It’s very hard to find in contemporary literature a book that is categorized as “Business 101” which covers all the important concepts one should know about business.

Most business books out there trying to address a very narrow segment of the business. They are too specific. Not good enough to lay the foundations of one’s understanding of what a business is and what are its core building blocks.

The author, Josh Kaufman, divides the business into five core parts:

Value Creation: discovering what other people want or need, then creating it.
Marketing: Attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created.
Sales: Turning prospective customers into paying customers.
Value Delivery: Giving your customers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied.
Finance: Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your efforts worthwhile

Then he goes through each part and explains many key concepts that can make or break the business. For instance:

in Value Creation: 10 Ways to Evaluate a Market, 12 Forms of Value, Bundling and Unbundling, Shadow Testing…
in Finance: Profit Margin, Value Capture, Lifetime Value, Acquisition Cost, Amortization, Overhead, Cash Flow Cycle, Leverage…

Apart from these 5 parts, he also goes through other important topics like: “The Human Mind”, “Working With Yourself”, “Working With Others”, “Understanding, Analyzing and Improving Systems”.

Jam-packed with hundreds of concepts that are defined, and explained in 1-2 pages each.

Absolutely brilliant work.

Notes on the next book, straight to you