Host - Monique Mills:   

[00:03]          Welcome to the Unpolished MBA podcast. On this podcast, we have conversations with tech startup founders and entrepreneurs and traditional corporate MBAs. Many say that startups equal the unpolished MBA because those without the formal business education are scrappy and do many things untraditionally to achieve business success. But anyone who has built a business from an idea can attest to the fact that the experience is another level MBA, and there's nothing quite like it. The candid conversations shared here is helpful to both sides of the fence. One is not better than the other, just different. Let's jump in.

(MUSIC)

                      [00:55]       Hi, I'm your host Monique Mills, and in my work, I get to have great conversations with a lot of smart and interesting people. Some are tech startup founders and entrepreneurs in various industries, and others are corporate employees. In this episode, I'm sharing a conversation I had with Dan Sanchez, a marketing executive for Sweet Fish Media which produces podcasts for brands. We talked about how he aggressively completed his MBA in six months and realized how much it filled in the gaps of information that he didn't even know we're missing. As they say, you don't know what you don't know, so listen in as Dan describes his startup experience and the journey to becoming the marketing maven he is today.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[01:43]           Like after going through the startup experience and then getting an MBA, it really backfilled quite a bit that I'd missed, and I thought I knew a lot.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[01:51]          See, I'm so glad you said that because very few people will admit to that.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[01:56]           I mean, I guess people say that about master's degrees all the time. I have a lot of friends who are pastors, and went back and got their master’s of divinity, their MDiv later, and they're like, “Yeah, I kind of already knew all that.” I'm like, “Really? You knew all of it?” because probably not but still, you do learn a lot on the job. I still feel like going through a well-rounded curriculum that has touches of all the major components, it's going to fill in some gaps that you had. And there's also more than one way to learn. Some people don't like classrooms. I actually don't really like classrooms and I did mine online, whereas they let me have at it, and I get to watch or read what I needed to.

But there are just different ways to consume information. And some people might be motivated enough to work through accounting without the formal structure. I, actually, as much as I love just pounding lynda.com, YouTube, and reading lots of books, there was something about accounting and finance specifically that I couldn't do it on my own. It was a little too complicated. I needed the full class structure of peers, teacher and help. I needed help honestly. It was a struggle for me. Finance specifically, which was hard but I'm so glad I had set the goal, and then I had to do it. I couldn't back out. It wasn't something I was interested in, but I'm so glad that I've learned it now. But I needed that extra accountability in order to push me through it, and that's why I'm just thankful that it's an option out there, you know?

Host - Monique Mills:   

[03:19]          Yeah, I agree. I'm always perplexed when I see posts about “Oh, who needs an MBA?” Like really successful entrepreneurs will go “Who needs an MBA? It's such a waste of time and waste of money. You could have just been out there doing it.” And I'm with you, I think people can learn different ways, but there are gaps that you just don't learn just doing it because you don't have time to be learning and executing in that capacity at the same time, you know?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[03:48]           Yes. It's funny, I always recommend MBAs to people who want to move up in leadership for like, especially if you're in marketing. Actually, I'd probably recommend this for any part of the organization. I found, like, if you're going up, especially when you're starting to make the jump from Director to VP to CMO to that level, the less it actually is about the craft of that department anymore, and the more you have to figure out how that department plays with the rest of the organization, which is what an MBA exactly helps you figure out. You can figure it out outside an MBA, but I'm like, without that, I'm probably pushing up against that ceiling right now of somewhere between Director and VP.

