*This is a 30-45 minute read!*
Basic business finance is not taught in schools growing up. Most of us not directly involved in business tend to avoid it. Nevertheless, today it’s become increasingly important to be literate in these concepts. Whether you want to invest in the stock market, understand the conversations on Shark Tank, join a startup company, buy a small business or just understand the news better, you need to know how business finance works, at least at a high level. This book provides a very quick-and-dirty, high-level overview of business finance for laymen.
Imagine you were about to travel to another country and you did not speak the native language there. You don’t want to speak it fluently, but you want to be able to ask where the bathroom is, to say please and thank you, maybe count to 10.
That’s the aim of this book: to teach you only what matters – the high level, essential concepts – in as simple and direct a way as possible. It’s OK to leave the minutiae (and there’s a lot of it!) to the accountants and bankers. Sometimes you just need to know the bare, conceptual basics of something and you want to know it very quickly. Especially for things like accounting and finance, textbooks are too complicated for this, going into levels of detail that are irrelevant for non-practitioners in that area. Even “For Dummies” books are hundreds of pages long and are meant to teach you a lot, way more than a vast majority of people need to know. We will not get into any real technicalities, jargon or exceptions. Again: this is as high level as it gets!
After reading this short book, you will know the basics, bare bones concepts of:
-Accounting and financial statements – how to understand a business by the numbers
-How to determine how much a business is worth
-What “shares” and “stocks” mean
-How the stock market works
People that may be interested in this book:
-Those wishing to invest in the stock market for the first time, but have no idea how it works
-Humanities majors going into business careers after college
-Teens interested in business (these things are not taught in high school)
-People interested in investing in a small business
-Employees joining startups – techies, salespeople, etc. – without a formal business education (are you being granted shares? What does that mean? How does it work?)
-Professionals who deal with financial or accounting concepts indirectly who would benefit from more knowledge in this area, such as lawyers or HR professionals
-Small business owners who have been operating their business but never truly understood the concepts behind their company’s financials
Basic business finance is not taught in schools growing up. Most of us not directly involved in business tend to avoid it. Nevertheless, today it’s become increasingly important to be literate in these concepts. Whether you want to invest in the stock market, understand the conversations on Shark Tank, join a startup company, buy a small business or just understand the news better, you need to know how business finance works, at least at a high level. This book provides a very quick-and-dirty, high-level overview of business finance for laymen.
Imagine you were about to travel to another country and you did not speak the native language there. You don’t want to speak it fluently, but you want to be able to ask where the bathroom is, to say please and thank you, maybe count to 10.
That’s the aim of this book: to teach you only what matters – the high level, essential concepts – in as simple and direct a way as possible. It’s OK to leave the minutiae (and there’s a lot of it!) to the accountants and bankers. Sometimes you just need to know the bare, conceptual basics of something and you want to know it very quickly. Especially for things like accounting and finance, textbooks are too complicated for this, going into levels of detail that are irrelevant for non-practitioners in that area. Even “For Dummies” books are hundreds of pages long and are meant to teach you a lot, way more than a vast majority of people need to know. We will not get into any real technicalities, jargon or exceptions. Again: this is as high level as it gets!
After reading this short book, you will know the basics, bare bones concepts of:
-Accounting and financial statements – how to understand a business by the numbers
-How to determine how much a business is worth
-What “shares” and “stocks” mean
-How the stock market works
People that may be interested in this book:
-Those wishing to invest in the stock market for the first time, but have no idea how it works
-Humanities majors going into business careers after college
-Teens interested in business (these things are not taught in high school)
-People interested in investing in a small business
-Employees joining startups – techies, salespeople, etc. – without a formal business education (are you being granted shares? What does that mean? How does it work?)
-Professionals who deal with financial or accounting concepts indirectly who would benefit from more knowledge in this area, such as lawyers or HR professionals
-Small business owners who have been operating their business but never truly understood the concepts behind their company’s financials
