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Chances are, if you’re in the learning business, you probably didn’t go to school knowing this is where your career would take you. Some of you may a have strong background on the learning or education side, while others may have it on the business side—but likely, you don’t have an equally strong background when it comes to both, and it may be difficult to combine the two.

And because we want you to have the core skills and knowledge needed to run a successful learning business, we’re focusing our newest series on the learning business MBA.

In this first installment in our seven-part series, we discuss the idea behind the learning business MBA and the related skills it requires. We also pull in perspectives from Josh Goldman—who we credit for giving us the term for the learning business MBA—and Arianne Urena and Cristyn Johnson.

To tune in, listen below. To make sure you catch all future episodes, be sure to subscribe via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, iHeartRadio, PodBean, or any podcatcher service you may use (e.g., Overcast). And, if you like the podcast, be sure to give it a tweet.

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What Is the Learning Business MBA?

[00:29 ] – We’ll credit the term to Josh Goldman, who now serves as the senior director of consulting at Tagoras, the parent company of Leading Learning, which we co-founded. He was not part of the team here when he first used the term. He was at a CPA society then, and he reached out to us because he was in charge of putting together programming for a gathering of the educators from the CPA world.

The idea of an MBA (a master’s in business administration) emerged and having that be a theme for a day of education. Of course, we weren’t going to accomplish a true MBA in a day, but the idea was that we could focus on the business side of providing lifelong learning and continuing education in a one-day session with these educators. We had a chance to talk with Josh much more recently than that initial conversation about this idea of an MBA for learning leaders.

[03:27 ] – Josh shares what he remembers about the original of the learning business MBA.

As I looked across the landscape, I realized that the market was changing. There were a lot of competitive forces at play, and I needed a skill set that I hadn’t earned either formally through formal training and education or informally via on-the-job learning…. As I advanced in my career and worked with different audiences and in increasingly complex associations, I recognized I personally was lacking some of the explicit knowledge, skills that you would find inside of a traditional MBA program…. And so the market was changing needs, and I felt at that time that that collective audience—all of those learning leaders across a number of CPA associations and myself—could use something like a learning MBA that helped us focus on some of those more business-focused or corporate-focused knowledge and skill sets.

Josh Goldman

Josh speaks based on his personal background working in associations, but we don’t think what he’s describing is unique to people working in the association world. People who wind up in the learning business probably do so accidentally more often than not. Even if you come to a commercial training firm that might be focused on the adult lifelong learning market, chances are you didn’t go to school thinking that’s where you were going to end up. So you may be lacking some of those skills. Also, it can feel a little bit distasteful to some to combine learning and education with business.

Perhaps there is some tension inherent in how we describe our audience. We talk about learning businesses. Learning is an innate impetus—all humans learn—and so it seems learning should be wide open, freely available. Business, on the other hand, is about competition and profit and charging for access. So it can feel distasteful for people who really buy into the learning mission of a learning business to think of it as a business.

Some people who end up in a learning business come a learning or education background. Others (probably fewer) land in a learning business with business skills and acumen, and they might be unfamiliar with the learning side of things and feel at a loss when it comes to understanding what goes into making an effective learning experience, which, of course, is what a learning business provides.

[06:45 ] – Back to the question, “What is the learning business MBA?”

The learning business MBA is shorthand for getting at the core skills and knowledge needed to run a successful learning business. Just as the traditional master’s of business administration focuses on key areas that are important for the successful operations of a business, the learning business MBA does the same thing. It identifies the core skills and knowledge in specific areas that are necessary for one particular type of business, for a learning business, and what it takes for that to be successful. The main difference is that the learning business MBA focuses on learning businesses that serve learners and help them learn, and so learning is so important to their profitability.

One of the things we’ll aim to do over the course of this series is to enumerate some of those skills and knowledge areas required for running a successful learning business, dig into them a bit, and have conversations with people who can help to illuminate them in the context of a learning business.

Another model is something like the altMBA that Seth Godin introduced a number of years ago. The altMBA and executive MBAs play off the idea of the full-blown MBA and focus on offering content to people who are already in the work world and are going to be able to put what they learn to work in the context of their day-to-day jobs. While obviously this podcast series is not going to be any sort of true MBA, we hope to MBA-type skills, knowledge, insights, and conversations with people from a business perspective that you will be able to put to work in your learning business.

What Would the Course of Study Cover in the Learning Business MBA?

[09:38 ] – Let’s talk about what would we study in the learning business MBA. What are the skills and knowledge learning businesses need to be successful? It’s going to vary from program to program, but there are some core areas you find in most MBA programs—things like accounting, finance, strategy, management, marketing, and communications. These aren’t unique to learning businesses, but they are definitely important to learning businesses.

When talking about skills he wanted and felt lacking in years ago, Josh mentioned product development, pricing, market assessment, and risk assessment. Those are arguably more specific domains—subdomains you could call them, under some of those broader categories.

There are some domains that are unique to learning businesses, the main one being an understanding of how adults learn efficiently and effectively.

An understanding of how learning happens is, of course, key to developing and delivering products that are going to help a learning business in its arguably most fundamental goal.

Celisa Steele

The business elements are really built all around developing and delivering effective, efficient learning products and services. Fortunately, we’ve got good r