by Emma Croft
emma.croft@getgardening.info
Taking One Step at a Time
People around the world have found themselves spending a lot more time at home recently, and while that has had its share of drawbacks, the situation has also presented some opportunities to pick up new hobbies. In fact, some individuals have found that their interest in sewing, baking, artwork, playing an instrument, and other skills have led to exciting business opportunities. Freckled Mom outlines a few tips on how to explore your interests and succeed in life and in business.
There are many benefits to learning new skills, including opportunities within your workplace or better employment overall. Whether you're working on soft skills or hard skills (for example, public speaking or learning a new language), use the following strategy to master them:
If your overall goal is to learn a new language, you might break this into smaller goals, such as becoming familiar with the new alphabet, learning the most common words and phrases, and recognizing the parts of speech. Next, find a partner to practice with, and then choose one area of the language to focus on, such as travel or household phrases.
Using the Pareto Principle
Focus on factors that are most likely to lead you to success. No matter what skill you want to learn, the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 Rule, can help you. Successfully learning the 20% (made up of alphabet, grammar, and phrases) drives 80% of your improvement when learning a new language. This rule can be applied to improving your ability to paint, play the violin, or handle workplace conflicts with patience and professionalism.
Setting SMART Goals
A quick internet search will deliver many tips for mastering new skills from home, and one of the first and most common is focused on setting SMART goals. This acronym helps you set an overall goal that keeps you on the right track. Using sewing as an example, the SMART goal process would look like this:
SMART goals improve your chance of reaching success and help you determine the course from beginning to end.
Starting a Business
Once you've honed your new skills, create a limited liability company. According to Corporate Direct, when you register your new business as an LLC, you enjoy reduced personal risks, a number of tax advantages, and decreased paperwork. LLCs tend to be more flexible than other small business types. The regulations in your state may be different from those in other states, so reach out to your state's business registration site or a formation service to register your LLC. This provider will do a lot of the legwork for you and help you avoid paying lawyer fees.
Take the chance to complete goals and experience new opportunities from a place of security and comfort. Your home could become the center of growing success.
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