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The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business Paperback – August 28, 2012

by Josh Kaufman (Author)

616 customer reviews

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Getting an MBA is an expensive choice-one almost impossible to justify regardless of the state of the economy. Even the elite schools like Harvard and Wharton offer outdated, assembly-line programs that teach you more about PowerPoint presentations and unnecessary financial models than what it takes to run a real business. You can get better results (and save hundreds of thousands of dollars) by skipping business school altogether.

Josh Kaufman founded PersonalMBA.com as an alternative to the business school boondoggle. His blog has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to the best business books and most powerful business concepts of all time. Now, he shares the essentials of entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, negotiation, operations, productivity, systems design, and much more, in one comprehensive volume. The Personal MBA distills the most valuable business lessons into simple, memorable mental models that can be applied to real-world challenges.

The Personal MBA explains concepts such as:

The Iron Law of the Market: Why every business is limited by the size and quality of the market it attempts to serve-and how to find large, hungry markets.
The 12 Forms of Value: Products and services are only two of the twelve ways you can create value for your customers.
The Pricing Uncertainty Principle: All prices are malleable. Raising your prices is the best way to dramatically increase profitability - if you know how to support the price you're asking.
4 Methods to Increase Revenue: There are only four ways a business can bring in more money. Do you know what they are?

True leaders aren't made by business schools - they make themselves, seeking out the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to succeed. Read this book and you will learn the principles it takes most business professionals a lifetime of trial and error to master.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A masterpiece. This is the 'START HERE' book I recommend to everyone interested in business. An amazing overview of everything you need to know. Covers all of the basics, minus buzz-words and fluff. One of the most inspiring things I've read in years."

- Derek Sivers, founder of CDbaby.com and sivers.org

"No matter what they tell you, an MBA is not essential. If you combine reading this book with actually trying stuff, you'll be far ahead in the business game."
- Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired and author of What Technology Wants

"File this book under NO EXCUSES. After you've read it, you won't be open to people telling you that you're not smart enough, not insightful enough, or not learned enough to do work that matters. Josh takes you on a worthwhile tour of the key ideas in business."
- Seth Godin, author of Linchpin

"I've run across few people who conceptually 'grok' how to get things done better than Josh Kaufman."
- David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

"A creative, breakthrough approach to business education. I have an MBA from a top business school, and this book helped me understand business in a whole new way."
- Ali Safavi, executive director of international sales and distribution, The Walt Disney Company

About the Author

Josh Kaufman is the author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, an international bestseller with translations in 12 languages. Josh specializes in teaching professionals in all industries and disciplines how to master practical business knowledge and skills. Josh's unique, multidisciplinary approach to business mastery has helped millions of readers around the world learn essential business concepts on their own terms. PersonalMBA.com hosts over 50,000 readers every month, and has been visited over 2 million times by readers all over the world since its founding in 2005. Josh's work has directly saved prospective business students millions of dollars in unnecessary tuition, fees, and interest by providing an effective, affordable, and debt-free method of learning fundamental business principles.

Product details

Series: the personal MBA master art of business
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Portfolio; Reprint edition (August 28, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781591845577
ISBN-13: 978-1591845577
ASIN: 1591845572
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 616 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in Books > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Training
- #109 in Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Entrepreneurship
- #166 in Books > Business & Money > Skills

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Breadth-Centric Approach Done Totally Right

December 14, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book is broad and shallow, but impeccably indexed and thoughtfully curated. It's also beautifully and concisely written.

Everything is organized into topic with detailed outlines, so that you can pick and choose as needed. So many books (see any Tim Ferriss book) throw everything and the kitchen sink with no focus or filter just to fill pages and put out another crappy round of sales; they're all fluff and the meat they contain is so basic that the author tries to pass it off as something complicated and essentially passes off mystique as value. Not the case here. I have a very sensitive BS meter and it wasn't triggered at all. Everything included is purposeful, and while there isn't much of any depth, this is more like what you'd get from an actual MBA (minus the network) - a big picture view and the memory/awareness of what to consider and whether to look it up when the time comes around. The only caveat is that this is all meat, so this is a book to study and write notes on a few times and memorize.

