The Personal MBA

Hacking Higher Education - Turning Online Courses into College Credits

Josh Kaufman — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:37:17 -0600

Every now and then, I invite cool people to share their knowledge directly with Personal MBA readers. Jay Cross, founder of The Do-It-Yourself Degree, is one of my students and a mentor to thousands of independent learners who are rapidly accelerating their college degrees with low-cost methods like credit by examination. Even though college isn’t the focus of The Personal MBA, this is handy information that can save you tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars, so I hope you enjoy this detailed “how-to” post on using Massively Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) to earn college credit. Here’s Jay. – Josh

Josh’s 2009 post on Hacking Higher Education via CLEP exams changed my life forever.

When I discovered it, I was in the same boat as many of today’s students. Close to graduating, but stuck waiting for my school to offer the classes I needed. I was staring down a two year journey to graduate…and it wasn’t because I couldn’t work faster. The school just wouldn’t let me! So I waited, stewing in frustration and searching for a way forward.

The CLEP hack was a new lease on life. After reading Josh’s post, I switched schools, studied my ass off and graduated in four months. Along the way, though, it stopped being about my own degree and became a personal crusade to help others. As an experienced writer for companies like TurboTax, I used my research skills to launch The DIY Degree and push credit-by-exam to its fullest potential…

Discovering four additional exam formats. (CLEP is just the beginning…)
Cataloging 150+ exams by format, subject, credit classification, passing score, cost, and whether they are graded or pass/fail.
Investigating the customized “challenge exams” your school can create for non-CLEP subjects.
Batching similar exams together for rapid credit accumulation.
Identifying self-paced online courses for students who aren’t good test-takers (or “math people.”)
Coaching students ranging from recent high school grads to middle-aged IT employees to the VP of a globally-recognized software giant.

Today, I’m thrilled to share the next generation of degree hacking: turning Massively Open Online Courses into real college credit. If you want to supplement your self-education with a credential (without mortgaging your future) this post is for you.

Higher education is abuzz about the potential of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to make college less expensive, more customizable, and location independent for future students.

The wheels are in motion:

American Council on Education is evaluating 5-10 of Coursera’s MOOCs for possible recommendation to its 2,600 member universities.
Udacity is working with ACE on a small-scale pilot program of its own.
EdX is collaborating with a handful of colleges as well.

If these experiments succeed, students will someday be able to earn MOOC credits in every subject imaginable. This is great news for independent learners, but like most things in academia, it could take years to become a mainstream credit option.

In November 2012, The Chronicle of Higher Education warned students not to expect any immediate relief:

[Coursera co-founder] Ms. Koller stressed that the new arrangement is merely a pilot project, and that the courses have to pass muster before they win admission to ACE Credit… “I don’t want people to say, ‘Can I get credit for my MOOC tomorrow?’” she said. “The answer is No. We haven’t even started assessing these MOOC’s.”

Although four of Coursera’s offerings earned ACE recommendation in February 2013, widespread credit redemption is still a long way off for most courses.

Fortunately, there is a way to turn MOOCs into credits right now.

Portfolio Learning Assessment: The MOOC Credit Path of Today

With a little planning, students can use a strategy known as Portfolio Learning Assessment (PLA) to apply their MOOC learning toward graduation.

PLA lets you create a portfolio demonstrating college-level mastery of a subject. Your portfolio gets reviewed by school evaluators and, if it matches the caliber of classroom instruction, you get credit toward graduation.

Despite general assumptions, PLA is not a way to get easy credit on the honor system. You cannot simply claim “life experience” and leapfrog a course without proving anything. Rather, PLA only awards credit for documented, college-level learning.

Luckily, this is precisely what MOOCs—which are modeled after real courses from prestigious universities—provide! In the process of completing one, you obtain the kinds of credible documentation a credit-granting portfolio calls for:

Graded assignments
Course projects
Noncredit certificates of completion
Transcripts of forum posts or group discussions (in peer-to-peer MOOCs)
Statements of accomplishment (in professor-led MOOCs)

Turning MOOCs into credit with PLA is not a fantasy or theoretical ideal. It is possible right now using existing processes. As Chari Leader Kelly, vice-president of leading PLA organization LearningCounts.org, recently told Inside Higher Education:

“We are set up to do that. The infrastructure is there.”

Let’s explore how it works.

Getting Started: 6 Steps to MOOC Credit via Portfolio Learning Assessment

I spoke to Chari in preparation for this post to learn more about the step-by-steps. Although LearningCounts.org is not the only PLA facilitator, they offer a proven path for MOOC credit conversion and serve as a solid example.

STEP 1: Enroll in a college that offers Portfolio Learning Assessment. Here is a list of schools that use LearningCounts.org to administer their PLA programs. These colleges are set up for this process and ready to walk you through it. A $500, three-credit course on portfolio development is required as a starting point.

STEP 2: Target which course(s) you want to earn portfolio credit for. Your portfolio needs to show that you accomplished the learning outcomes of a specific course at the college you attend. Since PLA is not as cheap or automated as other credit paths, it pays to amortize the cost and effort by creating a portfolio for several subjects at once (say, a cluster of computer science courses.) LearningCounts.org allows up to 12 credits in a single portfolio. In any case, list out the exact names and numbers of the courses you are targeting from your school’s course catalog.

STEP 3: Identify MOOCs that offer learning outcomes similar to those courses. The biggest consideration that Chari stressed to me was the importance of learning outcome equivalency. You might want to earn portfolio credit for Excelsior College’s “Operating Systems” course, for instance, but that does not necessarily mean a MOOC in this subject covers the same material. If the PLA evaluator decides your MOOC was too shallow or introductory, you can be denied credit.

To avoid this, locate a syllabus like this one for any course you are considering. Then compare it with the course description of the MOOCs you want to use and make sure they are at least roughly similar.

Pay special attention to any final exams or projects in the syllabus. These tell you the level of achievement required by the course and serve as an “upper bound” on how much you need to know to earn credit. If your school’s “Intro to Marketing” course requires a marketing plan as the final project, for example, you want a MOOC that shows you how to write one.

STEP 4: Inform an advisor about your portfolio plans. It is critical to share your portfolio plans with a PLA advisor. They are the arbiters of what you will receive credit for, and their stamp of approval will motivate you through the portfolio creation process. They can also confirm your portfolio credits will count toward your major, rather than being recorded as electives.

I suggest using some variation of this email script when you are ready to seek advisor approval:

Hi [NAME],

I have decided to use Excelsior’s Portfolio Learning Assessment program to earn credit for college-level mastery gained from Massively Open Online Courses.

Here is the Excelsior course I want to earn PLA credit for, with a link to the course description:

ELEC-201: Digital Electronics (3 credits)

Here is the Coursera MOOC I expect will impart comparable mastery:

Digital Signal Processing

It is my intention to successfully pass this MOOC and apply my documented learning outcomes (work exercises, test scores, letters of completion, etc.) toward the construction of a credit-granting portfolio for the Excelsior course listed.

Can you confirm my plan will lead to the credits I am seeking, or help me correct course if not?

I really appreciate your help. Thanks so much!

- [YOUR NAME]

This script makes your plan clear and allows the advisor to approve or correct as needed. Continue a back-and-forth dialogue until you get the green light.

STEP 5: Take your MOOCs and document your learning along the way. If and when you get advisor approval, it’s time to actually take the MOOC. Crucially, however, you should approach the course with the desired learning outcomes in mind and gather evidence of those outcomes as you go. If you are targeting credits for an “Object Oriented Programming” course, and you write a software program during your MOOC, keep it. If it’s a professor-led course, request a statement of accomplishment at the end. If it’s a peer-to-peer course, record your forum transcripts. Save any graded assignments, tests, or papers. These materials will prove college-level mastery and become the bedrock of your portfolio.

STEP 6: Develop and submit your portfolio for evaluation. Finally, it’s time to consolidate all of your documented learning outcomes into a structured portfolio that proves you achieved the required outcomes. Although every school has different requirements for the length and layout of a portfolio (and your advisor can help you with this) they virtually all require a summary of the knowledge you will be demonstrating.

CAEL’s how-to book on PLA, “Earn Credit For What You Know”, offers the following as an example for how you might introduce an evaluator to your portfolio:

Course: Web Design
Experience: My experience related to designing Web pages is best described by the following building blocks:

Understanding the client/server system and the Internet.

Using HTML to create graphs and charts and to format pages.

Using web-authoring software to create animations and effects.

Refining webpages to be user-friendly.

Creating a company Intranet.

Your advisor will assist you in expounding upon your summary and organizing your learning outcomes for the PLA evaluator. The evaluation itself costs $250. Once your learning is deemed college-level, you earn credit as planned.

Breaking Down The Costs

Paying $500 for a portfolio development course and another $250 to have your portfolio reviewed might seem steep, but consider the alternatives.

Here are the average costs of earning 12 credits according to DIY Degree’s Cost-Per-Credit Calculator:

Credit Option	Cost Per Credit
Private, 4-Year University	$1,137
Public, 4-Year University	$316
Portfolio Learning Assessment	$62

Despite the up-front costs, PLA saves you hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a per-credit basis. Best of all, if your school does not limit the number of credits obtainable from PLA, you can create multiple portfolios to amortize that initial $500 fee across even more credits.

