The Personal MBA 10th Anniversary Edition

When you consider what else you can do with the $15 or so it costs to buy this book, the value proposition feels downright ridiculous. For $15 you can buy 3/5ths of a baseball cap, order a round of watered-down drinks or pick up a 1/3rd of a video game. Or, for the same price you can get over 350 pages of clearly explained, entertainingly presented, essential business concepts that will directly and meaningfully enhance your knowledge of business. If you're new to business, it will take the stark raving terror out of the process. If you're a veteran it will help you focus and enhance any venture you're working on and likely inspire more profitable ideas. One of the many stories Josh tells in the book is of a hospital that incorporates simple checklists to prevent infections from developing in patients. These checklists include basic things like reminding doctors to wash their hands. Though almost laughably simple and obvious, the mere act of incorporating the checklists lead to the complete elimination of infections at this particular hospital. The Personal MBA book is the ultimate checklist for all business decisions - as an entrepreneur, investor or even as someone running your own career and household financial system. Anyone who reads this book will have a practical guide to avoiding financial catastrophe and identifying the most promising opportunities. If I had this book a decade ago I would have saved myself from a very unfortunate business experience that cost me over $50,000 in losses and limitless wasted energy. Josh, who is stunningly still under 30 years-old, has a wisdom far beyond his years. He is fiercely intelligent and despite a very pleasant demeanor as a writer, he is a rebel in the best sense of the word. His tone is always moderate, respectful and his arguments are always meticulously researched, expertly and passionately presented. He talks softly but he carries a big intellectual stick. Make no mistake about it. The title of this book is not a gimmick. He thinks business school is a terrible investment and clearly has walked the talk, building a successful career without it. He has a gift for simply articulating complex concepts and has a deep-seated passion for analyzing systems, particularly the workings of the human brain. His tone is never cloying, condescending, egotistical or obnoxious - as so many heinous business and management book titles are. He presents his views with an inspiring confidence that will fuel your business or business-to-be. While reading it I constantly had to put the book down to jot down new ideas. Think of it this way. After absorbing what Josh calls the "mental models" in this book you will find the world of business presenting you with opportunities everywhere you go. It is a lot like buying a car and then seeing that model everywhere. As you adopt the mental models into your own thinking you will feel a shot of inspiration and be empowered to act thoughtfully, and confidently. I recently interviewed for a job and couldn't help but notice interactions that were playing out exactly as described in the book. You know that scene in The Terminator, where Arnold Schwarzenegger sees a menu of options scroll down before his eyes? And he chooses his response from that list? This book is like having a long list of useful ideas to pull from as you make decisions. The concepts articulated in The Personal MBA helped me make progress as an entrepreneur (launched a Website that made a modest profit last year), landed a job in a completely different field that I enjoy and moved to a city better suited to what I really want. I highly recommend making the Personal MBA (both the site and the book) a major part of your studies. The risk is you spend $15 and sell it for say, $8, and lose seven bucks. The potential reward is you create a business you love, earn massive profits, increase your opportunities, avoid disaster and contribute something meaningful to the world through your business. If there's a better risk/reward profile for a $15 investment, I'd love to see it. The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business

Josh Kaufman’s The Personal MBA is a comprehensive guide that distills essential business concepts into clear, actionable insights. Whether you're an entrepreneur, manager, or simply someone interested in understanding how businesses work, this book offers a wealth of knowledge without the hefty price tag of a traditional MBA. Kaufman’s writing is engaging and straightforward, making complex ideas accessible to readers at any level of business experience. The book covers a wide range of topics, including marketing, sales, negotiation, productivity, and more. What sets this book apart is its practical approach—Kaufman focuses on principles you can immediately apply to your work or business. The Personal MBA is not just a read; it's a resource you'll find yourself returning to time and again. Kaufman’s ability to synthesize key business principles into a single, easy-to-understand volume makes it an invaluable tool for anyone looking to sharpen their business acumen. Highly recommended for those who want to master the fundamentals of business on their own terms.

I was not familiar with the formal movement of "The Personal MBA", but I was curious when I saw this book advertised. I finished my MBA in 2007 and had the good fortune of having my company reimburse me for the costs. This was an experience and process I feel will serve me well. As my MBA education lasted me two years, I finished knowing I did not know everything about business and all of its core elements (I still had a lot to learn). Since I have finished I have followed the philosophy of personal learning and trying to improve key skills related to the art of business. This book is a good starting point and has some good references and passages I found interesting. I did not find the chapters on Finance, marketing, sales, or the Human Mind overly helpful (probably in this order) as they operate at the highest level and cover the most basic elements of each core competency. The areas I found most helpful were Value Creation, Value Delivery, Working with Yourself, Analyzing Systems, and Improving Systems. The last passage from B.C Forbes and Appendix B are great. Each short, but I found these to be the most thought provoking parts of the book. The reading list is good, but some really important books are missing that may help further one's "business education". Think about what you need to learn and create your own list of 100 books (some from Josh's list would certainly be included). As people have noted this will never replace the value of a formal business education, but will be a value reference for people who need business skills to complement their hard skills and don't need to go through 2-3 years of rigorous training, plus the potential expense and opportunity costs. I would have liked to see core areas like project management and quality discussed further along with IT and related subjects. Maybe tie together business and IT as the book had this potential, but fell a little short (but in truth, this was not the author's objective). All in all, the cost of the book was minimal and provided a lot of food for thought and directions to follow and explore. This may even be a recommended read for those entering business school and those who just finished.