I just moved to Sweet Fish. It’s a startup company, and it's growing fast, so I'll probably grow with it is my hope. But as I'm looking at other VPs and as I'm having conversations with them, that's what I'm finding is the biggest trait is that those guys are generally doing less of whatever their department is in charge of executing, and they're having to work functionally across departments in order to make sure it's working well within the rest of the org. You need to have accounting, you need to know finance, you need to know HR, you need to know legal, you need to know how it all fits together to make one business work right.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[05:00]          That's right. They're all important and those days of just staying within a silo are just gone because everything is so interconnected now. Everyone needs to have a focus on, of course, customer success, but revenue and profitability. Otherwise, everyone here won't have a job soon. Some people will be leaving.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[05:22]         Yeah, one of my favorite people to talk to you in the organization is always the CFO. As the marketing guy, I'm always like, “Spend, spend!”, and he's always like, “No!”, so to wrestle with him, and honestly, to better understand the accounting and usually the CFOs world has made those conversations so much smoother because we can actually pull out the balance sheet, the cash flow statement, and yeah, the balance sheet and look at things and he can explain; I can actually understand why he's saying no, or I could push back on him and be like, “Yeah, but what about-- We can stretch that a little bit more.” I don't know, you can have a more intelligent conversation because you know things.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[06:00]          Yeah. And I think people respect you more, too, because you're not like cluelessly shaking your head “Uh-huh, Uh-huh.” You can actually-- One of the things that keep coming up on this podcast is the trend of, it's important to be able to speak the same language; it's important to understand the vocabulary. Like the term value proposition never was mentioned to me or came up in my entire life until I went to do an MBA and I had been an engineer for 15, 16 years. So--

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[06:33]           I was going to say, I’m like, “Really? Oh, because you were in…

Host - Monique Mills:   

[06:35]          Never came up.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[06:36]           Engineering. Yeah.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[06:37]          Yeah.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[06:38]           That would make sense because if you started in marketing, that becomes a term that gets thrown out there real quick.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[06:42]          Of course. Exactly. And we never-- Went always thought--

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[06:44]           That’s like our world.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[06:45]          Right. I have so much respect for marketers. I think that that is the superpower of a company. So creative, so smart, you know how to put things together, say things the right way to influence people. Copywriters, and stuff? It's just amazing. But previously in my engineering roles, engineers seem to think they're the most important people in the room, and the project and once you get that business sense you find out that's not true.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[07:14]           I don't know, in a way, I think it's both, and I quote Peter Drucker said that like, “The true--” I'm going to butcher this quote a little bit, but it’s something along the lines of like, “The true great part about business is going to be innovation and marketing. Everything else is cost.” But a lot of innovation, like if you're not having innovation around the product, or sometimes it's not the product, maybe you're not leading with innovation as a product. Maybe you're the lowest cost, but then you're going to have to have innovation around your supply chain in order to deliver that low cost like Walmart does. They're extremely innovative in how they can keep their costs that low. So there's got to be innovation somewhere in the business model, and that's where innovation and engineering start to become a really key part of the business. But Peter Drucker often said, like, “It's innovation and marketing together.”

Host - Monique Mills:   

[08:02]          It’s together. Right. I just had another podcast guest who, you know, the longtime engineer, and the entire episode - it’s actually episode 12 if you want to listen. The entire episode, she makes fun of us, and we have to laugh at ourselves because it's a combination of what we call engineer's arrogance and ignorance because you don't know any different. They don't teach you any of this stuff in engineering school. So yeah, literally for about 30 minutes straight, she got us right on that one, and she's an engineer too, so she's talking about herself. But we tend to think that the company revolves around what we do, and it's really that powerful combination of yeah, you need that innovation, you need that engineering mind in the product that they're going to release, but it goes nowhere without marketing and sales. It goes nowhere. So many great ideas sit on a shelf.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[09:02]           Yep. But I do think there's a lot to be had for the startup world as well, right? I mean, we certainly probably both know MBAs who have never really gotten their hands dirty, and you're just like…

Host - Monique Mills:   

[09:13]          Oh, yeah.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[09:13]           “…Come on. No, dude, that's not how it actually works. I know that's what you learned. I know you heard Porter's five forces, but that's not actually going to help me do my work today.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[09:29]            But, yeah, those are some of the basic foundations that if it's your first time hearing about it, it brings perspective, but that's not actually how it works when you're building something from nothing you and I know from the startup world. So, in your take, though, in your experience so far, do you believe that entrepreneurship is something that can be taught?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[09:53]           Yes. It's like any other skill. Some of it, you're going to have people with an innate ability to do it, and some that don't have the innate ability, but they could still learn how to do it. I mean, it's like me playing basketball. I'm 5’5”, I'm on the shorter side. I'm never going to be like, Michael Jordan, okay, but I can take lessons. I can wake up early, hustle and work, and become a much better basketball player, even though I'm only 5’5”.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[10:19]          Right.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[10:19]           I started to learn how to play to my advantage and learn how to be a really good assist on a basketball team, right?