What About Credit-By-Examination?

Nationally standardized exams like CLEP and DSST offer an even faster credit path for MOOC learning. Priced at just $80-$100 apiece, they are also more cost-effective.

Unfortunately, the subjects covered by these exams are mostly the lower-level, “gen ed” courses (like English 101 or Intro to Computers) mandated by all majors, rather than the advanced, upper-level subjects needed to complete a specific one.

PLA offers a fast and cost-effective credit path for subjects that lack standardized tests. An example would be a course like “Object Oriented Programming” which has no test but is required for computer science majors. With PLA, you could take a MOOC instead and earn credit from a portfolio of your learning outcomes.

For MOOCs in general education or business subjects, credit-by-exam is the way to go. If you are targeting upper-level courses, PLA is the slightly more expensive, but superior, alternative.

Who Should Use PLA for MOOC Credit Conversion?

Portfolio Learning Assessment is for self-motivated, independent learners who are not afraid to prove what they know, including:

Adults with a lifetime of work experience in a subject they need college credit for.
Younger students who would rather take MOOCs than brick-and-mortar courses.
Anyone who wants to earn a degree without breaking the bank.

What Does This Mean For Self-Learners?

I always encourage students to develop an internal locus of control over their college career by using the best accelerators currently available instead of waiting for uncertain future reforms. I also support putting effectiveness before ego by doing what works even when it is not “the normal way.”

While it would be nice to not have to use circuitous workarounds like this, MOOC conversion via PLA offers one of the highest returns on investment available in today’s college system—and a practical way to graduate faster.

Even if you already have a degree (or never wanted one) this is still a victory for you. Every step colleges take in this direction supports a future when what you know trumps how you learned it, and the collapse of antiquated barriers is something we can all celebrate!

Jay Cross is the founder of The Do-It-Yourself Degree, where he helps thousands of independent learners who rapidly accelerate their college degrees with low-cost methods like credit by examination.

LIVE from Seattle - Join Us Today For Free Business Training

Josh Kaufman — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:38:23 -0600

We’re on in less than an hour!

You can view my online business course live here: http://creativelive.com/live

I’ll be teaching you the most important ideas in business all day today and tomorrow (9:00am to 4:00pm Seattle Pacific Time, April 4-5), and you can tune in absolutely free.

If you have friends, family, or colleagues who may be interested in learning more about business, feel free to share this course with them via email or your favorite social network.

This course will only be live once, and it’s free to watch while we’re in studio, so now is your chance to learn the most important ideas in business directly from me.

Tune in, join the conversation, and bring your friends – you’ll learn a ton of useful ideas that will help you make more money, get more done, and have more fun at work.

Here’s the course link again: http://creativelive.com/live

See you in a few minutes…

Reminder - CreativeLIVE Free Online Course April 4-5

Josh Kaufman — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:47:06 -0600

The time has come: barring any further acts of god, I’ll be joining creativeLIVE in studio to teach a free two-day workshop on April 4-5. We’ll be covering the most important ideas behind the 5 Parts of Every Business: Value Creation, Marketing, Sales, Value Delivery, and Finance. If you enjoyed the Personal MBA book or audiobook, you’ll love this course.

This course is free to watch while we’re live in studio, and audience participation is a big part of the course. If you’ve ever wanted to ask me a specific question about your business, this is your opportunity.

As with the previous schedule, the course starts at 9:00am Seattle / Pacific Time (GMT -8) on April 4, 2013. Here’s a handy time zone converter to help you translate that into local time.

In addition, creativeLIVE is planning a free rebroadcast of the course immediately after we conclude each day, which will be around 4:00pm Seattle / Pacific time. The live chat won’t be available, since we won’t be in studio, but you’ll be able to access the video feed. For those of you halfway around the world who would need to wake up in the middle of the night to attend the first event, I hope this helps.

I also have three exciting new updates about the course:

Enroll Now for Free Bonus Content

If you like, you can watch the course free online on April 4-5 just by visiting creativeLIVE.com – no signup or email address required. If you formally enroll in the course, however, you get access to several valuable bonuses.

Here’s one example: if you’ve ever wondered how to create a useful financial report (or “profit & loss” statement) for a small business, I’ll show you the single-page financial statement I use for the businesses I run, and you’ll be able to download Excel and Pages templates to start using it right away.

If you enroll for free, you get the bonuses. If you don’t, you miss out, so if you’re planning to watch the course, you should enroll now.

Reduced Pricing for Recordings

If you want access to recordings of my creativeLIVE course, or you can’t make the live event but you’d like to watch later, creativeLIVE allows you to purchase the course recordings for a very reasonable price. Since everything free is subsidized, selling the recordings allows creativeLIVE to bring you high-quality live courses from top-notch instructors.

The original full price for this course was set at $249, which is very reasonable. I just got off the phone with CreativeLIVE, and we both wanted to make the course even more accessible if you’d like to watch it later. Here’s what we worked out…

If you order the course before we go live, you can purchase the recordings for $99. That’s a screaming deal – it’s a little over 6% of what I typically charge for my live classes.

Even better, if you’re already one of the many people who have pre-ordered the course at a higher price, creativeLIVE will be crediting you the difference.

As I’ve said before, creativeLIVE is a fantastic organization that’s changing the way training is delivered online, and I’m proud to work with them to bring you these course recordings at a very low price.

NEW: The Personal MBA Workbook

One more thing: I’ve created a new workbook edition of The Personal MBA. The workbook contains a summary of all of the concepts we’ll be discussing, bonus questions to help you apply the material to your own business, and space for you to capture your own ideas and action plans.

To date, this workbook has only been available for students of my live training course, but I’m happy to announce that it will be available to you if you purchase the course recordings.

See you live on April 4-5

I’m looking forward to seeing you live this Thursday and Friday. If you have any questions, feel free to ping me on Twitter (@joshkaufman) or contact creativeLIVE support.

See you in the studio!

CreativeLIVE rescheduled to April 4-5

Josh Kaufman — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 05:37:27 -0700

Great news: my free online Fundamentals of Business course with creativeLIVE has been rescheduled to April 4-5, 2013.

If you enrolled with creativeLIVE for the first date, your enrollment will automatically carry over, and you’ll receive reminders when the course is about to start. If you haven’t enrolled yet, here’s the link. Remember, the course is free when it’s happening live, so if you can attend, you save a few hundred dollars. (If you can’t attend, creativeLIVE allows you to pre-order the recordings, which includes the special workbook we’ll be using for the course.)

As with the previous schedule, the course starts at 9:00am Seattle / Pacific Time (GMT -8). Here’s a handy time zone converter to help you translate that into local time.

One more piece of good news: creativeLIVE is planning a free rebroadcast of the course immediately after we conclude each day, which will be around 4:00pm Seattle / Pacific time. The live chat won’t be available, since we won’t be in studio, but you’ll be able to access the video feed and materials. For those of you halfway around the world who would need to wake up in the middle of the night to attend, I hope this helps.

Also, thank you very much for your kindness. After I sent the reschedule announcement, I received hundreds of “get well soon” emails. My voice is still completely gone, but I’m on the mend, and I appreciate your support.

I’m looking forward to sharing this course with you!

CreativeLIVE - Rescheduling Due to Illness

Josh Kaufman — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 01:34:18 -0700

I have some bad news.

As you know, I’m scheduled to teach a live course on creativeLIVE today. I’m in the studio right now, the live audience is here, and the creativeLIVE team is ready to go.

Unfortunately, I’ve come down with a sudden and very nasty case of acute laryngitis.

As a result, we’re going to reschedule the event. In my current state, I’d be hell to listen to for two solid days, and I want to honor your time and the work of the creativeLIVE production team with my very best efforts.

We’re making plans now, and I’ll let you know as soon as details are finalized.

If you’ve planned your Thursday and Friday around watching this course, my sincerest apologies. I’m as disappointed as you are.

There’s a business lesson in this: unexpected things can and do happen. You can’t always control what life throws at you, but you can control how you react to changing circumstances, and how you choose to move forward.

So: the show will go on once my voice comes back, and I’ll let you know as soon as plans are in place. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Josh

3 Business Course Recommendations

Josh Kaufman — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 05:44:25 -0700

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin.

People often ask me which courses and training programs I recommend. Here are the three courses that I find most generally applicable for Personal MBA readers.

Dale Carnegie: Effective Communications & Human Relations

This is a 12-week, in-person course that covers both interpersonal skills and public speaking. The live, local format makes it much easier to practice social skills, public presentation, and conflict resolution – it’s not the kind of thing you can learn completely from a book. The course is organized logically, and instructors are trained very well. The course has been around for a long time, and most large organizations are willing to cover the training fee for employees. I’ve taken this course twice: once as participant, and once as a volunteer instructor. I’ve noticed substantial shifts in social confidence and speaking ability both times.

