What actually taught people to run a small business, and what was entertainment

A year of business content taught me nothing that survived contact with an actual business. Comparing notes with people running small things, the split is sharp.

Credited

• Doing it badly for a while. Unsatisfying, and the most common answer by a distance: the first year teaches you which questions are even real.
• A small number of old books. Not this year's. Cash, pricing, talking to a customer.
• One person slightly ahead of you in the same trade, who answers messages. Specific beats general enormously.
• Your own numbers in a spreadsheet, which makes abstract advice testable.
• The boring institutional stuff: tax guidance, trade bodies, local business support. Free, specific, correct.

Entertainment

• Anyone whose business is telling you about business.
• Interviews with people running something a thousand times bigger. The problems of a large company are not scaled-up versions of yours.
• General motivation. Universally described as pleasant and useless.

Filter: what specific decision did this help me make this month? Everything in the first list answers. Almost nothing in the second does.