How Businesses Actually Work
Like Duolingo, but for How Businesses Actually Work. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Making Something People Pay For and Keeping the Engine Running. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Businesses Actually Work
- Customers buy the removal of a frustration or an emotional payoff, not the physical labor or tool
- Pitching features (e.g., '48-inch steel blades') fails to connect with why the customer is opening their wallet
- Willingness to pay depends on the cost of the customer's alternative option, not the creator's production costs
- Cost-plus pricing leaves money on the table when replacing an expensive alternative
- Customers hire products to make progress in specific circumstances, not because of their age, gender, or income bracket
- The exact same buyer will purchase completely different things depending on their situation
- Differentiation only works if it improves something buyers actually care about and are willing to pay for
- Unique features that address irrelevant details add cost without increasing perceived value
- Verbal compliments and survey answers cost nothing and do not predict buying behavior
- Real demand requires putting something scarce on the line, such as cash deposits, pre-orders, or signed letters of intent
- Unit economics looks strictly at the direct revenue and costs tied to one single sale
- Scaling up sales multiplies unit losses rather than fixing them
- Company-wide overhead like office rent cannot be covered if individual transactions lose money
- Gross margin is what remains after direct production costs are subtracted from revenue
- A higher margin leaves more cash per dollar of sales to cover fixed operating costs like rent and salaries
- Low-margin businesses have very little leftover cash from each transaction to reinvest into growing the business
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Businesses Actually Work the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
You start a yard service. Which pitch is most likely to miss what your buyers actually care about?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where How Businesses Actually Work takes you
Decode the core mechanics that make any company survive and thrive. Learn how businesses create genuine customer value, price for profit, and manage the cash flow that keeps the lights on.
- 1
Making Something People Pay For
- Uncovering Real Customer Value
- Pricing and Unit Economics
- 2
Keeping the Engine Running
- Acquiring and Keeping Customers
- Cash Flow and Staying Alive
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
How Businesses Actually Work is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Businesses Actually Work today.
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