More information about the “Dale Carnegie 12-Week Course”

Center for Applied Rationality: Rationality for Entrepreneurs / Applied Rationality Workshop

CFAR is a brand new non-profit that’s teaching the only workshop I’m aware of that focuses explicitly on practical, general rationality skills. I attended the workshop myself last week, and it’s well worth the three-day investment. All of the critical topics are covered: appropriately updating your anticipations given new evidence, accounting for “value of information” in research/experimentation, factoring your goals into achievable parts, overcoming akrasia, and installing new high-value habits. Between the making better decisions, avoiding expensive mistakes, and increasing your productive thinking capacity, this training delivers an enormous amount of value.

More information about “Applied Rationality Workshops”

Ramit Sethi: Find Your Dream Job

Ramit is the author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, a Personal MBA recommended book on personal finance. Ramit has also contributed a few detailed guest posts on this site:

Ramit runs an online course called “Find Your Dream Job.” His career search, interviewing/prospecting, and negotiation material is several orders of magnitude better than other sources of information on the topic. Typical advice on “finding a job you love” is critically flawed in many, many ways, and mistakes in your strategy and tactics are extremely costly. Ramit focuses on ensuring that you understand how top performers go about finding work, how to permanently strengthen your negotiating position, and how to signal to an employer or client you’re worth more than competing candidates. When you translate the training fee into a percentage of a permanent income (and quality of life) increase, the cost is absolutely trivial.

More information about “Find Your Dream Job”

There are many great trainings out there, so this list is not exhaustive. That said, if you’re looking to invest in yourself this year, these courses are hard to beat.

Remember: you benefit from research and development as much (or more) than large companies. If you’re not setting aside time and money to invest in training this year, you’re doing yourself a serious disservice.

(Note: I have a personal relationship with these courses/companies, since I’ve taken their training. If you have any questions on my affiliations, see my disclosure policy.)

CreativeLIVE - Free Live Course Feb 14-15

Josh Kaufman — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 05:58:50 -0700

I have a surprise for you.

You may know that I host live training events that cover the ideas in The Personal MBA a few times each year.

There’s nothing quite like learning with a motivated group of smart, ambitious people. Books are great (I love them), but there’s a ton of value in setting aside time with other people to learn useful ideas, ask questions, and discuss how they apply to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Up to this point, if you wanted to study this material directly with me, you’d have to fly to Colorado for three days and pay thousands of dollars. My past workshop participants have found it a great investment, but I know that it’s not possible for everyone.

That’s why I’m happy to announce that I’m teaching my course live online February 14th and 15th, 2013.

Best of all: it’s completely free, and available worldwide.

Join me for a FREE online course February 14-15, 2013

CreativeLIVE is an awesome new company that specializes in live training. I’ve had my eye on them for a while, and a month ago, they asked me to teach a course.

This course will cover every idea in the “Business” section of The Personal MBA:

Value Creation – Discovering what people need or want, then creating it.
Marketing – Attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created.
Sales – Turning prospective customers into paying customers.
Value Delivery – Giving your customers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied.
Finance – Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.

Permanently Improve Your Career

Think about it. How much easier would your career be if you were able to…

Spot promising business opportunities in the world around you?
Evaluate new business ideas and strategies in minutes, capturing the great ideas and discarding the rest?
Discover what’s holding your business back, then remove that barrier decisively?

This is not a watered-down workshop: it’s the same in-depth training I currently charge thousands for.

I’ve taught this course many times. After each workshop, it’s common for participants to quit their job to start a profitable business, increase the profitability of their company, get promoted in their current career, or discover an untapped business opportunity that finally pays them what they’re really worth.

That’s why I love teaching it.

The “Catch”

Here’s the catch: you have to tune in LIVE if you want to get the course for free. It’s only going to be live once: February 14-15, 2013.

I firmly believe that this training is the very best thing you can do to permanently increase your productivity and effectiveness as a businessperson. These ideas can help you make more money, get more done, and have more fun for the rest of your life. It’s well worth investing two days to study them.

I’d also recommend attending even if you’ve already read (or listened to) the book: this information is well worth reviewing. I’ve had one participant of my live course attend all but one workshop I’ve offered, and he keeps coming back because he picks up new ideas every time. (He’s also doubled his salary in the process.)

Therefore, I think it’d be wise to do whatever you need to do to attend the live workshop on those days. Take a few vacation days. Reschedule appointments. Remember: it’s only going to happen once.

If you absolutely can not make it, creativeLIVE also offers an option to purchase a recording at a very small fraction of what I charge for the live workshop. That’s also a good option, and if you register in advance, you save $100. Still, I’d recommend tuning in live if you can.

Click this button to enroll:

Enroll in The Personal MBA LIVE on creativeLIVE

On the course enrollment page, click the “Enroll” button, then enter your email address. That’ll add you to the course system, which will give you some additional information and send you an email reminder the day before the event.

One More Surprise

Since creativeLIVE specializes in live courses, it’s much more fun to have a live audience.

Would you like to be in it?

Here’s how you can join me for the live taping in Seattle: shoot a 60 second video that describes…

The business you’d like to start in the next 12 months, or…
The business you’re currently working on.

Upload that video to Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo, then send the link via Twitter to @joshkaufman and @creativelive using the hashtag #personalmbaLIVE. We’ll select six people to attend the live course in studio, and you’ll be a live, active participant in the discussion.

Click the button below for more details:

Join Josh Kaufman live in studio

I’m super excited about this course, and I hope you’ll join me.

2013 is going to be a great year.

Best Essays I've Read in 2012

Josh Kaufman — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:11:53 -0700

As part of my Year-End Review process, I took a few hours to look back in my research database for great essays and blog posts I’ve read this year. Of the 1,374 posts I’ve saved, here are 12 of the best.

Checklist of Rationality Habits

We generated [this checklist] by asking ourselves, not what rationality content it’s useful to understand, but what rationality-related actions (or thinking habits) it’s useful to actually do… This checklist is meant for your personal use so you can have a wish-list of rationality habits, and so that you can see if you’re acquiring good habits over the next year — it’s not meant to be a way to get a ‘how rational are you?’ score, but, rather, a way to notice specific habits you might want to develop.

Read the full post…

Why I Quit Being So Accommodating

Surely, if life means anything at all, it means that each of us is entrusted with a certain irreplaceable fund of hours and weeks and years. To let anybody and everybody fritter that fund away is as if the trustee of an estate were to deposit the estate’s funds in a bank and issue check books to whoever applied… In my easy-going willingness to befriend the world at large, I was sacrificing my wife, my children, and my employer far more than I was sacrificing myself… What was true of my family was true of the business as well. I thought I was being friendly to the customers of the house. As a matter of fact, I was too often being friendly to the customers at the expense of the house. It is a common fault in salesmen. They let a thousand trivial demands on the part of the men to whom they sell take their time and energy from the business of the men for whom they sell.

Read the full post…

What If You Don’t Want to Be a Manager?

Imagine that you’ve invested years of blood, sweat and tears at work, and have successfully climbed the corporate ladder, only to wake up one day and realize that you sort of hate what you’re doing. Sure, you used to love it, and the more successful you became, the higher up the ranks of management you went. But now, instead of doing the hands-on work that you loved, you find yourself buried in managerial tasks like budgeting and supervising people that leave you feeling numb at best. You find yourself in the ironic position where all your hard work and success have landed you in a job that leaves you feeling empty, frustrated, and unfulfilled. That’s what happened to me. But how? Or better yet, why?

Read the full post…

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

As the Third Basic Law explicitly clarifies: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour. But let us abandon the lofty plane of theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life… Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation – or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

Read the full post…

The Evolution of My Perception of Money

How I view and interact with money has evolved through several distinct stages. I’m explicitly trying to not make value judgments on these perceptions, but merely just relate them… The most consistent theme in my perceptions of money over time has been valuing my time, and that is as true as ever. I’ve always loved services that improve my productivity and workflow, but now I seek them out as much as possible… It’s taken a few months, and I’m still as cheap and cost-sensitive as always, but now I am willing to expend on people when I see the value, especially when it is either something that can replace my time, is on critical path for DuckDuckGo, or is laying the ground-work for being around for the long-term.

Read the full post…

Deep Dive: Cancellation Rate in SaaS Business Models

Beyond the analytical breakdown, I have an emotional attachment to this number, because whenever someone cancels I think about what had to happen to get them to this point, and it kills me. Of course people cancel only after they’re already a customer, which means they’ve already gotten through the barriers preventing them from buying… Barely anyone on Earth will ever power through this gauntlet. I turn myself inside out just to get a thousand people to bounce off the home page, praying that one makes it through to the end, like a frog laying ten thousand eggs hoping three survive long enough to do the same. And then, after all that… they cancel! Son of a bitch! I have to know why and I have to do something about it!

Read the full post…

What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology

By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown. At risk of violating the sacred rule, I will attempt to describe the condition and prescribe some techniques that helped me. In the end, this is the most personal and important battle that any CEO will face.

Read the full post…

50+ Better Questions To Ask Than ‘How To Be More Productive’

“How can I be more productive?” It’s a question that many of us ask ourselves without realizing that the question, as stated, is impossible to answer. Just as I prefer achievable goals, I prefer answerable questions. Here are 50+ better questions to ask than “how to be more productive.” Some are different ways of saying the same things, but that’s a good thing.

