MBA self-education 100% pdf. A short, self-paced business crash course

The book “Your own MBA. Self-education is 100% useful to everyone who decides to create own business or simply prove to yourself and the whole world that self-education “feeds” no worse than a diploma from a prestigious educational institution. This is precisely the idea that the author of the publication defends. Josh Kaufman, who, using his own example, tells the reader about the benefits of self-development and self-education, provided there is a desire to work and move forward, destroying the usual comfort zone.

In most cases, people unnecessarily spend huge amounts of money on education in universities, business schools, etc. educational institutions, promising a bright future. But expectations do not always come into contact with reality, and a person is forced to do routine work in an office, of which there are billions around the world, while dreaming of taking the highest step on the social ladder.

JOSH KAUFMAN

In the book “Your Own MBA. Self-education 100%” Josh Kaufman helps to look at the role of self-education in a person’s life, which is the best factor for achieving success. The author in no way expresses the idea that a diploma is useless; on the contrary, Kaufman helps to re-evaluate one’s own contribution to self-development and proves that this works no worse than educational programs of higher educational institutions and prestigious business schools.

The book will reveal the most effective and successful principles that work in the business world. Kaufman lays out in an accessible form the basics of the basic disciplines necessary for a successful start in the business arena. In “Your own MBA. Self-education 100%” Josh Kaufman does not offer a clear set of tips and rules, but in the process of reading they themselves appear in the reader’s head.

One of the main features of the book “Your own MBA. Self-education 100%" is its accessibility and brevity in presentation. This is not just 500 pages of abstruse and boring theory that is difficult to fit into your head. Kaufman systematized and adapted complex information for the average person to understand. The author offers many options for solving business problems, talks about effective marketing models, and helps to understand personal psychology. By applying all these tips, you can build your own business much easier and more efficiently.

Download the book “Your own MBA. Self-education 100%"

Read online or download for free “Your own MBA. You can 100% self-education on our website. Start now to pave the way for a successful future with some parting words from Josh Kaufman. Also on our website you have the opportunity to listen to the audiobook “Your own MBA. Self-education 100%.”

The task of someone who goes into business is to find out what other people lack and find a way to fill this gap. A business won't exist if it can't offer anything. An enterprise that does not benefit others is called a hobby.

If there are two fields of activity, then it is better to choose the one where there is competition. This means that there are people willing to pay money for what you are going to offer, and the biggest risk of being left out of the market is reduced to zero. See what your potential competitors are doing by becoming their buyer. Find out everything about your competitors and create a product that is better than what they offer.

Most major automakers test their products by driving through obstacle courses. Software companies like Microsoft and Google are testing new products on employee computers before launching it on the mass market.

This form of field testing allows us to identify and eliminate product shortcomings before the buyer sees it. Use your product - The best way improve its quality. Become the most active and demanding consumer of your own product, and all other ways to improve your offer will pale in comparison to this one.

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

Marketing

The goal of marketing is to get noticed. And the best way to attract attention is originality. If you make your offerings unique enough to pique the curiosity of potential buyers, you'll have a much easier time capturing their attention.

A great metaphor to illustrate this principle is “Purple Cow” (based on the book by Seth Godin). When there are only brown cows grazing in a field, it's boring. The purple cow does not meet people's expectations, and this naturally attracts attention and interest.

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

If you want to quickly grab someone's attention, share something valuable for free. People love receiving gifts. Offering something free exists because it works: it entices people to buy the product or service later.

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

Please allow us to continue communication after providing free product influences business development. When you convey something of value to people, ask if they mind if you continue communicating with them. Tell them exactly what they will receive ( email or phone call) and what the value of further communication will be for them.

Sales

Reciprocity is the strong desire of most people to take a reciprocal action as a sign of gratitude. However, there is one thing that is not obvious: the desire to reciprocate is not always proportional to the volume of the initial gift.

Usually, salespeople begin communication with a potential client by doing him a small favor, for example, offering him a cup of coffee. This may seem like a simple gesture of politeness. But that's not true. Accepting even a small gift creates a psychological need for reciprocity in the buyer, which shifts the situation in favor of the seller. Potential customers who accept the gift are more likely to purchase the product.

Selling is essentially the process of identifying and removing buyer barriers—the insecurities that prevent your prospects from buying what you have to offer. Your main job as a salesperson is to identify and remove such barriers. During the discussion of any transaction, standard objections arise:

1. It's too expensive. People perceive paying for something as a loss, and this makes them resist the transaction. If the client understands that the value of your offer significantly exceeds the asking price, then this objection can be overcome.
2. This won't work. If the buyer thinks that the offer will not provide him with what was promised, he will refuse the purchase. Reviews can handle objections.
3. I can wait. The buyer may believe that he has no problems that require immediate decision The best way to resolve this situation is to focus your efforts on educating the client and helping him imagine what his situation might be like if he accepted your offer.

