Some of the easiest and best ways to improve your business skills
Are you a new business owner wondering how to improve your business skills? Or, perhaps you have been in business for a few years but you are not quite where you’d like to be. Whatever your story is, it is good that you are thinking of improving your business skills.
To become a successful entrepreneur, you have to be willing to push yourself. You must move out of your comfort zone, and take some risks. But, it is hard to do this if you lack confidence in yourself or your skills.
Learning is an essential part of entrepreneurship, but things can get overwhelming or chaotic if you don’t have a learning plan. Your learning will be more productive if you have a plan that you follow. You will also save yourself a lot of time and money.
So, in this post, I will share some of my best tips for improving your business knowledge and skills.
If you are ready to go to the next level in your business, let’s jump right in.
This post may contain affiliate links. If you buy anything using my links, I may receive a small commission.
1. IDENTIFY THE SKILLS OR KNOWLEDGE YOU WANT TO IMPROVE
If you have been in business for a little while, you may have identified some gaps in your knowledge or skills. Those are the skills you need to improve, especially if they are essential to your business growth.
There are a number of skills that are needed to run a business successfully. Some of the most important ones include marketing, sales, and financial management. However, they are not the only ones.
The first step to improving your business skills is to identify the skills you want to work on. If you are not sure where to start from, start with an audit of your existing skills and go from there, or use a business skills checklist to identify what skills you have and the ones you lack.
If you need help with this, you can use the questions below as a guide.
- Do you know how to market your business effectively? Are you good at attracting new customers? Do you have a marketing strategy?
- Do you know how to convert leads to buyers?
- Can you manage your business finances effectively?
- How is your organizational skills?
- Are you happy with your communication or networking skills?
- Can you create a business plan?
- Do you know how to research your market or industry? Can you identify your customers’ pain points or what they need?
Feel free to use this list to conduct a personal audit of your skills. You can always add to them. At the end of the day, you are in the best position to identify any gap in your skills or knowledge.
Doing a skills audit is important if you are serious about improving your business skills.
Once you complete this process, you are ready to move on to the next step.
2. PICK ONE SPECIFIC TOPIC OR SKILL YOU WANT TO LEARN ABOUT OR IMPROVE
How to improve the business skills you identified? Start by picking one skill or topic you want to improve. Preferably, the most important one or the one that will have the biggest impact on your business.
As an entrepreneur, you should enjoy learning new things and always be learning. But, the mistake lots of business owners make is trying to learn more than one thing at a time.
For the best results, it’s always better to focus on one topic at a time. First, you will reduce the amount of time it takes to learn that topic or skill, and secondly, you can give your undivided attention to it. When your attention is split, it’s harder to do a good or effective job.
Now, I know with so many things clamoring for your attention and your desire for a shortcut, you might be tempted to delve into many things at once. But, in my experience, you will end up not completing anything, and worse, you will waste a lot of money. I have done this a lot of times, so I know exactly what I am talking about.
So, the quickest way to improve your business skills is to be hyper-focused. Don’t try to multi-task. Pick one thing, master it before moving on to the next.
For example, let’s say you want to improve your marketing skills. There are lots of things to learn about marketing., and lots of topics to choose from. So, the first thing you have to do is to narrow things down.
What do you want to learn about first? Do you want to learn about SEO, Pinterest, email marketing, advertising, or something else? As you can see, these are all really big topics and will take some time to truly master them. So, the more specific you are, the better your result will be.
So, go ahead, identify your most pressing issue and what you need to learn first. Start with that. Or, if you are a new business owner, here are the most important things to focus on in the first year of business.
If you want an easy way to plan your blogging or business education, check out the Improve Your Business Skills Planner. It’s affordable and will save you lots of time and money. Check it out!
3. HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS SKILLS? SET SOME LEARNING GOALS
One of the answers to the question “How to improve my learning skills?” is, set some learning goals.
So, what is a learning goal?
A learning goal is what you hope to achieve at the end of a period of study. Anytime you decide to learn something, ask yourself, “What are my goals? What do I hope to achieve after learning this thing? What’s my desired outcome?”
If you can’t articulate your learning goals or the purpose for learning a particular skill or acquiring some knowledge, then you are probably on the wrong track.
Everything you learn should have a purpose. It should help your personal or business growth. It’s okay if you want to learn something for fun, but if you are planning to improve or grow your business, your learning goals must be clear and realistic.
So, let’s look at an example.
Let’s say you want to learn about SEO (search engine optimization). Your learning goals should include:
- Understanding what SEO is and how it is relevant to your business.
- Learn how to do keyword research.
- How to find low-competition keywords.
- How to rank your articles on Google and other search engines.
- Understanding on-page and off-page SEO.
As you can see, there are a number of outcomes you can get from learning SEO. So, if this is an area of interest for you, you start by picking one topic, learning everything you can about it, before moving on to the next.
It’s important to know what your goals are before you begin a period of study. Knowing what your goals are will help you find the right tools or resources to use to achieve your desired outcomes. Additionally, it will help you to stay focused.
You can use this same process for any topic or skill you want to improve. Whether it is learning about Pinterest, building your audience, budgeting, or organizing your business.
