One of the best ways to protect your brain from the vagaries of age is to always be learning. Targeting your learning towards improving your business will also be good for your bottom line. To keep your mind going and your business growing, the classes below can help.
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Boost Your Productivity
As a business owner, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds of your business; you can burn all your energy working for your business and have no more energy for working on your business. Knowing the difference between a project that will take several steps and a task, which is a single action or activity, is a great first start.
Taking a productivity course can help you separate out what has to happen and in what order. Delegating a project well makes no sense if the tasks aren’t defined. If you want to hand over a project to a skilled employee or freelancer that you trust, make sure you start by agreeing on the individual steps it will take to get the result you want.
Get Familiar with Design Tools
If digital design isn’t your strong suit, putting in the time to join an intensive bootcamp will quickly boost your familiarity with what is possible. Even if you’re happy to hand over the design details to an employee or an outside designer, having a base understanding of how the tools below work will improve your understanding of what is possible and how to ask for it:
- InDesign
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
If you have always been a pen and ink or paint and brush creator, improving your digital design skills may also increase your creative options by asking your brain to create differently.
Build Your Digital Skills
To build community and create a unique vision for your business, take an NFT masterclass. Non fungible tokens are unique to you and your business once you mint the NFT. Having a token you can share with your happy customers will build community.
Sharing this token with potential clients can easily expand your community and start communication between your happy clients and your future customers. Anybody with a smartphone can shop from anywhere in the world. Creating a community is a great way to get your products and services top of mind to your potential customers.
Become A More Confident Speaker
Join a Toastmaster club and learn the baby steps to becoming a better public speaker. As a more confident speaker, you can share your story on podcasts. As a business leader, you can speak to student groups and present to industry professionals.
At Toastmasters, you can
- speak extemporaneously for 60 seconds during Table Topics
- present a joke or word of the day as a mini-prepared speech
- learn to give a 6 minute speech about who you are
One of the best things about Toastmasters is that you get feedback within the meeting. You can also ask for help addressing problems you know get in the way of your message. If you know that your gestures are stiff or your speech is too fast, you can get specific coaching to become aware of these challenges.
Learn to Negotiate
Many of us just want to set a fair price and receive decent compensation. Sometimes the act of negotiating can feel a bit tainted. However, becoming a better negotiator can actually make you better at the art of constructive argument.
Logical argument and debate are artforms that have fallen by the wayside in a world of canceled culture and personal attacks. Backing away from overly personal confrontation is critical to being a better negotiator; your training will be focused on teaching you to craft an argument based on the quality of your work and your work product. Whether you’re selling directly to another company or convincing your boss to pay you more, your negotiating skills can directly impact your bank account.
Conclusion
One of the best ways to enjoy a rich life is to never stop learning. From food and wine to home repairs, one class can go a long way toward improving your home life. Work-related classes will free up time and boost your income as you build your skills.