Showing all posts tagged self development

In Business & Blogging, General

Education For Success

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on

Regardless of your goals, education is likely to help you achieve them. Business is a prime example of how this works. Running a business is hard work, and it takes a lot of time, effort and money. Knowing your stuff from the beginning is important however ongoing self-improvement and further education is what will help you and your business thrive.

In terms of what it takes to build a business that is strong and secure and has every chance of growing into a highly prosperous and profitable brand, it’s important to understand that you require the right skills and education in order to be able to successfully grow a business.  Take me for example. I am a freelance copywriter with over twelve years under my belt. Initially, all I needed asides from copywriting skill etc obviously was a basic idea of bookkeeping and accounts, WordPress know-how, some social media skills and time. This was enough to start my business and make a profit. To keep it afloat for another twelve years and grow to what it is today it was important for me to continually self-improve and to look at further education as a business tool as much as anything else.

Education for Effective Business

The fact is that running a business is an extremely complex task as there are various areas that you need to consider, from the day-to-day running of your business as a whole to aspects such as finance and marketing that need to be well thought out. These are often areas that many new business owners lack knowledge in, which is where education can come in so handy. Whether you choose to take night classes or study online for your MBA at Aston, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you choose to get the education that you need to build, run and grow a successful business.

It isn’t just important to understand industry-specific information and to know how to use it to benefit your business. You need to understand about business too. Educating yourself on everything from marketing to effective SEO to building and maintaining a website and more will help you to achieve your goals. There are other ways of educating yourself too, less classical education and more life skills and more.

Self Development Boosts Confidence as Well as Skills

If you are going to be able to build your business into a sustainable brand, you need to have confidence in yourself as a business owner and brand leader, as well as in your business. Confidence in business isn’t just important for your own self-esteem as a business owner, it’s also essential in terms of how it alters the impression you make when speaking to customers and potential business partners and stakeholders. If you come across as being a confident business owner and individual, this impression will have a positive impact on how you come across to other people, particularly customers and potential business partners, in addition to competitors. In business, confidence is key.

There can be a self-care aspect to taking courses while running a business too. I, for example, completed a mindfulness diploma earlier this year. The benefits that it has offered me personally have filtered over into my professional life.

Gaining Valuable Experience

When it comes to running a successful business, it’s important to understand that a lot of that relates to the experience that you’ve had. Life experiences is important and so is industry experience. Education takes many forms and not all learning comes with a certificate or scroll. If you want to know more about a certain part of your business or something else, try shadowing and talk to those in the know to see what opportunities might be open for you.

In Summary

When it comes to launching or growing a business the list of what you need to know seems staggering. As you and your business evolve you will need to keep educating yourself and adapting to change as and when it comes along. Remember that education that benefits you as an individual will benefit your business, be it via increased confidence or transferable skills.

So, a question for you. If you could take any course or learn anything right now, what would it be>

In Business & Blogging

Can You Build a Business For Free?

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on

small business

Have you ever wondered if you could be more successful if you only had more money? I’ve been a self-employed copywriter for twelve years. I have kept my overheads super low however in truth have needed to spend in order to grow my businesses. As the saying goes, you do need to spend money in order to make money, and if you’re not willing to do this then the rate of growth you’ll experience is going to be low. The key is being savvy with your spending in order to build a business that is successful.

Free Growth is Possible But Slow

There are countless ways to grow your brand while staying relatively frugal, but at the end of the day, you need to spend a little bit of cash in order to get yourself out there. I went years without a website (other than this one), didn’t go to networking; I didn’t have business cards even. My business grew and I was happy with the rate of it given that I have very small children at home. It could have grown faster however it would have cost money. As it was my spending wasn’t zero but very low to start with.

Without spending any money, you’re not even going to have your own website domain. Instead, you’re going to have a subdomain with an existing company, and this is going to affect your credibility and also your exposure. People aren’t going to remember your website very well, and you also won’t be able to monetise a website like that very efficiently. So yes, free growth is possible in theory but very limiting.

Studying is the Best Way to Grow Your Career

You don’t need to go back to college or school to get something like an MBA with engineering focus or even to learn new skills such as music production. The fact is; you can learn pretty much anything on the internet if you know where to look. Paid resources are often the best place to learn because they’re created by professionals that want to teach and pass on their skills. The best ROI on spending I’ve done is spending on self-education and I don’t regret a penny of it.

There are a number of great resources online, free courses, forums and more. I’ve made the most of many of these but have to say the courses I have undertaken and the skills I have learnt which have the biggest impact on building a business for me have been paid courses. These aren’t necessarily copywriting courses, or SEO digital learning opportunities either. Back in January I completed a mindfulness diploma. Putting this learning into practice has helped me both personally and professionally. 

In Summary

The moral of this story/blog post? If you want to build a business without spending money on it, you can. You will have to set your expectations accordingly though. I’m still frugal on my business spending. I make sure that what I spend on my business has a good return on investment for me. Examples of this include membership to our local business association, excellent web hosting, a web developer and my accountant.

Whether you are looking for full-time blogging work or are looking to build a business that’s entirely different, you need to budget for necessary expenditures if you are going to build your business and reach your goals.

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