People don't like to waste money and take risks. Risk transfer is a strategy in which the risk associated with a transaction is transferred from the buyer to the seller (suggest free shipping and return without any restrictions if the consumer does not like the ordered product). This strategy removes the buyer's buying barrier and increases your sales.

Resumption is the process of persuading customers to buy your product again. Resumption is considered simpler, faster and effective way increasing business profitability than attracting new customers. Your old clients know you, trust you, and understand the value you can provide. Once every 3-6 months, reach out to “lost” clients with new offers.

Financial management

Four methods to increase company income:

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

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

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

Human brain

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

To overcome the fear of loss, you need to reinterpret this risk and understand that there is nothing scary about it. Casino visitors do this every day. How do casinos encourage people to play games? They distract people from their loss. Instead of playing for real money, players receive chips from the casino, and the sense of value is lost. Players lose “fake” money, and the casino gives them “rewards” with free drinks, hotel rooms and other things to ease the feeling of loss.

Contrast. Imagine that you need to buy a suit. You go to the store and see that next to the usual suits for 400 dollars there are suits for 3000. No one buys them, but this is not necessary. Their goal is completely different. In comparison, $400 suits don't look that expensive (even though the same suit costs $200 at a nearby store).

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

Work on yourself

There are four ways to deal with any task - completion, deletion, transfer and deferment. Completing (performing) a task is optimal only when you can do everything correctly and efficiently. Removal is used if the task is not important. Delegating a task to another person is effective if that person can do it 80% as well as you can. Delay is effective for tasks that do not need to be solved right now.

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

Priming is a method of consciously programming the brain to highlight certain information in the environment. If you convey to your mind what exactly interests you, it will warn you every time that the object you need is available.

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

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

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

Confirmation bias. The best way to find out whether you are right or wrong is to find information that proves you wrong. Confirmation bias is the tendency to pay attention to things that support your conclusions and not to notice things that contradict them.

We hate to find out that the decision we made turned out to be wrong, so we tend to filter information. The stronger our beliefs, the more willing we are to ignore sources of information that challenge them. This is why politicians don’t read the interviews of their rivals: they already know that they don’t agree with them in their views, so why bother?

Unfortunately, a situation where neither side pays attention to what contradicts its judgment often turns into a crisis. Deliberately look for information that contradicts your hypothesis.

Working with others

The apathy of an outsider. When two people are responsible for the same decision, no one is responsible.

Suppose you are busy shopping in a store and the person next to you suddenly becomes ill. If you yell, “Hey, someone call 911!” - most likely, no one will do this. Each of the store visitors will assume: “Probably someone has already called.” It is much more effective to single out one person in the crowd, establish eye contact with him and very clearly say: “YOU ARE CALLING AN AMBULANCE!” Rest assured: the person will do it immediately.

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

Social proof. When one person performs a certain action, others perceive it as a social signal and begin to act in the same way. Viral videos and stock market bubbles gain their power through social proof—if so many people are paying attention to them, it's easy to conclude, “There's something to it!”

Reviews are an effective form of social proof. Best reviews not “great”, “the best”, but “I bought the product and was very pleased with the result.”

Principles of effective management:

• Hire small groups of people from competent professionals (most effective group- 5-8 people) capable of providing the desired result quickly and efficiently.
• Be clear with your team about the desired end result, who is personally responsible for what, and keep them updated on how things are going.
• Use the golden three: appreciation, courtesy and respect. This is the best way to make employees feel important.
• Create an environment where every team member can perform at their best on the best equipment.
• Protect your team from distractions.
• Create an aggressive plan for completing the project, update it as you go, and find the shortest path to completion.
• Take measurements to understand how well the work is going.

Systems Analysis

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

1. How quickly does the system create a product?
2. How many people pay attention to your offer?
3. How many customers agree to buy what you offer?
4. How quickly do you serve one client?
5. What is the average lifetime value of a customer?
6. What is the profit margin?
7. What is the frequency of product returns or complaints?
8. Is the money you have enough for you?

Improving systems

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

You may notice this principle in various aspects of your life, it takes different forms. For example, less than 1% of films produced annually become blockbusters, and less than 0.1% of books written become bestsellers. Therefore, for best results, concentrate on a small number of the most important factors leading you to success.

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

Self-education, whether related to business or anything else, never ends. Every new concept that comes to your attention represents thousands of opportunities for new discoveries. This is what makes self-education so fun: there is always something more to learn.

