Many business owners are fully invested in running their business efficiently, all in hopes of maximizing growth and potential. This requires you to be a jack-of-all-trades, learning the ins and outs of marketing, bookkeeping, sales, and filing taxes. However, if you feel like you have hit a dead end and the rate of growth and progression appears to be slowing down rather than going forwards, you might be wondering if there are any steps that you can take to improve things. Perhaps you feel like you have truly expended yourself and there is no more than you can give unless you are able to improve your own knowledge, expertise, and business skills.
Today, getting a business degree is easier than ever thanks to online course options that you can study from the comfort of your home or office. An advanced business degree such as an online MBA or DBA may be available to you depending on your current level of education and experience and could be the catalyst that you need for future business growth and improvement.
As you build on your own experience and improve your knowledge, you can apply your newfound knowledge and skills to your business as you go and reap the rewards. But how easy exactly is it to study while running a business at the same time? Here are some tips that you might find useful when it comes to making it work for you.
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Choose the Right Degree Programme
Today, there are more online business degree options available than ever before, especially due to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the education industry, which has led to online learning becoming the new normal. Research the degree courses that are available to not only determine which one is the most suited for your experience, past qualifications, and future goals but also aligned with your needs and requirements for studying.
If you are planning to continue running your business full-time while you study, a flexible online DBA from Aston University Online could be the best choice for you since you will be able to take control and choose a study timetable and method that works best.
Plan Your Schedule in Advance
The beauty of fully online degree courses is that they provide the student with much more autonomy and freedom when it comes to how they learn. This is the ideal option for busy business owners who might not always have the time to get to regular 9 AM lectures or spend the whole day at the university campus when they have work to do at the same time.
Online degree courses mean that you can study in the evenings, at the weekends, or during your breaks from work throughout the day depending on what works for you best. However, to make sure that this gets the best results for you, it’s wise to spend some time going over your current schedule to determine when you’ll be able to study. Planning this beforehand will provide you with some kind of structure that you can follow to ensure that you’re not falling behind.
Get Yourself a Dedicated Study Space
Studying for an advanced business degree can be a lot of hard work, let alone when you are trying to run a business at the same time. If you plan to study from home, bear in mind that you are going to have distractions.
Even if you live alone, there’s always the washing up or the laundry to distract you from what you really need to be doing. And if you live with family, trying to study on the sofa or at the kitchen table can sometimes feel impossible. Setting up a dedicated home office space in your living area, whether you use a spare bedroom, convert the garage or loft, or turn a part of your living room or dining room into your office and make it out of bounds when you are studying can make all the difference by ensuring that you have somewhere quiet to focus. Set up a desk and make sure that you have everything you need right there.
Delegate Your Business Responsibilities to Trusted People
One of the first important business skills that you’ll learn when you decide to take on an advanced business degree is that of delegation. If you’re currently working like many entrepreneurs and doing as much as you can yourself, something has got to give if you want to free up enough time and make sure that you still have the energy to study regularly on top of running your company.
Now is a great time to start reducing the number of hats that you are wearing and begin building your delegation skills by selecting the right people to assign tasks that you’d normally do yourself to. You might want to consider outsourcing some tasks to reputable third-party companies, working with trusted freelancers in the industry, or taking on more full-time staff to support your business and evenly spread out the workload while you work on improving your qualifications.
Ask for Support
Getting an advanced business degree will be a huge investment of your time and energy, and to successfully achieve your goals, you’re going to need a lot of support. This is not only the support that you can get from other business professionals and your employees through delegating your business tasks to them, but it’s also important to get personal support from friends and family members.
Be ready for things not always running as smoothly as you expected; there are always going to be days where you feel stressed and overwhelmed and knowing who you can turn to for practical or emotional support when you need it can make all the difference. Familiarise yourself with the support options for students offered by your university and utilize what they have to offer as often as you feel that you need to.
If your business has hit a plateau and you feel that you’re no longer able to offer anything new, getting an advanced business degree can provide you with a fresh new outlook and set of skills to bring to the table.
