27 posts tagged with "Entrepreneurship"

Business Administration is a set of durable mental models—how value is created, how numbers tell the truth, how strategy concentrates power, how managers raise output, how capital is allocated, how people work across cultures, and how ventures sell, negotiate, position and communicate. This series turns core books into expanded, chapter-depth practitioner guides (frameworks, tables, negative cases, consulting translation and capstone sheets)—not skim summaries—so you can use them on pursuits, product bets, operating reviews and board conversations.

Business school sells credentials, networks, and a structured map of how organisations work. The Personal MBA sells something different: a portable lattice of mental models—reusable concepts you can apply to any offer, market, team, or system without waiting three years or spending six figures. Kaufman’s claim is blunt: if your goal is to understand how businesses create and capture value, you do not need an MBA. You need the models—and deliberate practice applying them.

Most MBA value is not the diploma—it is a shared visual language for decisions: 2×2s, process flows, simple equations, and rules of thumb you can sketch on a whiteboard under time pressure. Jason Barron’s The Visual MBA compresses that language from a full MBA experience into picture-first notes. This article turns those course chapters into practitioner frameworks you can reuse in consulting, product, and general management.

Most small businesses assume growth means ads. The durable path is usually the opposite: run a business so good that customers, employees, suppliers, and peers recommend it — then make that recommendation easy.

Most people do not lose arguments because their logic is weak. They lose because a request was framed to trigger an automatic “yes”—a favour already received, a public stand already taken, a crowd already moving, a familiar face, a title, or a closing window. Understanding those frames is how you sell ethically, lead without coercion, and defend yourself when someone else is selling you.

A me-too business model is a lost opportunity. For startups, the model is not an afterthought to the product — it is often as disruptive as the technology, and more durable when incumbents cannot copy your DNA.

Raising money is like sex, relationships, and money itself: people want to know about it, few talk openly about it, and it can get unnecessarily complicated. It need not. The real work is deciding whether you should raise at all — then building a trajectory that keeps you funded until the company can stand on its own.

You can hire the right team, sharpen a value proposition, and paint a bold vision — and still fail if you never connect with customers in a repeatable way. Go-to-market is where execution either compounds or collapses.

The question people ask most is “How can I be as successful as you?” The better question is personal: have you got what it takes — for the problem you care about, over a multi-year journey, when the path is not a textbook?

You are what you hire. Every person is a Lego block in the company you are building — additive or dilutive. There is no sideline version of this sport.

Hiring is the number-one practical challenge startups report: not only finding the right people, but making sure those hires stick. A “great” resume that leaves in six months was never the right fit — and the cost of that mistake compounds fast when you are five people and just lost 20% of the company.