Read the full post…

The ‘Busy’ Trap

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day… Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

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Wiio’s Laws of Communication

Wiio’s laws are humorously formulated serious observations about how human communication usually fails except by accident. This document comments on the applicability and consequences of the laws, especially as regards to communication on the Internet. Despite being entertaining, Wiio’s laws are valid observations about all human communication. For any constructive approach to communication, we need to admit their truth and build upon them, instead of comfortably exercising illusionary communication.

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The Evil Overlord List

The infamous lists of “Things I’ll do if I ever become an Evil Overlord”. Read them, and you’ll be Dangerously Genre Savvy, able to avoid dooms of many villains. Fail to read them, and your Genre Blindness will condemn you to pick up any Villain Ball you see, perhaps even demoting you to the rank of Harmless Villain, and failure will be your only option.

Read the full post…

Urgency: the Natural Way to Prioritize?

Urgency is in fact the natural way to prioritize. We do things first because they need to be done first. The farmer sows the seed and later the crop appears. At one time sowing becomes urgent and at another reaping. There is no possible way of saying that sowing is more important than reaping or vice versa… people tend to think of the degree of urgency a task has in terms of when the task needs to be finished, when in fact the urgency relates to when the task needs to be started.

Read the full post…

Audible.com Best of 2012

Josh Kaufman — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 05:57:50 -0700

I’m proud to announce that The Personal MBA has been featured by Audible.com as Best of 2012 in the business category.

The audio edition of The Personal MBA has been selling extremely well, and I’ve been hearing that listeners are enjoying the audiobook as much the paper edition. The paperback is best for reference use, of course, but the audiobook is ideal for learning all of the concepts course-style.

The audiobook is comprehensive, portable, and for 13.5 solid hours of no-fluff business training, you can’t beat the price.

If you haven’t yet picked up your copy of The Personal MBA in audio, check it out.

A Holistic Mission to Organically Downsize Buzzwords

Josh Kaufman — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:20:22 -0600

Can we all please align on leveraging lean language? Proactively downsizing our words will save a ton of bandwidth and empower us all to achieve innovative breakthroughs, synergize our missions, and scale our impact.

(Sanity check: the previous paragraph is 100% irony. This paragraph didn’t appear in the first version of this post, and I received a lot of questions wondering whether or not I was being serious. Buzzword abuse is so pervasive many intelligent professionals can’t recognize over-the-top humor from actual usage.)

Buzzwords are fashionable words and phrases that make simple ideas sound more complicated or impressive. Here are a few top offenders:

Innovation (“improvement”)
Paradigm Shift (“improvement”)
Revolutionary (“improvement”)
Breakthrough (“improvement”)
Transformational (“improvement”)
Next Generation (“improvement”)
Passion (“interest”)
Social Media (“attention/marketing”)
Synergy (“work well together”)
Iconic (“recognizable/remarkable”)
Transparent (“straightforward”)
Empower (“action”)
Proactive (“action”)
Brand (“reputation”)
Scale (“increase”)
Grow (“increase”)
Leverage (“use”)
Utilize (“use”)
Align (“agree”)
Agile (“efficient”)
Lean (“efficient”)
Impact (“effect”)
Organic (“natural”)
Ballpark (“estimate”)
Bandwidth (“capacity”)
Enterprise (“large business”)
Holistic (“complete”)
Inclusive (“complete”)
Mission (“goal”)
Vision (“goal”)
Value Add (“valuable”)
Downsize (“fire employees”)
Runway (“time until we run out of money”)
Best Practices (“method that works”)
Going Forward (“in the future”)

“Managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually, a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts. Remember that what you write is often the only chance you’ll get to present yourself to someone whose business or money or good will you need. If what you write is ornate, or pompous, or fuzzy, that’s how you’ll be perceived. The reader has no other choice.” – William Zinsser, On Writing Well

When people talk about “learning the language of business,” they often mean figuring out how to wade through verbal clutter in search of words that actually mean something. It’s a waste of time for everyone.

I’ve noticed myself becoming less and less tolerant of buzzwords. Say what you mean, make it clear, and don’t try to make something sound more impressive than it is.

Removing Verbal Clutter

Here’s an approach I find useful in removing buzzwords when I write and speak: whenever you’re tempted to use a word that sounds like a buzzword, taboo that word and try to explain what you mean in another way. Simple words are always best.

Here’s another useful rule of thumb: whenever someone consistently uses big important-sounding words for simple ideas, it’s safe to assume they don’t know what they’re talking about, and they’re trying to conceal that fact.

The faster business buzzword usage becomes a social signal for “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” the better.

Ramit Sethi - Radically Boost Your Job Offers

Josh Kaufman — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 01:00:00 -0600

Every now and then, I invite cool people to share their knowledge directly with Personal MBA readers. Ramit Sethi, author of the Personal MBA-recommended (and New York Times bestselling) book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, is my friend and one of the world’s foremost experts in using behavioral psychology to earn more money, land your dream job, and take control of your life. This is part 3 of 3 of a special mini-course for Personal MBA readers. Here’s Ramit. – Josh

This week I’ve been showing you how to challenge your assumptions and focus on a few high-value activities up front can have a dramatic impact on your results. This is true in your career and your personal finances.

Today, I want share a case study with you that shows this mindset in action. I’m also going to share you with a special technique that has made me and my students hundreds of thousands of dollars in raises and freelance income.

This story is about one of my students, “Vince,” (name anonymized) who discovered that credentials like an MBA alone won’t get you a job.

But deeply, truly understanding the desires of the hiring manager will. See for yourself…

Meet Vince

Vince spent $100,000 and two years getting an MBA only to find out that employers didn’t care about MBAs any more. They said they only wanted people with experience.

His school’s Career Services Department gave him the exact same advice they gave every student in every situation. Shotgun out as many resumes and applications as possible and hope something sticks.

Vince knew from his struggle to find a summer internship halfway through his MBA that this approach probably wasn’t going to get him a job. Certainly not a great job for good money doing something he loved.

That’s when he did something most job hunters never consider doing. He stepped back and thought about how he could make himself stand out. How he could really get into the heads of his potential employers?

Vince found a way to PROVE he was a better candidate than his fellow graduates and applicants with more experience.

The results?

Comparing his mid-program internship search to his post-graduation job search, Vince boosted his call backs from 30% to 70%. Better yet, he boosted his offers from 11% to 86%.

Even though Vince applied to only a third the number of companies in his second round, he received six times as many offers!

By truly understanding what his “customers” wanted (HINT: it wasn’t experience), he was able to go from being just another graduate to being sought-after.

Here’s how he did it.

MBA ≠ A Guaranteed Job

Vince was tired of his job as a management consultant. The short projects and huge emphasis on billable hours wore him down. He knew that if he could move into the consumer technologies field then he’d be a lot happier. But how?

He had a plan:

Quit my job.
Take on a bunch of student loans.
Spend two years to get my MBA.
Graduate and start a new, better job.

Right?

With graduation coming up, Vince started his job search. The news was grim.

“Every company I talked to said they were just hiring people with experience,” Vince said. “I had invested $100,000 into my education and then found out companies will no longer overlook your lack of experience if you have a credential. It’s just not true anymore. How do you gain experience when you’re just starting out?”

The business world had changed. But the job search strategies his school’s Career Services Department gave him hadn’t.

“I knew that since they gave the same advice to everyone, there was no differentiation. It was pretty prosaic.”

Nonetheless, Vince gave it a shot. Halfway through his program, he needed a summer internship. He sent out resumes and cover letters to 30 companies and hoped for the best.

“I was very scatter shot. Not at all niche. I had a form resume and cover letter. Clicking on ‘submit’ 30 times isn’t that hard. I just tried to shoot as as many resumes as possible.”

The results weren’t very promising. Of the 30 he sent out, only nine called him back. Worse yet, because he hadn’t done his homework before the interview, he wasn’t prepared. Only one of the nine made him an offer, and it wasn’t a great internship.

Vince knew he needed a new strategy. That’s when he saw my course on how to earn more money on the side: Earn1K.

“I treated my job interviewing strategy like a business.”

“I’ve read your blog since 2004. I’m a big believer in having as many psychological tools as possible. Your focus on developing automated systems instead of relying on willpower really resonated with me.”

Vince knew that not all of the course applied to him, but the psychology did.

“The psychology of how to convince someone to part with their money is something I wanted more scientific analysis on, not just intuition. How could I convince an interviewer that I was worth a large salary seemed similar to convincing a business that I could freelance for them. Just replace ‘customer’ with ‘hiring manager.’”

After graduating, Vince didn’t want a repeat of his internship search. He decided to approach his job interviewing strategy like a business. He wanted to understand his clients need and know how to pitch aimed at solving those needs. He signed up for Earn1K.

“I used to consume, and consume, and consume…”

Vince dove into two key Earn1K lessons on getting inside the heads of your customers. He studied a 37-minute video on how to define your target market and another 35-minute video on how to identify the benefits your clients truly want. There were also bonus videos and worksheets to help him make each lesson actionable.

“Before Earn1K, when it came to preparing for an interview, I was just a huge consumer of content. I’d read blog posts, commentary, any info about the company I could find,” Vince said. “It didn’t help. Having info wasn’t enough. I still didn’t understand their real business challenges.”

