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Summary of The Personal MBA 

4.6 . 3360 reviews

Short summary

No matter the state of the economy, getting an MBA is an expensive choice that is impossible to justify. Even elite schools like Harvard and Wharton don't teach students what it takes to run a real business. The best you'd learn is the art of making great PowerPoint presentations and some irrelevant financial models. You can get better results and save time, energy, and money by skipping business school altogether. Josh Kaufman argues that true leaders aren't made by fancy MBA programs — they make themselves by acquiring the skills, knowledge, and experience they need to succeed. In this summary, you will learn the most valuable business lessons through simple, memorable mental models that can be applied to actual challenges you'll face in the business world. "Skipping business school to learn the fundamentals of business on your own may be the best decision you ever make." ~ Josh Kaufman

Table of content

  • Summary of The Personal MBA
  • About the author
  • What is The Personal MBA about?
  • Who should read The Personal MBA
  • Topics in The Personal MBA
first key point

MBA programs don't equip you with what you need to succeed in the business world

Listen the first key point
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Contrary to popular belief, MBA programs do not make people more successful. The primary reason is that the schools offering these programs teach very few things that are of substantial value in the working world.

Glance through the curriculum of any business school and you’ll discover that everything is structured around a few assumptions about what you will do after you get your degree: you’ll either become a consultant, work as a financier at an investment bank, become a corporate accountant, or become a C-level executive at a big industrial manufacturing operation.

And because the coursework is essentially structured around running your massive operation efficiently and/or doing complex quantitative analysis, these programs do not equip students to effectively tackle any of the other vital things that 99% of working business people do day in and day out.

Truth is, no MBA program can equip you for the business world like educating yourself. By studying the basics of sound business practice and developing a network, you can get the major perks and benefits of business education at a fraction of the cost.

According to Josh Kaufman, it’s far better to spend your time and energy teaching yourself what you actually need to know to succeed in the business world, rather than waste your hard-earned cash learning irrelevant theories.
The consensus is clear: today, MBA programs are a waste of money and time. Many elite schools teach outdated assembly-line education about PowerPoint presentations and profit-and-loss statements.
After two years of studying sanitized case studies, students are bundled off into middle management to find out how business really works. Josh Kaufman has made a career out of distilling the core principles of business and delivering them quickly and concisely to people at all stages of their careers.

In the coming chapters, you will learn the essentials of marketing, negotiation, sales, and strategy.
second key point

Identify the things that people don’t have enough of and provide them

Every successful business produces something valuable. The world is full of opportunities to make people’s lives better, and your job as a businessperson is to identify things that people lack, then find a way to provide those things. The value you create can be of different forms, but the goal is always the same: to improve someone else’s life. Without creating value, a business can’t exist.
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third key point

Marketing: the art and science of finding people who are actively interested in what you have to offer

fourth key point

Sales: successful businesses sell what they have to offer

fifth key point

Finance: the art and science of money inflow and outflow of a business

sixth key point

Take care of your brain and body

seventh key point

Accomplishment becomes easy when you learn to work with yourself

eighth key point

To be successful in business, you must learn to work with people

ninth key point

Conclusion

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What is The Personal MBA about?

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