Developing Business Acumen

I spent years wanting to make money with my online activities. I couldn't figure it out when I was a homemaker. It just mystified me.

I didn't begin getting a clue until I was homeless and collecting recyclables under circumstances where every penny mattered to my quality of life.

Collecting recyclables taught me a lot about when to make the extra effort to get a particular can or bottle and when to not bother. But it taught me that because I was so extremely poor. I don't know if it would teach you anything if you aren't in similarly dire straights.

There are videos all over the place talking about business stuff. Y Combinator produces such videos and I've watched more than a few of theirs.

I kept a list for a time but when I wanted to publish it, a lot of the links were dead. This is their online library.

Another way to learn is work for a small business. You will likely see more than you think you do.

I also took free classes from the Chamber of Commerce when I lived in Manhattan, Kansas. They sometimes had successful business owners speak and they also taught basics about things like keeping the books and paying taxes.

The paperwork is extremely important. It's a big part of keeping it legal and it will be very much context dependent because the laws and regulations vary substantially from one jurisdiction to another.

My mother has a lot of business acumen and was self employed for a lot of years. She worked as a seamstress, doing babysitting and as "the maid" at homes of wealthy locals which often was more like "chief, cook and bottle washer."

One wealthy woman was going to officially promote her to "assistant" or something but died before that could happen. In contrast, my father had no business acumen and never was very successful after he retired from the military. 

But the military is a big bureaucracy run by the same federal government that runs out Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is the people who handle federal taxes. And my mother was a German immigrant who spent years telling me she would prefer to be a secretary instead of "the maid" if only her English were better (and mispronounced English every time she said that, leaving out the hard G).

So she had an accountant and my father helped her with the paperwork and taxes because as an immigrant, she had trouble dealing with that stuff.