After completing Earn1K, Vince developed a new approach.

“Now, if I’m interested in working for a company, the first thing I do is interview a ton of alumni who work there. I ask what their pain points are. What keeps the managers up at night? This is the info I really need to know. Once I have that focus, I can take the next step. Figure out how to address those needs.”

Vince didn’t just brainstorm solutions to those needs, he created a detailed presentation outlining his strategy for solving them. (This is part of the Briefcase Technique, one of the tactics he’d learned in Earn1K.) He also created new, very targeted resumes and cover letters for each company on his list.

Now to test his new approach… This time, he only sent out 10 resumes and cover letters. Of those 10, he had seven call him back. An increase from 30% to 70%. But Vince knew the real test would be the interview.

“My first interview was with an online tech company. From my conversations with alumni, I knew their biggest challenge at the moment was cloud computing pricing. Sure enough, that question came up early in the interview. I said ‘You know, I’ve thought about that issue and have a document that should address that.’ And I don’t mean just notes. I had a tables, a whole strategy.”

The interviewer was hooked.

“I could tell he was surprised,” Vince recalled. “No one does this. But at the end he said it was the most in-depth discussion about company issues he’d had with an interviewee.”

Of his seven interviews, six companies offered him a job. An increase from 11% to 86%.

“With six job offers to choose from…”

With six job offers to choose from, Vince controlled where to take his career. Eager to learn all that he could, he chose a company that offered him a high-level, customer-facing position and promised to rotate him every couple of months so he could really learn the business.

Vince credits Earn1K with teaching him the skills he needed to connect with and sell himself to those hiring managers.

“Earn1K taught me that it’s okay to be unorthodox. In an economy where where everyone looks the same, being a little unorthodox is a plus. You have to hustle. You have to be better than the others. Don’t be afraid to show how good you are, to show them you understand what their problems are. The Briefcase Technique is a great way to do that. I love it. That’s how I got an excellent job instead of a mediocre one.”

How to get into your client’s or hiring manager’s head

As Vince illustrates in this case study, many of the techniques I teach freelancers can be applied to your regular job. That’s why I want to say thanks to Josh Kaufman and all the Personal MBA readers by giving you an exclusive video excerpt from my Earn1k course.

Click the link below and you can watch a clip from the exact lesson that helped Vince land six times as many job offers. I hope you enjoy it!

Here’s the link: How to get into your client’s head.

Learn Ramit’s “Briefcase Technique”

Ramit Sethi is the author of the New York Times best-selling book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, which focuses on personal finance for people in their 20s and 30s by weaving together threads from health & fitness, social psychology, and personal finance. His blog, iwillteachyoutoberich.com, hosts over 300,000 readers per month. Recently profiled in Fortune Magazine, he currently focuses on helping his students find dream jobs and earning side income to help them live a richer life.

Note: Ramit and I are friends, and I’ve advised in the development of both of his courses. We also have a revenue sharing agreement; I recommend his materials because they’re AWESOME and 100% worth your time and money. Concerns? See my disclosure policy.

Ramit Sethi - How to Hack Your Day Job

Josh Kaufman — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 01:00:00 -0600

Every now and then, I invite cool people to share their knowledge directly with Personal MBA readers. Ramit Sethi, author of the Personal MBA-recommended (and New York Times bestselling) book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, is my friend and one of the world’s foremost experts in using behavioral psychology to earn more money, land your dream job, and take control of your life. This is part 2 of 3 of a special mini-course for Personal MBA readers. Here’s Ramit. – Josh

Do you wish you got paid more money at work?

Of course you do.

I can help you do that. Today. Right now.

My advice has helped people negotiate, on average, $10,000 per negotiation. Not just “born negotiators”. I’m talking about regular people who never thought they could get paid what they were really worth… especially in an economy like this.

The secret is to approach negotiating your salary – and your job – like a top performer.

I’ve been studying these top performers for years…

How do they get so much more done during the same workday?
How do they negotiate massive raises?
How do they find and land Dream Jobs even in this economy?

There are specific strategies, tactics, and scripts you can use to achieve the same results.

I’ve used them to land jobs at Google, Intuit and a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund. My students have used to them to find unadvertised jobs and land $10,000 raises. I want to show you how you can use some of these same techniques in your current job — today.

Hack Your Day Job – “High Performance, High Pay”

Top performers work differently and negotiate differently than average employees. They understand that putting in just a little extra work upfront can pay huge rewards down the road. This what I call the “Craigslist Penis Effect” in action.

Let me be perfectly clear here – I don’t mean working hard for years and hoping your boss will notice. That’s an excuse for not taking responsibility for your own career. What I’m talking about is using proven strategies to prepare for a negotiation. The difference is night and day and can add thousands of dollars to your salary.

Here are a few videos to show you how this approach can work for you…

(RSS readers: click here to view these videos…)

“How to get a huge raise when you’re very good at your job”

You’re already doing excellent work. It’s time to get an excellent salary. Here’s how to turn your success into a $10,000 raise.

“How to negotiate your salary if you’re underpaid”

You’ve done some research and discovered you’re not being paid what you’re worth. Before you kick down your boss’s door and demand more money, consider this long-view approach. The end result could be an additional $5,000 – $10,000 in your pocket, every year.

Three bonus tips on master negotiating

OK, now that you know how to approach the negotiation, what about the actual meeting itself? Here are three master negotiating DOs and DON’Ts that can help you seal the deal.

In the video, I’ll also teach you the fastest way to improve your negotiating skills.

How to double your productivity at work

“That’s all well and good, Ramit, but what if I’m not a top performer?”

I get this question a lot. In a lot of cases, people already are top performers; they just don’t realize how valuable they are to their employer. How much have you done to support your boss and achieve your company’s goals in the last 6 months?

But what if you’re really not sure if you qualify? Check out this final video on how to double your productivity at work. By strategically spending a few months of hard work to accomplish performance goals you set up with your boss in advance, you can rapidly upgrade your status from “ordinary” to “top performer” in no time.

Watch a master negotiator at work

What does it look like when you use all of the strategies and tactics I taught you today and actually sit down for a negotiation?

I can show you. I recorded an exclusive video with one of the best negotiators I’ve ever met. In it, you’ll see how a top performer talks his way into a $7,000 raises, doubles his stock options, and accelerates his review cycle.

You can find that video here.

Watch Ramit’s Negotiation Video

See you Friday with a special post on how to approach every interview so you leave with a job offer.

Ramit Sethi - Find a Job You Love

Josh Kaufman — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 01:00:00 -0600

Every now and then, I invite cool people to share their knowledge directly with Personal MBA readers. Ramit Sethi, author of the Personal MBA-recommended (and New York Times bestselling) book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, is my friend and one of the world’s foremost experts in using behavioral psychology to earn more money, land your dream job, and take control of your life. This is part 1 of 3 of a special mini-course for Personal MBA readers. Here’s Ramit. – Josh

Did you ever listen to that radio show Loveline? Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew would be fielding questions from teenagers about their sex lives, and invariably there would be some 16-year-old girl who would call up with her question:

“Uh… hi… my boyfriend is unemployed, bald, fat, and 24 years older than me. And he beats me. What do you think I should I do?”

Cue 1 million people simultaneously screaming “LEAVE HIM!!!” into their radios. It’s so obvious to us.

But to her, her question is unique.

Now, when I go on TV, 90% of the time, I get the same 7 questions:

“I’m in debt. What should I do?”
“No matter what I try, I can’t seem to save. What should I do?”
“What should I do with my money to grow it?”

SAME QUESTIONS, OVER AND OVER!

But to them, their questions are unique.

I run I Will Teach You To Be Rich, where my goal has always been to help people live a richer life: whether by saving, investing or earning more money.

Readers regularly come to me for career advice. They ask a lot of questions, but what I’ve found is that most of them are HIGHLY UNSPECIFIC. If you ask a dumb question like “How do I improve my resume?” expect a vague response back.

Asking the right questions is not sexy. But if you still think that “How do I write a cover letter?” is your major barrier to finding a dream job, you’re missing the entire game that’s being played around you.

Most of the people who ask me questions aren’t happy with their careers. These people are very smart, but for one reason or another they feel stuck in their jobs and don’t know what they can do about it.

Maybe you feel the same:

You’re sick of your current job and want to find work that you’ll actually enjoy, while paying you what you’re worth.
You want to change course and start a completely new career, but have no idea where to start.
You’re unemployed or new to the workforce, but don’t want to settle for just any job – you want to find your dream job.

By far, the biggest problem my readers face isn’t their intellect or their qualifications – it’s their approach.

They make a number of faulty assumptions and waste their time on low-value activities. I want to help. In this article, I’m going to point out those assumptions and low-value activities so you can avoid them and take an 80/20 approach to your career.

Let’s start with the most common assumptions…

Assumption #1: “I’m not qualified.”

Most people think that if they’re not getting the job offers they want, their only solution is to improve their skill set, which will then make them more marketable. NOT TRUE.

Yes, skills are important. But your approach is just as critical, if not more so. In fact, tons of people get their dream jobs DESPITE being far from the best candidate on paper.