Host - Monique Mills:   

[10:24]          Yeah, yeah.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[10:26]           Am I going to be an all-time all-star? No, not even close. But luckily, with entrepreneurship, it's not nearly that limited. There's so much room to start companies and make money, maybe you won't be the next Mark Zuckerberg, but you can probably have your own small business. Shoot, you could probably even start your own awesome midsize company. It might not make it to Salesforce level, but you can still do amazingly well, just because you worked hard and learned it. But some people will just have a natural ability to have that intuitive sense to sense the market and how to capitalize on it, right?

Host - Monique Mills:   

[11:00]          Yeah, absolutely. I've noticed that people that I know who have had that kind of sixth sense naturally came from entrepreneurs in their family. And I don't know if there's any kind of connection to that. I'm still making it through lots of interviews, and I need at least 30 to be considered statistically significant as we learn in the MBA. But so far, that seems to be a trend if it is that they've had some kind of entrepreneur around them growing up. So how do you feel about those kinds of condescending remarks about like, you don't need the MBA and that hostility toward doing higher education?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[11:45]           I don't know. I mean, it kind of goes both ways. It used to be a lot more the other way, where it's kind of like, “Oh, yeah, you can't do business. You don't have your MBA. You don't even have a business degree? What?” But I don't know, I just think it's silly. It's just popular right now to say that. And I can't say that having an MBA is-- It's hard to be able to track because I was already on my way to learning and growing and executing and doing great things. And I think a lot of people, especially if you earned it after being in the workforce a while and then you came back to school, you were already probably the person that was killing it in work. So it's hard to like, “Did I get that raise or get that next opportunity because of the MBA or because I was already killing it?” It’s probably a combination of both, right? But I do think people, even the people that are adamant that MBAs aren't worth it, or even degrees for that matter, right?

Host - Monique Mills:   

[12:35]          Yep.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[12:37]           I’ve found that those people actually still assume things about you because of the degree. Like I was having a conversation with a close friend of mine, and he said something. And he's not anti-degree, but he's like, “No, it's not worth anything. Just show me your work experience.” But he's like, “Well--” We were having a conversation about finances. We were having a conversation about margins on products and different things. He's like, “Yeah, I don't know, I’ll have to think about it more. I don't have an MBA like you do.” So he was already associating-- He's like, “Oh, because you have an MBA, you understand this world better, and I'm having a hard time because I don't”, which really is more of a mindset issue.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[13:15]          Absolutely.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[13:15]           But still I think people like him are knocking degrees out on LinkedIn but are actually still giving it more weight than they know.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[13:25]          Yeah, it's kind of a subconscious thing that's happening. So yeah, it's really weird. I've seen many of those posts where people will knock it down but I'm never really sure about the motivation behind that. Is it insecurity or is it--? I don't really know what it is. It doesn't make sense to me.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[13:50]           Yeah. I'm not sure either. I'm sure some of it is probably insecurity. I know one of the biggest reasons why I even went back to get it was because I had this itch that I knew I'd always have this thing that I'd always wished I had done it, and so I just needed to do it, just to get rid of the itch. But of course, it ended up being highly beneficial, regardless, but I could see that.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[14:11]          But you said you did yours online?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[14:14]           That's right.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[14:15]          Okay. And how long did it take you to do it?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[14:20]           Mine actually only took six months. It went through really fast, but I pounded it hard for six months.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[14:28]          And when you did it, what was your plan? What did you want to do with it? Or was it just a personal goal?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[14:36]           It was a personal goal, but I also wanted to work at a higher level and in an organization and I knew I was missing pieces. I knew I needed the formal structure in order to force myself through it because I'd taken some swings at learning different subjects before and motivation was always running out. And I knew I needed to take a hard run at learning it and not mastering it but becoming competent in other areas that I was already competent in marketing.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[15:02]          Wow. Let me just say this, your marketing skills are sick. Sick. And the thing is, it just seems to come so naturally. Now, did you have that before doing the MBA or is it something you just kind of realized that you had a superpower for and just added fuel to the fire?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[15:27]           It's hard to tell whether I have a natural ability for marketing. I just read a lot of books. And part of the reason why I was even [able] to get the MBA done in such a fast time was because I'm just an aggressive reader already so I'd already read lots of books. I'd already read Michael Porter books, I'd already read some of the bigger textbooks, partly because I was insecure so I started looking at the programs and picking out their textbooks and reading them ahead. I don't know, I was lucky. And early in my career, I've spent most of my career between nonprofits and startups. And the really nice part about those two organizations is they're usually strapped financially. There's always too much to do, always. No one has the luxury of specializing - everybody wears multiple hats. And therefore, there's less red tape. There are less restrictions on what you can or can’t test.

