The Personal MBA: Can You Get an MBA From a Book?
Have you ever wondered if staying in college or going back to college long enough to get a MBA would make a significant difference in your career? Making the choice to stay in college longer and spend tens of thousands of dollars for something of an uncertain benefit can be a very difficult thing to do. The truth is, though, what you need is not another degree: you simply need to learn more about what makes business tick and how to improve your own ventures or the company you work for. Now you just need to figure out what to study, and you'll be ready to learn all the skills an MBA would give you on your own.
Why do you need to learn more about business?
First, though, you'll need to decide if you really need to learn more about business. When I personally started college, I never thought I would end up taking business classes. I was shocked when my college required a number of business and economics focused classes, and initially resented having to take them. I then started seeing how the classes had helped me look at the world of business differently, and I found the info in them benificual in everything from running my own site to working as a freelancer to my ministry work in Thailand. The thing is, business permiates every part of life, and the more you can learn about how to start your vision, progress it into something others are willing to pay for, and then grow the business to fit your and the market's needs, you'll find it easier to do your own job or start the business you've always wanted to.
That's where The Personal MBA comes in. Author Josh Kaufman has been sharing tips and training on his website, PersonalMBA.com/blog, for years, trying to help people learn all they can about business from the best authors and online content. From highlighting the best business books to distilling his own business knowledge in informative blog posts, the Personal MBA site has a wealth of info to help you learn everything from an MBA without having to go back to school. Then, building on this knowledge, Kaufman has distilled it into his new book, The Personal MBA: Master the art of business. This book is being released today, but I had the privilege to receive a pre-release copy for review and was very impressed at how thorough and informative this one book is.
An MBA in a book
The Personal MBA book is a nearly 400 page book that lets you explore all the topics you'll come across about business and economics related to running your own company. But rather than being a dry book that tries to teach you a whole field of knowledge in each chapter with different concepts mixed in throughout the whole thing, this book is designed to let you learn about individual concepts thoroughly with mini-essays about each. It's laid out similar to 37signals' Rework or Getting Real, with short sections that pack in a powerful concept and make you ponder its implications for your work. From ROI to Bias to Risk reversal to Association marketing, you'll learn about an amazing variety of business concepts on your own pace with interesting and easy to understand explanations and applications.
Then, each section of the book includes a Share This Concept link at the end. Each individual idea has a companion page on the book's site, which includes a video explaining more about the topic, and an outline of what that section of the book discussed. For example, page 180 discusses what bootstrapping means, how it's benificial to your business, and more. This section's Share This Concept link, http://book.personalmba.com/bootstrapping/, both gives you more info about the topic and lets you share what you've learned with colleagues and friends. If you take the time to explore this extra content, you'll find that you learned even more from the book than you could from the text alone.
I was very impressed with the depth of business topics that The Personal MBA covered, and was very excited to see that it didn't make business dry or difficult to understand. Unlike a textbook, The Personal MBA is designed to let you explore a topic you need to learn more about, even if you haven't read the whole book. Whether you're a business student or want to learn more on your own, you'll find this book a great reference guide to help you master business better than you could on your own. Best of all, it's a great example of how much you can learn today online, from books, and in self study, without spending tens of thousands of dollars or wasting years of your life in school. For once, technology and its related older cousin, paper books, have made life simpler and can help make you more productive! The most important part isn't about where you learn, or how you learn, but it's what you learn and what you do with it. The Personal MBA empowers you to understand the business world and drive your visions into profitable ventures, and if you're motivated, you can use it to learn more than an undedicated person would in a traditional business program.
Purchase The Personal MBA from Amazon.com ($15.21)
Purchase The Personal MBA in Kindle eBook format ($14.99)
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