Last Updated on October 30, 2017 by Martin
Have you ever been into doctors office where all his diplomas were hanging on the wall? Big diplomas with a big fat red seal of approval on all of them?
Off course, with the purpose to make you calm and feel rest assured that this doctor is the right decision!
Have you also noticed, that sometimes, if not always, these diplomas are more than 20 years old, often even more?
So how can you really be sure this doctor is the right choice?
Perhaps a doctor that just finished doctors school last year, with the latest knowledge is a much better choice?
Why? because he is not resting on his laurels, thinking that his experience will lead him his way. He is scared of shit of making mistakes and lose you as a customer.
So, What Can We Learn From This?
Don’t ever rest on your laurels when you want to build or already have a successful business. Never become that doctor with all the diplomas hanging on the wall. Telling your self that you did good in life, believing that you got it, and never have to educate yourself again!
Continuous education is vital to your success, as a marketer, an entrepreneur and working at home person. Else, you will not be able to keep up with the latest in your industry.
Going Back to School?
I am not talking about going back to school as a fulltime job, but find literature, courses, books, and other hot spots of sources you can learn from and grow your business. You can even learn a lot from what more and more kids are starting to do, hackschooling. It is a concept where you are creating your own education, with the stuff you need to get the job and position you want. Make sure to make it a fun process like 13-year-old Logan LaPlante when he goes to school.
With hackschooling, you are not spending time on an education, just to get the diploma and credibility. You don’t spend your time on an education where you only need 20 pct of what you are learning.
You, see, your future education as an entrepreneur is to teach yourself the stuff you need to make you and your business a success.
Let’s Look at an Example
Let’s say you are in the start-up phase of your business. You have a partner who takes care of the coding of a website and application who will sell a particular product online. In the start-up, you don’t have the funds to hire extra staff.
So, your part of the business will be to take care of the administration, sales, and social media. To do this successfully you will have to develop skills in accounting, as a salesperson, and as a marketer using your website, Facebook Youtube and other media.
At this point, you have some basic skills, as a webmaster but will have to improve your skills so you can keep up with competition from other start-ups.
It means your continues education have to be something with accounting, sales, social media and marketing if you want to stay on top of everything.
If you want to go the traditional way getting these skills, it is going to take you a very long time, and a lot of theoretical learning that will you away from “real business life”. To find the school with the exact educational mix, will likely be a problem as well. So you might end up having to take more than one education to keep up with your needs.
With Hackschooling, you focus on the topics you have to learn and combine them so they fit into your working life taking care of your business.
As an example, your classes could look like this.
Accounting classes
You take some classes in accounting and taxation at an evening school near you or take an online course that will teach you everything you have to know. You can even get free classes in accounting at some colleges and universities.
Sales
Sales course you can also do online or take classes in a learning institute near you. I would even consider finding a mentor I could follow, to learn real hands-on sales and dealing with customers. Perhaps someone in your family?
Marketing and Social Media
When it comes to social media there are plenty of opportunities to get certified as a social media manager, and to learn the ins and out in social media marketing. I do recommend to work with your business at the same time because your marketing mix will be specific for your business. Hootsuite.com have some pretty cool course in everything you have to learn about social media marketing.
You can also find plenty of online training at a site like Udemy. But, here I will be a little more careful choosing because you don’t know enough about the teacher and what you will learn since basically everyone can set up their own course. But to get the basics it is a good place to start.
Specific Things Like Video and Editing
Here you can find plenty of course on Youtube and other places On-line. There are plenty of courses made by Youtubers and marketers teaching you how to make video presentations, what equipment you need, and how to edit your videos. Alternatively, if you want to produce top-notch quality content you can take courses at schools of Journalism and film schools.
With the high schooling method you will be able to make your own education with practical hand on training you can use directly with your business. You will be able to master the tools you need for your business a lot faster, compared to the traditional path of education.
The only downside with this system is, you will not become that doctor with the diplomas. You will not get the recognition from universities, other than getting printable certifications of the course you have taken online. But you for your business, and to make it grow, you really don’t need an academic recognition.
Finally
When running your business, always make sure that you are running your business and that it is not running you. see how here in this article.
Plenty of Ways to Get Started with Hackschooling
To inspire you to get started I have added this list of other great sources to get started. Here is everything you need to make your own hack schooling so you can take your business to the next level.
- Kahn Academy – Learn everything from math, programming, to finances, and it is free.
- Coursera – Online courses from top Universities. Get your masters degree online.
- Ask.fm – Just ask what is on your mind, and you will get the answer.
- Ted Talks – Probably one of the greatest of sources of just about anything. From entrepreneurship to saving the planet.
- GitHub – development, and coding. A great community of sources and inspiration.
- Edx – Online courses in everything from programming to architecture. You can get started free of charge.
- Skillshare – Tons of online courses from experts. You can also find training in using different online tools like Mailchimp.
- Youtube – Probably not the best place to find online courses. But excellent for problem-solving.
- Duolingo – language learning free of charge.
- numberphile – All about numbers and math.
- Codecademy – Learn how to code.
- CodeSchool – More learning how to code.
- Udacity – Online courses and nano degrees in everything from self-driving cars to artificial intelligence.
- Academicearth – a great collection of course from institutes like MIT, Capella, and Walden University.
- Open Yale Courses – Want to study at Yale? Yes, you can! Free selected courses are available.
Other Great Article to Read
Get better running your business, get some of my other tips from these articles.