But the first nonprofit, I was just lucky in that they let me do things I shouldn't. I was I knew nothing, and they let me try them out. They let me experiment and of course, experimenting, and testing and learning, even like with LinkedIn, it's all about the volume, and testing and learning and getting better at it, getting your hands on the website to be able to test different pages A/B split test to see which one statistically works out better. You start doing that over and over again, you start to learn rather quickly what's working, what doesn't work. And after doing that, over 10 years, I was able to learn marketing.  Of course, it was in addition to lots of amazing books. And I was lucky to learn specifically about value propositions, it’s funny you mentioned that earlier. I learned about that really early in my career in marketing.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[17:06]          I would hope so.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[17:06]           And so once you get that piece early-- Because that's the cornerstone of marketing. If you can learn how to explain why someone should buy something, and do it clearly and articulately with credibility, everything's downhill from there. Getting to that point is pretty difficult but learning how to do that in an environment that gave me the freedom to do it-- Actually, they gave me the freedom to fail a lot and gave me a little budget to spend and try things was where and how I learned marketing.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[17:36]          Wow. Yeah, the experimentation is incredible when it comes to your growth because you learn lessons really quickly, that will be much harder to learn from reading a book or even hearing from somebody else who's done it.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[17:50]           Reading a lot gave me some of my early wins, right? I think you get addicted to it because you're kind of like, “Well, maybe if I read a little bit--” You read a little bit, you're like, “Okay, let's test it.” And then all of a sudden, you get rewarded because you tested it and it frickin’ worked. You're like, “Oh, good. The book actually was right.” You're like, “Oh, let's do that again”, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling reward cycle, I think, that we get on so we-- I am a little addicted to reading because the reading is actually working, right?

Host - Monique Mills:   

[18:16]          Yeah, it brings you inspiration, it helps you connect the dots of previous experiences. And I mean, some of the stuff that I've come up with is really a combination of everything. It gives you more to work with.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[18:33]           One thing I was thinking about before we jumped on this call was like how I wish everybody had the opportunity, one, to go to school and learn business formally. But I also wish everybody had the ability to go through a startup experience in some capacity.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[18:48]          Me too.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[18:49]           There's something about doing both that's just magic. And this is where the magic happens. It comes in the discernment, right? And it's the discernment around which projects you should take on, which opportunities you should capitalize on, what are threats and what aren't threats, what the markets doing. I feel like having both angles, from the startup experience because startups are really good at listening to customers, iterating quickly, right, and actually building products people want. Where sometimes if you come from a traditional background, you might just launch the product and not actually talk to the customer, right? Classic.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[19:27]          That’s right.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[19:30]           But if you have both, all of a sudden you can see an opportunity and assess business ideas in your mind 10 times faster because you can be like, “Okay, well, how much would we have to charge? We'd have to charge this much”, and all of a sudden, you're doing some of the basic math and accounting to be like, “Yeah, but does that break even? Okay, we're not going to break even but what if we added this?” You're kind of like just doing it in your mind really fast which is why people get mad at us sometimes when they're like, “What about this business idea?” You're like, “No.”

