Mva to myself. Recommendations by Josh Kaufman Self MBA by josh

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Creating value

The task of someone who has gone into business is to find out what other people lack and find a way to fill this gap. A business will not exist if it has nothing to offer. An enterprise that does not benefit others is called a hobby.

If there are two fields of activity, then it is better to choose the one where there is competition. This means that there are people who are willing to pay money for what you are going to offer, and the biggest risk of being left without a market is reduced to zero. Keep track of what your potential competitors are doing by becoming their buyer. Learn everything about your competitors and create a product that is better than what they offer.

Most of the major automakers test their products by driving through obstacle courses. Software companies like Microsoft and Google test new products on employees' computers before launching them to the mass market.

This form of field testing allows you to identify and eliminate product flaws before the buyer sees it. Using your product is the best way to improve its quality. Become the most active and demanding consumer of your own product, and all other ways to improve your offer will fade before this one.

Anyone who registers on Facebook brings friends and acquaintances with them. Anyone who liked a YouTube video shares it with other people. This is called autocatalysis (acceleration). If you have an element of autocatalysis in your business, the business will expand faster than you expect.

Marketing

The goal of marketing is to get you noticed. And the best way to get attention is to be uncommon. If you make your offers unique enough to pique the curiosity of potential buyers, it will be much easier for you to grab their attention.

A great metaphor to illustrate this principle is The Purple Cow (based on Seth Godin's book). When only brown cows graze on the field, it's boring. The purple cow does not live up to people's expectations, and it naturally attracts attention and interest.

Marketing is most effective when it focuses on the desired end result. Most car owners don't buy expensive SUVs because they often have to pull off the highway. They buy such cars only because they can feel like brave adventurers. Most women buy $20 a tube of lipstick not just for the color, but because they want to feel beautiful and desirable. It is better for you to inform potential buyers not about the properties of the product, but about its benefits, that is, about what the client will receive by accepting your offer. Make the consumer come to the conclusion: "This is what I need."

If you want to grab someone's attention quickly, share something of value for free. People love to receive gifts. Offers of something free exist because they work: they encourage people to buy a product or service in the future.

If you want buyers to remember who you are and what you offer, you need to grab their attention and hold it for at least a few seconds. A hook is a single phrase that describes the main benefit of your offer. Sometimes the headline acts as a hook, sometimes a short slogan. Once you figure out your hook, start using it right away! Place it on your website, print it on business cards - basically, make it the first message your potential customers see.

Requesting permission to continue communication after providing a free product affects business development. When you give people something of value, ask them if they mind if you continue to communicate with them. Tell them exactly what they will receive (an email or a phone call) and what will be the value for them of further communication.

Sales

Reciprocity is the strong desire of most people to take action in return as a token of gratitude. However, there is one non-obvious thing: the desire to reciprocate is not always proportional to the volume of the initial gift.

Typically, salespeople start their conversation with a potential customer by doing them a small favor, like offering them a cup of coffee. This may seem like a common courtesy gesture. But it's not. Accepting even a small gift creates a psychological need for reciprocity in the buyer, which shifts the situation in favor of the seller. Potential buyers who accept the gift are more likely to buy the product.

Selling, in essence, is the process of identifying and removing buying barriers - manifestations of insecurity that prevent your potential customers from buying what you have to offer. Your main job as a salesperson is to identify and remove these barriers. In the process of discussing any transaction, standard objections arise:

It's too expensive. People perceive paying for something as a loss, and this makes them resist the deal. If the client understands that the value of your offer far exceeds the asking price, then this objection can be overcome.
It won't work. If the buyer thinks that the offer will not be able to provide him with what he was promised, then he will refuse to buy. Reviews can handle objections.
I can wait. The buyer can trust they don't have problems that need immediate attention The best way to resolve the situation is to focus your efforts on educating the client and helping them imagine what they might be like if they accepted your offer.

People don't like wasting money and taking risks. Risk transfer is a strategy in which the risk associated with the transaction is transferred from the buyer to the seller (offer free shipping and returns without any restrictions if the consumer does not like the product ordered). This strategy allows the buyer to get rid of the buying barrier and increase your sales.

Resumption is the process of persuading customers to buy your product again. Renewal is considered an easier, faster and more effective way to increase the profitability of a business than attracting new customers. Your old customers know you, trust you, and understand the value you can provide. Once every 3-6 months, reach out to "lost" customers with new offers.

