e-lifeandwork: Learn New Skills Online | Online Courses & Real-World

As layoffs continue hitting companies across the United States left and right, employees may feel uncertain about their fate in the business. Anyone can be impacted, even you. Fortunately, there are ways you can set yourself apart if this unfortunate event ever happens to your organization. Follow these tips to make yourself an indispensable employee who is essential to keeping things running smoothly within the business. Develop and Strengthen Your Transferable Skills There is a good reason why soft skills are popular in the workforce. These are skills like communication, emotional intelligence, problem solving, critical thinking and the ability to lead, none of which can be replaced by artificial intelligence.  Dave Fisch, CEO at Ladders, recommends developing and strengthening your transferable soft skills. “Not everyone can communicate well with others or solve problems as quickly and efficiently, so building on those skills will set you apart from the majority of e...

Admittedly, I've never been cool enough to be part of the Starbucks cult. But in need of a caffeine-fueled pick-me-up on a 90-degree day, I went to the drive-through for a $4 iced coffee.  I soon found myself stuck in the single car-width lane for more than 20 minutes. After daydreaming about how much momentum I'd need to get over the embankment and through the wall of dense shrubs (as one does), my sensibilities won out. I settled on the simple hope that the barista would at least acknowledge the wait. To my surprise, I got more than I had hoped for.  I got an apology and a free coffee.  Almost instantly, my angst towards one of the nation's notoriously slow fast-food chains dissipated--as did the vow I had made to myself to never return. With that, a new daydream sprung to mind: Was I actually frugal as I thought, or just cheap? Regardless, I drove off happy.  In the grand scheme, a free coffee from a multinational chain may not seem like a...

Online training came to the forefront because of the pandemic. Every corporate company these days is making the best use of technology to offer online training to their employees. Although online training has been in the limelight for the past ten to fifteen years, it became more prominent since the pandemic outbreak because organizations had no other option. The shift from offline training to online training is not easy as the engagement is not so great, tracking parameters changes, and organizations don’t have a proper idea about the ROI in online training. However, thanks to tools like learning management systems, many companies have succeeded in transitioning from offline training to online training.  Unfortunately, there are still a lot of businesses that are still figuring out how they can successfully offer online training programs. Of all the issues, tracking the progress is one of the most pressing ones. Before we discuss the parameters through which you ca...

Small business owners calculating their monthly cashflow. In a meeting last week, a successful serial entrepreneur, who wants to shift to becoming a full-time investor, remarked that they were going back to school to get an MBA at the age of 45. I asked, why? The answer was surprising to me. Even though this entrepreneur had built several companies (north of $50 million in annual revenue) they felt inadequate as a potential investor. Specifically, they cited an inability to read company financial statements, including a balance sheet, etc. in order to determine a company’s health and value. This made me stop and think. How many other entrepreneurs or small business owners really understand how to read and utilize financial statements or even critical finance metrics in order to determine a company’s health and financial worth? In my career of building a $1 billion company and managing four company turnarounds, I found the following financial metrics below to be invaluab...