As a child, I remember I just couldn’t wait for school to be over, I was eager to get into the real world. It was that feeling of wanting to be free from books and exams.
During my first year of university, I had the privilege of working voluntarily for legal practice. It was run by truly inspiring women and I loved the buzz in the office. One day, during a lunch break, one of the ladies asked me what I was looking forward to most after university. Instantly I replied, “burning my books and never having to take an exam again!” She laughed, and then she said “Don’t burn your books. Trust me, after university you will need to study more and more.”
I remember thinking...maybe I should have thought a bit more before answering. Even though I admired her, I brushed her advice off. I wasn’t ready for the reality she was presenting and I shook it off the way you shake off a bad nightmare and carried on with my day.
That was over 20 years ago, but those words still ring true. In most careers, it doesn't matter whether you are a solicitor, a marketing professional or you do car bodywork you never stop learning, nor should you ever allow yourself to get complacent and not learn more. Every now and then, take an audit of your skills and really evaluate what needs brushing up or refreshing up. There really isn't a good excuse for not knowing. how to do something nowadays!
As a business owner, it is not always easy to find the time to take a break...let alone train yourself, to learn new skills. However, It's important to regularly look at available courses to see where you can update and further your knowledge. We need to make learning and keeping ourselves updated, as important as the work we do for our clients.
Knowledge can open your mind and present you with new opportunities.
It’s your master key to open any door!
When you think about courses, you might think they are something long and boring. Nowadays this need not be the case. Technology has worked wonders.
Thanks to technology, there is usually something to be found in a format suitable to you. Say you just purchased a new computer and are unfamiliar with the latest PowerPoint version. You can easily go on YouTube and type whatever question you may have.
On the other hand, say, for example, you want to learn how to use a selection of office programs. There are loads of courses online, some free, some cheap and some more advanced. There really isn’t a good excuse for not knowing how to do virtually anything nowadays.
A Marketing Professional can support you with more than just running your campaigns…
If you prefer a personal approach, keep a marketing professional very close and enquire if they offer any. Most agencies either offer a support service or know good sources for learning some marketing skills, furthermore, they might be able to show you how to use a few tools and share tricks of their trade.
At Marketing Nest, part of our strategy is to teach you some of the tools we use. We train ourselves to stay up to date so you are in safe hands. If there is anything we can do to make your experience better we are happy to help.
We have supported our clients countless times with a variety of things, from learning how to create simple graphics for your social media, to how to write a blog, to how to use content management systems for your social media or your website.
Push yourself to source for training in areas that help your business. Even if something is not technically within your job title, make an effort to learn something about it. We had a scenario (at Marketing Nest) where a client trained us about their industry so we could better understand how to promote them. It was insightful for us and valuable to our client.
As a business owner, you need to know how to delegate and maximise the best use of your time and skills. The main reason why Marketing Next can help you is that we walk the walk. We seek the know-how that is required to satisfy our clients' needs.
When I wanted to learn how to update WordPress websites,
I’d usually leave that to my web team to deal with it, but I wanted to
know the work required behind it. So I took a training course on
Udemy and then used a dummy site to test what I learnt
It’s better to learn something even if you don’t use it... rather than being in a situation of not knowing how to do something when you need to do it.
The best thing any business owner can do is to invest in knowledge - theirs and their staff, even short training to improve your (and your employees) skills and to learn and grow professionally.
“I want to make sure that my clients have the best version of me that they could have”
Here is a little tip for you to know if you're in front of a good professional. Next time you see your mechanic, your plumber, your electrician, your IT person and ask them this:
What new skills have you learnt in the past couple of months? If they are struggling to come up with an answer or worse still - they say they haven’t bothered to learn anything new, run away quickly!
Jokes aside, we may not all have the time or the money to take full training courses all the time but it's important for our brain to keep it ticking and learning. I’d rather go on radio silence because I'm learning new skills rather than posting every 5-minutes on social media and not be up-to-date with the latest tools with the latest apps strategies and skills that I need as a professional Social Media Manager.
Learning new skills can broaden your horizon and allow you to even be able to expand your business and elevate your knowledge to the next level.
Saying that let me leave you with two questions, and I genuinely would love to hear your answers either on Social Media or click here, and start your answer with: #ToLearnList...
Q1. What skill have you always wanted to learn and never bothered to?
Q2. What is stopping you from taking a course and learning it?
As we always lead by example, here at Marketing Nest, I’ll go first and share what I would like to learn after I finish my current course. Here is my next item on my to-learn list:
My next item on my #ToLearnList is a course on how to create
animations using Adobe After Effects. I always love being
creative and I will ask one of my designers
to take some time to show me the basics.
For a chance to win a FREE 3O min Training on how to design your Social Media graphic elements, share your answers on Social Media using the hashtags below#ToLearnList / #ToWin. We will then announce the winner on August 23rd 2021.
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