• The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business

  • By: Josh Kaufman
  • Narrated by: Josh Kaufman
  • Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (7,121 ratings)

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The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business  By  cover art

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business

By: Josh Kaufman
Narrated by: Josh Kaufman
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Publisher's summary

Audie Award Nominee, Business and Educational, 2013

Getting an MBA is an expensive choice - one almost impossible to justify regardless of the state of the economy. Even the elite schools like Harvard and Wharton offer outdated, assembly-line programs that teach you more about PowerPoint presentations and unnecessary financial models than what it takes to run a real business. You can get better results (and save hundreds of thousands of dollars) by skipping business school altogether....

Josh Kaufman founded PersonalMBA.com as an alternative to the business school boondoggle. His blog has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to the best business books and most powerful business concepts of all time. Now, he shares the essentials of entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, negotiation, operations, productivity, systems design, and much more, in one comprehensive volume.

The Personal MBA distills the most valuable business lessons into simple, memorable mental models that can be applied to real-world challenges.

True leaders aren't made by business schools - they make themselves, seeking out the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to succeed. Read this book and you will learn the principles it takes most business professionals a lifetime of trial and error to master.

©2010, 2012 Worldly Wisdom Ventures LLC (P)2012 Worldly Wisdom Ventures LLC
  • Unabridged Audiobook

What listeners say about The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Great until chapter 6...

Clearly knows a lot about finance. Great book for the introduction to business. I've validated things from my economics class at Iowa State. Until you get to chapter 6 and this guy wants to take time in an MBA book to influence you to go vegan. This is highly inappropriate and misguided. This is a feeble attempt by anti-ag groups to attack our food producers. It's weird that he mentions essential amino acids and veganism in the same few sentences. Animal protein is one of the best sources of essential amino acids your body needs. There is a reason why the food pyramid includes meat and dairy (I wanted to include insulting language here). The only thing I learn about smart people during my short career getting my PhD is that smart people never know how dumb they really are. You can be a genius in finance/business and a complete imbecile in all other realms. This guy is no exception. When I need an Rx I go to a doctor, when I need a cavity filled I ask a dentist, when I need tax help I go to a CPA, when I need business help I buy this book, but when you need personal life choices on food and exercise always go to the guy with a degree in business..... 🙄

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great book!!!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I very highly recommend this book as it explains basic business concepts in the first half of the book (which is what I was looking for) and gets into a whole bunch of funky and useful "positive psychology" concepts in the second half of the book (bonus!). All topics are explained concisely and engagingly, with Josh Kaufman doing an super job narrating his book. Look at the purchase price as an excellent investment.

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3 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Some good, a little bad, a lot of other.

There is good information to be found in this book, but also a great deal of twaddle. The author begins with a "straw man" argument that today's MBA programs are geared to corporate middle managers and not to entrepreneurs, which is quite correct. That is the purpose of MBA programs. Then he touts this work as addressing the needs of the entrepreneur but provides a great summary of the information found in most MBA programs.

Skip the three chapters in the center of the book that focus on personal improvement. Eating right, exercise and meditation are all topics that belong in a different kind of book. Bully for Mr Kaufman that he has gone vegan, this has no relevance to the topic.

The distillation of business concepts are where this book shines, but they are often hidden within the author's endless promotion of his own website, his stories of his failed time at P&G, and his lifestyle guides. Mr Kaufman has clearly done a great deal of reading on the topic of business and has the ability to distill the information to be very useful, but he has trouble unifying this work.

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3 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Seems a little insecure

I would rather Kaufman share what he’s learned through rigorous study than tell me how rigorous his study has been.

The first 10% of this book seemed to explain why getting an MBA was a terrible idea. The rest of the book may be brilliant but, I will never know.

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2 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Sparknotes for business books

The performance is littered with annoying beeping noises at the start of new sections, same ones used in clickbait “top 10 ___” style YouTube videos.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Principles - Josh Kaufman

This book has little to do with MBA coursework material on self study. It's not even an entry point into where to do self study. Much like the author, I don't have any degree at all. I've sold a software startup, now work at a large corporation in a prestigious position, and make well into the top 1% of income. Cool story too, but I wouldn't go about writing a book about it.

All of books Kaufman references are popular reading books. They're not coursework. They're not textbooks. They're popular non-fiction, feel good, books. If you read those and only those, I guarantee you you will not be able to go up against those with a real MBA.

I titled this "Principles" by Josh Kaufman because about half way through, it reads like Principles by Ray Dalio. Like Dalio and Kaufman, I too have my own set of principles written down that I live by, **but that has nothing to do with an MBA.** The author repeatedly plugs his vegan diet in greater and greater detail throughout the book like a sales pitch, because that is one of his biggest life principles. Cool. Not an MBA.

To get this same life advice, but from a more credible author, I would recommend Principles by Ray Dalio. That book, although very similar, is exactly what it says it is.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

sure, there are nuggets but...

One thing I personally can't stand when buying a book that is supposed to have information I'd like to learn is when the author can't get to the information!

Kaufman spends two very long chapters 1) self-aggrandizing (presumably to establish credibility) and 2) going over how bad it is to get an actual MBA. I've already bought the book, stop the sales job!

There are some good pieces of info here, but having to pick them out of the rest of the content is just not worth it to me.

Maybe this is just better as a book than in audio, where you can skim to get to any valuable stuff.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this audio

I really enjoyed it. Clear structure, great ideas, a lot of references to other books I'll definitely read.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

I really liked it.

Where does The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

For a technical subject, it's very interesting. Josh Kaufman does a great job of boiling potentially dry topics into conceptually simple, independent, and interesting chunks of information. He does a great job of conveying how best to think about business and its processes.

What other book might you compare The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business to and why?

The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries - also a good exposition of business philosophy (but more specific and less comprehensive).

Have you listened to any of Josh Kaufman’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I don't think that would be a good idea.

Any additional comments?

I really enjoyed it. It was long for an audio book, but interesting to the end. I'm trying to figure out when to squeeze in a second listen sometime in the future. It's worth reviewing.I didn't totally agree with the author's ending ideas. While it's true that we must exert our own efforts and reap the fruit of them in all of the facets of our lives, we also have help at times. As a Christian I believe that God puts people into my life to help them and be helped by them. I learn so much from those around me, though at the core I have to choose to be willing to listen and learn. Hopefully I didn't take his comments too far out of context.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

One star is to good, Watered board me please!

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

No clue

What do you think your next listen will be?

Something to pull me out of my deep depression the narrator put me in.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He ruined it.

What character would you cut from The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business?

The narator

Any additional comments?

What can I say? I stopped after ten minutes, tried again a few days later and made it another ten minutes.

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