Even money-making masters like Warren Buffett are always eager to learn something new. When Buffett was asked what superpower he would like to have, he replied: “I would like to be able to read even faster.” Your growth has no and cannot have limits.

My own MBA. Self-education 100% Josh Kaufman

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Title: Your own MBA. Self-education 100%

About the book “Your own MBA. 100% Self-Education” Josh Kaufman

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

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

The author himself found necessary information and put it into practice. This many years of work brought its fruits, because today he is a successful specialist. In his book “Your Own MBA. Self-education 100%” he talks about how to engage in self-education, what literature to read. The main advantage of the book is that there is no water in it, there is only useful and necessary information.

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

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

Josh Kafman, as mentioned above, does not give specific recommendations or advice on how to open your own business and make it successful, but at the same time, reading the book “Your Own MBA. Self-education 100%,” ideas will appear in your head. All you need to do is organize them and put them to work.

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

The book is read in one breath and leaves behind a lot of food for thought. Even if you don’t want to start your own business, the book “Your Own MBA. Self-education 100% will teach you a lot and help you get the necessary motivation you need to realize your plans. We recommend the book to everyone who likes to develop and strive for more.

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

Quotes from the book “Your own MBA. 100% Self-Education” Josh Kaufman

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

I can't give you a 100% recipe for success. But I can tell you with absolute certainty when you will fail: when you spend all your time trying to please everyone.

The methods are a car and a small cart, but there are very few principles. For those who have mastered the principles, it is easy to choose one method or another. But those who are looking for a method without paying attention to the principles will have a hard time.

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

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

For a first-time buyer to make a purchase from you, he must have fairly high expectations. But after making a purchase, satisfaction will remain only if the result from using the product turns out to be higher than expectations. If the result turns out to be lower than expected, then the quality rating will also decrease, regardless of the objective state of your product.

The iron law of the market is merciless and cruel: if you don’t find enough consumers who want to buy what you offer, your chances of building a strong business are negligible.

After analyzing them, I identified additional requirements. You cannot produce and offer services without first finding out what the consumer wants (studying market conditions). And to attract a buyer, you first need him to pay attention to you, and then become interested (marketing). Before paying money, people must make sure that you can be trusted and will fulfill all the terms of the transaction (delivery of goods and related transactions). Customer satisfaction depends on how well the salesperson exceeds his expectations (customer service). Sufficient profit presupposes the ability to earn more than you spend (financial management).

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

Current page: 1 (book has 36 pages total) [available reading passage: 8 pages]

Josh Kaufman

My own MBA. Self-education 100%

...

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

© Worldly Wisdom Ventures LLC, 2010

© Translation into Russian, publication in Russian, design. Mann, Ivanov and Ferber LLC, 2012

This book is well complemented by:

My first business

James Caan

Startup management

Katherine Kathleen and Jayna Matthews

We're going into a break

Cameron Herold

Vocation

Ken Robinson

From the publication's partner

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

Business game

Conditions:

At the age of 20, my grandparents got married. It's 1924.

"Citizen", devastation. There is no food in the villages. There are private farms where something grows, and even that can be taken away. There are almost no livestock (they were taken away or died). There are hand tools, of course: saws, shovels, axes, ropes. Living with parents is an immediate NO. Firstly, there is nowhere (seven people on the benches), and secondly, there is nothing to eat.

Task:

Survive. Build a farm. Give birth to children.

Now imagine yourself (you can use films) in this environment. Record that you are 20 years old. You don't have a roof over your head. You don't have a penny of money. You are newlyweds. Food is only under your feet. At the same time, there is no healthcare, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Pyaterochka and Stroymaterialy stores, transport, or work in the city. There are civil clashes all around.

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

Very briefly, schematically, I outline my grandmother’s detailed story of how everything turned out for them. The point of my presentation is to voice the old-fashioned solution to this business problem.

So, the sequence of actions:

1. Spend the night - where relatives sheltered.

2. Then the forest, log house, small house under the direction of the village carpenter. ( Grandfather learned how to build a frame, attach rafters, etc.)

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

4. Next – winter in your home. Grandfather gets a job on the outskirts of the city as a mechanic at a railway depot. ( He begins to read books and study the locomotive on his own. Takes courses and becomes an assistant driver.) Little money appears.

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

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

8. Then, at the new house, a barn with three zones appears sequentially:

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

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

– 3rd zone – summer storage of products. This cellar is a deep hole that is filled with ice in winter and serves as a refrigerator for food all summer.

