About.
I am a former institutional trader, treasurer, and financial analyst. I left my job two years ago and decided to start my own business. My business began with financial courses. I was teaching stock investors how to undertake equity valuation and portfolio management. I had online and offline classes. After a year and a half, I decided to diversify my business and started an IT project. I wanted to connect my previous equity valuation, portfolio management, and teaching experience and build an app that will help investors with no or little financial knowledge find great stocks, construct an efficient portfolio, and get valuable investment ideas. As a result, I made two applications. The first one is an iOS application, "Stock Target Price," that calculates a stock's target price and growth potential, extracts investment ideas, and defines a good time to buy or sell stocks. The second app is a web-based application, "Diversset," a stock and ETF screener and portfolio builder. I want to share the skills I learned while developing and promoting my apps and creating a financial course.
My new skills and success formula.
I have my formula for a successful business. 10% of success is an idea, 20% of success is a product (MVP), 30% success is product management, and 40% success is luck. To be noticed by influencers, the chance that Google will rank your page higher, and the luck that people will find your business.
Below is the list of things I learned; the first three are related to product creation. The last seven things are related to project management.
- Web development. I learned the programming language JavaScript to develop the web-based app and node.js to create a database and authentication. I also learned design languages HTML and CSS to create a beautiful app design. I also used my custom formulas and learned how to transfer well-known financial models (such as the Markowitz model) and calculations into JavaScript code. It was a very challenging task. As a result, I created Diversset, an app that helps investors find stocks and ETFs and constructs an efficient portfolio.
- iOS-development. I learned a SWIFT. It is a programing language for writing apps for iOS and macOS devices. I learned many things, including authorizations, adding ads, and in-app purchases, created my custom formulas to make financial calculations and learned how to write and integrate financial formulas into the SWIFT environment and integrated API. As a result, I made a "Stock Target Price ." This app helps investors calculate their selected stock's target price and growth potential. Moreover, the investor can share his investment ideas and get useful trade ideas from other investors. Another great app feature is that an investor can define the perfect time to buy or sell his selected stocks.
- Design. Nowadays, it is impossible to divide programming and design. These two things go together. To make your app the best, you should pay attention to the design. I learned Adobe XD design tools to create UI and UX interfaces and provide the final user with user-friendly apps.
- Website audit. Now we start with the project management part. When I finished my website, I wanted to understand what I did wrong, how google crawls my pages, and will my website rank in a search result. To do all of this, I have taken a website audit course and learned how to check a website for errors and make sure google sees my website.
- Blogging. I am not good at writing posts, and English is not my native language, but still, I am trying to increase my brand's awareness and help people find solutions they need. That is why I post articles on different storytelling platforms regularly. I am also very active on social platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Quora, and Patreon.
- Video editing. I learned the DaVinci app to edit and publish my videos. I record videos on my YouTube and Instagram channels where I teach investors equity valuation, show how to find exciting investment ideas, construct efficient portfolios and share my financial expertise.
- Presenting on camera. This skill is related to posting educational videos on my YouTube channel and is also related to my online course. I couldn't record myself on camera at first and was very worried. But those fears vanished with time, and now I feel comfortable sharing my video content.
- Learning social media marketing. I am still learning SMM to promote my services and products. I would not say that I am successful at this stage yet, because I am only learning, and I understand that project promotion and marketing and organic traffic gaining takes a lot of time and effort, and this is a long-term game.
- Learning SEO optimization. I am learning SEO optimization and creating backlinks, expanding my online presence to help Google find my website and rank me somewhere at least close to the first five pages in the google search (top 50). I don't know how long will it take, but I expect the results to be visible in 5-10 years.
These are the new skills that I am currently mastering to create great app updates, expand my product's visibility and gain new followers. I hope my article was helpful. Thank you for reading.