ML152: Josh Kaufman on Getting a Personal MBA, Decision-Making Algorithms and How to Market a Bestseller

Josh Kaufman is an entrepreneur, researcher, and author of three bestselling books – The Personal MBA, the First 20 Hours, and How to Fight a Hydra. I had Josh on the podcast previously where we spoke about the power of storytelling for promoting behaviour change and mastering complex projects.

Josh's book The Personal MBA provides a crash course in business by covering timeless principles and recently hit its 10th Anniversary. The 10th Anniversary of the podcast was an excellent excuse to get him back on the podcast for another chat, which was so good and went on so long, that I've split it into 2 parts.

In this first part, we discuss:

• The concept of exploration/exploitation and how that can help you decide what to work on
• The system Josh uses for choosing what to outsource
• How Josh applied the fundamental law of marketing to his book Personal MBA

We also cover the five sections of business value creation, marketing, sales, value delivery, and finance that Josh structures in the business section of the book, and in Part 2 we'll touch on some of his ideas around people and systems as well as his research methods.