The Personal MBA ^{2nd Ed.}

Are you tempted to go to Business School?

Save your money and read The Personal MBA instead.

This bestselling book gives you everything you need to transform your business and your career.

An MBA at a top business school is an enormous investment in time and cash. And if you don't want to work for a consulting firm or an investment bank, the chances are it simple isn't worth it.

The Personal MBA gives you simple mental mo9dels for every subject that's key to commercial success. From the basics of products and marketing to the nuances of teamwork and systems, this book distils everything you need to know to take on the MBA graduates and win.

• Introduction: Why Read this Book?
• You Don't Need to Know It All
• No Experience Necessary
• Questions, Not Answers
• Mental Models, Not Methods
• My "Personal" MBA
• A Self-Directed Crash Course in Business
• The Wheat and the Chaff
• The Personal MBA Goes Global
• Munger's Mental Models
• Connecting the Dots
• For the Skeptics
• Should You Go to Business School?
• Three Big Problems with Business Schools
• Delusions of Grandeur
• Your Money AND Your Life
• Breaking Out the Benjamins
• What an MBA Will Actually Get You
• Where Business Schools Came From
• In Search of Distribution
• Playing with Fire
• No Reason to Change
• The Single Benefit of Business Schools
• I Owe, I Owe-It's Off to Work I Go
• A Better Way
• What You'll Learn in This Book
• How to Use This Book

