4 Tips to Professional Development As a Business Owner

A lifelong learner is one who takes the opportunity to learn through all kinds of situations whether they’re formal or informal learning circumstances. When you’re eager as well as hungry for knowledge, you’re more likely to excel in your chosen craft. It’s vital that you invest in yourself when setting goals, so that you can achieve them with ease. Professional development as a business owner is critical to staying ahead of your competition.

1. Be curious

Take courses

Don’t assume that there is nothing you can learn. When you take courses, you’re furthering your knowledge in a variety of topics. Even if the topic doesn’t seem to directly apply to your career, it can lead to skills that are transferable. For example, learning about color theory can be applied indirectly to real estate. While you might not be staging homes yourself, you’ll understand what colors don’t work in the home, and why that’s the case.

In your chosen field, there’s always more to learn. The world is constantly changing, and you have to learn about those changes if you’re going to be effective at your job. Whether it’s marketing, social media or accounting, there’s plenty to learn on a daily basis.

2. Obtain certificates

When you have certificates to prove your knowledge, they can be used to leverage more opportunities for yourself. If you’re a real estate entrepreneur, you can prove that you also have certificates in other topics that might land you a sweet deal in some other area of your life.

Don’t miss an opportunity to gain a certificate in a topic that you’ve learned. It might cost a bit more and need a commitment, but that certificate at the end will bring value to the education.

3. Professional development

Join Toast Masters

As a club, this organization has members who are all about professional development. They work together to educate each other and provide peer reviews for things like public speaking. There’s a video library online for those who want to learn skills that will help them excel.

Beginners to public speaking can ask for a mentor at their local club. This person will help you learn how to craft a well-received speech, and how to speak to any group effectively. This is a skill that you can take with you into any business setting or career.

4. Write to clarify ideas

Medium

When you can learn to write effectively, it helps your overall public speaking capabilities. You’ll start with a structure or outline and learn how to hook a reader as you would in a speech too. With a platform like Medium.com, you can see whether your writing has the desired impact. It’ll get likes, comments and feedback that will help you improve.

When you use writing to clarify your own thinking, you’re exploring ideas and putting them down in a cohesive structure or argument. There are times when you have a vague idea in your head, but until you write it down, it doesn’t fully take shape. This platform can help you clarify and polish your thoughts.

Blog posting

Like Medium.com, posting to a blog allows you to gain feedback to your writing and speech style. If people get confused, you know that you have to further clarify your thinking.

It’s helpful to starting conversations too. When you can understand the needs of your audience, you’ll be on the way to creating arguments and ideas that have value in a larger sense.

Be a genuine student of your craft

As a lifelong learner, you want to have a well-rounded education. Gaining the ability to write a speech and deliver it to an audience is one of the biggest skills you can achieve as a business owner. It’s important to invest in yourself, so you never stop learning, growing and achieving your goals.

This article was submitted by John Delia and originally appeared on Due. It has been republished with permission and does not constitute the views or opinions of Upwork.

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