Depending upon your intended career path and also upon where you are in your career development when you read this, some of the information you need to acquire is listed below, not in any special order of importance. The priority is different if you are still an employee of a company, if you have already reached management, or if you intend to start and operate your own business, either full-time or part-time (moonlighting).

1. Learn about business finance, marketing, sales, production, operations.
   If you work for a large company that has departments in all these functions, make it your goal to learn everything you can about the way the departments work together and interact. You may have a friend that works in another department that will be willing to have lunch with you occasionally and tell you about his/her job and what they do there. Ask your supervisor/manager if there is any opportunity to rotate between departments for the purpose of learning how to be a better employee that can be cross-trained. When a person is out sick or leaves the company, sometimes there is an immediate void that can be filled by an employee that has multiple skills within the company.
   
   Read any available internal publications that are available to you, and especially read external documents, such as reports for stockholders (annual reports to stockholders with financial statements), press releases (frequently on the company website), and business proposals that are freely available internally to you.



2. Learn about organizational structures. Learn why some businesses are organized as partnerships, corporations, sole proprietorships, limited liability corporations, not-for-profit, etc. There are references in the "Resources" section of this website to places on the Internet where one can read about this subject in great detail, which does not need to be repeated here.
   
   This information becomes important in planning your own business in the future.



3. Learn what makes businesses successful (and not).
   
   Many great companies have emerged in the past 10 to 50 years. Just as many great companies have vanished in the same period. Ask someone 20 to 25 years older than you the names of some companies, including manufacturers, retailers, distributors, importers, etc. they they can remember. Then do an Internet search on those names and read about their demise.
   
   It is easier to find out information about currently successful companies, which are in the news daily.



4. Continue education all your life and take formal courses when you can. This suggestion pertains mostly to anyone already working, whether or not they have in mind to start their own business later on. It cannot be emphasized enough that high school and college can only prepare students with the basics in subjects that are tools to enter business, not provide a life-long education in any career they expect to pursue.
   
   Every profession changes so rapidly that no one should feel content that they have learned it all, and that they can quit learning at any specific point, unless it is at retirement. Every profession has continued education opportunities in their industry associations, and some professions even require continued education to maintain licenses. Courses can be taken in ancillary subjects which will broaden a business person's understanding across broad scopes of business activities, and they should be pursued. A business person should not rely entirely on outsourcing tasks involving accounting, taxes, human resources activities, communications, computers/Internet, etc. The more an individual knows about any given subject related to their business, the more likely they will not fall into traps from lack of knowledge or become victims of outside vendors telling them information which is self-serving.



5. Before you start a business, scope out the competition. This admonition pertains mainly to people starting a business from scratch, based on their own knowledge of an industry in which they have worked. Still, thorough research into the market they intend to enter is highly productive, unless the business person brings many years of experience to the table and already understands the market and competition they are entering.
   
   Competition is no longer just another company or storefront down the block. Because of the Internet competitors can be anywhere and surface anytime without warning. A person starting a business should have as part of their business plan and business model a specific plan to implement when competitors surface.



6. Understand that very few people “get rich quick”. There is a long-running joke that the retirement plan for most people in the 21st Century will be to win a lottery. It's almost that bad for some people who fail to prepare and to plan.



7. Understand world economics and recent (past 50 years) world history as it pertains to business today. What has happened since 1945 at the end of World War-II, when half the world was in economic and physical shambles, to create the global powerhouses (both countries and international companies) that exist today?



8. Don’t start a business in an industry in which you have no experience. Just because a business has an allure to which a person feels attracted or fascinated, this is no reason to believe entering such a business would be easy or even possible. Lack of knowledge of the inside workings of a business or industry is a sure-fire recipe for failure. Even hiring a manager with industry experience to run the business leaves the owner vulnerable if that person leaves or begins to make demands.
   
   Franchisors make the claim frequently that their training will establish any franchisee with sufficient experience to operate one of their franchise operations successfully. However, legitimate franchisors will screen out potential franchisees that appear to lack the ambition and the willingness to learn their system and to implement it successfully, or if they lack the requisite background in business to be able to absorb their training.



9. Don’t believe industry stories or anecdotes. If you can't verify a rumor or story that affects your business life, don't believe it. Ask people where they heard something and look it up for yourself. Rumors can be devastating to your morale, but more importantly, they can cause you to steer yourself in the wrong direction.



10. Develop a prodigious memory about business issues you might think might not be relevant to what you need to know. Catalog everything you read and hear on interesting business cases. If you can't remember them, bookmark the website pages in a file system where you can retrieve them to remind yourself later. Magazine articles can be scanned. Audio can be recorded and stored on your computer with little or no special equipment or knowledge. Content is "king" and knowledge is power.



11. One of the most important things a person can do along the way in their career is to learn to manage their time. There are lots of written plans and resources to show you how. However, you must believe in it, practice it and participate. "Tempus fugit" (time flies), and it doesn't come back. We all get the same 1,440 minutes a day, starting at midnight in your time zone. The winner(s) make the most of each day. Yesterday's minutes are like yesterday's newspapers and empty airline seats.