Financial management

Four methods to increase company revenue:

Increase the number of clients served. More visitors - more orders. Provided that the value of the average check remains unchanged, you get more money.
Increase the average size of each transaction (increasing the value of the average check). You encourage every customer to buy more from you.
Increase the frequency of transactions per client. You encourage customers to buy more often.
Rise prices. In this case, you will receive more money from each purchase made by the client - this will allow you to earn more, making the same efforts for this.

Price power is the ability to raise supply prices over time. If customers are sensitive to the price of your offer, then you will lose a significant part of them if you increase it. But there are exceptions, such as the luxury trade: customers buy them because they are expensive social signals. These products are considered unique precisely because of their high cost.

Raising the price of designer bags, clothing and watches will make them even more desirable. In other words, you can find the perfect solution through experimentation.

human brain

Fear of loss. The essence of the fear of loss is that people are much more afraid of losing something than gaining something. People think that it would be nice to have your own business, but the fear of loss (the threat of losing a stable job) is stronger than the attractiveness of the opportunity to start your own business.

To overcome the fear of loss, you need to reinterpret this risk and understand that there is nothing terrible in it. Casino visitors do this every day. How do casinos encourage people to play games? They distract people from the loss. Instead of playing for real money, players get chips from the casino and the sense of value disappears. Players lose "fake" money, and the casino gives them "as a reward" free drinks, hotel rooms and other things that alleviate the feeling of loss.

Contrast. Imagine that you need to buy a suit. You go to the store and you see that $3,000 suits hang next to regular $400 suits. Nobody buys them, but they don't need to. Their purpose is completely different. Compared to them, $400 suits don't look that expensive (although the same suit costs $200 in a nearby store).

When presenting your offer, play with contrast: you will increase the chances that potential customers will agree to your offer.

Work on yourself

There are four ways to handle any task - complete, delete, transfer, and defer. Completion (completion) of a task is optimal only when you can do everything correctly and efficiently. Deletion is applied if the task is not important. Delegating a task to another person is effective if that person can do it 80% as well as you. Postponement is effective for tasks that do not need to be addressed right now.

Projects are goals that require more than one action. The larger the project, the more difficult these goals are to achieve. To manage it, focus on just one action that needs to be completed to move towards your goal, and you will definitely succeed in completing the entire project.

Priming is a method of conscious programming of the brain in order to highlight certain information in the environment. If you bring to your mind what exactly interests you, it will warn you every time about the presence of the object you need.

Priming can be used to increase reading speed. Before you start reading, determine why you want to read this material and what information you want to find in it, leaf through the book, paying special attention to the table of contents, terms and concepts that seemed important to you. Your brain will automatically filter out material that is secondary to you and focus on what interests you.

Parkinson's Law- work fills all the time allotted for it. We schedule our activities based on how much time we have for them, and when the deadline approaches, we resort to preferential choice to get everything done.

How to finish a project very quickly? Answer this question and you will discover different methods or approaches that can help you get the job done faster. If you break your day into ten-minute chunks and put them to good use, you'll be amazed at how much you can get done.

Confirmation bias. The best way to find out if you are right or wrong is to find information that will prove you wrong. Confirmation bias is the tendency to pay attention to what supports your conclusions and not to notice what contradicts them.

We hate to find out that the decision we made turned out to be wrong, so we tend to filter information. The stronger our belief, the more willingly we ignore sources of information that challenge them. That is why politicians do not read interviews of their rivals: they already know that they do not agree with them in their views, why bother?

Unfortunately, the situation, when neither side pays attention to what contradicts its judgments, often turns into a crisis. Intentionally look for information that contradicts your hypothesis.

Working with others

Outsider apathy. When two people are responsible for the same decision, no one is responsible.

Suppose you are busy shopping in a store and the person next to you suddenly becomes ill. If you yell, "Hey, someone, call an ambulance!" Most likely no one will. Each of the visitors to the store will assume: "Probably someone has already called." It is much more effective to single out one person in the crowd, establish eye contact with him and say very clearly: “YOU - CALL AN AMBULANCE!”. Be sure: the person will immediately do it.

The best way to avoid outsider apathy is to make sure that each task has one person responsible for implementation, as well as clear deadlines.

social confirmation. When one person performs a certain action, others take it as a social signal and begin to act in the same way. "Viral" videos and stock market bubbles gain their power through social confirmation - if so many people pay attention to them, it's easy to conclude: "There's something to this!".