9. And finally, having a strong base, he begins to develop the economy. It was an endless chain of consistent, leisurely actions that gradually increased the power and efficiency of the economy. Garden. ( Grandfather studied all the literature on gardening.) Boat. ( Learned to build a boat.) Networks. ( I learned to knit.) Fishing. Subsidiary farm. Etc.

Grandfather constantly studied the intended direction. I started implementing it by continuing to study a new business, learning from experience and reading books. Soon he became a driver and then an instructor at the depot technical staff training school. In adulthood, grandfather and grandmother lived in abundance, were strong and independent.

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

And I remembered all this in connection with reading Josh Kaufman’s wonderful book “Your Own MBA.” Suddenly, in my head, this “village” block of information, which was stored in my brain under the index “interesting historical information,” “resonated” with what I heard and felt in Kaufman’s book.

This clear, very vital and wise book about business turned my consciousness back to the roots, to the key point. Business, or, in Russian, business (economy), at its root has a very important root cause. In the old days, people did business not because they wanted to exchange a one-room dugout in the forest with a view of a tree stump for a two-room one with a view of a swamp, but because they could die of hunger or be killed by the elements. Therefore, there was no need to think for a long time, and it was possible to study only “on the job.”

Nothing has changed in modern life. Statistics show that success in modern world achieved by purposeful people who show obsession, courage, and invention. These people take action immediately, learning and adjusting their actions on the fly, applying knowledge gained from different sources, according to the situation, creatively, without turning off common sense.

Successful people they build a business not like a computer game, with the feeling that if suddenly “the game is over,” you can go to the kitchen to drink coffee and think about “what else to stir up.” Successful people drive real tanks. And to drive a real tank, you first need to know only four buttons: how to start, how to drive, how to turn and how to stop. And then - years of persistent independent training, analysis, work with masters of “tank” art and medals for cities that were actually taken, but sometimes “you don’t understand how.”

These are the thoughts that come from reading, I repeat once again, the very clear and practical book “Your Own MBA.”

My sincere wishes for creative immortality to the author of the book, my deepest bow to the team of the Mann, Ivanov and Ferber publishing house, who brought this book to the minds of Russian readers useful information, and to all colleagues, present and future. Self-confidence, optimism and faith in self-education!

...

Sincerely,Yuri Prostakov,CEO of I Can Teach,founder and director of the company "Yuri Prostakov Studio"www.i-can-teach.ruwww.i-love-english.ru

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

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

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

Life is hard. Especially if you're a fool.

John Wayne, star of classic American westerns

Since you are holding this book in your hands, I would venture to guess that you are either about to start your own business or want to get a promotion. And most likely, you still haven’t started taking action because the following reasons are holding you back:

1. Business “angst”(German) Angst- fear). The belief that you don't understand anything about business and therefore won't be able to start your own company or take on more responsibility in your current role. It is better to leave everything as it is than to overcome the fear of the unknown.

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

3. “Impostor Syndrome.” Fear that you will not cope with new tasks and everyone will understand that you are just a deceiver. But no one likes them, right?

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

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

You don't have to know everything

The methods are a car and a small cart, but there are very few principles. For those who have mastered the principles, it is easy to choose one method or another. But those who are looking for a method without paying attention to the principles will have a hard time.

Ralph Emerson, poet and essayist

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

“Your own MBA” – This is a set of fundamental principles for the functioning of any business, with the help of which you can accomplish your tasks. Once you master them, you will be able to solve the most complex problems and achieve the most elusive goals with amazing ease.

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

- How in fact business is running;

– how to open your own business;

- how to force it already existing business work more efficiently;

- how to use business skills and skills to achieve a personal goal.

You can think of this book as a kind of filter. Instead of absorbing everything that is written and said about business, with its help you can extract from seas information only the most important and focus on what will personally influence what is happening.

No experience needed

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

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric Corporation

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

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

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

Questions, not answers

Education is not the answer. Education teaches you to find answers to all questions yourself.

Bill Ellen, sociologist, educator

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

Mental Models, Not Methods

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher

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

Mental models are concepts that reflect your understanding of “how things work.” Imagine you are driving a car. Here you press the pedal to the right. If your car slows down after that, you'll be surprised, right? Because, as everyone knows, the gas pedal is on the right. This “known” is a mental model—an idea of ​​how things work in the real world.

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

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

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

Your own MBA

I am convinced that self-education is true education.

Isaac Asimov, science fiction writer, biochemist

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

As a student at the University of Cincinnati, I took part in the Karl Lindner Honors-PLUS program, which was, by and large, MBA course for students. The program was funded by a substantial grant, so I had a great opportunity to experience much of what business schools teach without going into debt.

