Speaker 3 (00:08.974)
Good morning and welcome to management under construction. I'm Dee Davis.
And I'm Brad Wyatt. are thrilled to have Harry Reynolds on the podcast with us today as our first guest. The topic we're going to discuss today is the MBA. Should you get one? What is it? What type of MBA is right for you? And what does it all add to your career and your life? I'm currently getting my MBA as we've discussed on prior episodes and Harry already has his MBA. He got it while he was working. So he got a part-time MBA and we're going to talk about that. Dee's going to ask some questions about it.
as we go and we're going learn from Harry's experience as somebody further along in his career about how that has impacted his journey. So that's the topic of discussion. Thanks so much for being here, Harry. Welcome and would love that you could tell us a little about yourself.
Thank you very much. Good morning, Dee. Good morning, Brad. I'm really thrilled to be here with you and share some of our experiences. And hopefully we can add some value to the listeners. tell you a little bit about myself, I've been working in the engineering and construction industry for the last 28 years, something like that. I'm originally from Costa Rica, and that's where I got my bachelor's in civil engineering. And I did a little bit of work in the design area.
for a while, for about a couple of years. Then I wanted to experience something new and then I decided to start working in construction. And I really like it and I stayed in the construction industry since then. I think the reason I like it is because I get to interact with a lot of people. It's a very active environment. While when I was working on the design, it was a little bit more stagnant and I get to interact more with people. And that's what I like. So that's why I decided to stay in the construction. I've been blessed that I had the opportunity to travel a lot around the world for...
Speaker 1 (01:54.798)
for the work that I had. As I mentioned, started right after I graduated from the University of Costa Rica with my civil engineering degree. I started working in Costa Rica for about maybe three to four years. And then after that, I had the opportunity to travel internationally. And then I moved to China for about three years. And that was a very good experience, not only working with a different culture, but also working with people from different backgrounds. Over there, I had the opportunity to work with people from all over the world. There was a lot of expats.
where I was living in the construction industry. That was a very good learning experience because of the fact that initially the management approach that I was putting was really about trying to implement what I knew and how I knew it. And being in China, being a different culture, I tend to realize that I had to learn how they did things and how they interacted with each other. And only when I started really taking some Mandarin lessons where I started learning about the Chinese culture.
That's when I realized that I had to do things differently. So I started to adapt myself to the people over there. And that's when I started getting results. And after those years in China, I realized that there was a lot of competition in our industry. And I realized, if I want to move on within the organization, and I also, if I want to really add value to the organization, I really need to pursue a master's degree. So I started researching universities and then...
I decided to apply to two or three universities. got accepted on some and I'll probably explain in more detail down the road, the process. But then that's where I ended up moving to the U S and then I moved to Arizona. That's where I got my masters at Arizona State University. I did it in construction management, which basically gave me a lot of technical knowledge and that allowed me to increase the contribution to the company that I was working for in the technical side. And then I've been traveling a lot since then all across the U S West coast, East coast. I spent some time in.
Singapore, in Malaysia, in China again, a little bit of time in Germany as well. I think it's been a blessing, honestly, the ability to travel with people from different cultures because I've learned so much from them and I think that's what has given me ability to contribute more. It's really being able to learn from all those cultures. So thank you for having me here. I'm excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 3 (04:13.714)
Thanks so much for joining us, Harry. Harry and I worked together and we met at least 10 years ago, maybe a little bit longer. We worked together at a company for a few years. Harry always stuck out in my mind as a really smart professional and somebody that I wanted to maintain contact with. And as you mentioned, he's been all over the place. I remember when you went to Singapore, he's been all over, I've been all over and we just have not been able to work together again.
and all this time and we got to fix that. I'm so glad you're here today. I think we want to start with Brad giving us a quick little overview of exactly what's an MBA, who's it for and little bit of a history lesson as we usually start our podcasts with.
