Adding more skills to your business toolkit

I am not an Excel or Google Sheets genius, I just like using both for my business. A lot. Spreadsheets are fun and I like using them to organize.

I didn’t start out loving it. Matter of fact I was thrust into using spreadsheets at a restaurant job that I had back in 2001 out of need to have someone, anyone, tally the receipts from the previous night’s service. I was voluntold for this task and there I was, learning how spreadsheets worked.

Small steps to get comfortable with business skills

I didn’t start out thinking that I’d be teaching spreadsheets as a skill, I didn’t start out understanding how useful of a tool this technology could be, but I know it now. And I love to share how it can be useful for managing everything from inventory to financial projections to pricing to doing deep dives into the data of your business.

In fact, building my technology skills wasn’t really my main goal when starting a business, but it became clear so fast that building these skills would be a huge asset and also a way of saving me from tedium, stress and frustration.

Learn new skills for independence

Not only that, but it is partly what has enabled me to remain as independent as possible. Running a business solo is a wild mix of needing to build community – cannot recommend this part enough – while also being able to trust your own decision-making process. If I can manage as much of the tech as I can – email marketing platform, SEO, website, and more – then I can also keep an eye on my overall business health as often as I like.

Learning project management

Project management wasn’t in my skill set before owning a business either. It’s not that I had ZERO experience with it, but in past jobs, I would only be responsible for a portion of a project, not the whole process, tip-to-tail.

Since I had to learn project management, then I also had to learn how to use effective project management software like Asana. I didn’t start off knowing what it was or why I needed it. I didn’t fully warm up to it at first and it took time for me to learn to use it regularly and effectively. Now I can teach clients and students exactly how I use it. I also now refer to it daily.

Do you need to be a technical expert to run a business? Definitely not! A user and understander of some technology? Oh yes.

In fact, building these tech skills can be one of the most useful things you can do for yourself in your business.

Staying curious is an entrepreneurial trait

Knowing how to take some basic photos of jewelry and knowing how to use Canva to remove the background saved me time and money. That meant learning both photography and photo editing basics.

Knowing how to sort a list of anything in a spreadsheet has saved me hours of tedious work. Also being able to use a spreadsheet to analyze my finances, project my finances and take a deeper look into my business has been invaluable to help me save and manage my business money.

Knowing how to use Asana to track all of my client work, or to use Asana to stay on top of my marketing and content calendar has saved me from keeping too much information in my head.

If you have been avoiding learning how to use any of this technology, this could be a great time to start. 

Curiosity is a trait that any of us can start doing anytime we want. Start yourself off with simple questions:

• What do I need right now?

• What tools would help me?

• What would happen if I learned how this new platform worked?

• Who could I turn to to ask questions?

If there is a task you find onerous, or a project that always seems to take 10 times as long as you think it should, have you asked yourself if there is a tool or process that would make things easier? It could be a new system, a new tool, or reusing a tool you already know.

Lead yourself with curiosity and you’ll get there.

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