I Paid $137,559 Out of Pocket for 2 Business Degrees - What a Waste!

Today I walked by this chair, and pondering on it taught me more about business than any MBA ever could.

Here are the 5 lessons it taught me:

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1. Being humble is profitable. The owner of this business is prideful.

Customers are telling him what his chair needs and he ignores them.

Why go through the effort of defacing a beautiful chair with a warning, when you could listen to your customers & redesign the dang chair!

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2. Compared to an internet business, physical products are a very hard business.

If something breaks on my website, I only need 1 user to tell me. I'll have it fixed in seconds by moving some pixels around.

So don't start a physical products business, right?

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3. Wrong! Internet business = easier = more competitors.

And the reverse is true for harder businesses, like a physical products or manufacturing business.

Pick your poison, because tradeoffs exist everywhere.

That which is easily gained is easily lost.

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4. Ignore PLG (product led growth) at your peril.

AirBnB did one thing amazingly well - a gorgeous product. The founders were designers 1st and founders 2nd.

PLG won't show immediate ROI like paid ads.

But "that which is easily gained is easily lost," remember?

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5. I saw this sign in a beachfront restaurant bathroom yesterday.

Alabama jokes about bathing in a public bathroom aside, there's a similar lesson here.

You can yell at your users or give them what they want & win loyalty:

In this case, a way to wash sand off their feet.

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Do I regret getting business degrees? No.

Would I do it again? No.

The best way to learn business is to go out and DO business and then think about it when you don't have to be.

If you can't or won't do both, then business isn't for you.