

I learned more from selling posters than 4 years of business books - IsaacL
http://blog.i.saac.me/post/9-things-i-learned-from-2-weeks-selling-posters-that-i-didnt-learn-from-4-years-reading-business-books/

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salemh
Doing will always (or lets say, "on the majority") be more effective then
studying, or reading, etc. I ran a painting franchise during school (such as
College Works Painting, Student Works and the like), and basically learned
hard sales (walking doors, then making calls for 3-4 hours a night, sometimes
the same leads all week for those 3-4 hours) for ~6-7 months. Sold painting
projects from $300 - $12,000 (avg $6,500), hired painters, fired, lost
painters, had massive headaches, worked 90 hours a week while first starting
out "production" of getting the projects completed. Advanced the next year to
"build" the team, ran ~12 college students doing the same thing I did the year
before (trained them up from zero).

Most business classes were funny after that (on seeing the lack of concrete
applicability), but not completely worthless.

EG: Operations made "sense" when examining project management of three
painting crews, hours, time to completion, planning materials of the next
jobs. I was just doing simplistic planning schedules on "operations" theory.

I learned a lot from failing (having my best painting crew quit because I
sucked at management) and succeeding (having another awesome painting crew
groomed to take over all client relations, to where I worked 10 hours a week
"managing" (as I learned from my failure of management) and just closing deals
while production was completed).

Article would do better with some metrics of numbers, whether they tried (or
would try) to scale it. That was the hold back in the "internship" (basically
franchises) of the painting gig. Average interns did ~$30,000 in production
revenue and had 90% turnover. Top performers did $80-$100,000+ (I was one, and
90% of my team were the next year) and it was just about "scale" and
delegation.

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alain94040
Totally agree. Going through the motions of selling something will teach you
so much more. A few years back, I wrote a similar blog post, except I was
recommending that MBA students drop out and launch an app on the App Store
instead.

The funny thing is that ever since, Google sends me traffic for everyone
googling "cheap MBAs". I'm sure I get unhappy visitors :-)
[http://blog.foundrs.com/2009/08/12/the-cheapest-mba-
program-...](http://blog.foundrs.com/2009/08/12/the-cheapest-mba-program-for-
cs-students-costs-99-and-its-called-the-app-store/)

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ssharp
Who do these type of anti-MBA sentiments apply to? Do a lot of people enroll
in MBA programs to "learn business" so they can start a startup, or do they
enter MBA programs to learn management so they can get a job in corporate
America? I've always assumed its much more the latter.

I could be wrong, but I don't think McKinsey is going to be terribly impressed
with a sole story of "learning lots" from launching an App Store app.

I think its good advice for people entering MBA programs for the wrong
reasons, but I'm just not sure how large that segment is vs. traditional MBA
students.

~~~
alain94040
Some people enroll in MBAs to become middle-managers in Fortune 500 companies.
Luckiky, those people tend to not hang out on Hacker News, so that advice will
only reach people who are thinking of the MBA as a way to entrepreneurial
success, which it isn't.

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chipsy
It's always about the fundamentals, isn't it?

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keymone
you learn more from doing something than from reading something. nothing new.
might want to check Einstein's quotes

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shingen
In my late teens and early 20's I had a lot of book & observation based
business information contained in my brain. The most jarring thing about
running a real business early on was all the ... bullshit. Most of which is
unavoidable. The myriad of issues and red tape, that have nothing to directly
do with creating or selling or product or marketing or managing.

The best thing to come out of those early experiences in my opinion, is the
automation you properly build up that makes it possible to fly a lot faster
through it all with each iteration. That part of experience is priceless. I
waste a lot less time now, and know a lot better what to focus on.

I don't think any business school can teach you the kind of fast reflex
adaption you acquire with experience. No two scenarios are ever the same, but
with enough experience you'll find a lot of cross over similarities, things
you learned over there that apply well over here. It becomes personal data
that you can call upon instantly, bend, manipulate, adjust to solve new
problems fast.

Data from experience is more easily available for manipulation to new problems
than mentally distant 'book based' knowledge.

