LEARNING CENTER for Professional Development, Coaching and Skill-building Opportunities
Articles by In3’s themes (tagline): Inspire | Innovate | Invest
What professional development goals do you have or are you considering right now?
We offer helpful forums, co-learning opportunities, personalize coaching and other pathways to learning. We focus on impact and sustainability, which is always about human-to-human connection, serving each other toward mutual benefit, and building community.
As former adjunct professor at a top-rated business school, managing partner Daniel Robin makes learning a top priority, carrying curiosity and interest in how to cultivate experiences and services that are “just-in-time” — applied to the real-world conditions and challenges at hand.
One quarter into the current century and what do we have to show for it? Daniel is also In3’s founder, and happens to be into lifelong learning, asking how we can best succeed together. It is much more rewarding to identify and define problems that we can actually solve. He’s never met a goal too modest or too ambitious, depending on ownership of the goal, alignment with the talents and resources of the person or company that set the goal, and their commitment to its realization.
But what’s often the most valuable learning is no walk in the park. Show up, learn stuff, get to the next level in your career? Probably not. Digging for answers is normal, but how do we know when its time to stop digging? Or to switch careers? Profound value can result from a steady pursuit of learning goals over an extended period of time, but are you willing to be quite uncomfortable at times to get where you want to go?
Most everyone gets into habits and patterns in life that can interfere with the kind of learning that truly supports manifesting goals worth having. Self-awareness mixed with external input (whether formal coursework, or the “hands on” application of your talents toward new knowledge and skill) offers the right cocktail for sustainable self-development.
In practice, this means both gaining a fulsome understanding of the way the world works, as well as the way you work, which comes down to whatever enables you to do your best work within your chosen contexts (gigs, projects, a job, or a course of self-study). How do you know if you’re doing your best work? Moment by moment, you don’t, but in the longer run, you know. Some of us evaluate our results relative to whether or not we upheld most of your values along the way. Others, just want to get rewarded, appreciated now and then, and have some degree of autonomy. Those are fine values, if you don’t get swallowed up.
If you value having fun, for example, maybe financial services are not the obvious choice, but some of In3’s team absolutely love it, and not all of them are “columns and rows” accountants. :>)
Another challenge with our work comes down to whether strife or difficulty is just part of your learning process, or due to picking a context that is, for you, like a suit of ill-fitting clothes. Trying harder won’t make that right. The trend these days is “quiet quitting,” where talking to an effective coach or counselor can help you get to root cause. Healthy, incentive-aligned, harmonious contexts, inside of which you are free to learn and grow (making some excellent, hopefully non-fatal mistakes along the way) can deliver your happiness back to you, which probably takes acknowledging the truth of the situation. Just like romantic relationships, sometimes we find ourselves in a “marriage” that doesn’t measure up. Changing it can be foreboding, so you have to ask if it is going to change for you? If not, you know what to do. Here’s wishing you the fortitude to get on with whatever your future holds.
Why is a financial services company interested in learning?
Because we’re innovators. We never let “good enough” stay unexamined for very long. If it works, don’t fix it, but maybe consider breaking it — pushing aside status quo for a moment — to build a new model. What’s wrong with the old model? Well, that’s a matter of how you measure and interpret what’s “right” … lately, the imperative for change has never been more pressing. And if we’re going to succeed at turning the big ship of commerce, and job designs (in the age of AI), in a more sustainable and life-affirming direction, we must approach each system with a designer’s sensibility, as so many of them are heading over a cliff. Staying with the “cup half full” orientation, that means that happier times are just around the corner, but nothing ever stands in the way of human inventiveness, our collective creative abilities to make the world better. How do I know? We’re still here, aren’t we? We’ve yet to annihilate ourselves, and we’ve had plenty of opportunities.
So, recommendation #1, don’t focus on the wall or limitation … focus on the road ahead. It is paved in gold and there’s no shortages or “lack” of anything we truly need. Nothing is beyond our reach. It might take work, but this is rosy upside of capitalism, but it does take all of us.
So, if what you are presently doing for work isn’t teaching you a LOT it had better be good for your resume or your bank account. If none of those are happening, get out. I mean, might it be time for a change?