This book is easy to understand. It offers a decent amount of basic knowledge when it comes to starting a business. I love how it not only covers the author’s experience and his advice but also other aspects (team working, mental health) that contributes to creating a great business. Would recommend to anyone who are interested in starting their own business but don’t know where to start. This book is good for people that are not interesting in starting business at the same time imo as it covers ideas that are beneficial to personal development

Did non change my life ;-) thoughts worth thinking about before spending YOUR OWN money on an MBA. This book does nothing for your CV like an MBA would if you care about that. This book may help you to figure out it its woth it for you.

It gives you consice steps on the different aspects of business, it goes even furthure and dirrects you to more sources where you can expand your knowledge on the different areas of the business but it doesn’t give a step by step guide to starting and launching a business

¡Guau! Este libro es de lo mejor que he leído en mucho tiempo y desde luego lo mejor que he leído sobre el mundo de la empresa y los negocios. Tómate este análisis como una introducción pero hazte un gran favor leyéndote el libro, porque te vas a alegrar. El libro parte de la idea de que para triunfar en la gran mayoría de empresa “sólo” es necesario sentido común, inteligencia emocional y conocer una serie de ideas y principios básicos. MBA Personal se encargará de enseñártelos. El autor, Josh Kaufman, ha trabajado en diferentes negocios, entrevistado a profesionales, y leído miles de libros de negocios, de los cuáles ha seleccionado las mejores ideas y las ha desarrollado en este libro. Si estás pensando en estudiar un MBA o simplemente mejorar tu rendimiento en tu empresa, este libro es un comienzo inmejorable. Y es que, tal y como dice Matt Damon en “El indomable Will Hunting”: “Has tirado $150,000 en una educación que podías haber conseguido por $50 en retrasos en una biblioteca pública” Una de las primeras ideas del libro es que debemos ser conscientes de que el objetivo de cualquier negocio es descubrir lo que la gente quiere o necesita, y después crearlo. No debemos perderlo nunca de vista, ya que los ingresos están directamente relacionados con el volumen de gente dispuesta a pagar por lo que ofreces. Pero crear valor no es suficiente, si nadie conoce lo que ofreces no importa lo bueno que sea. Por eso es fundamental el marketing, que se basa en atraer la atención para aumentar la demanda de lo que has creado. En la actualidad, hay mucha información disponible por lo que el tiempo de los clientes es limitado, así que hay que ganárselo siendo mejor que la competencia. Además es fundamental el qué y el cuando: fíjate en la gente adecuada en el momento adecuado creando en ellos curiosidad, sorpresa o preocupación. Una vez cuentas con la atención de los potenciales clientes, es la hora de transformarlos en verdaderos clientes a través de la venta. Para conseguir hacer ver a los clientes por qué deben pagar por lo que ofreces, es fundamental que seas capaz de generar confianza a través de tu reputación porque “Precio es lo que pagas. Valor es lo que recibes”

Initally, the author put together a list of the best business books. This book (by himself) is a sort of summary/explanation of the most important concepts from a variety of different topics, ranging from business essentials like marketing and finance over psychology and self-development to dealing with systems. As a consequence, this book is extremely comprehensive. The individual topics are covered on about 1.5 pages each, so do not expect something very detailed. Due to the nature of these concepts, going into more detail does not provide much of a benefit anyway, so this is not a problem. If you want to go deeper on a certain topic, the comprehensive reading list and other recommendations allows you to do this. In my opinion, this is the perfect balance between accessibility and depth. This book is great for getting an overview of a lot of topics: Some of them are so basic that you probably know them already, whereas others might be new to you. Because of the sheer number of topics, you will probably find quite a few new ones. Even if you did know all of them, this would still be a great resource to look up useful concepts for certain situations which you might not be actively aware of otherwise (absence blindness). And if you wanted to go deeper, the reading recommendations would allow you to focus on the good books rather than wasting time on the bad ones. A lot of these concepts are applicable far beyond business, so this would also be good read for people not focused on business administration. The premise of this book is that it replaces an MBA: This obviously partly marketing - the author does not cover everything an MBA covers. Instead, he focuses on the concepts that are actually useful and applicable and adds several that are not covered in MBA programs at all. He dedicates two chapters to explaining his take on this topic and I think his approach is very reasonable - it also aligns with my personal experience and what I learned during my own research. If I had to choose between a classic MBA and this book just for learning (without a certificate) about business administration I would definitely choose the book - regardless of the price. So overall, I think the author has done a very good job at creating a comprehensive and high quality book about anything related to business administration. I would definitely recommend this book - even to people not directly interested in business administration.