“Business” comes from the root word “busy”, and represents everything normally necessary to make money that doesn’t use a specialized, in-demand skill.
- Someone’s business may be poultry farming or custodial work, but they still must do the same of some things as distributed hosting providers or drivers.
- Often, their business can be one of those things that everyone needs.
Every person who freelances, even slightly, is engaging in business skills, to some degree.
- However, many of those domains are an entire discipline of their own.
- In the course of their work, an entrepreneur will perform all the skills in some capacity, and eventually must delegate if they scale.
While the only constant in business is change, the abstractions express the same way.
Core Components
Marketing is conveying value, which applies influence to make people psychologically bias to want your product (which also frequently requires sales).
Accounting is keeping track of value, starting with assets and liabilities and inferring financial value from it (typically for taxes).
Legal resolves civil disputes and tracks whether activities comply with a region’s rules.
Eventual Needs
Information Technology (IT) keeps the computers running, which is inevitable if the business ever requires any degree of automation.
Management is directing people to do things and manage projects, which comes once an organization surpasses about 3–4 people, even if they’re volunteers.
Logistics must have drivers and dispatchers.
Larger-Scale Needs
Human Resources (HR) manages a wide variety of miscellaneous tasks loosely connected to risk management and employee retention, since they can become time-intensive once an organization grows larger:
- Data entry and submission for payroll.
- Manage distributions to retirement plans.
- Resolving employee disputes.
- Running background checks for possible hires.
- Managing the processes for new hires (onboarding) and terminations (offboarding), including ergonomic/ADA issues.
- Serving as a loss control manager to prevent and manage insurance claims (especially regarding workers’ comp insurance).
- Archiving employee records and performance reviews.
- Managing organization-wide activities.
- Managing various other employee benefits (paid time off, company vehicles, etc.).
- Conducting periodic audits about the balance of power and responsibilities in an organization.
Public Relations (PR) directly manages the public reputation of the organization, and serves to conform the organization’s appearance to offset scandalous events.