Ask Christa! Business Basics Series (1/6) - How Do I Learn About Business Basics? (S3E26)

Introduction and Listener Question

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and with Season 3 focused on a lot of business questions our listeners have sent in, I’ve decided to create a Business Basics Series, similar to what I did with Season 1’s Strategy Series.

There will be six episodes in this series, and we’re launching the series today with the listener—or listeners—question, “How do I learn about business basics?”

And that’s a REALLY big question, and as with all big questions, the answer is… it depends….

But I’m truly going to focus on the “HOW,” as the listener asks, because any time you’re learning about something new or looking to learn more about something you know, how you learn can either enhance your interest or fizzle it out really fast… and if anyone has suffered through a professor reading power point slides as a way of teaching, you know as well as I do how much the HOW you learn will impact your interest in a subject.

It’s All About the Objective

Any time you’re looking to take on a new task, especially one like this that could span over several months or several hours DEPENDING on how “basic” you want to be, the first question is less about how you learn the basics, and more about what you’re looking to achieve with your learning.

For example, have you always been business curious and just want to know the basic structure and nuances of business? Or are you looking to start up a business and just want some baseline knowledge for perspective and leverage as you get started?

Are you looking to boost your confidence within a business setting, or are you thinking longer term, wondering if you should go back to school or invest more time and energy into deeper learning depending on what you mean about “the basics.”

So first, think about your objective. Why do you want to learn business basics, and what will you use that learning for? That will inform how you learn. 

If it’s for personal enrichment, then shorter form learnings in any media you prefer will do the trick: YouTube, a Google Search, LinkedIn Learning if you have that subscription, free online courses from universities. I also recommend watching TV series that focus on diagnosing and recovering different types of businesses so you can learn from the mistakes others have made—usually basic mistakes made because they did not have or learn the business basics before starting their businesses and quickly got in over their heads (and… this happens in corporate also, especially when there’s a mismatch with the CEO and what the business needs are).

Obviously I’m biased because I love myself a good recovery effort—and the messier and more overwhelming it is, the more interested I become—and it’s not because of the drama. In fact, part of why someone like me is called in is typically BECAUSE we don’t panic easily, we observe and listen a lot, and can size up the issue, the fix, and the plan within a few days.

But I’ll say this: some of the best learnings you can experience about business is through studying turn-around efforts. So if you are seeking to learn about business for personal enrichment, there’s a lot you can learn through turn-around and recovery shows like Tabatha Takes Over—and oldie but goodie; Bar Rescue; and Undercover Boss.

A quick note on TV shows—please… don’t watch Shark Tank to become savvy about business basics. Just…. That’s all I’m going to say.

Back to your objective…

If is’ to start a longer foray into learning about business, then I’d consider making the investment to subscribe to more formal learning content and articles so you can gain a solid foundation on two specific items:

Start at the Startup Phase

First, how you startup a business, and I recommend this because learning how to start up a business brings you through the basics in a way that pulls in various business topics only when you need to begin thinking about them. I think what tends to overwhelm business learners is the number of departments, functions, practices, processes, considerations, and dynamics are involved in a business—and they are ALL connected. 

If you learn about business through the lens of a startup, you start with the concept and design of the business—what you have to offer, why it’s special and meets an unmet need (meaning—why people would want to buy it), and how it fits into the current market (or where other similar products are—your competition—and your potential customers). 

This approach also gives you a comfortable pace to learn what you should care about during the different stages in a business’s growth cycle. For example, during the early days, there’s a lot of focus on what it takes to get funded, versus in the more mature days when there’s a lot of focus on keeping up with what you already offer, figuring out ways to enhance what you offer so it remains competitive, and investing in new products or services you can and should offer in order to stay ahead of competition and customer needs.

See… even saying what I just said… you can probably tell the difference in complexity just because of the difference in scale.

If you start from the start-up phase, you learn the bare essentials because that’s all you need to know at that phase of a business—the basics at a foundational level. You’ll also have the more complex concepts in view. It will give you a good span of information across the totality of a business, but the scope will be capped at the start-up and small business phase, which offers a full understanding of a business, but at a smaller scale. 

You can then decide whether and how you want to continue beyond the basics as you wish.