The fact is, most people ARE good enough for their dream jobs. They’re just not getting them because they’re not looking in the right places, and they’re not telling the right people in the right way. Are you the same way?

Assumption #2: “I’m lucky to even have a job, let alone shoot for something better.”

How many times has the media / family / friends drilled this one into our heads? Again, it’s BS – and most people believe it.

In my program on how to earn more money on the side, we taught others how to earn thousands (while everyone else was panicking about the tanking economy).

Similarly, I can show you how you CAN find your dream job, even as everyone else seems to be turning their back on ambition. Let’s start with some basics about how MOST people do their job search…

Here’s how MOST people approach looking for a new job:

Tweak and tune their resume to make sure it’s as up to date as possible.
Search online job boards for general terms like “marketing manager” or “web developer,” and send their resume/cover letter to any posting that looks interesting.
Reach out to a few contacts to let them know they’re looking for a job.
Wait and hope for the best.

And here’s what usually happens…

They find out that most positions either pay next to nothing or have an impossibly long list of prerequisites (or both).
The few jobs that are halfway decent are quickly taken by people more qualified or willing to work for less (or both).
They get zero feedback on what they’re doing wrong: “Is it my cover letter?” “Do they not hire English majors?” “Is anybody even reading my application?” This can go on for months.

Conclusion: The job market sucks. But what can you do, right?

Even worse are the effects you don’t see. People can only hear “no” so many times before giving up mentally (though they may still go through the motions). They begin to undervalue themselves, and as a result start applying to jobs they’re overqualified for or uninterested in.

Counter-intuitively, this actually works against them. They again get no results and the downward spiral continues. At the end of the day, they’re left feeling (wrongly) like they have no more options: “I’ve looked everywhere, and tried everything. Oh well, there’s nothing else I can do.”

While this generic method CAN work for some people, MOST will find the process ineffective and demoralizing – even the smartest and most capable ones.

The problem isn’t that they’re doing the wrong things – it’s that they’re spending too much time and energy on the wrong things while neglecting other, more productive activities.

The 80/20 Solution

You may have heard the 80/20 rule:

The vast majority (80%) of your results tend to come from a small minority (20%) of your efforts.

What this means is that there are a few critical activities that are likely to get you the most results in the shortest period of time. What most people do, though, is focus most of their time on the least effective activities.

What most job seekers spend too much time on:

Resumes and cover letters. People overthink these way too much – and yet they’re not even the most effective marketing materials at their disposal.
Responding to job ads. They might find something good, but posted jobs tend to be low quality, high competition. Hint: the very best jobs are taken before they’re ever even advertised.
Trying to get noticed. Dozens of social media profiles, blogging, general “networking events” that feel productive but never seem to go anywhere.

The problem with all of these activities is that they’re passive. You’re relying on someone else to post an ad or make you aware of an opportunity – if nothing happens, it’s out of your hands. They make you feel productive even when you’re not getting results (“Responded to 10 more job ads today!”).

On top of this, everybody else is doing this exact same thing, so it’s nearly impossible to stand out.

Note: I’m not recommending you ignore these activities – just that you allocate your time appropriately. They can and do still make a big difference in the long run.

WHY do we do this?

Most likely, we’re not aware of any other option, so we default to the same old things that have been done for decades – and that everyone else (including our friends) seem to be doing. There’s no real strategy or feedback system in place – we simply throw resumes into the wind and hope they land on the desk of any hiring manager that will have us.

This might work to get us a few interviews, but after a while, we stop pursuing a DREAM JOB and instead settle for whatever we can get. So, what’s the alternative?

The few crucial activities that gets you 80% of results:

Getting extremely specific about what you’re looking for.
Getting in touch with the right people.
Showing how you’re the best candidate for the position.

Let’s look at each of these in detail.

Getting extremely specific about what you’re looking for

Do you really know what you’re looking for, or are you simply taking whatever you can get?
Do you know the actual job you want, what it takes to do it and how you fit the bill?
Do you know the types of companies that hire for these jobs, the exact ones you want to work for and what their biggest problems are?

It may seem counterintuitive, but by forcing yourself to choose, you actually increase your chance of getting results, because your whole approach – from your resume to even your references – will be tailor-made for the position you want.

These are hard questions that take real work to answer. That’s why most people’s answers are BS: “I want to work with innovative, growing companies that add value by leveraging my unique management skills.”

Another reason people don’t work on this is that they’re afraid it means closing the door on other options. They want to appeal to everybody. In reality, all you’re doing focusing on one very targeted goal at a time. If your first option doesn’t work, you’ll simply move onto something else.

Getting in touch with the right people

For most people, “networking” means “being social with people you don’t really like in the hopes that one of them knows someone who knows someone.”

Not you. Instead, you’re going to figure out exactly who can help you get to where you’re going, and go to them directly. Other people won’t even know what they’re looking for, making it impossible to know who they need to talk to or what to ask. But you will.

It’s not just about collecting information, either. It’s about assembling a team of people who have your best interests in mind. It also means showing people that you’re worthy of being helped – by doing your homework before you meet them, and actually following up on their advice afterwards.

Your end goal should be an introduction to the person who has the authority to hire you for the job you want. And to be 100% qualified and prepared to ask for it by the time you get there.

Showing why you’re the best candidate for the position

Every hiring manager’s #1 question: “Why should I hire you?”

If you answer “I’m hard working, reliable, passionate and smart," great! So is every college kid across the street.

Getting your dream job is about showing your employer why you’d be a better hire than anybody else. A better hire, not necessarily a more experienced hire or a better technician. How do you do that?

First, by actually knowing and understanding the issues they care about the most (which, not coincidentally, you will after doing steps 1 and 2).

Second, by showing (not just telling) why you’re the best solution to their problems, because:

You understand their problems and can communicate them better than anyone else.
You’ve prepared proof that you can do the job more convincingly than anybody else has.
You have better recommendations from the right people than anybody else.

If you can get this far, you’ll be better off than 99% of other applicants and that much more likely to get the dream job you deserve.

Let’s recap

You should still do these:

Improve your resume and cover letter
Respond to job ads
Network and increase your visibility

But start focusing the bulk of your time on these:

Getting specific about what you’re looking for.
Getting in touch with the right people.
Showing why you’re the best candidate for the position.

But what if…

“What if I don’t know what I want?”
“What if I don’t have anybody I can talk to??”
“What if I don’t even have any experience???”

These are great questions, and if you’re asking them, you’re already on the right track. Instead of just hoping someone comes along and hands you your dream job, you’re ready to get out and go after it yourself.

I’ve got more material that will answer all of these questions and more in step-by-step detail. If you’re curious (and wouldn’t mind some more free videos), check it out at: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/dreamjob/personalmba/

Watch Ramit’s Free Videos

See you Wednesday for a special article on how to start getting paid what you really deserve.

ChangeThis Manifesto Update

Josh Kaufman — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:55:28 -0600

I’m happy to announce that the Personal MBA Manifesto has been updated at ChangeThis.com. You can download it here.

Many moons ago, ChangeThis published the very first version of the Personal MBA Manifesto and Reading List, where it became one of the most downloaded manifestos in the site’s history, with over 1.28 million downloads since publication. Over the years, I updated these resources on this site, but ChangeThis still had the original version.

That’s no longer the case as of today. The updated edition contains the entire manifesto and every book the Personal MBA recommends. Thanks to Dylan Schleicher at 800-CEO-READ, you can now browse the Personal MBA’s book recommendations in a beautiful, print-worthy format.

In total, the updated Personal MBA Manifesto clocks in at a little under 100 pages, and you can download the PDF free.

Enjoy!

London Meetup - September 8th

Josh Kaufman — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:30:56 -0600

Greetings from sunny London!

I’ve been in the UK for a week for the release of The Personal MBA in paperback. The book is selling very well: #4 on the W.H. Smith list at launch.

It’s been a busy week with several fun events, most notably great conversations with Dr. Sionade Robinson, director of the full-time MBA program at the Cass Business School. Our discussion should air on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service on Monday.

I also had the privilege of appearing as a guest on Monocle Radio, chatting with several major organizations about potential collaborations, and speaking to a group of internal Penguin employees about The Personal MBA and my upcoming book on skill acquisition.

Many thanks to Richard Lennon at Penguin for hosting me this week. It’s been a fantastic experience, and I’m looking forward to spending more time in London in the near future.

London Meetup: “The Queen of Hoxton,” Saturday the 8th at 4:00pm

I’ll be hanging out at The Queen of Hoxton tomorrow, Saturday the 8th, from 4:00pm until around 5:30pm. If you live in London or the surrounding area, please drop in for a pint on me. Here’s the address:

1-5 CURTAIN ROAD
LONDON, EC2A 3JX

The nearest stations are Shoreditch, High Street, Old Street, Liverpool St, and Moorgate. We’ll have our own area on the ground floor – just ask for me when you arrive.

If you plan to attend, please let me know at josh@personalmba.com or via Twitter so I can save you a seat. See you soon!

Personal MBA Book - Second Edition

Josh Kaufman — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:55:37 -0600

Today, I’m happy to announce that the second edition of my book, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, has been published in paperback by Penguin/Portfolio. It’s in bookstores now.

