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 you could have got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”
– Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon), Good Will Hunting. First of all I want to introduce myself to those who don’t know me: I am Olivier Roland, I’m 27 years old, I’m French and I manage an information services company that I created when I was 19 (with 3 people).

Are you familiar with the Personal MBA? It’s a concept created by Josh Kaufman. Going off the assumption that business schools don’t have a monopoly on knowledge and wisdom, he suggests that every one of us passes a personal MBA by reading a selection of the best business books that exist, 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. Finances and Analysis
10. Personal Finance
11. Supplement : Business History
12. Supplement : Business Reference But what is an MBA, you might ask? It stands for Master of Business Administration – a degree that is the result of some very expensive classes (about ¬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. Usually it takes from 12 to 24 months and it’s often pursued by students who want to finish off their education with a prestigious degree, usually executives in mid career who wish to boost their professional potential by acquiring high level knowledge – at an outrageous cost – quite apart from the cost itself, an MBA requires that you sacrifice a whole year or two, sometimes requiring you to give up your salaried job.

    That’s why Josh came up with the idea of acquiring the essential knowledge distilled in the MBA – that 20% of people accomplish 80% of the results – by reading a carefully chosen list of the best books covering the subject areas taught in the MBA – for less than $3,500, if you buy the books new, and even less than that if you buy the books used or borrow them.

    Started in 2005, the personal MBA has been aired twice, and now the idea is beginning to take off: take a look at this article in Business Week or this one in Lifehacker. It seems that the idea of getting a quality education by 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 I am preparing for it in the same way I would train for a marathon: I know that the challenge will be long and difficult, especially once the initial motivation – as well the enthusiasm of getting started – wear off. Why am I doing this? Here are my reasons:

    • Because I am a an autodidact and I love to learn. What’s more I love to read and I love to learn by reading. Since I built my business when I was young – 19 year old, I would be the happy owner of a degree if it weren’t for 10 or 20 missing credits, and I have learned most of what I know on the job, learning a lot from my mistakes, and also taking some classes here and there. I have also taken some night classes, but the practical application of these classes is not always apparent in my business.
    • Because I feel the need to get more knowledge to better run my business, to better understand the workings of the business world in which I find myself, to be more effective in all the projects that I have taken on or will take on, and to get a better appreciation for the world in general.
    • Because I have read several of the books listed in the PMBA already, and I found them all to be excellent, with a special mention for The 4-Hour Workweek. They all changed the perception that I had of certain things, sometimes radically. They have all changed my life on at least one level or have given me a new tool to work with. In light of the important changes that these 7 books induced, I can hardly imagine what 52 will do!
    • Because reading 52 books in 52 weeks, and writing a review, and posting it here without ruining my professional life and my social life represents a challenge in itself, which will call into action all my abilities for organization and self motivation. If I procrastinate too long, 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 it. I will learn as much from the project itself as I will learn from the books.
    • To do a real life experiment to see if it’s possible to change your life by reading the right books. That’s the point of this blog – I don’t want to create a blog that only talks about this challenge – and I will try to show that it’s possible by sharing with you what it brings to my business, to my projects and to my daily life.
    • To share the results of this project with others, in particular by writing clear, concise and relevant summaries.
    • To improve my English (About 80% of the books are only available in English). How shall I undertake this task? Here 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, that includes an overall summary as well as chapter by chapter, if the book lends itself to that.
      3. Sacrifice only what is useless. I don’t plan on giving up my other activities – my business, improv theater, sports, my two entrepreneur clubs, my other blogs, my leisure time, my personal life. I am going to try and organize myself better and get rid of only what is useless – casually surfing the web, video games, YouTube, everything that wastes precious time in general. I can’t cut out TV, since I hardly watch it anyway.
      4. Take action. To think without doing something is just as stupid as to do something without thinking. Thought is based both on our experience – in the field – and our knowledge – acquired from books, school, in conversation with others. The first problem is to choose the 52 books from among the 77 or the 93 of the PMBA. This wasn’t an easy task. First, there are several books that I have already read (7 in all). 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 it seems to me they are all important.

         In the end, I got rid of the two Supplement sections (Business History and Business Reference), that’s 16 books, the books are only available in an audio version (being French, it’s much harder for me to understand spoken English than written English), a large part of the category Design and Production (being about services and software, this seemed less important to me), everything in the category Personal Finance (I have already read The Millionnaire Next Door, which has already opened my eyes on this subject – as well as the blogsGet Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar and I will wait to be richer before I get deeper into this topic ;) and the ones that seemed too specialized or too specific to the USA.

         Here, then, is the list of the 52 books that I will read. The original PMBA obviously suggests a list that is exclusively English titles, but some of them have been translated into French. I will read them in French when possible, to save time, and I will read the rest in English.

         Quick Start
         1. 10 Days to 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. The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
         8. The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz
         9. The Simplicity Survival Handbook by Bill Jensen
         10. Cut to the Chase by Stuart Levine
         11. The Unwritten Laws of Business by W.J. King
         12. Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun
         13. Results Without Authority by Tom Kendrick

             Psychology and Communication

         14. How to Win Friends & 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. Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham
         25. The Sales Bible by Jeffrey Gitomer
         26. The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
         27. SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
         28. Bargaining For Advantage by G. Richard Shell
         29. 3-D Negotiation by David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius

             Entrepreneurship

         30. The New Business Road Test by John Mullins
         31. Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson
         32. The 4-Hour Workweek 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 & Curt Coffman
         35. 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner & James Harter
         36. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
         37. Growing Great Employees by Erika Andersen
         38. >45 effective ways for hiring smart 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 Great Companies by Nikos Mourkogiannis
         43. Strategy Blue Ocean by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
         44. Seeing What’s Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
         45. Learning from the Future by Liam Fahey & Robert Randall
         46. Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter F. Drucker
         47. Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun
         48. Green to Gold by Daniel Esty & Andrew Winston

             Finances 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 Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik

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

         My project kicks off officially on the October 1st. Let’s meet the 4th or 5th for the first review of the first book, 10 Days to Faster Reading.