Testimonials are an effective form of social proof. The best reviews are not "great", "the best", but "I bought the product and was very pleased with the result."

Principles of effective management:

Hire small groups of people from competent professionals (the most effective group is 5-8 people) who can provide the desired result quickly and efficiently.
Clearly articulate to team members the desired end result, explain who is personally responsible for what, and don't forget to keep them informed about how things are going.
Use the golden three: appreciation, courtesy, and respect. This is the best way to make employees feel important.
Create an environment where every team member can work at peak performance on the best hardware.
Shield your team from distractions.
Create an aggressive plan at the end of the project, update it as you go, find the shortest path to complete the work.
Take measurements to understand how well the work is going.

Systems analysis

If you want to improve the system, focus on key performance indicators. Measure, analyze:

How quickly does the system create a product?
How many people pay attention to your offer?
How many customers agree to buy what you offer?
How fast can you serve one customer?
What is the customer's average lifetime value?
What is the profit margin?
What is the frequency of product returns or complaints?
Do you have enough money?

Systems Improvement

In any complex system, the minimum number of input parameters is responsible for a significant part of the result. This pattern is called the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. In many companies, less than 20% of customers provide more than 80% of revenue.

You can see this principle in various aspects of your life, and it takes many forms. For example, less than 1% of movies produced annually become blockbusters, and less than 0.1% of books written become bestsellers. So for best results, focus on a small number of the most important factors that lead to your success.

Use this method to identify your best clients. By focusing your efforts on these people and putting your relationships with everyone else on autopilot, you can increase your income and reduce your work time.

Self-education, related to business or something else, never ends. Every new concept that enters your field of vision represents a thousand possibilities for new discoveries. This is what makes self-education so exciting: there is always more to learn.

Even master money-makers like Warren Buffett are always eager to learn something new. When Buffett was asked what superpowers he would like to have, he replied: "I would like to learn how to read even faster." Your growth has no and cannot have limits.

Josh Kaufman

Himself MBA

100% self-education

Dedicated to the millions of entrepreneurs around the world who make life better to the best of their ability

From a publishing partner

My grandparents were real businessmen in those distant pre-war, war and post-war years. They were peasants and did not know the word "business". Their education consisted of two levels: elementary school (the ability to read, write) and then - the school of life.

business game

Conditions:

At the age of 20, my grandparents got married. Outside in 1924. "Citizen", devastation. There is no food in the villages. There are private farms where something grows, and that can be taken away. There are almost no cattle (they were taken away or died). There are hand tools, of course: saws, shovels, axes, ropes. Living with parents is a NO. Firstly, there is nowhere (seven in shops), and secondly, there is nothing to eat anyway.

Task:

Survive. Build a farm. Give birth to children.

Now imagine yourself (from the movies) in this setting. Record that you are 20 years old. You don't have a roof over your head. You don't have a penny of money. You are newlyweds. Food is just under your feet. At the same time, there is no healthcare, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Pyaterochka and Building Materials stores, transport, and work in the city. Around civil skirmishes.

The only plus is that to build a house you do not need to buy land or register with the chamber. He went to the edge of the village and lined up behind the last house.

Very briefly, schematically, I set out a detailed grandmother's story, how everything turned out for them further. The meaning of my presentation is to voice the old-fashioned solution to this business problem.

So, the sequence of actions:

1. Spend the night - where relatives sheltered.

2. Then a forest, a log house, a small house under the guidance of a village carpenter. ( Grandfather learned how to fold a log house, fix rafters, etc.)

3. Then the stove, under the guidance of a local stove-maker. (Grandfather learned to make stoves.)

4. Next - winter in your house. Grandfather gets a job on the outskirts of the city as a mechanic in a railway depot. ( He begins to read books on his own and study the locomotive. Passes courses and becomes an assistant driver.) There is little money.

5. Then a fire in the village. The house is burning down.

7. Grandfather builds a second house on his own (log house, stove, etc.). Relatives, who were built later, invite grandfather as construction consultant.

8. Then, with a new house, a barn appears in sequence with three zones:

1st zone - a workbench, tools, a grindstone, a lathe, a drilling machine, etc., that is, according to Marx - first we create the production of means of production;

2nd zone - energy block: a place for the preparation and storage of firewood and coal;

3rd zone - summer food storage. This is a cellar - a deep pit, which is clogged with ice in winter and serves as a refrigerator for food all summer.

