Suggested Reading Materials & Study Guides

The Portable MBA Series is an awesome resource for increasing your business knowledge. While it is not a one-to-one equivalent of getting an actual MBA, it is about as close as you can get, and for a lot less. Each book retails for around $20.00 - $40.00 at Amazon.com. If this is more than you can afford, you can also check them out of the library for free. We also have two of them available in eBook form: The Portable MBA in Finance and Accounting and The Portable MBA in Project Management to get you started.

I have all of the ones pictured above and found them to be a tremendous asset to my career. They will give you an outstanding, well-rounded knowledge of how the business world works and how to be successful, especially at starting, running and growing your own business.

"The basic economic resource - the means of production - is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor. It is and will be knowledge" – Peter Drucker

"What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books" – Thomas Carlyle

"Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information." – Peter Drucker

"The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability." – Henry Ford

An Actual Review From Amazon

The rage nowadays seems to be how you can circumvent the B school process, save 100,000 dollars, and still come out on top with all the knowledge free. I got news for you, It won't happen. But there are activities and materials you can procure in order to sharpen your business acumen and critical reasoning skills.

This post comes as a result from a recent seminar I attended where deans from top MBA programs in NYC were convened to talk about the admissions process. There were 5 up there - 3 of them agreed that if it weren't for the networking opportunities at B school, everything you get a B school can be attained by suscribing to the Economist. I was shocked.

So here we go. The top five ways to get your portable MBA:

1. Buy the complete Portable MBA Series. There are many more, but you only need these 8:
• The Portable MBA (start with this one)
• The Portable MBA in Finance and Accounting
• The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship
• The Portable MBA in Marketing
• The Portable MBA in Management
• The Portable MBA in Strategy
• The Portable MBA in Investment
• The Portable MBA in Economics

You probably think I'm joking, I'm not. The wealth of information here will blow you away. Be smart and consider it all as an investment. Anyways, top B schools cover all the topics listed above.

2. Suscribe to the ECONOMIST.

I suscribe to dozens of business periodicals, but the Economist is global in scope. Remember that word - global. You'll hear it a lot in Business school should you decide to go.

3. Read Thomas Friedman's new book: THE WORLD IS FLAT

I read over 300 business books a year (on average one a week) and this is so far the best book I've read in 2005.

Get this: Business Week polled some of the top B school professors in the nation and they all said they were planning on reading this over the summer. I'll let you decide.

4. Be thankful you have the internet at your disposal.

Our parents did not have such a luxury as Google, Investopedia, or Wikipedia. Read everthing related to business, finance, econ, marketing, technology, media, wall street, stock markets, venture capitalism, & the internet. That means business blogs, too...

5. Get cable and watch either CNNfn, CNBC, or Bloomberg as much as you can.

Even if you're busy, leave it on and let that juice seep into the subconscious. Use discipline + never change the channel to watch what the rest of America watches. So there you go.