The lazy student’s guide to being more business savvy

Your teachers would like you to read the business sections of the newspapers every day and they are right – that does help you in lots of ways:

• You read well-written and concise articles.
• You are exposed to the right business language.
• You generate a breadth of knowledge around the subject.

But you may not always have the time to do this, and many newspaper articles are aimed at business people who want to buy and sell shares. The language can become difficult. For example, they might talk about earnings, which we know as profits, and there’s never much on operational issues or human resource management.

However, there are several tricks you can use to make your life easier and get you to the top of your Business Studies or Business Management class.

1. Set up Google alerts to track your top companies

Find a couple of businesses you are really interested in. For example, Uber or McDonalds or Ted Baker. Go to Google and set up a Google alert for these companies. You will then receive an email update if a news story about that business appears in the paper. www.google.com/alerts

By concentrating on a couple of businesses, you get to know their story, what they are doing and how it’s working out for them. That makes it easier to dig down into the detail.

2. Examine front of business accounts

With those businesses, download their latest set of accounts from their website. Forget the numbers at the back. Instead, the wordy parts at the front often have loads of interesting ideas on what they are trying to achieve. Even if you only read a couple of pages, that’s great. Highlight any words you don’t understand. Look them up or take a guess at what they mean. Then drop a line to your teacher and ask.

3. Store cool stuff on DropBox

Create a DropBox folder on your computer where you can save interesting bits you find. For example, you may receive a particularly interesting Google alert, or come across an advert on a wall, or an offer in a shop window as you are out and about. Take a clip or a picture, and save it in your folder. Even if you don’t ever refer back to it, it starts a thought process. However, if you can just scroll through these a couple of times a month, even better – it gives you a sense of what the customer sees and what businesses show you.

If you are feeling really clever, why not put them together in Sway; Microsoft’s clever way to create a display of work. You can use this with your DropBox folder, or their own drive, OneDrive.

4. Talk business with adults

Have a couple of questions up your sleeve and then ask away. There’s nothing better for older people than talking about themselves. And they may even have an interesting story to tell.

Here’s a couple of questions: What’s the best bit about working for your business? What are the best sorts of people to employ? How do you beat your competition?

They don’t have to be the top dog at the business. It’s just as interesting to hear a view from any level of a business.

So…

You are surrounded by the world of business. Keep asking yourself why that product or service works. Ask others why they’ve bought that product. And then think how that business made that happen. There’s always a story.