9. And, finally, having a strong base, proceeds to the development of the economy. It was an endless chain of successive, unhurried actions that gradually increased the power and efficiency of the economy. Garden. ( Grandfather studied all the literature on gardening) A boat. ( Learned to build a boat) networks. (I learned to knit.) Fishing. Subsidiary farm. Etc.

Grandfather constantly studied the intended direction. I started to implement, continuing to study a new business, adopting experience and reading books. Soon he became a machinist and then an instructor at the training school for the technical staff of the depot. In adulthood, grandfather and grandmother lived in abundance, were strong and independent.

The red thread in this story about the life of my ancestors is the fact of constant self-education and movement forward. In modern terms, grandpa and grandma were always in new projects and developments. This gave new knowledge, broadened horizons, introduced to a large number of people and created more and more “mental models” (the concept from this book), as close as possible to the “truth of life”.

And I remembered all this in connection with reading the wonderful book by Josh Kaufman "My Own MBA". Suddenly, in my head, this "village" block of information that was stored in my brain under the index "interesting historical information" "resonated" with what I heard and felt in Kaufman's book.

This is a book about believing in yourself. Suddenly? Nevertheless, the main idea of the author lies in the value of your personality, and not the "crust" in your case. You can graduate from any business school you want and stay on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Or you can follow in the footsteps of the author of the book.

Josh Kaufman is an outstanding manager who did not receive a classical business education. He deliberately chose a non-standard path, deciding not to go to MBA courses, but to get self-educated at the same time starting to work full-time at Procter & Gamble. However, the simple question - why is an MBA diploma needed and what resources can be used to get an education of the same or superior quality - haunted him.

Josh began blogging about self-education in business and soon, realizing the huge demand for the subject, left P&G to write his personal guide to key management concepts.

The result of his work is before you.

Josh Kaufman wrote an alternative business textbook from which you will learn:

How the business works.
How people work.
Finally, how the whole business system works as a whole.

At the same time, do not expect that you:

You will be inundated with information on management and business leadership.
You will comprehend all the subtleties of accounting.

This "textbook" is designed to ensure that you quickly learn the essential foundations of business practice and start successfully applying it "in the field."

And then - what's the difference what is written in the diploma!

Who is this book for?

For those who have decided to open their own business, but have complexes about the lack of a “cool” diploma.

For aspiring entrepreneurs who want to learn more about the mechanics of doing business.

For successful businessmen who do not want to stop there, because they know that the whole point is in development.

Why we decided to publish this book

Many of us do not have an MBA. Even Russian. But this did not stop us from starting to do business that captivates and makes a profit. We dare to assume that many of our readers can say the same about themselves.

D. Kaufman's book will give you confidence at the stage of starting your business. It will help you anticipate and avoid various pitfalls and traps in advance, significantly shortening your path to success.

Book chip

A textbook that captures - and teaches. No, you did not understand: really teaches.

From the author

If you are a self-employed entrepreneur, designer, or even a student who wants to master the basics of effective entrepreneurship, this book is for you. It doesn’t matter who you are and what you are trying to do - you will get a new look at business and from now on you will not waste time fighting unnecessary fears, but devote it to doing business.

You can think of this book as a kind of "filter". Instead of absorbing everything that is written and said about business - and this is a sea of \u200b\u200binformation - with its help you will be able to extract only the most important things in order to focus on what you personally need most.

My own MBA. Self-education 100% Josh Kaufman

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Title: Myself MBA. Self-education 100%

About the book “My own MBA. 100% self-education" Josh Kaufman

How to start your business? Today, thousands of people are asking this question. Working in companies, you can gain experience, knowledge, skills, but at the same time, the salary may not please at all. Another thing is your own business, where you are in charge and work for your income.

The book “Myself MBA. 100% Self-Education” by Josh Kaufman is not a textbook with a lot of theory that has not changed for decades. Moreover, the author will not give you a single idea on how to start a successful business. But there is one "but".

The author himself found the necessary information and applied it in practice. This long-term work has borne fruit, because today he is a successful specialist. In his book “My own MBA. Self-education at 100%” he talks about how to do self-education, what literature to read. The main advantage of the book is that there is no water in it, there is only useful and necessary information.