As a techie-turned-entrepreneur who likes clear APIs and expects good crunch-bang documentation (think C++ interface guides), this is the perfect format and just what I was looking for. If you want a lot of depth, you'll have to sacrifice scope and go for a book that covers one or two topics. For what it is, this is about as good as it gets (and I've read TONS of books on business, organization, 'self-help', marketing, negotiation, etc.).

Thanks Josh for putting this out.

81 people found this helpful82 people found this helpful

Solid overview of principles / Not a replacement for an MBA

November 12, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Pros: good overview of MBA principles, and a good read for anyone prior to an MBA (to help you understand what you are getting into, and inform your career recruiting decisions)

Cons: none. Pretty good.

Overall: I would buy it again. I don't know that it is a stand-out over the other handful of highly rated MBA books, but it is still a solid overview. You won't go wrong buying it.

20 people found this helpful21 people found this helpful

August 7, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Think of this book as a summary of several topics related to managing a business.
The book is somewhat divided into 3 parts:

Part 1 talks about the parts of the business: value creation, marketing, sales, value delivery and finance
This is where the book excels in my opinion. As I said it is only a summary, but a very useful one for someone just beginning.

Part 2 is about the human side of the business and is only superficial which is understandable because the subject would take several tomes to be adequatelly covered.

Part 3 is about working systems (analyzing, optimizing) is also superficial. Again it only covers the main topics as a summary.

What I also like about the book is the bibliography which is extensive enough to keep you busy for at least a year or two of reading material.

The title is somewhat misleading. You will not master the "art" of business, but it will surelly get you started. Overall, a nicelly done book for people trying his or her first steps in understanding what a business is.

I'd have given it 5 stars if the footnotes were on the same page cos I dont like going back and forth to the end of the book in search for them, also if there was a hardcover version available and if some topics were more deeply covered (more technical detail), specially the 1st part of the book which deals with the Value Stream.

7 people found this helpful8 people found this helpful

Great overview of business topics

November 14, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Great book! Obviously it's not a replacement for a 2 year MBA program, but it's certainly worth a read before you drop six figures on a degree.

This book is a great overview of many business topics and will help you identify which topics you need to learn more about. It also provides several other resources to learn about those topics more in-depth if you think you're weak in a topic.

My only wish was that the book had more case studies from the author's clients rather than focusing on some examples based on his own life. But that didn't happen too much.

Still a great read and a good reference book on business topics.

10 people found this helpful11 people found this helpful

i love this writer's style - no bull

February 11, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

oh how i wish i had read this when i started my business years ago. i read several books a month (used to read about 4 books a week!) and this one is one of my favorites of all time. SO MUCH info, simply put. i love this writer's style - no bull, just simple, striaghtforward. i really really really wish i had known about it about 6 years ago but better late than never. essential reading. this is one of the only books i got from the library and then ended up buying it for my kindle even though i'd already most of it. it's that good.

14 people found this helpful15 people found this helpful

A must read for all self taught entrepreneurs!!

December 7, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I recently bought Josh Kaufmen's book, The Personal MBA, and I have only good things to say. Its an informative, easy to read, well structured work.
I've found that most buisness books I have read, (and I've read dozens) spend most of the book motivating you on the perks of being a buisness owner, yet leaves you with very little substance. Even though she that discuss technique, touch on topics briefly, and skip the important detail. This book is the exception, and it belongs on the shelf of anyone who takes their buisness seriously.
Pros:
• easy to read
• can be read out of order, each chapter stands on its own
•thorough
•practical
•says things in bite sizes pieces, and at the end of each idea has a link to email or share the thought to a colleague who might be interested.
• gives an overview of all the topics involved in buisness, along with a substantial list of books the author recommends, should the reader chose to delve into a certain topic more thoroughly.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to take their buisness self education to the next level.

18 people found this helpful19 people found this helpful

This is what an MBA covers

April 4, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I teach MBA classes, he is correct and quite comprehensive, if he can add some exercises and problems to some of the chapters, like financial analysis, this book will become the one textbook MBA degree. It was a nice refresher for me. Great for entrepreneurs who need the application more than a piece of paper.

24 people found this helpful25 people found this helpful

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