Small Biz Tutorials Online

This is a small biz startup sort of post, but since I'm always in that mode, I might as well drop a few findings here as I come across them.

My big weakness in managing my biz is accounting, book keeping, etc. Not only did I major in medieval english lit in school instead of business administration, but numbers have always turned my brain to molasses. (Weird feeling, by the way).

Surprise, though, because there is salvation, namely that nothing un-molasses the brain like the mother of invention...necessity. When your ability to pay bills is directly reliant upon how much you can learn about small business accounting, your brain tends to speed up.

For me, it just doesn't speed up until I've got free time, which is usually later at night; so I wind up learning my small business accounting largely over the Web. Fortunately, there are numerous excellent tutorials available out there if you just know where to look--or you have some small biuz blogger around to point them out.

Management Help is an excellent site. Basically a free library of in-depth papers on all kinds of business management topics. One is this a really good guide called the Basic Guide to Financial Management in Small For-Profit Businesses. No, it's not a Sanford page-turner, but if you need the knowledge it's there. And in much more depth than the usual "5-steps to basic whatever" type article you'll find in the online small biz mags.

In a similar vein, I really liked their guide to Financing by For-Profit Organizations. Again, quite in-depth and far beyond a typical magazine article.

A little less in-depth, but much quicker to digest are these video tutorials and workshops from Commerce Bank--yeah, the same guys who provide time and temperature on TV late at night. They've actually put a fairly large library of topics on the Web, including conducting a market analysis, building a business, management tactics, etc. And they're free--just click on the link and you can watch the workshop lecture right there in the browser. Sure, the advice is aimed at pulling you into various banking services, but it's still good knowledge.

Posted by Oliver Rist on April 18, 2006 05:55 PM