Today, opinions about self-education are clearly divided into “definitely for” and “categorically against”. Some believe that self-education is a waste of time, that you cannot learn everything yourself, you need to draw experience from knowledgeable people. Others, on the contrary, believe that this type of education is the best, because we learn only what we are interested in and need, without cluttering our heads with unnecessary or outdated facts. In addition, it is easier to apply knowledge in practice.

The book “Myself MBA. 100% self-education” is unusual in that it not only helps you decide to open your own business, but also makes you develop yourself. You will not only become a good manager, but also change your whole life.

Josh Kafman, as mentioned above, does not give specific recommendations or advice on how to open your own business and make it successful, but at the same time, reading the book “My Own MBA. 100% self-education”, ideas will be born in your head. You will only need to organize them and put them into action.

Self-education today is like a second education, only without a diploma. Of course, if this does not apply to medicine. If you have a desire, you can learn anything and become a real professional in this matter. This is what he tries to explain in his book “My own MBA. 100% self-education" Josh Kaufman.

The book is read in one breath and leaves behind a lot of food for thought. Even if you do not want to start your own business, the book “Your own MBA. 100% self-education” will teach you a lot and help you get the necessary motivation that you need to implement your plans. We recommend this book to anyone who likes to develop and strive for more.

On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read the online book “To Yourself MBA. 100% self-education” by Josh Kaufman in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.

Quotes from the book “My own MBA. 100% self-education" Josh Kaufman

Do what people need.<…>There is nothing more valuable than finding a way to satisfy a hitherto unsatisfied need. If you can give people what they needed but couldn't get, that will be a bonanza for you.

I cannot give you a 100% recipe for success. But I can say for sure when you will fail: when you spend all your time trying to please everyone.

There are wagon and a small cart methods, but there are very few principles. One who has mastered the principles, it costs nothing to choose this or that method. But those who are looking for a method, not paying attention to principles, will have a hard time.

The market is the most important thing. It doesn't matter what a stellar team of professionals you recruit or what an amazing product you develop. If you don't have a market, you are nobody.

There are no perfect people, and therefore mistakes are inevitable. Don't be upset! New projects await you ahead; the main thing is not to cling to a bad experience in the hope of compensating for your expenses.

In order for a buyer to make a purchase from you for the first time, they must have sufficiently high expectations. But after the purchase, satisfaction will only continue if the result of using the product is higher than expected. If the result is lower than expected, then the quality score will also decrease, regardless of the objective state of your product.

The iron law of the marketplace is merciless and cruel: if you don't find enough customers willing to buy what you have to offer, your chances of building a strong business are slim to none.

After analyzing them, I identified additional requirements. It is impossible to produce and offer services without first finding out what the consumer wants (market research). And to attract a buyer, it is necessary that he first pays attention to you, and then becomes interested (marketing). Before paying money, people need to make sure that you can be trusted and that you will fulfill all the conditions of the transaction (delivery of goods and related operations). Customer satisfaction depends on how much the seller has managed to exceed his expectations (customer service). Sufficient income involves the ability to earn more than you spend (financial management).

A transaction is an exchange of value between two or more parties. If I have something you need and you have something I need, then by agreeing to the exchange, we both win.

Published with permission from Portfolio, a division of Penguine Group Inc., and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

* * *

Dedicated to the millions of entrepreneurs around the world who make life better to the best of their ability

Chapter 1 Why Read This Book

Another business textbook? As if they were not written enough without you.

Customs officer at Kennedy International Airport after I answered a question about what I do

Life is hard. Especially if you're an idiot.

John Wayne, star of classic American Westerns

Since you are holding this book in your hands, I would venture to guess that you are either about to start your own business or you are looking for a promotion. And most likely, you still have not taken action, because the following reasons are holding you back.

1. Business "angst"(German angst- fear). The belief that you do not understand anything about business and therefore will not be able to create your own company or take over about more responsibility in my current position. It is better to leave everything as it is than to overcome the fear of the unknown.

2. Fear of being incompetent. The idea that business is a complex thing and should be handled by professionals. If you don't have an MBA or a diploma from a prestigious business school, who are you to say, "I know what to do."

3. "Imposter Syndrome." Fear that you will not cope with new tasks and everyone will understand that you are just a liar. But nobody likes them, right?

Dont be upset. Everyone experiences these unfounded fears, and you can quickly get rid of them. To do this, you just need to learn a few simple rules that will change your understanding of how a business works.

