I realized the other day after finishing a consultation with a new client, that my business has grown almost 40% since completing a certification course this past April.  It was kind of a wake up call on how important training is to growing your business.

Of course training is always beneficial in that you gain new knowledge and skills. As small business owners,  we sometimes forget that it is these very items that make us more valuable to our clients.

Bringing in new ideas and abilities helps clients, and in my line of business the primary goal with any client is to help them get their work done, no matter the task and doing so in a way that saves them time and money.  For most the goal of having a virtual assistant is to free up time to devote to generating more revenue or in some cases to having more time for family and life.

What training did I complete? A Certification course for Social Media Marketing. The course from VAclassroom gave me deeper insight into this type of work. Social Media Marketing is quickly turning into my niche, or niche, as some people say (…sorry, I couldn’t help that, so many people pronounce that word differently!)

This training taught me how to focus on my clients, their targets and goals; creating a strategic plan for them.  It helped me clarify and define a process and system with my work in social media. I discovered how to be as efficient as possible for my clients and to be always thinking of new ways to use social media in order to help my clients grow their business.

Will I stop at this course? No way, as more opportunities to learn arise, I will sign on! This past year I have taken a bookkeeping course, have taken weekly seminars at VAnetworking and joined in many other courses that saw me making improvements in how I  manage my own business or work for my clients.  I’m even going to lead a class myself on July 16th as part of a Summer Speaker Series. I will be teaching others – exciting and scary at the same time!

There is always more to learn to improve yourself, your work and your business – and by doing so you will  grow and prosper your business.

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If you’d like to partake of 28 Seminars for $27 this summer, please check out the VAvirtuosos site. The topics are varied and very applicable to many types of businesses.

If you are interested in taking VAclassroom’s Social Marketing Training, it is a self study and open to anyone. If you use the coupon code SUMMER09, you can save $100 off the course.

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