It has been said over and over again that you need to continue your education and broaden your skills throughout your career. That is a little bit easier said than done. The reason for this is not the lack of training and education opportunities, but quite on the contrary: there is a real abundance of them. Therefore, you should choose wisely when it comes to your education and you should think about how you will spend your money, time and efforts to learn. Here are some of the very basic skills that you need to know if you want to be a successful entrepreneur.
Languages
Whenever you run out of the ideas about what to learn, pick a language that you like and start learning it. Try to get it to the highest level of knowledge possible, but at least reach the point where you can have a simple conversation on that language. This will do wonders for your satisfaction, confidence and it will keep your mind fresh. Also, learning more languages allows you wider window into the art of communication and that is something that a successful businessman simply has to have. Knowing a little about language and culture of a foreign contact will do wonders to that particular relationship.
Computer Skills
You don’t have to be a wizard that can fix any sort of computer issue or write programs for your company. However, you will be forced to pick some software solutions, applications, hardware and the like. You will hardly make good choices if you don’t have the proper knowledge about computers. Not to mention that you really need to know how to use them as you cannot really imagine any of the business processes without computers.
Basic SEO
It is almost unimaginable that a business today exists without the website. The entire branch of marketing is based on the websites and the online marketing. What makes your website stand out and rank high on the list of search results is the search engine optimization. There are experts in this area and they are really good, but you should know at least the basics about it in order to be able to keep up to date with all those trends that influence the online part of your business.
Basic Accounting
You should definitely hire an accountant to do their work for you if you are not the professional accountant. That is just too delicate part of any business to be left to amateurs. However, it is not a good idea to be kept in dark about such an important aspect of your company, so get some training so that you can be informed and that you can talk to the accountant and actually know what they are talking to you. It is a very good idea to keep the uni notes from these types of courses as these info are really hard to keep in your head at all times and you can use them as reminders.
People Skills
It cannot be stressed enough how important people skills are for any business. First of all, they ensure that the people relations are good inside the company as good people skills mean that people are working well and communicate well. Moreover, it is virtually impossible to score any of the businesses and make deals if your people skills are bad. Work on them at all times and improve them constantly. If you are interested in the subject you should also check out our recent article on Emotional Intelligence and the Appreciative Inquiry.
Project Management
If you get to know how projects are made and how they are planned that can benefit in many ways for your business. You will have some knowledge about how to make your business work and how to approach to any new sort of project. Moreover, you will learn a lot about different business processes and that will allow you to improve yours.
Leadership Skills
Once all those people are in your company, they expect you to be their leader and to lead them and the company. There are many types of leaders and you need to make sure that you know your type of leadership skills, your good and bad sides and how to make them all work for you and your company. Being a good leader for your company may well made all the difference about the company’s success or failure. If the company is yours then you should definitely go to some of the leadership trainings and motivate the people that are on the key positions in your company to take these courses as well.
Besides these, you should always keep in mind that there will be a lot of training opportunities for you in the specific field of your work. These need to be explored and you need to make sure that you take some of those opportunities. They will keep you up to date and they will allow you to do some networking as well with people from your branch.
About the Author
Dan Radak is a VPS security and Hosting specialist. Currently he is employed as a consultant in a couple of e-commerce companies. Lately he has been interested in studying related themes. You can follow him on Twitter.
Image credit: Markus Koljonen / World Bank Photo Collection / Super Boreen / George Redgrave / Nokton / Alan Dayley / Texas A&M University / Les Roches