If you are a self-employed entrepreneur, designer, student, programmer, or just a professional who wants to master the basics of entrepreneurship, this book is for you. No matter who you are or what you do, with a new perspective on business, you will no longer waste time fighting your own fears, but devote it to your cause.

It is not necessary to know everything

There are wagon and a small cart methods, but there are very few principles. One who has mastered the principles, it costs nothing to choose this or that method. But those who are looking for a method, not paying attention to principles, will have a hard time.

Ralph Emerson, poet and essayist

In the study of any new subject there is an important rule: you don't need to know everything; you just need to understand a few fundamental principles of the field. Once you master them, the process of accumulating knowledge will go much easier, and learning will become more successful.

"My own MBA" is a set of fundamental principles for the functioning of any business, with the help of which it is possible to fulfill the tasks set. Once you master them, you will be able to solve the most difficult problems and achieve the most difficult goals with amazing ease.

Over the past five years, I have read a huge number of books on economics and business, interviewed hundreds of professionals, worked in a corporation from the list Fortune 50, has repeatedly opened his own business and collected information about various enterprises - from tiny, where everything is done by one person, to multinational ones with a huge staff and billions of dollars in profit. All this time I processed the collected information and as a result formulated several main principles, which are set forth in this book. Understanding these fundamentals will give you a solid decision-making toolkit. If you are willing to take the time and effort to learn these principles, you will learn:

how in fact business is running;

How to open your own business;

How to make an existing business work more efficiently;

How to use your business skills to achieve your personal goals.

You can think of this book as a kind of filter. Instead of soaking up everything written and said about business, it can help you glean from seas information only the most important and focus on what personally will allow you to influence what is happening.

No experience needed

People tend to overestimate the complexity of a business. We are not building rockets - we have chosen one of the simplest professions in the world.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric Corporation

Even if you are a complete beginner, don't worry. Unlike most business manuals, this book does not require any special knowledge or experience. I don't think I'll be read exclusively by CEOs of large companies making millions of dollars worth of decisions every day. (But even so, this book will still be very useful to them.)

If you have business experience, take my word for MBA clients around the world: you will find information in this book that is much more valuable and useful than anything that is taught in business schools.

We will look at 256 simple concepts with which you will learn a completely new business way of thinking. After reading the book, you will have a much more correct and clear idea of what a business is and how to run it successfully.

Questions not answers

Education is not the answer to the question. Education teaches one to find answers to all questions.

Bill Ellen, sociologist, educator

The authors of most business textbooks try to give answers: to suggest a method or a solution to a problem. This book is different. She won't give you answers - she'll teach you how to bet questions. Knowledge of the most important principles any business is the first step to making sound business decisions. The more you learn about what questions to ask in a particular case, the faster you will find answers to them and understand what you need to develop your business.

Mental models, not methods

The limits of my language are the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher

In order to acquire new skills in the field of business, it is not at all necessary to strive to learn everything - it is enough to master the basics. I name the key concepts of business science mental models. Together, they form a solid system that you can rely on when making decisions.

Mental models are concepts that reflect your understanding of "how it works". Imagine you are driving a car. Here you press the pedal on the right. If your car slows down after that, it will surprise you, right? Because, as everyone knows, the gas pedal is on the right. This "known" is a mental model - a representation of how things work in the real world.

Your brain automatically forms mental models, noticing certain principles in what you do every day. However, the models formed in this way are often not entirely accurate, because the experience of one person, of course, is limited. Education is a way to refine your mental models by assimilating the knowledge and experience that other people accumulate throughout their lives.

For example, many believe that “starting your own business is a very risky step”, “to open your own business, you need to write a detailed business plan and borrow a lot of money”, and “business is about connections, not knowledge”. Each of these phrases is a mental model, but none of them is absolutely correct. Adjusting your mental models will help you become more clear about what you are doing right and what is wrong, and as a result, your decisions will be more accurate.

After examining the mental models proposed in this book, many of my clients have realized that their ideas about what is a business and how does it work, are not entirely true - if they had known this before, they would not have had to make such efforts at the beginning of the journey and waste precious time on unnecessary fears and worries.

Himself MBA

I am convinced that self-education is true education.

Isaac Asimov, science fiction writer, biochemist

I am often asked if I have an MBA. “No,” I answer, “although I went to business school.”

As a student at the University of Cincinnati, I took part in the Karl Lindner Honors-PLUS program, which was basically an undergraduate MBA course. The program was heavily subsidized, so I had a great opportunity to learn a lot of what they teach in business school without going into debt.

