The stepping stone from where you are today to where you want to be is simple: learning more skills. Let’s compare the differences between the people living an average lifestyle and successful, happier people. The latter have understood and leveraged more valuable skills in their lives.
Whether learning how to invest your money, starting a business, or learning a language, the skills we know make us more valuable in the marketplace and give us the momentum to learn even more.
In 2016, let’s commit ourselves to learn at least one new valuable skill to take our careers, businesses, and lives to the next level.
Are you ready?
Here are six websites to get you started.
1. CreativeLIVE
Skill: Photography, Entrepreneurship, and Creativity
CreativeLIVE brings a unique business model, providing free live classes that anyone can tune into. Then, those who are interested in keeping the course can purchase it.
Unlike SkillShare, CreativeLIVE focuses solely on bringing top experts to share their knowledge. These include New York Times Best Selling Authors such as Tim Ferriss, Pulitzer Prize winners, and more. Their topics also heavily focus on creative issues like photography, design, and branding.
2. Skillshare
Skill: Marketing, Design, and Branding
Skillshare is a learning community where you can learn anything from anyone. While they have classes from experts such as Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Gary Vaynerchuk, most of the courses are from local experts who have helpful knowledge to share. Learn everything from branding, SEO, audience building, and more.
They have a free community you can join, and their premium plans start from $10/month.
3. Rype
Skill: Languages (Spanish)
As globalization rises, everything from business, media, and the economy will require interaction with foreign people outside your language.
Learning to speak a new language will give you a significant advantage over those who lack the knowledge, and it’s better to get started sooner than later. As a side benefit, language learning has been shown by numerous sources to increase your mental agility, memory retention, and decision-making skills.
Where to learn: You can get started with a free mobile app like Duolingo or learn faster by using a personalized language learning website like Rype, which matches you with a native-speaking teacher for private lessons online.
4. Codeacademy
Skill: Coding
Codeacademy is a fun, simple, and gamified method of learning how to code from HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, and beyond. You can get started for free, and they will walk you step-by-step to learn the basics of coding while forcing you to practice on your own!
5. Toastmasters
Skill: Public Speaking
Warren Buffet has often claimed that the most valuable skill a recent graduate can learn is the art of public speaking.
Being a good communicator is massively understated and a crucial skill that can never be improved enough. Whether going into a job interview, making a presentation, or starting a business, being a great speaker will make you stand out from the crowd and get your message across.
Check out a local Toastmasters organization in your city, and you can start to receive immediate feedback.
6. Investopedia University
Skill: Investing
Enjoy an abundance of detailed lessons on money management and investing. You can even set up a simulator stock portfolio on Investopedia, where you’ll get $100,000 of “fake” money to get some real-life practice before you start investing with your own hard-earned money.
Which of these websites will you use to learn a skill in 2016? Do you have any other helpful suggestions to share?
