Your Personal MBA: For Free
First off, I should mention that this book was recommended to me by Thomas Frank over at collegeinfogeek.com (here‘s the reading list), and I have to say, this was a great recommendation. I’ve been interested in business for multiple reasons, but always felt that business has been “too complex” or “risky”.
This does not have to be the case. Josh Kaufman in his book “The Personal MBA” (check it out here) runs the gamut in regards to business topics, covering everything from personal productivity to finance. He shows that business can be simple, and risk can be managed intelligently, even without an MBA from some highfalutin business school.
There are two things I really liked about the book: firstly, it’s broken up very well into basic principles that are written in bite-sized sections. As such, the book can be a fantastic reference tool. Even if you only want to look up Josh’s advice on something such as, say, how to get more people to join your community service club at school, you can find the pertinent section quickly, read it quickly, and implement it quickly. Reading the book cover-to-cover is not necessary to gain a great deal of knowledge about how to vastly improve any vaguely business-related practice you engage in.
The second thing that I liked, which I’ll cover more in another article, is the idea of self-education. The book’s author, Josh, earned what was essentially an MBA at the undergraduate level, and thus did not have to mortgage his life to find out what they teach at business school. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on a nearly worthless degree (this is enlightening), he discovered that by reading business books (which he recommends here) and combining this with practical experience (which Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, has an interesting perspective on), one can learn as much, if not more than one would learn at business school.
To be honest, even if you have zero interest in business, this book is fantastic as a general self-help resource, and everyone will find something that they can use in their daily life, be it business-related or no. I’d highly recommend this book to anyone.