So, grab a piece of paper and a pen, and make a list of your learning goals. Or, consider using a planner like the Improve Your Business Skills Planner. to help you stay on track. Check it out below.
4. IDENTIFY ALL THE RESOURCES YOU NEED TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE OR SKILLS
At this point, you have identified the skills you want to improve, picked the first topic or skill you want to learn about, and set some learning goals. Now, it’s time to take steps to improve.
In this step, you are going to invest some time and money in your education. The investment you need to make depends on the tools or resources you choose and how you learn best.
This is by no means an easy process because of the myriad of resources and tools available on the market. But it is something that needs to be done.
To identify the best resources, you will need to do some research or ask for recommendations from people you trust. After your research, make a list of all the resources you found or the recommendations you got. You are going to need this list, later on, so hang on to it.
Now, let me say that if you are on a limited budget, it’s okay to use free resources, as long as you understand this route will require more time and you won’t get all the information that you need.
But, the good thing about free resources is that they often lead to more comprehensive paid offers. So, if you are happy with a free resource, you can decide to upgrade to a paid offer. For example, Debbie Gardner has a free SEO course and some paid SEO resources. They are highly recommended if you are interested in this topic.
Now, it’s time to get back to the list of resources you compiled.
Before you invest in any tool or resource, you can ask the following questions to help you narrow down your choices.
- Is this the best person to learn from?
- Is this the right resource to learn from?
- Can I afford this product or resource?
- Do I understand what I will be getting?
- How long will it take to complete this resource or learn how to use this tool?
- Is there an easier, cheaper, or faster way?
- Do I like the format of this resource? Personally, I would rather read than watch videos, but most courses include texts and videos, so that’s okay.
This is not a comprehensive list of questions to ask, but if you work your way through them, you should be able to make a good choice. Also, don’t forget the costs. The most expensive products are not always the best, so factor that into your consideration.
So, this is how to identify and choose the best resources to learn from.
5. SET START AND COMPLETION DATES
Once you have identified the resources, training, courses, free videos, or whatever you need to improve your skills or knowledge, the next thing to do is to set a start and completion date.
Some topics take longer than others to learn, so always give yourself enough time to start and finish. For example, you probably don’t need weeks to learn how to use Canva, but you will need quite a bit of time to learn a marketing strategy.
Of course, learning never ends, and you can always revisit a topic to learn more about it. However, for the initial study, it’s good to have a start and end date or a time frame. For example, one month, two weeks, or something like that.
I like the idea of learning one new topic every month. This way, I can really delve into a subject, use multiple resources (depending on how comprehensive they are), and learn as much as possible.
There’s no right or wrong way to do this. The only thing that is important is that you actually do it. A time frame helps you to stay focused. When you set a target date, it forces you to stop procrastinating. I have resources that have taken me months to complete because I didn’t have a completion date, so there was no sense of urgency.
This is not a very effective way to learn because you end up not implementing anything. And, we all know that learning without implementation is pointless. So, if you want to hold yourself accountable, always set a target date before you begin a period of study. And, make sure it is a realistic time frame.
6. IMPLEMENT AND REVIEW THE RESULTS
Like I said a few times, you won’t get any benefit from learning if you don’t implement something you have learned.
Did you learn how to do keyword research? Did you learn how to do email marketing? Then, put that knowledge into practice. That’s the only way to know if the tactics you learned about actually work.
Implementation is also a good way to tweak your tactics or customize what you have learned to fit your needs. So, don’t buy a course, go through it, without taking action. That defeats the purpose and is a waste of time and money.
Ahem, I remember buying some templates because they were on sale and never actually using them.
It doesn’t matter if something is on sale or not. It’s not a good deal if you are not going to use it. Remember that the next time you want to buy something because it is on sale.
So, what do you do after implementation? You review the results. Allow yourself enough time before you review the result. If it is something you expect to see an immediate result, then you can check it as soon as you are done. For example, making changes to your website, installing a plugin, or things like that.
But, for most things, you should expect to wait weeks or months to see the full benefit.
What do you do during a review? Well, check if you got your desired outcome. If not, try to figure out what went wrong so you can fix it.
After the review, determine if you need further training on the subject or if you are happy with the result.
Finally, rinse and repeat until you improve all the skills you identified at the beginning of this post.
Final thoughts on how to improve your business skills the smart way
There are many skills needed to run a business successfully. You should already have some of them, but you may lack some other key skills.
Working to improve these skills or to acquire more knowledge is an ideal way to build and run a business. No matter what the skill is, there are lots of resources available to help you learn whatever you need to.
All you need is the desire to learn, a plan, and an education budget. Yes, you need a budget for learning.
Since there are lots of tools and resources out there, make sure you take the time to do proper research, so you can identify the resources that cover all the topics you want to learn about. Sometimes, you need more than one course or training to cover a topic.
Some resources will cover one area, while another will deal with some other area. Or, they cover the same topic from different perspectives. In my opinion, it’s always better to learn from more than one source.
But, keep an eye on your budget!
Are you a business owner who wants to improve some skills or acquire more knowledge?
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