A year later, under the university's "work-study" program, I received a managerial position at Procter & Gamble - one of the 50 most successful companies, according to the magazine Fortune. In 2005, when I was graduating from university, I was offered the position of deputy head of brand management in the household chemicals division, a position usually invited to holders of MBA degrees from leading educational institutions.

By the beginning of the last semester, I was much more concerned about the future than actually studying. Of course, the new job required a deep knowledge of business, and all my colleagues probably sported diplomas from the best business schools. For a while, I also thought about getting a special education, but then I decided that there was no point in spending a lot of money on a “crust”, which was necessary, in fact, only in order to get a position that I was offered anyway; besides, I would have had enough work even without a bunch of tasks that would have to be done during part-time study.

As I pondered what to do, I remembered the advice of Andy Walter, the first deputy director of Procter & Gamble, to whom I had to report: “If you spend as much time and effort as it would take you to get an MBA degree, on a good job and reinforcing skills, the result will be the same.” (Andy didn't have an MBA, just an electrical engineering degree. Walter is now a world-class IT executive and oversees some of Procter & Gamble's biggest international projects.)

I eventually abandoned the idea of a business school - but not a business education - and sat down with books to complete my "personal" MBA course.

Self-Made Short Accelerated Business Course

Many self-taught students will easily outdo PhDs, masters and bachelors from top universities.

Ludwig von Mises, Austrian economist, author of Human Action

I have always loved books, but before I decided to study business science on my own, I read mostly fiction. My childhood and early youth were spent in New London, a small town in the state of Ohio, whose inhabitants are mainly engaged in agriculture and some produce for their own needs. My mother works in a children's library, my father taught physics to high school students, and then became the director of an elementary school. So reading played a big role in my life, but business didn't play any.

When I got my first real job, I knew next to nothing about what a business was and how it worked—except, perhaps, that it was the kind of job people go to to get paid. The existence of companies like Procter & Gamble, I had a very vague idea until I applied for a position and stepped into the corporate world.

Working at P&G is a good education in itself. For the first three years, I had to make decisions that involved creating new products, managing the manufacturing process, allocating millions of dollars in marketing costs, and controlling the distribution of products through major retail chains like Walmart, Target, Kroger, and Costco.

As deputy head of brand management, I managed teams of 30-40 employees, as well as contractors and intermediary organizations, all of which had competing projects, plans, and different order of urgency. The stakes were high, and, accordingly, the pressure on me was considerable. Even now, I am amazed at how many thousands of man-hours, millions of dollars, and extraordinarily complex manufacturing processes it takes to create a typical bottle of dishwashing detergent, which you can buy in any supermarket. Everything from the shape of the bottle to the perfumes is streamlined, including the wording on the shipping cartons.

However, at the time, I wasn't just thinking about my job at P&G. The decision to educate myself instead of studying for an MBA program turned from a side project, so to speak, into a slight insanity. Every day I spent hours reading and comprehending business literature, bit by bit accumulating precious knowledge about the laws by which the business world lives.

That summer, after graduating, I did not go on vacation. Instead, I spent whole days at the business bookshelves at the local bookstore, soaking up as much as I could absorb. By September 2005, my official full-time employment at Procter & Gamble, I had read hundreds of books in every subject taught in business schools, as well as those not taught there: psychology, physics, and theory. systems. So on my first day at the company, I was ready to discuss business strategy with the best business school graduates.

As it turned out, self-education served me well - I became a valuable employee, did really useful work and received high marks from the inspectors. However, over time, I realized three important things.

1. In large companies, everything happens slowly. And the best idea can die in the bud just because it needs the approval of too many to make it happen.

2. Obsession with career growth interferes with quality work. I wanted to do my best to do the real thing and do my best, rather than run around and pitch in for a promotion. But intrigues and the struggle for a place under the sun are an integral part of every working day in a large corporation.

3. The feeling of dissatisfaction leads to complete exhaustion of forces. I thought that the daily work would be enjoyable, but instead I felt like I was being driven through the ranks. Soon this shook my health, I began to quarrel with loved ones. The longer I stayed in the corporation, the more I wanted to break out of this world and work for myself, become a private entrepreneur.

Grain and chaff

It is important that students have a healthy hooligan disrespect for knowledge; for their business is not to worship what they study, but to doubt it.