Thanks to my team at Portfolio for their work on the second edition. It’s great to have a publisher that stands behind their books for years, and is willing to invest in creating great books.

What’s New in the Second Edition?

The second edition of The Personal MBA contains approximately twenty brand new concepts. You can see every concept in the book at http://book.personalmba.com.

Most of the new concepts are in the Finance chapter. One of my design criteria for the first edition was to explain finance without relying on the financial statements, which most new businesspeople find intimidating or confusing. The original chapter did the job, but many readers were curious about the financial statements, so you’ll see a lot of new material that explains the three major statements, where they come from, why they’re important, and how to avoid major sources of bias in financial reporting.

All of the other new concepts flesh out major ideas in each of the remaining ten chapters. Every chapter has new content, and there’s new coverage of important topics like akrasia, career happiness, hiring, and business cycles.

New Reference Features

I also worked with Portfolio to enhance the book’s value as a long-term reference. In addition to the new concepts, a secondary “Key Terms” table of contents makes it easy to find specific ideas without combing through the chapter listings. Each mental model is also fully indexed in the main page index, so you can find all instances of every idea in the book.

Should you purchase the second edition?

Yes. I highly recommend that you purchase a copy of the second edition. Here’s why:

It’s more complete – the new concepts make the book even more comprehensive
It’s easier to use – the new reference features make it even more useful as a reference
It’s not expensive – since the book is in paperback, you can upgrade for a few dollars

I recommend giving your hardcover edition away, either to a friend or your local public library. They’ll appreciate it.

The book’s new reduced price also makes it easier to give to friends, colleagues, or your team – anyone who you know is interested in starting a business, moving up in their company, or pursuing a new career.

Audiobook Edition

I’ve also recorded an unabridged audio edition of the book, which is available via Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes as of today. Audible is a great service that I personally subscribe to, so I recommend checking it out.

I’m very proud of this new edition of The Personal MBA, and I think you’ll find it extremely valuable in the months and years to come. Enjoy!

Order your copy now…

How Superheroes Can Sell Suits - Indochino

Josh Kaufman — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 07:58:11 -0600

I’d like to introduce the “Systematic Brilliance” series here at PersonalMBA.com. Instead of generic business school case studies, which almost always suffer from a bad case of retrospective armchair quarterbacking, I think it’s more useful to look at examples of businesses that are actively applying fundamental business principles in a smart way. We can learn from their example.

Periodically, I’ll feature companies that are doing cool things, examining the principles behind the tactics. These posts will pay particular attention to the systems these businesses are using to generate results, which are almost always overlooked by media business profiles.

As a general rule, these are not businesses I advise: at most, I’ve discovered the company as a prospect or as a customer. If there’s ever a conflict of interest, I’ll disclose it up front.

First up: Indochino.

Indochino: Custom Men’s Clothing

Here’s what Indochino does in their own words:

We provide the modern gentleman with high quality menswear that fits your body perfectly. Our quick 10 minute measurement process can be done from the comfort of your own home; no tailor required. All of our products are hand tailored and delivered to any part of the world within 3 weeks. Indochino makes it easy and affordable for customers to get custom tailored menswear for a look that is professional, fashionable and truly sophisticated.

I first heard of Indochino through a friend several years ago. I don’t wear suits on a regular basis, and I hate shopping for clothing, so I filed the information away in my tracking system. The suits I had previously purchased served the purpose. I did not have a clothing problem that needed solving.

That changed two months ago, when I discovered I would need nice clothes for two big upcoming events:

My brother is getting married, so I need a nice black suit.
I’m going to be in London the first week of September to promote my book, and I need to look sharp for media interviews with the BBC, CNN, CNBC, etc.

In addition, a recent dietary experiment worked in a very big way: I lost 25+ pounds by eliminating wheat gluten from my diet. My old suits no longer fit very well.

Time to go shopping, I suppose…

Point of Market Entry

This is a classic example of a Point of Market Entry. One day I wasn’t in the market for a suit; the next day, I was. When I decided to shop for a suit, I went back in my notes, and there was Indochino, so I checked out what they had to offer.

It’s important to note that Indochino’s marketing from several years ago worked, just not right away. The idea of “nice, affordable custom suits” was interesting enough to make a note, as well as Prime me to consider a custom suit for my next purchase.

Competing With Non-Consumption

That’s not to say that I instantly became a major prospect for Indochino. After all, I wear dress clothes 1-2 times a year, if that. I don’t need a huge dress wardrobe.

Indochino sells basic custom three-piece suits starting around $450. Perfect: that’s in my budget. I love the idea of getting a custom suit for roughly the price of an off-the-rack.

I intended to purchase a single black suit and be done with it. Instead, Indochino’s marketing increased my initial order by 5x, convincing me to purchase four custom suits, complete with ties, shirts, and accessories.

How? Superheroes. Seriously.

Understanding Your Probable Purchaser

I don’t need many nice suits, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want them on some level. The challenge for Indochino was to identify what might make me Desire another suit enough to spend the money.

The type of customer who is willing to purchase a custom suit online has a few easy-to-identify characteristics. They’re probably:

Younger: 25-39 years old with a decent level of disposable income
Looking to purchase clothing either for work or an upcoming event
Want shopping to be convenient

Indochino covers these fundamentals well: their website is nice, shopping is convenient, and clearly targets a younger customer base. That’s not, however, emotionally compelling enough to generate additional sales.

What’s interesting about a younger target market is the Associations they have of well-dressed people. An older target, like mid-50s executives or salespeople, grew up in a time where suits were more common… something that professionals were expected to wear.

That’s not true for a younger audience. My associations of uber well-dressed people come from movies, television, and yes, comic books.

Bruce Wayne. Tony Stark. James Bond. Well-dressed is a part of the persona of these characters, and that Association is alive and well in the back of my mind.

Indochino released a Superhero Collection, promising to deliver a suit worthy of Batman or Iron Man’s alter-ego.

Where do I sign up?

I’m not joking: the thought of that makes me really excited. Indochino understands their Probable Purchaser very well, so their marketing struck a nerve. My internal monologue shifted from “which suit should I buy” to “how many can I buy?”

I purchased four custom suits, four custom dress shirts, four ties, cufflinks, and a custom raincoat.

Modularity

A major part of why Indochino can put together unique collections is Modularity. Each pattern is computer-rendered, adjusted to the customer’s measurements, then cut using a laser from the appropriate cloth. The pieces are then assembled into a finished suit.

This Value Stream means Indochino carries no finished goods inventory, aside from accessories like cufflinks and tie clips. The major raw material cost is in the fabric, which can be purchased in smaller-than-typical quantities, alleviating purchasing risk and allowing Indochino to test many different offers.

Since every aspect of the suit is custom, Indochino can change any aspect of the product: primary cloth, lining, buttons, buttonholes, etc. Want a full-fabric vest instead of a silk/satin back? No problem!

In the case of the Superhero Collection, Indochino focused on two specific aspects of the offer: the suit lining and the buttonholes. The collections paired unique linings with special contrasting buttonholes, a visible Status Signal that the suit is custom-made. To top it off, they include a small magnetic lapel pin for an additional touch of flair.

Taking Away the Fear

Buying clothing online, particularly custom clothing, feels risky. What if it doesn’t fit well? What if I don’t like it? Will I be stuck with a suit I’ll never wear?

Indochino employs a classic Risk Reversal strategy with their Perfect Fit Promise:

Indochino’s “Perfect Fit Promise” makes ordering a custom suit risk-free. If your order is anything less than perfect, we will do everything in our power to make it right. If an order requires adjustments, Indochino will provide a credit of up to $75 for local tailoring. If a tailor deems the order unalterable, Indochino will gladly remake it free of charge. If you are not 100% satisfied with your order, you can return it for a full refund.

That goes a long way to eliminating risk as a Barrier to Purchase. (For the record, my suits fit perfectly without additional tailoring.)

Indochino also uses Education-Based Selling to help customers take their own measurements. A series of 30 diagrams and videos show the customer exactly what to measure, and how to measure accurately. As a result, the customer doesn’t have to worry about finding a tailor.

If the customer is still wary of taking their own measurements, Indochino provides a Traveling Tailor service, which stops periodically in major cities. The display serves as both a retail outlet and a chance for potential customers to be measured by expert tailors.

The Value of Anticipation

It’s impossible to describe how apathetic I am about clothing in general. My shopping strategy is typically to (1) find an item I like in a standard retail store, (2) buy 4-5 of the same item in different colors, (3) congratulate myself on avoiding more clothes shopping for at least another two years.

It typically takes Indochino 3-4 weeks to deliver an order, which accounts for the custom manufacturing and international shipping. What I didn’t expect was the anticipation: every few days, I’d check my order status, wondering when the suits would arrive with a feeling of excitement.

If Indochino can make me excited about spending 5x more than I intended to on clothing, they’re doing something very, very right.

How can you apply the principles mentioned in this post to your own business?

General Career Advice

Josh Kaufman — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:00:00 -0600

I get a lot of email from readers. Aside from feedback or questions about my book, a lot of people ask for career advice.