A year later, through the university’s work-study program, I received a position as a manager at Procter & Gamble, one of the 50 most successful companies, according to the magazine. Fortune. In 2005, when I was graduating from university, I was offered the position of deputy head of the brand management department in a division dealing with household chemicals - this post was usually filled by holders of MBA diplomas from leading educational institutions.

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

As I wondered what to do, I remembered the advice of Andy Walter, the first Procter & Gamble executive to whom I had to report: “If you put in as much time and effort as it would take to get an MBA, Good work and consolidation of skills, the result will be the same.” (Andy didn’t have an MBA, just an electrical engineering degree. Walter is now a world-class IT executive overseeing several of Procter & Gamble’s largest international projects.)

Eventually, I abandoned the idea of ​​business school—but not the business education—and hit the books to complete my “personal” MBA course.

A short, self-paced business crash course

Many self-taught people can easily outshine doctors of science, masters and bachelors from the best universities.

Ludwig von Mises, Austrian economist, author of Human Action

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

At the time I got my first real job, I knew almost nothing about what a business was and how it operated - except, perhaps, that it was the same kind of work that people go to to get paid. I had only a vague idea that companies like Procter & Gamble existed until I applied for employment and stepped into the corporate world.

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

As Deputy Head of Brand Management, I managed teams of 30-40 employees, as well as contractors and intermediary organizations, all of whom had competing projects, agendas and varying degrees of urgency. The stakes were high, and, accordingly, considerable pressure was put on me. Even now I am amazed at how many thousands of man-hours, millions of dollars and extraordinarily complex technological processes necessary to create a regular bottle of dishwashing detergent, which you can buy in any supermarket. Everything from bottle shape to fragrances is optimized, including the text on cardboard boxes for delivery to stores.

However, at the time I was thinking about more than just my job at P&G. The decision to engage in self-education instead of training MBA program from, so to speak, a side project has grown into a slight insanity. Every day I spent hours reading and comprehending business literature, piece by piece accumulating precious knowledge about the laws by which the business world lives.

That summer, after receiving my diploma, I did not go on vacation. Instead, I spent my days in the business book racks at the local bookstore, soaking up as much as I could handle. By September 2005, when I officially started working full-time at Procter & Gamble, I had read hundreds of books on all the subjects taught in business schools and those not taught there: psychology, physics, and theory. systems So on my first day at the company, I was ready to discuss business strategy with the best business school graduates.

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

1. In large companies, everything happens slowly. And the most best idea can die in its infancy only because its implementation requires the approval of too many.

2. Obsession with career growth interferes with quality work. I wanted to put my best effort into doing the real thing and doing the best job I could, rather than running around and applying for a promotion. But intrigue and the struggle for a place in the sun are an integral part of every working day in a large corporation.

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

I finally found a book that resonates with my views!

Let me give you the necessary uppercut quote:

"So, the sequence of actions:

1. Spend the night - where relatives sheltered.

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

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

4. Next – winter in your home. Grandfather gets a job on the outskirts of the city as a mechanic at a railway depot. (He begins to read books on his own and study the locomotive. He takes courses and becomes an assistant driver.) Little money appears.

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

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

8. Then, at the new house, a barn with three zones appears sequentially:

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

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

Zone 3 – summer food storage. This cellar is a deep hole that is filled with ice in winter and serves as a refrigerator for food all summer.

9. And finally, having a strong base, he begins to develop the economy. It was an endless chain of consistent, leisurely actions that gradually increased the power and efficiency of the economy. Garden. (Grandfather studied all the literature on gardening) Boat. (Learned to build a boat) Networks. (Learned to knit.) Fishing. Subsidiary farm. Etc."

Here it is, an MBA from the times of industrialization, when they went out into space from bast shoes, dugouts and manure.

And the main thing here is practice! In modern parlance – “business practice”. She is primary. If there is no practice, then other knowledge becomes useless: how to create value, manage marketing and finance. This simply won't happen!

If practice does not scare you, and you have been active and “in business” for a long time, then this book will be simply a storehouse of knowledge and a faithful assistant for you. Moreover, don’t be surprised if, while reading it, the thought comes to you: “Well, I already know that! I don’t remember the name, but I know the principle!” This is fine. This does not mean that the author blatantly ripped off the book from 10 other books. No! compilation here is minimal. This suggests that you are in the flow, that you have begun to understand a lot intuitively, and have reached a lot on your own.

This book is a compass or a pointer after a fork in the road, that “you are on the right road, comrades!”

Without a doubt, pick up the book and soak it in! It will resonate with your heart and brain!

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Mikhail Apostolov, an expert in Film Reading, was with you.

All the best!