Jacob Bronowski, writer and host of The Ascent of Man

If anything comes easy to me, it is the ability to isolate the most important from a large amount of information. I have a synthetic mind, and my travels in the world of business literature quickly became an exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff.

The amount of business information published every day is amazing. As for books, the general collection of the Library of Congress alone contains about 1.2 million books, textbooks, manuals, and other business literature. If we assume that the average reading speed is 250 words per minute, and the average book has 60,000 words, then it will take 528 years to master the entire collection of the Library of Congress, and then, assuming that you read 24 hours a day, and even if you allow yourself such a luxury as food and sleep, then all 822 years.

According to Bowker, the organization responsible for assigning standard international ISBNs to publications, 11,000 new business books appear worldwide each year, adding to an already multimillion-dollar collection of publications published since the early 1900s. Amazon.com returns 630,000 titles for business literature, not counting audio, e-books, and non-ISBN books.

Of course, books are not the only available source of information. Take newspapers and magazines, for example: Wilson's catalog of business periodicals (WBPI) currently contains 527 major business periodicals. Each year, WBPI adds 96,000 new items to its archive, which already contains 1.6 million titles. This figure does not include blogs - according to Google Blog Search, there are currently more than 110 million blog entries on the Internet related to business in one way or another, and this number is growing every day.

And I wondered: what of all this to me in fact need to know? How to distinguish valuable information from verbal garbage? I began to look for a "sieve" to separate the rational grain from the chaff. And the longer I searched, the more I realized that such a "sieve" does not exist - so I decided to create it myself.

This continued until, one fateful morning, my “personal MBA course” unexpectedly went public, after which my life changed dramatically.

"Myself MBA" goes global

Whoever can best identify the problem is likely to be able to solve it.

I read with particular interest the blog of Seth Godin, best-selling author of Trust Marketing, Purple Cow, and Irreplaceable, one of the pioneers of successful online marketing.

One morning, Seth commented on his page the following news: Harvard University has rejected the applications of 119 students who wanted to enroll in an MBA course. It turned out that some hackers hacked the Harvard website and some of the students were able to view the "closed" documents with a preliminary decision on enrollment. The story caused a lively discussion in the media: everyone was discussing whether the classic MBA applicants are really liars and thieves, or whether this is taught in business school.

Instead of resenting the behavior of the students, Seth (not surprisingly) showed his own attitude to what happened: Harvard gave these students a gift. By refusing admission, the Harvard authorities saved them $150,000 and two years of their lives, which, otherwise, would have been spent chasing a not very useful piece of paper. “I don’t understand,” Seth wrote, “how studying in the MBA program is better than real work experience, coupled with a focused study of 30-40 worthwhile textbooks.”

"Hell! I thought. “That’s exactly what I do!”

Over the next two days, I compiled a list of books and other sources that I found most useful and posted on the blog with a link to Seth's post so that those who read the marketing guru's advice and decided to put it into practice could see my findings. After that, I quickly wrote a short letter to Seth and sent him a link to my entry.

Two minutes later, a post appeared on Seth's blog with a link to my list, and my site was flooded with visitors from all over the globe.

The topic was picked up on popular self-development and self-improvement resources like Lifehacker.com, after which it migrated to social media resources Reddit, Digg, Delicious, and others. In the first week of the existence of the MBA for myself list, several thousand people visited my little corner of the Internet space . And most importantly, they began to get in touch.

Some readers asked the question: where to start? Others recommended books they had read themselves. Some people did not fail to remark that my idea was naive and that I was wasting my time. Despite everything, I continued to read, write out the necessary and replenish the list of books. Meanwhile, the number of supporters of business self-education grew rapidly.

In an amazingly short time, the Self MBA project grew from a one-man initiative to a global movement, so I left Procter & Gamble and devoted my time to improving my program and working with clients.

As much as I enjoyed being the administrator of my own forum, I quickly realized that a list of books alone was not enough. People read business literature in search of a solution to a particular pressing problem or in order to quantitatively and qualitatively improve their own knowledge on a topic. They are looking for answers to questions, and books in this sense are not a panacea.

After all, their main content is ideas and knowledge, but due to the fact that you have to turn pages for hours to get to useful information, many of my followers never found it. The readers of my blog, having read the list, started reading with enthusiasm, but, having mastered several books, they could not stand it - they had to wait too long for the result, and after all, everyone has a family and a job.

And to help them, I took the job myself.