Today is the third day of International Work Out Loud Week and it’s all about making a contribution.

So for today’s challenge, my contribution will be to share my own story on Snapchat on how Working Out Loud has helped me in my own business so that it could open the conversation for others in their own business to share their own story.

The reason for this is that my purpose (the problem I’m solving) this week is to find out what benefits, value, risks, and rewards are there for, freelancers, small business people and young people in search of employment to work out loud using social networks to support and build a new business, find work or help them in their own personal, professional or business goals.  

There’s a lot of different ideas out there about working in public. Whether you’re an employee in a company or someone working in your own business, everyone has their own perceptions.  While some want more tangible proof, evidence and data that working out loud provides impact and benefits to business immediately, others like the idea that they can finally express their own unique skills, talents and knowledge and show their work so that they start to build new connections in the workplace.  For them, the evidence comes through on the quality of the relationships, creativity and innovative ideas that they start to have.

I’m hoping my story will encourage others who are similar to me – those who are not employees in companies – but running their own businesses to share their own story and how working out loud has helped them and their business.

• The good and the bad.
• The pros and the cons.
• The risks and the rewards.
• The challenges and the opportunities.
• The fear and the exaltation.
• The vulnerability and the security or safety that comes with keeping ideas to yourself.

Is working out loud really all worth it to people working for themselves?

I’m going to share my story of how using social networks and this blog have been CRITICAL for me in my own learning journey.  As someone who works in the field of learning and development, I would have felt like a fraud if I didn’t walk the talk when it came to social sharing behaviours as espousing working out loud as a modern workplace learning behaviour.

I need to BE DOING IT MYSELF IF I ASK OTHERS TO COME ON THE JOURNEY WITH ME hence why I use the blog as my online space where I share what I’m doing.  

I will share the story of how I experimented with video openly through this blog and also showed my experiments on my YouTube channel and what resulted from these.

The result of me learning a new skill out loud was that I was exposed to opportunities I never thought possible.  These have been from becoming a roving reporter for LearningNow TV to being selected as an applicant to be in a film crew to create a short film (The Ultimate Social Learning Experience) sponsored by my local council and then have our film screened at the local cinema was an honour.  I’ve had some other opportunities along the way such as invitations to different events outside my field of corporate learning and development to work with different professions – engineers, auditors, accountants, doctors.

I would NEVER have had these opportunities if I didn’t openly SHARE out loud what I wanted to learn.   These opportunities came about because people read or saw my own story and then REFERRED me to new business opportunities or leads.

So what about you? What will your contribution be for Work Out Loud Week?  How has working out loud contributed to someone else’s personal learning journey?

So What Happened on Snapchat Yesterday on Making a Connection?

Here’s the video of what happened in the last 24 hours on Snapchat.

My most favourite connection was MEETING my favourite author David Hunt (who we connected on Twitter) in person last night at a Readings Book Launch.  He was launching his new book True Girt, The Unauthorised History of Australia Volume 2 so it was a chance to get the books autographed and ask him some questions about Aussie history!  (He was kind enough to do an introduction to his book 5:54).

Once the snaps were shared I’ve had 4 different conversations with people whom I didn’t previously know or connect with on other social media. That is, they were completely new people. Their feedback to me was that they liked how I was snapping every day and now considering how they’re going to structure their snap channel to educate others in their area.  One viewer described herself as a “Learning Junkie” and I liked that – I’m going to use it!