In this article I am going to tell you what in my opinion is necessary to study and develop for a modern self-esteemed person to find a place in life, to become a demanded specialist regardless of an elected line of work; to tell you about skills that will easily help you to find a job or to set off your own business and to live your if not rich then a sheltered life.
Nowadays more and more people wish to work for themselves (to be freelancers) or to become owners of some business.
From my point of view, it is a good and right way of thinking. But how to prepare yourself for such a way of life so that you are able to resist all those people who get in your way?
First of all, there are really lots of things you are to learn, you have to broaden your horizons and to understand how it works in the niche you are going to take. It is rather difficult just to initiate one’s own business and start doing things that you have never dealt with.
Thus, here are some pieces of advice:
- never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. The earlier you start taking conscious steps towards your goal, the faster you will rich it. The place where we finally turn up is just a series of choices. Step by step for the whole life we are reaching what we finally have.
- to make things easy surround yourself with people who are developing in the same direction. There has to be a reason why in rich families rich men are born. When you are surrounded by people sharing your ideas and views you can make up for the shortage of knowledge, find idols, obtain a stimulus to act. Ideally, you should be surrounded by people who are successful in the niche you are going to occupy.
- nobody knows which skills will be useful for you in future, but some of them, namely:
- literacy
- communication skills
- public speaking skills
- oratorical skills
- knowledge of a foreign language
- planning, time management
- the ability to structure, analyze, make information easy and available
- the ability to sell your time and labor, but it’s much better to sell other people’s time and labor
are undoubtedly good to have.
Here are some more useful skills that in my opinion are worth obtaining especially taking into account current tendencies.
(We will start with simple skills, skills that you may use to make money, and will slowly move on to skills that are essential for businessmen)
1Word and Excel – these are two basic programmes used for editing texts, tables, diagrams, schemes, etc. Needless to say that in the 21st century it’s absolutely essential to be able to use these programmes. The resources of these programmes are uncountable. The more professional you use them, the better. At the worst you may take up copywriting, it is not the worst option for self-employed people.
Google Docs – a very useful tool, which has already become an integral part in lives of many people. It is really handy to use it for creating documents online, their hosted storage, sharing them and perhaps the most important is the fact that it is convenient for collaborative work on documents.
Visio – I have recently got to know about this program. In my opinion, nowadays it is really useful for those who like schemes and diagrams. It is convenient to use it for planning, project management, prototyping, etc. I will mention project management as a separate paragraph in my list of useful skills.
2 Photoshop. There exists a wide range of occupations and posts that may require knowledge of this programme. It is used by photographers, designers, web designers, copywriters, editors, etc. On no account, I would neglect this useful tool.
3One more time in this article I would like to draw your attention to the importance of knowledge of foreign languages, as it is a very useful skill and in fact is quite a good way of making money, for example, text translation, language teaching via Skype, interview translation and so on.
4Working with photo and video materials, photography and processing to be exact. These skills can give you freedom, and this freedom is a dream of any freelancer.
5Recording of audio and video courses. It is a very interesting and profitable niche.
6Partnership programs. You can distribute or advertise different goods and services. And it may turn out to be simple and profitable activity.
7Digital marketing is a very large and multi-branch sphere, and being a specialist in this niche you are not going to fail. The ability of selling will always be relevant. In the sphere of digital marketing we can name diverse kinds of advertisement and ways of selling goods and services, such as:
- partnership marketing;
- e-mail marketing;
- search-engine marketing (SEO);
- contextual advertising;
- banner advertisement;
- teaser advertisement;
- social media marketing (SMM);
- video advertising, etc.
8Google Analytics – this tool is worth sharing. Mostly all kinds of business are based on selling of goods and services. But how to measure the success of the selected strategy and its advertising? The number of site visitors, sales, the efficiency of advertising, strategies and many other options are easily valued by Google Analytics.
9Project management, delegation of authority – these are things managers and businessmen come across. It is essential to find tools and such methods of organization of work process to make clients satisfied, to meet the deadline, to raise money and to pay employees. The ability to work with customers and employees is very important and you are to study for that.
There is no point in disregarding services of all kinds that help you in organization of your work and work of your employees. I will not draw special attention to them, as there are lots of them. Good examples of such services are Trello and Google Docs again.
It has to be said that the majority of the skills mentioned above cannot be developed very fast, most of them cannot be perfectly learnt. The fact is that all the spheres are multifaceted, hierarchically they have many branches, many strategies, conceptions and methods. There is no need to do more than you can and to try to learn all at once. While acquiring skills, as while reading books, your own point of view, thoughts and ideas about what you need to do and to try are formed.
Acquired skills, your personal brand, your portfolio, your reputation, the image of your company these are things that, as opposed to money, realty and other benefits, cannot disappear without leaving a trace, cannot lose value or be taken away. These are things to work on.
The last thing I’d like to say that nowadays there are lots of materials – different books, articles, audiobooks and video courses that may be useful for you, that will give you the necessary knowledge, inspiration and give you strength. The main thing is moving towards your own direction, that was consciously chosen and is certainly right. Remember – “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Acquire new useful skills, perfect yourself in all things that you can do, always stay up to date. Good luck!