How Businesses Work
Like Duolingo, but for How Businesses 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.
21 levels across 3 sections, about 42 minutes end to end, roughly 8 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Starting and Selling, Managing the Money, and People and Systems. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Businesses Work
- A business identifies a specific gap or problem
- The 'job' is the underlying reason a student reaches for their wallet
- A business requires a price to be paid to keep the system running
- Customers buy a result or a feeling, not just an object
- A business is a repeatable process, not a random act of kindness
- Different products can solve the same emotional or practical job
- Recognizing that a business is a problem-solving system with a cost
- Identifying the 'Job to be Done' for various school-based services
- Profit is not guaranteed and only happens after costs are covered
- The business owner takes the risk of losing their own money if the idea fails
- Profit is the specific reward for successfully managing that risk
- Finding new customers is more expensive and difficult than keeping old ones
- Repeat customers provide a steady, predictable flow of money
- A business that only sells to a person once eventually runs out of people to sell to
- Identifying the value of customer retention for sustainability
- Lowering prices makes you the 'cheaper' option to attract budget-conscious students
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 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.
When a student buys a school hoodie, what is the 'job' they are actually paying for?
Get it right to open this lesson and 20 more in the app.
Where How Businesses Work takes you
Go from an idea to a functioning company by learning the core pillars of business: from making your first sale to managing a global team.
- 1
Starting and Selling
- The Value Exchange
- Marketing and the Message
- The Art of the Display
- 2
Managing the Money
- Keeping Score with Accounting
- Cash Flow and Finance
- 3
People and Systems
- Leading a Team
- The Big Picture: Economics
3 sections · 7 units · 21 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
How Businesses Work is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. 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 Work today.
Download Tomo, search How Businesses Work, and play your first lesson in under a minute.