The Personal MBA

Text translation (literal):

Hello and welcome to this new video from the “Books for a Change of Life” blog. So in today’s column, I will tell you about a book that is really close to my heart, which is “The Personal MBA” by Josh Kaufman.

I wrote the preface to this book, just so that you know. And why this book?

Well, it’s very important to me on an intellectual and emotional level. Those who follow my work will know that I started the blog “Books for a change of life” with inspiration from Josh Kaufman’s “Personal MBA” which is based on an idea of Seth Godin, a highly successful American marketer, who says: in fact, you could get the basics of what you need to know in order to succeed in business, whether you’re an employee or an entrepreneur, if you read a selection of the world’s best business books, rather than attend a school such as… or do an MBA that can cost up to $5,000 and take two years to complete.

And so, that’s how I started my blog “Books for a change of life”. From the selection of 52 books from the “Personal MBA” and then to give myself the challenge to read and summarize one, each week, over the next 52 weeks, to give me a total of 52 books.

A few years after that, Josh Kaufman went a step further and released his book “The Personal MBA”, which is not necessarily a collection of books but rather a collection of all the concepts, or at least the vast majority of them, that you need to understand and master in order to be successful in the business world. So, it’s essentially a book that, in a few hundred pages, summarizes the basics required in the business world. A great book which I recommend that you read.

Basically, there are 11 different sections, all of which will be of real value for any entrepreneur. I will quickly read them to you:

How to create value. How do you create value? Obviously, this is the basis of any successful business. The company succeeds because it is able to generate value that wasn’t there before and is able to sell that product, and especially to make sure that the perceived value of its products is higher than the price it charges for them, otherwise no one would buy its products or services. So:

  1. The creation of value.
  2. Marketing. To sell the value you create.
  3. Sales.
  4. Deliver value. How do you deliver it?
  5. Finance.
  6. A personal approach is crucial in order to hire, to manage, to look after the customers, etc.
  7. Improve yourself. How to increase your productivity?
  8. To be able to work with others is also very important.
  9. Understand all the processes and systems.
  10. Study and analyze the systems.
  11. Improve the systems and processes even further.

Systems and processes are what make it possible for a business to run without you, for a business to run smoothly without the need for you to work too many hours and cause you to burn out. With systems, you can make your business work for you rather than you work for it, which makes a huge difference. And this book gives you everything you need to get started with all the advantages on your side.

I would have given anything to have access to a book like that when I started off my business as a 19-year-old.

It would have saved me a lot of trouble because it really… Well, I won’t say it’s all in there, but you get the point, everything’s in there. There is a vast array of important points that are extremely well summed up in each case, generally with the action you should take, and everything slots together as well. Whenever you have terms in bold type, it’s related to other ideas that you can read about. Anyway, it really is a wonderful book, I did the preface, I’m very proud of it. It was really an honor for me to be asked to do this by Leduc.s Publishing.

So there we are, I recommend, with complete sincerity, that you read this book.

Thanks to all those who have watched this video and see you soon for more adventures.

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