My Crazy Project: Read 52 of the Best Business Books in 52 Weeks and Post a Weekly Review

“You wasted $ 150,000 on an education that you could have gotten for a dollar fifty in back fees at the public library.”
– Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon), Good Will Hunting. First of all I want to introduce myself to those who do not know me: I am Olivier Roland, I am 27 years old, I am French and I run an information services company that I created at 19 (with 3 people).

Are you familiar with the personal MBA? It is a concept created by Josh Kaufman. Assuming that business schools do not have a monopoly on knowledge and wisdom, he suggests that each of us pass a personal MBA by reading a selection of the best business books out there, around 77 published in 2008 (93 with supplements) in 12 different categories.

1. Quick start

2. Productivity and efficiency

3. Psychology and communication

4. Design and production

5. Marketing, Sales and Negotiation

6. Entrepreneurship

7. Management and leadership

8. Strategy and Innovation

9. Finance and analysis

10. Personal finance

11. Supplement: Business History

12. Supplement: Business Reference But what is an MBA? It stands for Master of Business Administration, a degree that is the result of some very expensive classes (around ¬50,000 in Europe, $ 100,000 in the United States!) And at a high level for doing business in the global economy, strategy, marketing. , finance, human resources and management. It usually takes 12 to 24 months and is often carried out by students who want to finish their education with a prestigious degree, usually executives in the middle of their career who want to increase their professional potential by acquiring high-level knowledge, at an outrageous cost, Quite the cost itself aside, an MBA requires you to sacrifice a full year or two, sometimes requiring you to quit your employee job. That is why Josh came up with the idea of ​​acquiring the essential knowledge distilled in the MBA, which 20% of people achieve 80% of the results, reading a carefully chosen list of the best books that cover the subject areas. taught in the MBA. – for less than $ 3,500 if you buy the new books, and even less if you buy the used books or borrow them. Started in 2005, the personal MBA has been issued twice, and now the idea is starting to take off: check out this article from Business Week or this one from Lifehacker. It seems that the idea of ​​obtaining a quality education for yourself is not new. To learn more about the Personal MBA, read The Personal MBA Manifesto. My project consists of 52 books from this list. I am approaching this project seriously and preparing for it in the same way that I would train for a marathon – I know the challenge will be long and difficult, especially once the initial motivation, as well as the enthusiasm to start, wear off. . Why am I doing this? These are my reasons:

    • Because I am self-taught and I love to learn. I also love to read and I love to learn by reading. Since I built my business when I was young (19 years old), I would be the happy owner of a degree if it weren’t for 10 or 20 missing credits, and I’ve learned most of what I know on the job, learning a lot from my mistakes. , and also take some classes here and there. I have also taken some evening classes, but the practical application of these classes is not always evident in my business.

    • Because I feel the need to acquire more knowledge to better manage my business, better understand how the business world in which I find myself works, be more effective in all the projects that I have taken on or will take on, and gain a better appreciation of the world in general.

    • Because I have already read several of the books listed in the PMBA and found them to be excellent, with a special mention for The 4 hour work week. Everyone changed their perception of certain things, sometimes radically. They have all changed my life at least on one level or given me a new tool to work with. In light of the major changes these 7 books brought about, I can hardly imagine what 52 will do!

    • Because reading 52 books in 52 weeks, writing a review and posting it here without ruining my professional and social life represents a challenge in itself, which will put all my organizational and self-motivation skills into action. If I procrastinate too much, if I don’t organize myself well enough, if my motivation sinks like a rock, I won’t get there. And you will be the first to know. I will learn both from the project itself and from the books.

    • Do a real life experiment to see if it is possible to change your life by reading the right books. That is the point of this blog, I do not want to create a blog that only talks about this challenge, and I will try to show that it is possible by sharing with you what it contributes to my business, my projects and my day to day. life.

    • Share the results of this project with others, in particular by writing clear, concise and relevant summaries.

    • Improve my English (about 80% of the books are only available in English). How will I undertake this task? These are the rules of the challenge:

      1. Choose 52 books from the actual list of The Personal MBA.

      2. Read one a week for 52 weeks. Write a relevant summary, including a general summary, as well as chapter by chapter, if the book lends itself to that.

