Teaching yourself skills

[Richard.curran]

If you're thinking about trying to learn a new skill so you are better in business then I say go for it! Whether that is getting your driving licence so you can make deliveries, learning accounting so you can DIY or getting a trial on Photoshop and making yourself a new logo - go for it!

New skills are what being a cutting edge entrepreneur is all about. You need to improve to stay ahead of the game. A friend of mine on these forums, Dan, recently read some business books so he could learn more about product positioning - he's already a proficient coder so the e in e-commerce came naturally to him and he chose to study the commerce part.

I went the opposite direction, I've got a degree in business and I can do all things businessy, like marketing, accounts and all that jazz. I needed, as Gareth from SkyScanner called it "geekify myself". One year ago I started out learning coding.

Since then I'm pretty sure that I've more or less mastered HTML and CSS, I'm still getting my head around Ruby on Rails (as that's more programming than simple markup) yet I'm quite proficient and I can work my way around an MVC framework quite well. I still go get outside help when I need it, which is often, but I'm actually able to solve my own problems.

In terms of language I've got to the stage where I can learn it by reading the dictionary, if you speak two languages you'll catch my drift.

I speak Spanish, I am self taught, so to speak. A few years ago I went to Spain and lived there for the guts of a year and after the first few months I got a dictionary and started reading it, learning more words by being able to understand the descriptions of other words. In business terms that's 'critical mass' I suppose.

Learning new skills takes time - all the more reason for you to start now!

My story is not that inspirational to everyone so tell us your story about what skills you've learned since starting your business to give other people some inspiration!