You may be the boss, but that doesn’t mean you know it all. The best business owners are constantly learning and they are able to apply this knowledge in order to improve their business. There are lots of ways in which you can keep learning. Below are a few examples.

Read

There are so many written guides and success stories out there that you can learn business tips from. There are entire business blogs dedicated to things like marketing tactics, employee engagement ideas or productivity hacks. You can also read books by business experts that deep-dive into all kinds of subjects. Even social media can be a place for learning – there are many accounts that regularly post advice on niche topics for providing some quick tips on your lunch break.

Listen

Listening is the most traditional way of learning. To help build your knowledge on certain topics, consider attending seminars led by experts or hire your own speakers at sites like Executive Speakers. You can also hire advisors on all kinds of areas of business such as business law, finance, marketing and HR. It’s important to also not turn a deaf ear to the people around you – including your clients, employees and business partners. Their feedback could provide plenty of advice for improving your business. You can even listen to business podcasts to gain more knowledge (some people find podcasts much more insightful than videos, because you can more easily take them in as you are working).

Watch

Many of us are visual learners and get more out of watching someone demonstrate something or looking at infographics. There is so much visual content that you can find online – the most obvious being videos. On top of watching video conferences, consider things like demo videos and video walkthroughs. These can be useful for learning how to use new types of software or for learning how to do practical tasks such as cleaning machinery. You can also attend live demo events and classes where you can learn from watching people. Don’t forget that you can also learn from watching competitors, clients and even employees – this could include looking at an employee website to see how it is designed, watching which products customers gravitate to in a store or learning shortcuts from savvy employees. 

Analyze

Businesses nowadays are able to collect huge amounts of data which can be analysed to help improve various areas of a business. This includes sales data, web traffic data, risk assessment data and advert performance data. Explore different analytics tools to help monitor various aspects of your business and see what you can learn from this data (this guide at SimpliLearn suggests a few great examples of analytics tools). You can also use analytics collected from competitors or general industry studies to learn new things. 

Experiment

Not everything can be learnt from following a formula or seeking advice. Sometimes you have to experiment to work out if something is a good idea. Mistakes can serve as valuable lessons, providing that there is not too much at stake. Besides, you can minimize the risk by testing ideas on sample groups or by using software to create projections – by collecting feedback and data, you can then measure the success of your experiments.