As a Certified Public Accountant (CPA,) I am required to renew my license every two years. Like thousands of CPAs across the country, it comes down to the wire and I struggle to obtain the hours I need to meet Continuing Professional Education (CPE) requirements. This ongoing licensing process can be stressful, yet extremely gratifying, creating in me the belief that learning should not stop just because you have a degree in hand.
In fact, it is my love for learning that raised a question: If so many professional services require continued education, including CPAs, attorneys, doctors, real estate agents and brokers, then why not marketing professionals? I couldn’t come up with the answer, but I did have a eureka moment that led to how E.B. Lane University (EBLu) was formed.
With continued education, advanced learning and training is the whole point of the courses, but the networking and sharing of ideas is always rewarding and inherent when like-minded professionals get together. This was the case for a young woman from American Express, who shared with me how their organization held monthly lunch-and-learn sessions. She commented about how interesting they were and how the staff in the accounting department received credit for the classes. That’s when the light came on – we could do the same thing at E.B. Lane.
Typical within the walls of a creative shop, the first lunch-and-learn was branded E.B. Lane University with it’s own EBLu logo, student notebook, and some lively discussion about the excitement of going back to school. We knew it would only take the offer of free lunch and a calendar of interesting topics to have a full classroom of students seated.
Our first two courses were focused on Marketing Profs webinars: “How Branding Can Impact the Bottom Line, The Harrah’s Story” and “How to Avoid the Meatball Sundae” by Seth Godin. We mixed up the topics by learning from our own experts, including a lesson on search engine optimization and an introduction to Facebook and Twitter before these social media terms became everyday words. For a more personal focus, we learned everything about effective networking and how to eat healthy for a more energetic lifestyle.
Perhaps a license is not the end result from EBLu, but 12 classes and more than five hundred classroom hours later, we have definitely received an education from community leaders, clients, professional speakers and internal staff.
For true professionals, lifetime learning should never stop. Although it’s a CPA requirement to renew a certificate every two years, I’ve learned it’s not just about the certificate. Continued education is about the process of learning something new, a mindset of continuous improvement and staying fresh.
So what’s next for EBLu? I have a lot of ideas swirling in my head. We have a course on grammar in the works, there could be the beginning of a book club or toastmasters club, and there’s always training in a formalized subject matter. But we’re open to creative recommendations and we would love to hear your thoughts. What topics interest you? Are you willing to teach a course? Please share your comments – and make sure you’re on time for class.
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