hot Slimy Grimy produced a shiny white stripe on a boat I had been scrubbing for a half day. I couldn’t believe it. The whole boat was done, and the bottom gleamed like new, in the 15 or 20 minutes it took for my persistent mentor to pull his boat out.

I thanked him profusely.

I learned something important! So, remember to listen, even when you think you know better!

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Molly is a second grade teacher on a tiny island in the South Pacific called Majuro. We will meet on Dec. 19 in Hawaii, half way between Majuro—the capital city of the Marshall Islands—and Easthampton, Massachusetts, and we’ll stay for three weeks in a friend’s house on Kona. We plan to snorkel, hike and explore.

So, instead of decking my halls and dreaming about a white Christmas, I’ve been packing my sun block, flip flops and my grandmother’s Hawaiian skirt. I’m also packing my laptop and some of my file folders. As I did last year, I will combine work and play on the trip.

I’ll be writing a manuscript for a client and managing other client projects as well. This year, I will have reliable WiFi and use of my telephone; last year, on Majuro, the capital island of the Marshall Islands, I was in a techno black-out zone, and that was cool in its own way—once I got over the shock and anxiety of unplugging.

You may remember that I visited Molly last winter in the Marshall Islands. I stayed for a month. I worked on several client’s manuscripts while away, and I also penned a series of blogs. We repeatedly visited an island called Eneko; we received an actual message in a bottle from a helicopter pilot; went on a helicopter ride; and met the former president of Majuro at an island barbeque.

This year, I hope we have even a fraction of the kinds of exploits and learnings that we had last year. I’m excited to learn about the culture of the island of Kona and some of its mystery and history. And I hear there is an active volcano, and we might see molten lava!

I am all about learning these days. Keeping my mind open and tuned in to what’s new and different is what allows me to do my best work for clients. Through listening, absorbing and understanding, I get to know a client and his or her preferences as well as the overall organization mission and goals.

Learning is not for the uneducated. No, it’s for people who understand that there is always a new way to grow, and that the more you grow and develop, the better you can be.

More on that topic in two weeks!

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I remember walking to her desk one day to ask her how to spell a certain word. “Look it up in the dictionary,” she told me without making eye contact. She did not explain how one looks up a word one does not know how to spell. So, I went back to my desk, and I did not attempt to figure it out.

Mrs. Lambson could have suggested that I come up with my best guess at spelling the word in question and look that creative spelling up in the dictionary. She could have suggested that I continue to refine my guess until I found the correct spelling.

Instead, I guessed at word spellings for many more years, until I eventually learned the technique on my own; it made perfect sense. The process of guessing, searching and refining was also a good practice to weave into my study habits, and it served as an excellent framework for looking words up in the AP Stylebook when I became a journalist after college.

Most reporters I worked with at local newspapers didn’t take an interest in the stylebook or much care if their copy was what we would call “clean”—free of grammatical and style errors—when they submitted it to an editor. I, on the other hand, rather obsessed over it. I wanted to stand out, and I was interested in newspaper style as well. I considered hunting through the stylebook for answers a bit of a game.

Eventually, my curiosity and persistence paid off; I memorized all the key style points over time and now only rarely have to consult the guide book. Now that I am using The Chicago Manual of Style more, though, as I develop and edit books for clients like Jim Ricci and Tom Zink. I find I must go back to my former discipline of looking things up. This is tedious, but important if I want to do my best work.

I have also recently been inspired to reread The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. This “little” book, as Strunk called it when he first published it in 1946, is full of good learnings and reminders on the craft of writing.

Reading, and refreshing my knowledge, is one way that I do professional development. It continually expands my brain in a way that is easy to manage, timewise. It’s also good for my clients, and so it is good for me and also good for my colleagues in The Creative, whom I work with a good deal.

We should all look for the ways in which we need reminders in our industry, and practice the things we might have grown fuzzy on, seeking out those areas that represent new territory.

What is your growth challenge? Figure it out, and eagerly study up!

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