One of the things that is constantly a challenge when building a small business is finding out what you don’t know. Even selling at a farmer’s market or a craft show introduces all of us to new situations and technologies that we may not have the skills for. This could be as basic as not knowing how to sell or as complex as new techniques to develop new products. Monica and I are constantly having to learn and you should be constantly learning too.

My current situation (based on some of my previous blog posts) is packaging. The packaging situation is about to drive both of us nuts. We could contact a packaging consultancy company, but we don’t have the kind of money to even make it into their lobby. After Monica and I sat down on Monday to work out an action plan, my first task was to learn how to design packaging. So I’ve been spending this week learning Adobe Photoshop.

Many of the applications that you will be working with may be relatively intuitive. Photoshop has never been an intuitive application for me. Over the years, I’ve tried to learn it several times but always fell a little short because there wasn’t really a need to learn it. Now there is. I’m going to need Photoshop to create not only packaging, but better labels and even graphics for the web. Yes, I could hire someone to do this, but what is the fun in that?

Anyways, the point of this blog post is to introduce you to a web site that you may never have heard about called Lynda.com.  Lynda.com was started by an entrepreneur years ago to host a collection of online training. This has always been my go to site for training I’ve needed over the years. The site started out focused on graphics design and web development but has since evolved to cover many topics that you may not even know you need to learn.

On Lynda.com you can learn technologies for small business such as Photoshop, or how to setup an Ebay or Etsy store. You can also learn about marketing and sales. There are topics on Square and Paypal to learn the basics and advanced features of these technologies. You can even learn about time management techniques.

The really cool thing about Lynda.com is that it is ever-evolving. Can’t find a topic that you want? Contact Lynda.com and see if you can teach it. There are new courses being added every day – some of which might be just what you need to learn.

I’m writing this blog post because I’ve always been a huge fan of Lynda.com and have always tried to learn something new even though I’ve graduated high school and college! It seems like there is always something new that I need to know.

Regardless of how you learn, your business will require that you know something that you don’t know already and you must embrace the concept of continual education. Lynda.com is an excellent resource to add in your toolbox for learning.

DISCLOSURE: Other than being an irregular subscriber to Lynda.com, I have no relationship with Lynda.com or its parent company LinkedIn.com.