About This Book

To the readers:

The creation of  Business 101  wasn't because business education had become accessible to me, but rather because I had clearly felt that for many high school students, truly systematic and accessible business education was actually very distant.

When I first encountered business competitions, like many beginners, I lacked a complete training path and didn't clearly know where to begin. Faced with business cases, competition tasks, team divisions, and final presentations, I felt visibly helpless: there was a wealth of information, a lot of terminology, and many seemingly mature solutions, but very little material truly suitable for a high school student to gradually enter the world of business learning.

Later, I began to self-study business, finance, and investment-related content, and successively participated in several business and investment competitions, including the Wharton Investment Challenge and the SIC High School Investment Competition. In this process, I gradually transformed from an inexperienced beginner into a student capable of independently analyzing problems, participating in competitions, and winning awards.

But it was precisely in this process that I realized more profoundly: the gap in educational resources is enormous.

Some students have access to established business courses, professional mentors, systematic training, and high-quality competition guidance from the outset; while others, even with equal interest and willingness to work hard, may struggle to even find the most basic entry point. It's not that they lack ability or enthusiasm, but rather that they lack a clear, reliable, and beginner-friendly path.

Business education is often packaged as too distant. It always seems associated with expensive programs, complex terminology, elite resources, and opportunities for a select few. For many high school students, business isn't unworthy of study, but rather seems too difficult to enter; it's not that they lack interest, but rather that they don't know where to begin.

This book aims to address this situation.

I hope that Business 101 can be a more equitable, clearer, and more accessible learning resource. It doesn't attempt to create distance, nor does it want to turn business learning into a game for a select few. Instead, it aims to help students who are just beginning and lack abundant resources and experience to gain a more solid starting point.

In a sense, this book is also a response to my own early experiences. I know how bewildering a novice can feel when facing a business competition for the first time, and I know the extra cost of self-learning in an environment lacking systematic resources. Therefore, I hope to transform the experience I've gradually accumulated through learning, competition, and practice into materials more suitable for middle school students.

I believe that business education shouldn't belong only to students already at the center of resources. It should also belong to those who are willing to learn, willing to think, and willing to try, but temporarily lack guidance and opportunities.

This is why I wrote Business 101.

Haoyu Zhang

Author of Business 101

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