Disclaimer: I am collaborating with ThePowerMBA — this post contains affiliate links to their product for which I may receive commissions. I choose my collaborations selectively and commit to sharing fair and honest reviews with my audience.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about why I decided to enroll in ThePowerMBA. I felt excited and motivated to start this new learning journey, alongside a healthy dose of skepticism. It’s no secret to my friends and family that traditional approaches to learning like schooling have rarely worked in my favour. So I set out to see how ThePowerMBA would be a true alternative.
I also promised to share about my experience — so here goes.
Admittedly, my life looks quite different now than it did when I initially enrolled. Among other things, I joined/co-founded a startup called Konvrs — we’re the online gathering place for older adults 50+ to learn from experts, have conversations with like-minded people, and make friends. I left behind two years of running my consulting business Cause Digital. I had not worked in a tech startup environment for over four years, and I definitely arrived at Konvrs feeling rusty about the language and frameworks used in startup world.
ThePowerMBA kicked off in mid-September. The learning content is broken down into bite-sized modules. Every weekday, we receive one micro-learning module of 15 mins each. The content is comprised exclusively of videos and case studies from real successful entrepreneurs, like Waze co-founder Uri Levine or Sugarfina co-founder Rosie O’Neill. This to me is one of the biggest differentiators between ThePowerMBA and regular schools — they draw heavily from the experiences of successful practitioners, rather than theorists.
I was also very happy to see that nowhere are there long blocks of text (my pitfall!). ThePowerMBA have figured out an innovative way to use Typeform so that content is communicated concisely and keeps students on their toes.
ThePowerMBA content is generally very much designed for digital businesses, which I found immensely helpful. I don’t have formal business training and everything I’ve learned to-date has been on the job. Working at such an early startup, every day I am exposed and confronted with different business challenges and solutions. I was able to glean insights from the Business Model Analysis module and apply my learnings to different scenarios our own business is facing.
It’s my commitment to keep things real online and not post about only the highlight reel or “positives” of my life. The past month has been a very full and stressful one for me. As such, I did not regularly keep on top of ThePowerMBA content every single day as designed. I think this kind of learning journey is most impactful if you integrate it into your day-to-day and absorb the learnings over time. That being said, I will say that because the content is bite-sized, it was very easy to catch up in a short amount of time.
I also found that they focused a bit too heavily on the Business Model Canvas framework throughout the modules, and at times I found myself checking out because I was too used to seeing it. A healthy dose of novelty is key for keeping learning exciting.
Going forward, I would love to see a greater emphasis on case studies over theories and frameworks. This is more of a request for improvement than anything else, because they already do feature a lot of case studies.
I’m learning a lot and look forward to diving deeper into ThePowerMBA content. Until the next month, friends!
Leah Bae 