Getting Started In Business

How Do We Teach You How To Get Started In Business?

There are many ways to approach how to get started in business. How did you get started walking or talking or reading – you probably don’t remember. It is safe to say that each of these accomplishments happened because of a number of people who helped you, your determination, your abilities, learning from mistakes, watching others, encouragement, a push, and various teaching methods used.

Like learning to walk, in which there were many steps (preparation steps or pre-walking activities) before you started to walk, business has many steps you should take before you go into business or work in business. As you learned to walk, you fell many times until you walked and then ran. Business isn’t something you necessarily succeed at the first time or get off to a running start.

There are also stages of business that we should discuss. If you cut lawns and are paid, then you are in business vs. renting a store and setting up a store to sell things or to develop a product and build a factory to build it. Each of these examples are businesses with different levels of challenge, expertise and commitment.

We help you take steps to prepare for business by helping you develop skills. We help you prepare for business by providing experience opportunities which help you develop a résumé and give you valuable work experience.

Steps To Take To Prepare For Business or To Get Started; Summary

(There are additional explanations on each of these steps below)

Understand the basics of business

By reviewing the TeachingKidsBusiness.com Business Basics Program will be exposed to many important basics required in business.

Activities:

  • Go through the program at [Business Basics] to give you basic understanding of business.

Understand Yourself

To make the right choices in business you not only have to be prepared with a good plan, resources and skills but, you need to understand yourself. By understanding the things you are good at and like will help you find the right fit. For example; if you do not like to read, are not a good reader and like to be active, then a research position would probably not be a good fit for you.

Activities:

  • [What’s Your Thing] helps you understand more about yourself.
  • [Job Fit] helps you understand that it is important to do something in business or as a career that fits well with you.

Develop Business Skills

Like anything you try to do, the better the skill level you have, the better you will do. For example; if you play soccer and work at learning to kick the ball properly (practice a lot) you will be able to kick well and possibly score goals.

Business is really about applying skills. If you are a baker you need to have the skill to bake things that people will enjoy to eat. If you are a firefighter you need to know how to put out a fire and save lives. If you run a watch repair store then you will need to know how to fix watches.

It should now make sense that you should not go into business until you have some skills to sell. Yes, you have to start somewhere, meaning that you need to work at something while you develop skills. For example; if you decide that there is an opportunity to cut lawns in your neighborhood then you should want to learn and practice on your own lawn. Once you know how to do it, developed the skills, you can then venture out and try it in the form of a business – get paid to do it somewhere else.

Skills are not just about learning to cut grass. Skills are a wide variety of things you are able to do. In the case of business they include things like time management, decision making, networking, and many other things that help you manage yourself and your business.

Activities:

Do Some Research

Before you go to a movie you will normally check what is playing, talked to people about what is good, look in the paper at listings and reviews or have seen movie trailers (preview). There is always some information you can use to make a decision.

In business, information is very important to help management, business owners and employees to make good decisions. Reports on what is selling helps people order more product, observing line up or customer traffic and how busy a business is at certain times to allow businesses to make hiring decisions on how many employees they will need.

You should research business opportunities, job opportunities, types of business and jobs in certain areas etc.

Activities:

  • [Business Cases] are excellent ways to understand various businesses and possible opportunities from your observations on what they are not doing, that you could do as a business,
  • [e-Mentors] or mentors in general are an excellent resource of information, advice and encouragement,
  • [Links] for websites are an excellent resource.
  • Research online businesses for products that interest you. Read about these businesses and determine what they do and how well they do it.

Talk to people and network

Business is very much about dealing with people. You need customers and you need to know their likes and dislikes to provide them what they want. Therefore, the people element is important to think about and to learn as early as possible.

One way to help you to start to connect better with people is to work on networking with people. You will also develop people skills through this process. You will also develop other skills such as communicating your ideas, listening and organizational skills.

Activities:

  • [Networking] is a section that will help you understand how to start to develop a network and to take steps to begin to learn networking.

Observe businesses and look for opportunities.

One excellent way to get started in business is to observe other businesses. Think about it, you can pretend you are in business by watching and playing out what other businesses do. This was a key strategy in TeachingKidsBusiness.com to let kids observe and participate in the development of the website.

You will find that once you start to observe, notice businesses, you will start to ask questions that will help you figure it out.

Get some experience

You have probably heard the expression “it takes money to earn money”, while it also takes experience to get jobs and succeed in business. As a kid, it is hard to get experience. TeachingKidsBusiness.com recognized the needs of kids to gain experience and therefore created a number of “experience opportunities” for kids.

People will often work charity and will work for free in jobs to get experience and to prove themselves.

Activities:

  • [Business Experiences] is a good section to help kids gain valuable experience,
  • Try things like the lemonade stand, grass cutting, paper routes, baby sitting, pet care and other things you can think of that are safe and that your parents approve of. The goal is not as much the money as the experience.

Try a low risk business for experience in TeachingKidsBusiness.com

Activities;