Building bridges of understanding happens to be an important facet of In3’s work and mission. Much of what we do is dedicated to helping open access to funding and knowledge via innovative solutions to some of the finance industry’s most frustrating problems. We publish guides that turn great complexity into practical solutions that would otherwise remain out of reach to all but those who don’t actually need to raise money.
We love to learn, and have seen skillful entrepreneurship, effective fundraising strategies and just common sense (paying attention) deliver on-target results since 1996. We all seem to want the same things and (guess what?) share the same frustrations, as born out by this earlier survey of the Top 8 Things People Desperately Want but Can’t Seem to Attain. If anything, this has deepened since COVID.
In3 Presentations, Workshops/Webinars or Retreats
Take a moment and notice whatever goals you have and, within that, whatever has caught your curiosity recently. What if there was a streamlined way that you and your team could make a quantum leap forward? What current patterns, issues or seeming roadblocks keep you from enjoying expanded success?
Sometimes the answer is to hire a professional to add to your team’s capabilities, but often the better answer is to take it in-house and learn on-the-job how to get results without overperforming. Who said that hard work is the right answer? Sure, persistence is necessary, but so is fresh thinking and gaining perspective that (by definition) we humans often lack.
Top educational themes for 2025:
- What are the top half dozen “impact” project development opportunities and which sector is right for me? The so-called “impact”, “net zero waste,” “sustainable” or “circular” economy is defining the future of investing. (See related “Entrepreneur’s Toolkit” or Primer on purpose of IGF). How has investing for “sustainable infrastructure”, nature-based climate change mitigation and not just recycling but upcycling (recovery and regeneration) of materials, ecosystems, and communities become an imperative for achieving the UN SDGs and beyond?
- Carbon & Tax Credits — how to arrange them, what businesses are most likely to benefit, and how to make sure you don’t over-rely on them as part of your sustainable value proposition.
- Guarantee Participation Opportunities — how both asset owners and sales agents stand to benefit, with above-average return-on-investments the norm, at reasonable risk.
- Impact Capital — who is investing, in what sectors, with what terms, and how to gain access?
- ESG & Performance Benchmarking — We can tailor this topic to your unique circumstances, including Impact Measurement & Management (IMM) and how this arena has finally become a must-have focus area for companies, financial institutions, and governments, large and small.
- Project Finance Essentials — inspire, innovate, invest model, also called Project Finance 101, best as a series of short sessions, spread out over 3-10 weeks.
- Mid-market Project Finance that solves 4 notorious problems with zero money down — In3’s MasterClass for Certified IGF Sales Agents and development partners (course description)
- Renewables Project Finance Happily Disrupted [ also available as a webinar ]
- The challenge of “Sustainability with Prosperity” and how that drives innovation — keys to making lasting breakthroughs without breaking a sweat (article)
- Project or Early-stage Venture Fundraising — master what not to do in order to multiple options for right action. In other words, only trust your intuition to a point.
- Investment Strategy for Renewable Energy Projects (can be tailored to a specific industry or technical pathway)
- Applied Innovation — works best as weekend retreats, offsites, or workshop. More
- Tools for Collaboration with diverse international teams … breaking down silos, proficiency gaps, or other barriers to success
- What is “Vetting” and how it works to increase your odds of success, saving time and money
- Opportunities in renewables, waste-to-value and/or clean energy markets
- [ Additional Course Topics (management skills, mostly) or Ask Us if you have a particular topic in mind not appearing here ]
Free Educational Guides & Templates
We firmly believe in open access to capital for all who can put in the necessary time and effort to conceive of a mid-market project or venture innovation and maintain sufficient objectivity (be careful not to “fall in love” with your idea) to prove it is feasible with reasonable and transparent assumptions.
This practice of dreaming up projects, planning them with sufficient rigor to know there is a solid business in the making takes quite a bit of drive, determination, and talent, not to mention teamwork. Toward that end, In3 offers a full suite of Educational Guides to ease the pain of figuring things out from scratch. Take advantage of our nearly three decades of experience and go as deep as you can before contacting us. This, we firmly believe, makes for a productive arrangement that gets results and benefits communities, and stakeholders where the projects operate. See list of available guides here.
See definitions if the meaning of terminology used here seems unclear. Or All FAQs.
See also our Video Library or recent interviews and public presentations made by Mr. Robin.