Since moving to Spain over 6 years ago I have been trying my hardest to learn Spanish.
I’ve listened to the Collin’s Spanish lessons on audible, I’ve done the Duolingo app most days and I can still only speak “Pequeno Espanol”….
It’s just not that easy to learn a new language when you’re in your 40’s, as your brain isn’t the sponge it used to be.
I’ve had other barriers too…
As we all know practice makes perfect, but I don’t get much opportunity to practice (my fault, I know).
You see most of my social circle is English and everyone in our home town seems to be able to speak English too, so even if I try to speak to them in Spanish they reply back to me in English.
Also when I do try and speak in their language the Spanish do not correct you as they think this is rude to do so, which means I’m if I’m wrong in my pronunciation then I’m never going to learn.
Well that was the case until I met Luna!!!
Luna is the daughter of a good friend who, at home speaks English and watches English TV, however as soon as she steps out the front door her schooling and her friends are all Spanish.
This means at the age of 11 she is fluent in both English and Spanish, something I am very envious of, but also that she has become by best teacher…. as she has no tact.
An 11 year old does not think it is rude to correct my pronunciation of a word (even repeating herself up to 7 times for me to get it right!) as she knows she is helping me and therefore out of all the methods I’ve been trying to improve my Spanish she is the most unusual but has become the most useful and my favourite.
This made me think about all the unusual places we can learn about improving our businesses.
Like I did when starting out my Spanish we all go to obvious place to learn about business: networking, training courses, books, YouTube.
But in truth business lessons are all around us.
Remember; “No one remembers what you said, they only remember how you made them feel”.
You can look at how other businesses made you feel special and look at ways you can implement this into your business. For instance, I ordered a home hair dye kit recently and the whole ordering and delivery process was aimed at making you feel unique, when the bottle came it even had my name on it. I have put a couple of their emails into my swipe file to look at next time I’m doing a marketing campaign.
Or even look at some businesses that have made you frustrated and neglected and think about how NOT to make your customers feel the same. I know the broadband company that we are meant to be getting our new fibre connection with, in our new home, by today have not delivered on their promise and how that makes me feel – there is definitely a business lesson or two in there somewhere! For me to ensure I do not make our clients feel the same and not to be adversely written about in someone else’s blogs!!