Host - Monique Mills:   

[19:56]          “That won’t work.”

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[19:57]           No. There's a lot of no’s out there but you have to go through a lot of no’s but then all of a sudden, you're like, “That's it. I can see that one. That one's going to work.” But it's because you're running it through so many filters in your mind, from both the startup lens and the MBA lens, so I find that to be invaluable. being able to do both. We're always surrounded by ideas. I don't know about you but like my direct reports, my boss, ideas from books, ideas from LinkedIn, you're constantly having to assess whether an idea is worth pursuing now, later, or never. It's constant.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[20:30]          I work with tech startups so I literally have hundreds of ideas that come through a month, and some of this stuff will probably never make it off the shelves because it's so far out there, and, you know, regulatory things and all that, and which, because of the MBA, I think about all of the different forces involved with bringing certain things to the market. And so working with PhDs and doctors and engineers of all kinds, they come up with some incredible things, but the part that's missing-- So they have this subject matter expertise, but the part that's missing is that superpower over there, right? The marketing and sales part. And so I actually do spend a lot of time explaining to founders how they need that. They need that counterpart because otherwise the idea, the business, the product won't go anywhere.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[21:27]           That's really hard to be a good entrepreneur and not have a pretty good sense of the marketing. I feel like the essence of marketing actually, is entrepreneurship.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[21:37]          Yeah.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[21:37]           The ability of a good marketer to discern a market or what the market needs to hear in order to buy is essentially entrepreneurship. That's how I even started studying it. I didn't study entrepreneurship in school, but I did start buying all the like Four Steps of Epiphany, Startup Manual, like all those kinds of books because I was like, “Wait, there's something missing from marketing books.” And then I found it in entrepreneurship books because that's where they really started talking about finding the market - product-market fit, right?

Host - Monique Mills:   

[22:03]          Yep.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[22:04]           Because there are some products that will never be sold, no matter how good the marketing is because they never had a product-market fit.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[22:09]          That’s right.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[22:10]           Which is always a marketer’s dilemma, you're like, “Well, what do I do? How do I convince my boss that maybe we should just scrape the whole product? Because maybe it's me, but maybe we never had a fit on this product”, right? Hard conversations.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[22:23]          It is, especially if they're not aware of the startup foundational principles. I had the pleasure of meeting Steve Blank and having dinner at his house in December.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[22:36]           That’s amazing.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[22:37]          And then we had another talk afterward for a Zoom meeting. And I literally had to tell him, because I also teach a class in entrepreneurship at a university, and I use his course, his principles as the foundation. I told him, I said, “Listen, you have literally changed lives. Your philosophies, your explanation for things” and access to pretty much anything he's ever done is free online.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[23:09]           Yeah, It's huge.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[23:11]          I'm like, “You have changed entire industries, lives, families.”

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[23:17]           He’s impacted the world. It's sad that he didn't get more credit for it, right? You and I know his name, but most people are like, “Who?” Even in the startup world, they're like, “Who?”

Host - Monique Mills:   

[23:25]          And I'm like, That's the whole reason--

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[23:25]           Let’s see who went to Stanford.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[23:28]          And that’s the whole reason why you're being taught these things from the accelerators and stuff. At the meeting, he had on Alex Osterwalder there who created the Business Model Canvas. And they have, of course, other lines of books and things that come out to help people, and I honestly think that MBA programs need to replace the books that they're using and start using these books as the foundation because you don't have to be a startup to utilize the principles.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[24:00]           For sure. I think a lot of MBA programs are using those books now. A family member of mine went through CSU, his MBA, and he was going through the Business Model Canvas and through-- They didn't use Steve Blank’s book, they used Eric Ries’ book, The Lean Startup

Host - Monique Mills:   

[24:20]          Oh, The Lean Startup.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[24:21]           Yeah, and he was having, I guess it was a class on entrepreneurship within his MBA, but he was having to pump out business models, lots of business models as part of his classwork. I didn't in my program, it was more focused on IT and project management, which, for me, was really helpful. But I think some programs are starting to improve their curriculum and pull things out. The hard part about MBAs and businesses and I think this is part of the reason why people knock them so much is because they're having to actually pull from well researched and proven tactics and models, but a lot of stuff that's working now, well, once it's been proven and statistically verified, it won't be working anymore.