Sometimes my correspondent is just getting started, and wants advice about where to look for jobs. Sometimes they’re contemplating a specific career move, and they’re not sure which option is most promising. Sometimes they want to start a business, but they’re having a tough time with the uncertainty of it all.

In all cases, I have the same response. Here it is:

As a matter of policy, I generally refrain from telling people what to do. Career choices are very personal decisions, and it’s your responsibility to choose the best course of action in your situation.

There are, however, a few questions that may help you make a good decision:

1. What are the benefits of each of your options? (Financial, emotional, experiential.)

2. What are the costs of each of your options? (Financial, emotional, experiential.)

3. What could you test without spending a lot of time, energy, or money?

4. Are there particular skills you can invest in improving?

5. All else being equal, which experience would you most like to have?

Hope this helps,

Josh

I can’t predict the future any better than anyone else, so specific advice without the benefit of a ton of context and personal observation would be useless at best and detrimental at worst. This is also one of the primary reasons I don’t offer unsolicited advice.

Over the years, I’ve found that guiding with questions (also known as the Socratic method) generally produces the best outcome. Asking a few good questions is almost always more useful than specific advice. The most valuable answers come from your own head.

Practice + Paying Attention to Real Results = Skill

With that in mind, I highly recommend reading Why Blacksmiths Are Better at Startups Than You by Amy Hoy. Here’s a short excerpt:

Business is a reality engine:

Don’t work on the basics every day? You’ll fail.
Don’t market constantly? You’ll fail.
Don’t solve your customer’s pains? You’ll fail.
Don’t ship? Ha!

There you go: business in four sentences.

Business is truly a mastercraft. Attack it rigorously, honestly, and openly — and commit to mastering your spoiled inner child — and oh! the places you’ll go. Reality will become your fondest friend. Your driving questions will evolve from “Does this make me sound smart?” to “Does this motivate a customer to buy?”" — from “Gee, what do I feel like doing today?” to “How will I make my customers’ lives better today?”

You’ll make things with your hands and your brain that will help people, people you get to meet, to talk to, to learn from. And you will feel rewarded.

If you’re not in it for the long haul, though, don’t bother. If you’re too special to practice the basics, don’t bother. If you’d rather feel validated than achieve a result, don’t bother. If you’d rather defend the status quo than grow, give up now.

That is the decision you’ll face every day: Do you just want to splash about in the kiddie pool and rebel at the first sign of seriousness, or do you want to craft a real business and a real life, with reality as your favorite ally? Do you want to surprise yourself with how much you can achieve?

Business is a skill and a craft. Always has been, always will be. The more you practice, the better you become. Simple as that.

The Billionaire Formula

Josh Kaufman — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:28:33 -0600

“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.” – The Social Network by Aaron Sorkin

Let’s assume you want to become a billionaire. Let’s also assume that you choose to ignore the evidence that having a billion dollars won’t make you happier or more satisfied with your life. Becoming a billionaire is your only goal. How would you go about doing it?

Quit Your Day Job

First, you can’t expect to become a billionaire if you hold a salaried job, even a high-paying one. Median pay for the CEO of a public company in 2011 totaled $9.6 million dollars, which includes cash, stock, and bonuses. You’d become a bilionaire in 104 years; probably less, since median CEO pay keeps increasing. Still, median CEO tenure is 4.9 to 6.5 years, so even the top job probably won’t make you a billionaire.

If you want to become a billionaire, you have to be at least a partial owner of a very large company. Ideally, you should start that company, and hold on to a large chunk of shares as it grows.

The Billionaire Formula

Okay, you’re now the founder of a growing company. How much money does the business need to bring in to make you a billionaire?

Here’s the basic formula for becoming a billionaire:

(Typical Customer Lifetime Revenue – Typical Lifetime Cost of Customer Acquistion – Typical Lifetime Cost of Customer Value Delivery – Amortized Overhead per Customer) * # Of Customers Served * ( 1 – % Average Corporate Tax Rate) * % Ownership of the Business

Typical Customer Lifetime Value is the amount of revenue you collect from every customer over the entire lifetime of their association with your business.

Typical Lifetime Cost of Customer Acquistion is the amount you spend (on average) to bring in a new customer.

Typical Lifetime Cost of Customer Value Delivery is the amount you spend (on average) to deliver the value you create to a paying customer.

Amortized Overhead per Customer is the amount you spend on salaried employees, office space, utilities, insurance, etc. divided by the number of customers you serve.

# Of Customers Served is self-explanatory.

% Ownership of the Business is the number of shares of the business you own divided by the total number of shares that exist. This ownership percentage entitles you to that percent of the company’s profits, but the mechanism by which you collect those profits in practice may vary.

Astute readers will notice that (Revenue – Costs – Overhead – Tax) is the definition of Net Profit. That means we can simplify the formula to this:

Typical Lifetime Net Profit Per Customer * # Of Customers Served * % Ownership of the Business

Three Major Variables

Broken down this way, it’s pretty easy to see how billionaires are made. If you have a business with a very high typical lifetime net profit per customer, you serve a lot of customers, and you own most of the business, you’ll make a lot of money. Simple as that.

You can also give on one or more criteria if you make up for it in others. For example, if you own 100% of a toy company that sells novelties for $1 typical net profit per customer, you can still become a billionaire if you sell to 1 billion people. Likewise, large reinsurance companies may have less than 100 customers, but when each customer’s lifetime net profit is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the math still works.

The real key is percentage ownership. If you own a large stake in a business that’s serving millions of people extremely profitably on a consistent basis, you’re likely to become a billionaire. In practice, there are relatively few companies that reach this size, and those companies each have only a few owners who have large enough stakes to reach the billion-dollar mark, so there are very few billionaires.

The Public Market Wrinkle

The public stock market adds an interesting twist to the billionaire formula. If the market values a company as if it had a high Typical Lifetime Net Profit Per Customer or as if it were already serving millions of happy customers, an owner of that company may have a net worth of over a billion dollars… at least on paper. The actual numbers may not matter so much if investors believe the company has promise in the not-so-distant future. If the market begins valuing the company differently, however, that personal net worth line can change overnight.

A good example of this phemomenon is Mark Zuckerburg, who owns 28.2% of Facebook. When the company went public, investors valued the company as if Typical Lifetime Net Profit Per Customer was very high, and millions of advertisers were happy customers. (Remember, Facebook users are not Facebook’s customers – they’re Facebook’s product. ) When Facebook went public, Zuckerburg was suddenly worth $19.1 billion dollars.

41 days after going public, however, prices for shares of Facebook plunged, and Zuckerburg was suddenly $7.2 billion dollars poorer. All that happened was a shift in the expectations of the market.

Major Lesson: Own a Large Chunk of a Profitable Business

Forbes currently lists 1153 billionaires in the world today, out of a world population approaching 7 billion people. Every single one of them is a significant owner of an extremely profitable business that serves many (or large) customers.

Want to become a billionaire? There’s your formula.

September Masterclass + Nightingale-Conant

Josh Kaufman — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 06:08:40 -0600

Three quick updates for you today…

Wildfire Update

I’ve posted an update to my Colorado wildfire post. Here’s the short version: we’re okay, and I didn’t lose my office or library. Here are the full details. Thanks for your support during this trying time.

Next Masterclass: September 13-15, 2012

Registration is now open for my next live Masterclass in Fort Collins, Colorado. This three-day masterclass is the best way to learn all of the most important ideas in business in as little time as possible.

This will be my fifth masterclass. After every masterclass, I ask participants for their feedback. Every single past participant has rated the masterclass a 9 or 10 on a scale of 0-10. If you’re familiar with the concept of a Net Promoter Score, that’s a grade of 100%, which is unheard of.

If you’re interested in attending the masterclass, I suggest enrolling now for three reasons:

Enrolling now saves you money. Statistically, this week is the least expensive week to book air travel for September 13th, so you’ll save money. For one week only, I’m also offering $1,000 off the full enrollment price, which should cover travel from pretty much anywhere in the world, as well as lodging in Fort Collins during the masterclass.
This will be the last masterclass I host this year, and potentially until late 2013, given the timing of my next book release.
This is a small group training, and there are only 15 seats available, full-stop. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

I’d love to see you in Fort Collins. Click the link below for all of the details:

Nightingale-Conant Masterclass CD Set

If travel to Fort Collins isn’t in the cards for you, I’m pleased to offer a brand new alternative: a full recording of one of my past Masterclasses has been produced and released by Nightingale-Conant, one of the world’s top publishers of business and personal development audio material.

Nightingale-Conant doesn’t mess around: they’ve produced courses for Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Dale Carnegie, Jay Abraham, and Brian Tracy, among others. I’ve purchased 12 home study courses from N-C myself over the years, and the value is always way, way more than the asking price. When N-C offered to produce this home study program, I agreed immediately, and I’m thrilled to partner with them to bring this course to you.

Nightingale-Conant’s audio engineers spent months transforming the Masterclass into a 16-CD home study course, and they’ve done a stellar job. I’ve been listening to the program since I received my pre-release copy, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I think you’ll find this home study edition of the Personal MBA Masterclass well worth your time and money.

Enjoy!