What made more than a hundred serious and busy people to come to the sea when it’s cold and wet and moreover to pay for this dubious pleasure an average of $1000?

The hero is vigorous and active and still looks good in his 70 - Brian Tracy, world-class business trainer. His training “Total Business Mastery ~ 2 day MBA” was organized by “VEDA” company in Odessa in October 17-18.

Everybody was able to benefit from a seminar – part of it was dedicated to the topics of personal effectiveness, goal setting and time management. These were the most practical modules with off-the-shelf tools for self-development.

Still, in the first place, seminar is intended for top managers and business owners.

The title of the training - “2 day MBA” - has some sense. Brian goes over various aspects of business such as planning, marketing, sales, product portfolio management, product quality management, recruiting and employee retention. Explains why measure business with numbers, which numbers, how, and what to do afterwards. Brian doesn’t go into details, doesn’t give ready-made recipes – also it’s impossible in a given format. Instead he points out the principles and approaches, provides the bare bones of the knowledge.

Still the information is quite practical so that one can really start to act based on it. But keep in mind that the devil is in the details. For example, I do not quite agree with the proposed methods of motivation - particularly because of the large number of details and nuances in this subject.

Each module ends with a set of questions Brian proposes to answer right on the training - makes to think, analyze some aspect of business or yourself, discover omissions and opportunities for growth. This is perhaps the most valuable part of the training. In our group we agreed that the first approximation we have written out, but there is still a few months worth work - sometimes alone with a glass of whisky, sometimes with partners and sometimes with a team of specialists.

And like a refrain in each set of questions: What will be your immediate next action? How will you measure its success? What are the deadlines? The method is so straightforward, head-on… but seems to work.

What is at the end of the day? Much better understanding of the business, exercises to think out and the action plan. And yes - now I’m a certified MBA!

And what will be your immediate next action?