What attitude is important in learning new skills?

It is true that digital skills play a bigger part than ever in our world today, in any field of our lives. These skills are some others, like the ability to manage social media or be flexible and learning from scratch about new programmes, apps, and tools important for our jobs has become a daily reality. But to learn these or any other skills, we need to 
have the right mindset about how to do it.

The concept of lifelong learning has become very popular. However, the re-learning concept or learning from scratch, adapting digital skills to any work field is not only trendy but vital. Re-learning or learning new things will help you constantly develop new sets of skills and make you more adaptable and flexible in the job market or while creating your business. Also, technologies are changing rapidly, which opens up a wider variety of possible tools and might attract more technological target groups.

Knowing digital skills, or being able to learn them, is needed not only for our daily tasks and jobs but especially for people trying to open their businesses or improve them. Why? you‘d ask. Because many advertisements and shops are online (e-shops), they have become a necessity for our changing world and a secure business even during hardships like pandemics or wars.

Basic and important digital skills: Social Media

When you start your online business, the first thing you have to know is how to manage social media, at least at a basic level. That can help you not only to promote your products, but to actually become the platform where you can create your e-shop. Check out Facebook/Instagram cosmetics Hazelberryskinfood shops online as an example.

Other useful platforms for beginners to start their business with Zyro. The Zyro platform provides you with basic information on how to:

• Manage the online platform.
• Write articles for your platform. You have templates you can re-use.
• Create a basic logo.
• Generate brand name for your company.

Generally, this platform provides you with all the basic parts you need to start the online platform for a low 
monthly price. It might be the first step in learning how to create your online business and give you an idea 
how platforms can differ for different kinds of businesses.

Basic important digital skills: financial literacy/online documents

One more important part of starting a business is having basic skills in how to deal with documents and 
finances online.  You need to know:

• What online documents you need to have (Freelance document, licence, or make your company?).
• You need an online bank account.
• You need to know basic accounting rules.
• You need an online signature (not obligatory, but helpful).

Getting started with your Individual Activity in Lithuania

All that requires knowledge and digital skills. However, not all might be clear when we start having our business, paying taxes ourselves, receiving profit, etc. In that case, you can always call the information or help lines of the tax office or the social insurance office, and they will walk you through the processes or answer your questions about any trouble or question you have. I don‘t know the rules and regulations for starting a business in other EU countries. 
countries, but as for Lithuania, from my personal experience, while starting your individual activity, you can:

• Make a freelance (individual) activity document online at the tax office (VMI) and pay it online.
• You need an online bank account. Basic accounting requires having invoices for every work you do (online or printed) and online or in Excel. journal of the money you earn or spend.
• Online signatures are not obligatory, but they might be useful when you have to sign more invoices or contracts, and you can start working from day zero when you get the document for freelance work.

As it shows, you will need at least basic online document and financial literacy skills. For that, you don‘t need to take special courses; you can do things as you go with the help of the institution’s information and help line and the online information they provide. Also, take help from people who already have similar businesses to yours and ask them for advice. The last but not the least on the list is “pay yearly taxes online. The forms of tax declarations have been  simplified after COVID, and every year they become more accessible and clear to users.

Suggestion

All the digital skills mentioned might seem like quite an overwhelming set. However, you might want to keep in mind that you should only take one step at a time. If you learn all these digital literacy tasks one at a time, you will not feel overwhelmed and will be able to create your digital business step by step.