The Most Useful Thing I Learned in My MBA Was Marketing

It was probably about 20 years ago.

While working as an engineer, I started to feel that there might be a limit to what I could do with technical skills alone, so I enrolled in an MBA program in Japan.

It was not a famous university in the United States or anything like that.

At the time, I vaguely thought it would be nice if I could move from being an engineer to becoming a business manager.

In the end, I realized that management was not really the right kind of work for me, so I did not go down that path.

During the MBA, I spent a reasonably enjoyable time doing mock startup projects, creating business plans, and discussing case studies.

But to be honest, I do not use much of what I learned there in my current work.

I work alone as a freelancer.

Organizational theory, HR systems, and management strategies for large companies have almost no place in my work now.

Among all of that, the thing I still feel has been useful is marketing.

One of the first things I learned in the MBA was a very obvious fact: good products do not sell themselves naturally.

First, people become aware of them.

Then they become interested.

Then they compare and evaluate them.

Only after that do they finally make a purchase.

I became conscious of that sequence.

For me today, the product is not a system or a service.

It is myself.

“How can I make people aware that I exist?”

“How can I make people feel that they want to ask me to do work for them?”

This way of thinking is still at the center of my work.

Awareness does not usually come from one miraculous encounter.

In most cases, it is the accumulation of many points of contact.

A large company might run TV commercials or place advertisements.

For me, it means writing this blog, posting on LinkedIn, and meeting people.

The probability that any single point of contact will lead to work is probably extremely low.

That is exactly why I have no choice but to keep accumulating them.

Only after people know me do I earn the right to explain my strengths.

And even if I can explain them, the hurdle between that explanation and actually receiving work is still high.

I do not think I would have learned this way of thinking simply by writing code as an engineer.

The biggest thing I gained from the MBA was not technical knowledge, but the perspective of how to bring myself to the market.

That said, reality is harsh.

The MBA tuition was not cheap.

Now, 20 years later, if someone asked me, “Did you recover that investment?”, I would have to pause for a moment.

I did obtain marketing as a tool.

But if you ask whether that alone was enough to recover the tuition, well…

If I evaluate it purely by cost effectiveness, unfortunately, it is still negative for now.

From an ROI perspective, the investment has not yet paid for itself. At least if I were evaluating this deal, I would not invest in it.