Then Focus on Topics of Interest

I just described what it takes to learn about the basics, but if you’re going to do that, push onward to the next step: list business topics of interest and learn more about those, too. Go deeper into your learning. Get into the rabbit hole—why not? You’ve started your momentum—now it’s time to have some fun, and you’ll learn which business topics you are most interested in as you learn the foundational items studying start-ups. 

By focusing on topics of interest, you’ll not only gain momentum, but you’ll begin to repeat what you are learning, thinking about how what you’re learning can be applied in the real world, and then seeking out and learning more about these topics of interest. The more you can reinforce your learning across various examples—or various businesses, business cases, practices, etc—the more your learning will stay with you, and soon you’ll be analyzing like a pro… the natural progression after that is you’ll begin to find various solutions to business problems.

At that point, you not only understand the basics, but also how to add value to a business even with the basics. And yeah—you can do that.

The Nuts and Bolts of Business Learning

There are a lot of free resources you can go to learn about business: YouTube, free online courses I’ve posted a few times, and I’ll put them in the show notes here again, too, Harvard Businses Review, Sloan Management Review—and as an aside, most people somehow miss this fact about business—there’s actual research, A LOT of it, about what works best in business and how to implement what works best. 

And it’s not like a few decades ago when the application of the research or the way in which it could be applied was a bit of a mystery—no, these days, a lot of business research is applied research—research that is conducted with a full focus on studying the real-world then applying the learnings from that study back into the real world (versus in academia) for the sake of implementing and successfully executing evidence-based best practices for a business. So when I mention Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review, I do so knowing full well that a lot of those articles are based on applied research backed by evidence.

Forbes—another great outlet that often includes evidence-based research, and then—whatever your favorite industry outlet is, subscribe, read, study. 

I’ve mentioned in other episodes that there are learning platforms also; my go-to is LinkedIn Learning, but there are others, too.

Business is truly one of those “every day is a school day” topics. Make every day a learning day.

Additional Resources 

For your resources, I’ve listed free online courses where you can search for the topics of your choice, and I listed these in Episode 25 also. Take advantage of free resources that offer great formal learning in at a pace that works for you.

I’ve also listed the US Small Businses Administration SBA learning platform for you. It’s easy to forget how much support is offered to those who own small businesses, and if you want to learn the basics, fast—start with a start-up mindset. Learn what you need to get started in business, and you’ll learn what you need to get started LEARNING about business.

With that, I’ve also include a link to the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs Resource Library. 

Final Thoughts

Final thoughts: in one of my previous episodes, I mentioned how critical it is to know HOW you learn. I want to reiterate that point here. 

Learning isn’t about strict adherence to a book—in fact, a lot of times, business books become quickly outdated OR they are rooted in someone’s experience and should probably be listed as a memoir versus a business book. 

One of the most effective ways to learn about business is to actually study business—live, in the moment, in action, where you can see how it works. Sure, it’s helpful to have the basics down, as I’ve talked about in this episode, but unlike soooo many other topics, you can actually learn about business through a variety of media. 

Find out what works best for you and jump in. Business is everywhere—the corner coffee shop, the movie theater, the car dealership, the people paving a road, your pet’s veterinarian, a public school district is a government entity so isn’t purely a business per se, but they run the same or similar processes as businesses where a service is offered, paid for, and with any profit or surplus of funds, reinvested for improvement and growth. Also worth noting: nonprofits and not-for-profits ARE businesses, too.

So, learn the basics—why stop there? Once you learn the basics, you’ll see how business is really just a process, made up of smaller processes, nested in—you guessed it—even smaller processes. I love business. Everything about it, especially when I’m called in to truly be the doctor of business and recover its health.. 

Wrap Up 

OK—Episode 26 is done!  I hope you enjoy the Business Basics Series. The next episode is asking about when you know you’re ready for your first raise—and I don’t mean a raise you’re talking to your boss about because of the good job you’ve been doing all year. This question is asking about THE raise, with investors. Wooo… it’ll be a good one.

To submit your question, go to my show’s website, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H, and click on the Submit a Question button, and while you’re there, click the FOLLOW button and subscribe to my newsletter, More Answers, which I issue every Sunday night to set you up for the work week. 

As always—I thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!