andycallahan

I'm beginning to look into business schools and was talking about this with a business consultant, who also happens to be my neighbor. He said his daughter is working part-time with Empire Today while putting herself through business school. He said they had ordered Empire Carpet and that's how she got into it. She apparently also likes their business model. Hearing this made me realize that it would be good to work while in school, in order to have real life experience to incorporate into my learning. After all, if I want to be become an expert some day and be a business consultant myself, the more exposure I have to how companies are run, and see first hand different ways of operating a business, the more prepared I'll be, and the more I'll have to draw from in my consultations. My neighbor said that while theory is important as a basis, experience is just a important. He said that management decisions that are made without practical experience can be a big mistake. He recommends getting as broad a basis of experience as possible, starting early on. MBA's, in his view, only make people useful to a certain extent. If people are too removed from real life business experience, or if their perspective isn't broad enough and informed enough from different levels and different points of view, it can lead to bad judgment calls in the business world. That's advice that I'm going to take to heart.