Josh Kaufman is bestselling author behind “The Personal MBA,” a business coaching book that sold 900,000 copies and speaker behind the 2013 TED Talk “First 20 hours — How to learn anything“, which has been viewed over 39 million times.
Kaufman says the average person with an idea can win 10,000 dollars one month starting their own business — higher education is not required.
“I think it's accessible to most people,” he told host Steven Bartlett on a July episode of Diary of a CEO podcast.
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Kaufman explained that some first-time entrepreneurs think that starting a business requires a lot of new things to understand and that only people with a business education can do it. But, he says, you don't need one MBAwhich can cost up to $250,000 in top-ranked schools, to create a successful company.
“For better or worse, when adults decide they're interested in business, the first thing they do is go to Google…type in the letters MBA and start looking for graduate business school programs, and I think that's a wrong,” Kaufman said. .
Three popular industries that MBA students go into after graduation are consulting, finance and accounting, and technology, according to one 2024 report from the Graduate Management Admissions Council. Kaufman says that if you're trying to break into those industries, an MBA can be worth it as an expensive type of interview. But for entrepreneurship, he said an MBA is not necessary.
Kaufman says would-be entrepreneurs can overlook the MBA because while business is complex, it's not complicated and most of the ideas are “common sense and simple arithmetic.” So even though entrepreneurs need to know and handle complex situations, running a business isn't about a six-figure degree—it's about how one wants to create value in the world, according to Kaufman.
Kaufman noted a prominent 2004 study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and said, “If you're good enough to get into (an MBA), you're good enough to do well regardless.”
The first questions you should ask when thinking about starting your first business (MBA or no MBA)
Kaufman says there are a few questions you should start with when starting your journey.
1. Is this a big enough problem that someone will pay money to solve it?
The answer will help you understand the size of the market for the idea and its financial potential, he says. For example, if you were to start a candle making business, you would think about why someone would buy a candle and at what price.
“A lot of the stuff around value creation comes down to making trade-offs between competing priorities,” Kaufman said. “The perfect product or the perfect offer would give everything the customer wanted and it would be free.”
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2. How does your idea attract the attention of people who might want or need what this business offers?
Human beings are driven by certain basic drives, Kaufman says, so marketing can play into that.
“Packaging matters, belonging matters, story matters,” Kaufman said.
3. How will you look for sales and what does the process look like?
This is where the money ideally comes in and business owners convince someone to become a customer.
The ultimate goal of a sale is not only to get a customer, but to ensure that they are satisfied with their purchase and to keep them buying for as long as possible.
“I think there's a huge amount of business knowledge and skills that you can develop yourself by understanding the most important concepts about what businesses are and how they work and using them in your everyday life, using that in a career. that you already have, using it to start something new yourself,” Kaufman said.