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Everything You Need to Know About Business with Josh Kaufman of The Personal MBA

Episode #049

Josh Kaufman (@joshkaufman) has read a lot of business books. He also happens to be the author of The Personal MBA, easily one of the best business books in existence. In it, he lays out the fundamental concepts that are core to every successful business, and in this episode, we talk about how he became the kind of person who was able to write this book.

  1. 6

    This was probably the most insightful podcast I've heard this year -- thanks Josh and Courtland!

  2. 4

    Bought 4 books while reading this. Good stuff.

  3. 3

    I'm really curious about how many books he actually read? This was such a great episode.

  4. 2

    Josh, I had bought the kindle version of the Personal MBA a few years ago, but I have only gotten a few chapters in. You mentioned the later third of the book touching on systems and processes. I am really excited to get back into the book as I have had a difficult time finding a good process book.

    What is your process for synthesizing and taking notes on a book you are reading?

    Best regards

    Ty

  5. 1

    My Main Takeaways:

    • Proctor and Gamble relies heavily on Marketing and Advertising (at least it did when Josh worked there in 2002/2003.

    • Proctor and Gamble talked to customers to get ideas for existing or future products.

    • If you work for somebody else, try and get as close to the core business as you can. Get involved with the money-making activities.

    • A good challenge is to try and construct the 5 core parts of an existing business just to get a good idea of how it works.

    • Josh spent a couple of months in his final year of college reading about business, he didn't even take a holiday in the summer while everyone else was taking theirs, he was just reading. He did this because he realised everyone he would be working with in his first job after college would have an MBA, while he didn't.

    • Josh started the Personal MBA Blog as a platform to post his research notes while researching business topics. He did not expect the amount of traction that it ended up receiving.

    • Josh valued his blog enough and was happy enough to do it for himself, but after 1,000-10,000s of people starting tuning in, he realised that this was a big deal for many people.

    • Josh said that he was reading full time, he would work, and then read for hours.

    • The idea for Josh to write a book, was when he met a business book expert at an event, who planted the idea of Josh turning his Personal MBA Blog into a book.

    • Josh went through 9 substantial drafts of the Personal MBA over the span of 2 years, until he got to the draft that worked.

    • Josh finds that traditional business books obsess about "sounding smart", Josh wanted to go against this, and keep the Personal MBA simple.

    • You can learn a lot about marketing and sales by reading psychology books alone.

    • One advantage that programmers and engineers have in business is that they've been trained to think about systems as a primary concern. Instead of being something that you add to the business when you're having major issues that need to be addressed.

    • Book recommendation: Thinking in systems by Donella Meadows

    • Courtland highlights that in: teaching people with business skills how to code VS teaching people with programming skills how to start a business, the latter is easier.

    • Josh says that it's better to start with a specialised skill, i.e. design, programming, law and then ADD business knowledge ontop of it.

    • Publishing, itself, is a business.

    • Josh's advice: Educate yourself on everything about business, to get a broad understanding. This shouldn't take very long.

    • Side projects are a great way to get experience with business.

  6. 1

    Great interview! It's a shame that it has a lot of audio stuttering which disturbs the listening experience.
    Are you using Skype to conduct interviews?

    1. 1

      Not using Skype. Any particular timestamp where this happens? Do other episodes have the same effect for you, or just this one?

      1. 1

        Hi,
        These 2 timestamps are more severe: 8:21, 8:27.
        There are many more timestamps (when Josh speaks) which sound like tapping on the mic, just to note a few:
        8:59, 9:10, 9:23, 10:20, 10:41, 10:48

        In other episodes I can hear some of the more severe type of drops, like when you have a bad connection over Skype (you usually note them in the transcript).

        Thanks for checking that out!

        1. 2

          Just wanted to chime in, listening on an iphone 6 in the podcast app I experienced exactly these same issues.

  7. 1

    This was a solid interview/loving the book too

  8. 4

    This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

    1. 2

      Cialdini book is great. Read it some years ago and I definitely need to read it again, it really is mind-changing.