Entrepreneurship has never been more popular – the entire “ecosystem” is getting dangerously overcrowded. In order to learn how to swim past the depths of mediocrity and onto the surface of success, startup business owners need to constantly upgrade their knowledge and learn new things. Fortunately, this amount of popularity has given birth to a wide range of management training and courses that have never been more affordable. Useful knowledge is right in front of you.
1. Management
All the world’s natural-born leaders, from politicians to CEOs, know the difference between management and leadership, and it was Steve Jobs who summed it up in a memorable sentence: “Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.” Of course, to most successful leaders, leading comes naturally – they have a feel for it. On the other hand, management is a skill learned gradually, and, in order to inspire people to do things, you need to learn how to persuade them first.
A management course will help you improve your hiring process, teach you how to communicate with your team and motivate them, inspire you to inspire teamwork, etc.
2. Public speaking
Being a leader doesn’t mean that you have to be good at speeches, but being able to round up a solid inspirational speech does make you a better leader. Firstly, you need to realize that a solid entrepreneur is also a motivational speaker – instead of money, your goal is productivity, and instead of your clients/audience, you’ve got your employees.
Your team might know what they’re supposed to do, but you need to show them why they’re doing it. For this, you need to be honest and truthful, which is more than inspirational. Instead of starting with the product/service, start with the goal; instead of saying “We produce quality wallets because we want your money to be safe and easily accessible”, go with “With the goal of protecting your money in style, we have come up with this awesome wallet.” This is inspirational for both your clients and your team, and public speaking is all about being inspirational.
Keep in mind that public speaking isn’t easy to learn without a good public speaking coach. That’s why you should hire professionals. For example, public speaking coaching from Thought-Leader can help you improve your public speaking skills. They have former TEDx speakers on their team and their vast experience can guide you in becoming a successful public speaker.
3. Digital marketing
Online marketing is the essence of successful modern advertising; no one pays too much attention to billboards and posters anymore. In fact, a fail-proof digital marketing strategy is one of the pillars of business success. As a rule of thumb, it is recommended that an entrepreneur hires a digital marketing agency, seeing as how this line of work isn’t something that can be done effectively while simultaneously juggling all the other business-related tasks and still be top-notch. Of course, startups are usually cash-strapped, especially during the initial steps of their development, and sometimes, an entrepreneur has no other choice but to take matters into their own hands.
Here’s what to pay attention to when it comes to digital marketing: the importance of SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and paid ads. Take a quality course to learn the basics of creating a digital marketing strategy.
4. Accounting
Cash flow issues are one of the main reasons why so many businesses fail. Having a rock-solid financial plan is one of the ways to prevent this, and without expertise, this is impossible. Hiring an accountant is, of course, the best possible option, but if this isn’t viable, consider getting an advanced diploma in accounting in order to be able to take care of everything on your own. Even if you hire an accountant somewhere down the road, the experience and knowledge in accounting that you’ve gathered will help you oversee your accountant’s work.
A diploma of accounting course will help you get the general feel of your business’ health (assets, liabilities, and equity), it will help you learn the basics of bookkeeping and, most importantly, it will teach you to create a financial plan!
5. Economics
The thing with entrepreneurs is that they have to be in charge of both micromanagement and the bigger picture. While the first part of this equation is pretty rewarding in itself, the global scale isn’t that transparent – until you’ve learned the ropes of basic economics, you won’t be able to make solid large-scale decisions.
Real entrepreneurs are aware of the fact that they have to excel in more than a couple of different fields. Management, public speaking, digital marketing, accounting, and economics are only some of the important fields a true businessperson has to have covered.