So that's why it's kind of like it's good but some subjects lend themselves better to formal education like finance, like accounting. Those things aren't changing. They've been around a long time, right? Like cash flow statements are still considered new, even though they've been around for 30 years now, right? Because accounting has been around so long, it's a tried and true discipline. It's verified, but marketing's changing so much. So when I was reading marketing textbooks, and it was talking about Twitter, I’m like, “No, this is out of date.” And that's why people kind of poopoo degrees.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[25:42]          It changes so fast - marketing.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[25:44]           They’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and that’s a shame.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[25:47]          That's right. I mean, look at you know, having LinkedIn stories, having reels on Instagram, which is basically TikTok. It’s TikTok on Instagram now. I remember when Snapchat was a solitary thing, and then Instagram took on the features, and then Facebook took on the features, and so it's all changing very fast. But I would say marketing is changing extremely fast but the foundational principles of business, accounting, finance, things like you said, that's not going anywhere.

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[26:28]           No. That's why it's still worth it.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[26:30]          That's right. You got to constantly be learning when you're in marketing. So do you think you'll ever start your own startup and be the CEO of your own startup?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[26:40]           I think about it, but I wrestle with it.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[26:42]          Why?

Guest - Dan Sanchez:   

[26:42]           Honestly, I'm like, “I don't know if I want to be number one.” I’m like, “Being number two sounds really good because I know that the pressure of number one--" My boss says this all the time. I report to the CEO, and he's like, “I love having the flexibility.” I'm like, “Dude, you have the least amount of flexibility of anybody on this team. People's lives and livelihoods depend on you. You can't just go AWOL for-- You just can't disappear for a month unless you plan it ahead of time or something, or just take off the day because people are depending on you to show up and provide the leadership and guidance for you to lead this company.” I'm like, “I don't know if I want that weight.”

                      [27:14]       I mean, I guess it is attractive to do the Tim Ferriss thing to kind of have your own little business model and do the 4-hour work thing,  but I think I'm too-- I don't know, even that sounds like not as much fun because I want to continue working on this. I love marketing. I love what I do so much that I just kind of like showing up to work. I like working for Sweet Fish Media because one, the CEO is really marketing-oriented, but still gives me the freedom to do what the marketing stuff I know how to do. And then it's media focused as a podcasting agency. We're focused on producing content in the way that most marketing departments should be operating this day. We're trying to champion and pioneer and essentially be a media-driven marketing company. And that's what I'm excited about. So I'm more excited about working with the Sweet Fish Media team as part of a team than I am just kind of going on my own solo adventure, but you never know. I mean, I started my whole career wanting to be a fine artist, and it pivoted multiple times. And now I'm in love with marketing, so I'm like, “It could change again.” So right now, I'm really loving being a marketer.

Host - Monique Mills:   

[28:19]          Well, that's it. I would definitely have to agree with Dan that the combination of innovation and marketing is unmatched. It’s definitely the combination you need to be successful in business. He mentioned that an MBA can tie it all together for those that are seeking to move into leadership, and that's when he'll usually recommend it to some of his peers. It helps to be able to work cross-functionally across an organization to be most effective.

I also agree with him when he mentioned that everyone should experience a startup; there is nothing like it. The ups, the downs, all of it is just a very exciting journey where you'll learn so much. He mentioned that entrepreneurship is a skill that could be taught, and you don't have to be the next Mark Zuckerberg to do well as an entrepreneur. There's so much opportunity out here. It doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur or employee, as long as you're enjoying what you do every day. Besides, you can always pursue entrepreneurship at any point. There are so many tidbits of information in this episode, and so I really hope you enjoyed it.

The Unpolished MBA conversation continues, and you can be a part of it by going to unpolishedmba.com. Thank you for listening.