      3. Sacrifice only the useless. I do not plan to give up my other activities: my business, improv theater, sports, my two entrepreneurial clubs, my other blogs, my free time, my personal life. I’m going to try to organize myself better and get rid of only what is useless: casually browsing the web, video games, YouTube, everything that wastes precious time in general. I can’t cut the TV since I hardly watch it anyway.

      4. To take action. Thinking without doing something is as stupid as doing something without thinking. Thought is based as much on our experience, in the field, as on our knowledge, acquired from books, school, in conversations with others. The first problem is to choose the 52 books among the 77 or 93 of the PMBA. This was not an easy task. First, there are several books that I have already read (7 in total). For the most part, I decided to add them all to the list because (1) they are worth reading again and (2) I want to write a review for them because they all seem to me to be important. In the end I got rid of the two sections of the Supplement (Business History and Business Reference), it is 16 books, the books are only available in an audio version (being French, it is much more difficult for me to understand spoken English than English written), a large part of the category Design and production (when dealing with services and software, this seemed less important to me), all in the Personal Finance category (I have already read The millionaire next door, which has already opened my eyes on this topic, as well as the blogs Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar and I will wait to get richer before delving into this topic;) and those that seemed too specialized or too specific for the US. Here, then, is the list of the 52 books that I will read. The original PMBA obviously suggests a list of titles exclusively in English, but some of them have been translated into French. I will read them in French when possible, to save time, and the rest in English.

         Quick start
         1. 10 days for a faster reading by Abby Marks-Beale
         2. > StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
         3. Lead the field by Earl Nightingale

            Productivity and efficiency

         4. The effective executive by Peter Drucker
         5. Getting things done: the art of stress-free productivity by David Allen
         6. Bit literacy by Mark Hurst
         7. Creative habit by Twyla Tharp
         8. The path of least resistance by Robert Fritz
         9. The Simplicity Survival Manual by Bill Jensen
         10. Come to the point by Stuart Levine
         11. The unwritten laws of business by WJ King
         12. Make things happen by Scott Berkun
         13. Results without authority by Tom Kendrick

             Psychology and communication

         14. How to win friends and influence peopleby Dale Carnegie
         15. Crucial conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler
         16. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Deliveryby Garr Reynolds
         17. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
         18. Influence: the psychology of persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
         19. Sources of power: how people make decisions by Gary Klein
         20. Deep survival by Laurence Gonzales
             Design and production

         21. Getting real by 37signals (free PDF ebook)
             Marketing, Sales and Negotiation

         22. All marketers are liars by Seth Godin
         23. Indispensable by Joe Calloway
         24. Taking everything you can out of everything you have by Jay Abraham
         25. The Sales Bible by Jeffrey Gitomer
         26. The ultimate sales machine by Chet Holmes
         27. Sale of SPIN by Neil Rackham
         28. Negotiate for advantages by G. Richard Shell
         29. 3-D negotiation by David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius

             Entrepreneurship

         30. The New Business Practice Test by John Mullins
         31. Ready, fire, aim by Michael Masterson
         32. 4 hour work week by Timothy Ferriss
         33. How to make millions with your ideas by Dan Kennedy

             Management and leadership

         34. First, break all the rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
         35. 12: The Elements of Great Management by Rodd Wagner and James Harter
         36. What got you here won’t get you there by Marshall Goldsmith
         37. Great growing employees by Erika Andersen
         38. > 45 effective ways to hire smart people by Pierre Mornell
         39. Judgment by Noel Tichy & Warren Bennis
         40. The halo effect by Phil Rosenzweig
         41. The essential Drucker by Peter F. Drucker
             Strategy and Innovation

         42. Purpose: the starting point of large companies by Nikos Mourkogiannis
         43. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
         44. Watching what’s next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
         45. Learning from the future by Liam Fahey and Robert Randall
         46. Innovation and entrepreneurship by Peter F. Drucker
         47. Innovation myths by Scott Berkun
         48. Green to gold by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston

             Finance and analysis

         49. Turning numbers into knowledge by Jonathan Koomey
         50. Show me the numbers by Stephen Few
         51. Marketing metrics by Paul W. Farris, Neil T. Bendle, Phillip E. Pfeifer, and David J. Reibstein
         52. Web analysis: one hour a day by Avinash Kaushik

         I don’t plan on reading the books necessarily in this order, but I will try to read the entire category one category at a time to make it easier to compare and connect my new insights.

         My project officially begins on October 1. Let’s meet the 4th or 5th for the first review of the first book, 10 days for a faster reading.