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Business Fundamentals: Strategy, Marketing, Ops, 480+ Tools
3,039 students
Business Fundamentals: Strategy, Marketing, Ops, 480+ Tools
Understand how a company works: business basics for non-business professionals, financial statements, org design
Last updated 10/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Take away 480+ tools: templates, procedures, AI prompts, matrices, checklists, question lists and formulas, plus 32 downloadable tool files
- Follow one hundred dollars through a company with the Hundred Dollar Breakdown workbook and calculator
- Read the environment of a business with STEEPLE analysis, SWOT analysis, a TOWS matrix and a stakeholder power-interest matrix
- Read the three financial statements with an income statement template, a balance sheet template and financial health review questions
- See how a company finds customers with a marketing strategy one-pager, marketing unit economics formulas and channel dashboards
- Understand how money arrives with a revenue funnel tracker, a revenue handoff SLA template and RevOps KPI formulas
- Frame a business problem with a business problem statement, five whys, a stakeholder register and a User Story template
- Describe how work flows with a business process description template, SIPOC and AS-IS and TO-BE process analysis
- Understand why companies are arranged the way they are with a five-step organizational design process, a RACI matrix and the Galbraith Star Model
- Learn with Mike, the #1 HR instructor on Udemy: 1,800,000+ enrollments, 170,000 students, about 200 books on Amazon
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Course content
18 sections • 84 lectures • 52h 53m total length
Requirements
- No business education required: the course is written for people who came from another field
- Experience of working in any company, in any role
- A spreadsheet program such as Excel or Google Sheets for the tool files
- Nothing else to buy for the course itself: 32 tool files and the presentations are attached to the lectures
Description
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
485 tools for understanding how a business works in one course: 303 ready-to-use templates, procedures, AI prompts, matrices, checklists, question lists and formulas, 149 models and methods, 32 downloadable tool files, and 1 app shown on screen.
Open a lecture, take the tool, use it on the company you work in.
Why good specialists feel lost in business conversations
You are good at your job. Then you are invited to a meeting about the budget, the funnel or a reorganization, and half of the words mean nothing to you. Nobody explained how the company earns money, why marketing and sales argue, what a process is or why the structure was changed last year. Without this map it is hard to defend your ideas, and it is hard to grow beyond the specialist role.
What changes after this course
You can follow money through a company from the customer to the profit line. You read the three financial statements. You know how a company finds customers and how a lead becomes income. You can frame a business problem and not its symptom. You can draw a process. And you understand why the organization is arranged the way it is and what changes when it is redesigned.
What is inside: 485 tools, counted lecture by lecture
You do not have to take this number on trust. Open any lecture and read its description: every tool inside is listed there by name.
- 303 ready-to-use tools inside the presentations:
- 86 templates and sample documents: income statement template, balance sheet template, marketing strategy one-pager, business process description template
- 47 step-by-step procedures and workflows: environmental analysis, strategic option evaluation, requirements elicitation interview, process implementation
- 39 ready AI prompts: business problem statement generation, five whys analysis, AS-IS process description, customer review analysis
- 36 formulas and metric sets: financial health metrics, marketing unit economics formulas, RevOps KPI formulas and benchmarks, process efficiency formula
- 34 scorecards, rubrics and matrices: TOWS matrix, risk probability-impact matrix, stakeholder power-interest matrix, RACI matrix
- 31 question lists and scripts: financial health review questions, customer discovery interview script, root problem diagnostic questions, leadership role design questions
- 27 checklists: organizational structure evaluation, marketing strategy audit, Definition of Ready, process audit
- 3 other working tools: MoSCoW prioritization, value-added activity classification
- 149 models and methods explained with examples: open systems model, Porter generic strategies, net present value, STP model, bow-tie funnel, BPMN, Galbraith Star Model
- 32 downloadable tool files: Hundred Dollar Breakdown workbook and calculator, 11 RevOps workbooks, 16 business analysis files and three sample HR documents
- 1 app shown on screen: Microsoft PowerPoint for drawing a process
Where the tools are
- Business, environment, strategy and finance (3 sections, 65 tools). What a business is, competition, the economy, regulation, strategy and the three financial statements.
- How a company finds customers (3 sections, 153 tools). Market position, marketing strategy, budget, brand, digital channels, the marketing function and AI.
- How money arrives (2 sections, 97 tools). Revenue operations, the funnel from lead to money, metrics, data, automation. 11 tool files are here.
- How a business problem gets framed (2 sections, 116 tools). Problem or symptom, requirements, process modelling, systems thinking, change. 16 tool files are here.
- How work flows through a company (2 sections, 39 tools). Process description, BPMN, examples and a description project.
- Why companies are arranged the way they are (3 sections, 48 tools). Organizational design, archetypes, operating models, levels and redesign.
The course also keeps the original Russian-language edition as a separate section of 40 lectures. Its lectures and materials are in Russian and are not included in the count above.
Who is teaching
I am Mike, the #1 HR instructor on Udemy, with 1,800,000+ course enrollments from 170,000 students, and the author of about 200 books on Amazon. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn and worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank across 20 years in HR. I hold PHRi, SHRM-CP and HCI sHRBP certifications and represent HRCI in Eastern Europe. I am also a founder and lead the strategy of my own academy.
I came to business from a specialist role myself. When I joined the STB TV channel, during my onboarding I was given a file where all business processes of the company were described: first at the top level, then each process in more detail. It was very useful. I quickly understood how television works, how the processes are arranged and which departments take part. It showed me how I fit into the whole picture. This course is that kind of file for any company.
How to use the course
Start with the first lecture and follow one hundred dollars through a company. Then go in order: business and environment, customers, money, problems, processes, structure. Section and lecture titles show how many tools are inside, and each lecture description lists them by name.
What is included
- 44 lectures in English across 16 sections, plus the original Russian-language edition as a separate section of 40 lectures; 53 hours in total
- 134 downloadable resources: tool files and the lecture presentations
- 485 tools across the English lessons, ready to copy into your own work
- Lifetime access to all materials
- Active instructor support in the Q&A section
- A Udemy Certificate of Completion
Where to start
Open the first lecture, download the Hundred Dollar Breakdown calculator and enter the numbers of a company you know. Enrol now and start your first lesson today.
Who this course is for:
- Engineers, designers, analysts, HR and other specialists who want to understand the business they work in
- New managers who are now asked about budgets, strategy and processes
- People moving from a specialist role to a business-facing role
- Founders without a business background who want one map of how a company works
- Anyone who sits in meetings and does not follow half of the terms