1. Value Creation
• The Five Parts of Every Business
• Economically Valuable Skills
• The Iron Law of the Market
• Core Human Drives
• Status Seeking
• Ten Ways to Evaluate a Market
• The Hidden Benefits of Competition
• The Mercenary Rule
• The Crusader Rule
• Twelve Standard Forms of Value
• Form of Value #1: Product
• Form of Value #2: Service
• Form of Value #3: Shared Resource
• Form of Value #4: Subscription
• Form of Value #5: Resale
• Form of Value #6: Lease
• Form of Value #7: Agency
• Form of Value #8: Audience Aggregation
• Form of Value #9: Loan
• Form of Value #10: Option
• Form of Value #11: Insurance
• Form of Value #12: Capital
• Hassle Premium
• Perceived Value
• Modularity
• Bundling and Unbundling
• Prototype
• The Iteration Cycle
• Iteration Velocity
• Feedback
• Alternatives
• Trade-offs
• Economic Values
• Relative Importance Testing
• Critical Assumptions
• Shadow Testing
• Minimum Viable Offer
• Incremental Augmentation
• Field Testing
2. Marketing
• Attention
• Receptivity
• Remarkability
• Probable Purchaser
• Preoccupation
• End Result
• Qualification
• Point of Market Entry
• Addressability
• Desire
• Visualization
• Framing
• Free
• Permission
• Hook
• Call-To-Action (CTA)
• Narrative
• Controversy
• Reputation
3. Sales
• Transaction
• Trust
• Common Ground
• Pricing Uncertainty Principle
• Four Pricing Methods
• Price Transition Shock
• Value-Based Selling
• Education-Based Selling
• Next Best Alternative
• Exclusivity
• Three Universal Currencies
• Three Dimensions of Negotiation
• Buffer
• Persuasion Resistance
• Reciprocation
• Damaging Admission
• Barriers to Purchase
• Risk Reversal
• Reactivation
4. Value Delivery
• Value Stream
• Distribution Channel
• The Expectation Effect
• Predictability
• Throughput
• Duplication
• Multiplication
• Scale
• Accumulation
• Amplification
• Barrier to Competition
• Force Multiplier
• Systemization
5. Finance
• Profit
• Profit Margin
• Value Capture
• Sufficiency
• Valuation
• Cash Flow Statement
• Income Statement
• Balance Sheet
• Financial Ratios
• Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Four Methods to Increase Revenue
• Pricing Power
• Lifetime Value
• Allowable Acquisition Cost (AAC)
• Overhead
• Costs: Fixed and Variable
• Incremental Degradation
• Breakeven
• Amortization
• Purchasing Power
• Cash Flow Cycle
• Opportunity Cost
• Time Value of Money
• Compounding
• Leverage
• Hierarchy of Funding
• Bootstrapping
• Return on Investment (ROI)
• Sunk Cost
• Internal Controls
6. The Human Mind
• Caveman Syndrome
• Performance Requirements
• The Onion Brain
• Perceptual Control
• Reference Level
• Conservation of Energy
• Guiding Structure
• Reorganization
• Conflict
• Pattern Matching
• Mental Simulation
• Interpretation and Reinterpretation
• Motivation
• Inhibition
• Willpower Depletion
• Loss Aversion
• Threat Lockdown
• Cognitive Scope Limitation
• Association
• Absence Blindness
• Contrast
• Scarcity
• Novelty
7. Working with Yourself
• Akrasia
• Monoidealism
• Cognitive Switching Penalty
• Four Methods of Completion
• Most Important Tasks
• Goals
• States of Being
• Habits
• Priming
• Decision
• Five-Fold Why
• Five-Fold How
• Next Action
• Externalization
• Self-Elicitation
• Counterfactual Simulation
• Parkinson's Law
• Doomsday Scenario
• Excessive Self-Regard Tendency
• Confirmation Bias
• Hindsight Bias
• Performance Load
• Energy Cycles
• Stress and Recovery
• Testing
• Mystique
• Hedonic Treadmill
• Comparison Fallacy
• Locus of Control
• Attachment
• Personal Research and Development (R&D)
• Limiting Belief
8. Working with Others
• Power
• Comparative Advantage
• Communication Overhead
• Importance
• Safety
• Golden Trifecta
• Reason Why
• Commander's Intent
• Bystander Apathy
• Planning Fallacy
• Referrals
• Clanning
• Convergence and Divergence
• Social Signals
• Social Proof
• Authority
• Commitment and Consistency
• Incentive-Caused Bias
• Modal Bias
• Pygmalion Effect
• Attribution Error
• Option Orientation
• Management
• Performance-Based Hiring
9. Understanding Systems
• Gall's Law
• Flow
• Stock
• Slack
• Constraint
• Feedback Loop
• Autocatalysis
• Environment
• Selection Test
• Uncertainty
• Change
• Interdependence
• Counterparty Risk
• Second-Order Effects
• Normal Accidents
10. Analyzing Systems
• Deconstruction
• Measurement
• Key Performance Indicator
• Garbage In, Garbage Out
• Tolerance
• Analytical Honesty
• Context
• Sampling
• Margin of Error
• Ratio
• Typicality
• Correlation and Causation
• Norms
• Proxy
• Segmentation
• Humanization
11. Improving Systems
• Intervention Bias
• Optimization
• Refactoring
• The Critical Few
• Diminishing Returns
• Friction
• Automation
• The Paradox of Automation
• The Irony of Automation
• Standard Operating Procedure
• Checklist
• Cessation
• Resilience
• Fail-safe
• Stress Testing
• Scenario Planning
• Sustainable Growth Cycle
• The Middle Path
• The Experimental Mind-set
• Not "The End"

• Appendix A: How to Continue Your Business Studies
• Appendix B: Forty-nine Questions to Improve Your Results

Well, this book starts by telling you that the MBA is worthless. Of course, the author uses himself as a case in point (he doesn't have an MBA)… This starts by pissing me off, as I am a self-made man, who later in life took the MBA, and I can assure you that the MBA degrees moistly gives good value (if you're smart enough to be perceptive, that is).

Well, after having read the book, he gives a very good run through of many business values/techniques, albeit sometimes very uneven, as he some sometimes are extremely shallow and sometimes are detailed and crisp. All in all, I believe this is a pretty decent book, as a primer for what business IS all about. It can't supplant an MBA, regardless on how much the author tries to self-promote the book.