📖 The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
Topic: Business | Rating: 5/5
Outline
This book explores 271 business concepts including value creation, finance, the psychology of working with yourself & others, and business systems.
Why I read this book
To gain insight into the different levers required in building a business.
Three keynotes
1. Create value that exceeds expectation
Every company has a purpose. To fulfil a need or want. To create something of value, and the best businesses maximise that value.
“The value you create can take on one of several different forms, but the purpose is always the same: to make someone else’s life a little bit better.” (Kaufman 2020, p.37)
2. A successful business is sufficient
In the pursuit of growth, it needs to make sense. Sometimes doing more introduces more stress and less to your bottom line. Profits are important, but they’re a means to an end – to fuel your value proposition and support yourself and your employees.
“As long as you’re bringing enough to keep doing what you are doing, there’s no need to fight for every last penny. Create as much value as you can, then capture enough of that value to make it worthwhile to keep operating.” (Kaufman 2020, p.172)
3. Building a business is a mental game
To understand the hardwired tendencies of the human mind, we can work with our biology and make better decisions. We should develop the emotional intelligence to work with ourselves and others. And exercise an experimental mindset by taking action, learning from our experiences, and improving through each iteration cycle.
“Motivation is an emotion – not a logical rational activity.” (Kaufman 2020 p.239)
“The more you cultivate an Experimental Mind-set, the more you learn and the more you’ll achieve.” (Kaufman 2020, p.432)
Thoughts/reflections
There is so much to learn and understand, and this book does a great job to rationalise key concepts and provide additional resources to delve deeper.
Pursing any venture is simply personal development in disguise. The best teacher is always ‘experience’. So, prioritise action, explore the road less travelled, trust your instincts, adapt/pivot when necessary, and create something of value to you. And of course, have fun. 🤗
Recommendation
I recommend this book for anyone interested in studying business/MBA or building a business. But I think anyone can benefit from this whether you are a business leader or employee.
Shared thoughts as I read