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (05:00.942)
Yeah, starting at the very beginning is always a very good place to start. So what is an MBA? An MBA stands for Masters of Business Administration. It's usually taught out of a university with a business college. It's a two-year program for a full-time student. It can be a two-year program for a part-time student, but it can be longer as well, depending on that person's flexibility. And there are also online programs that can be shorter. But it's a survey degree of various business topics is what it is. There are certain
MBAs that allow you to specialize and say you have an MBA specifically in accounting or specifically in HR or something like that. for the most part, it's just a survey degree. History of the MBA. In 1908, Harvard invented the MBA as a way to give people a leg up in the business world to try to understand what it means to do management from an academic standpoint. In 1925, Stanford added their program. In 1935, the University of Chicago added their program.
and then the first woman was admitted to a MBA program in 1959. Since the past 20 years, there's been rapid growth and expansion of the MBA program, more online programs. Some believe that the expansion of the MBA program to smaller universities with less research and with less history in that area has diluted the value of it. I think that's them defending their turf, if you will, but there certainly are differences between a top
M7 MBA, which is the biggest and oldest MBA programs in the United States and other programs. I go to Michigan Ross. Michigan Ross is not an M7 program, even though it's a full-time program. It doesn't carry quite as much weight as a Stanford or a Harvard or UChicago or a Wharton might in those traditional upper echelon business circles, but it's still a top 10 program. So that's what we like to say at least. The MBA is still a big deal at Michigan. The only public school to make that top 10 list.
Yeah, I didn't realize that you could specialize, so that's really helpful. I don't have an MBA. I'm the only one on this call that doesn't have an MBA, so I'm here to learn too. All right, along with you, the listeners. I didn't know you could specialize. That's very interesting. I already learned something new.
Speaker 2 (07:14.862)
Yep, there's some programs that allow you to specialize. And some people even, if the program doesn't range to an emphasis that would sit on the diploma, they'll put that they're taking mostly marketing classes. And they'll say, I have an emphasis in marketing in my MBA. I took nothing but marketing after I finished the core base classes that I had to take. Anyway, so that's what that is. Who is it for? Why would somebody get an MBA? Some of the requirements for an MBA help us understand that.
Anybody with three plus years of career experience is allowed to apply. And a lot of MBA programs say that they want to see somebody between three and seven years of career experience to have enough understanding of how the business world works to be able to speak in class when there are open lectures and debates, but not so much experience that they are not really ready to come back and learn in a positive way, not set in their ways at least.
A lot of people trying to switch careers, seeking an MBA because it's a great time to get back onto a college campus and in front of recruiters and re-brand yourself in a general way. But people who are just seeking advancement in a career that requires an MBA also come to get an MBA. We'll talk a little about what those careers are a later on. Managers working in an executive position later in their careers get what's called an executive MBA if they want. And it's for people who
may not have had a traditional path to their place. They may have been entrepreneurs who didn't go to college or they may have dropped out of college and are now coming back to get a chance to come back and learn things they didn't when they were younger and just trying to network with other people as well. That's a big part of the MBA. How much does it cost? That's one of the big things that people ask, especially for these full-time programs because they are very expensive.
So the tuition for a top tier MBA program can be anywhere from $160,000 to $200,000. Many schools offer significant financial scholarships for people, and there's a lot of opportunity there, people with unique career experiences, people who qualify for DEI scholarships. There's a lot of ways to make that degree cheaper if you apply merit-based, all that stuff. But then you also want to look at other costs of the MBA, like your living expenses while you're unemployed.
Speaker 2 (09:37.006)
and the opportunity cost of not working. for me, think my living expenses are going to probably come to between 40 and $50,000 for two years of rent in Ann Arbor, which is not a very cheap place to live, and food and books and gas and car insurance and all those things that people have to spend money on to be a person. And then the opportunity costs of not working, that can be a lot of money for people. All told, the tuition, the opportunity costs, living expenses, it can get up to
five or $600,000 for some people if they're making a lot of money before they come to the MBA. And on the low end, you're looking at still $300,000. So pretty expensive undertaking. Before we get into talking to Harry about his experience and talking about each of our takes on the MBA, let's talk about what some traditional MBA based careers are. So these are careers where people who have gotten MBAs have always done these careers.
than a mainstay, a staple of an MBA holder. Kind of like a structural engineer usually has a civil engineering degree. This is the same kind of thing. So consulting is one of those careers. It offers about a hundred and many thousand dollars in salary post-graduation as a base, plus a ton of bonus, plus a ton of opportunity to make a lot more money in a very short amount of time as you advance in that career. Consulting as a career could be described as adventures in a myriad of
complex business problems. Companies with big business problems, don't know how to solve. Hire consultants to come help them solve those problems in a very short amount of time under a lot of pressure. imagine flying to the middle of nowhere to work for an industry you don't have any experience in and being given a balance sheet and a bunch of employees to interview and trying to solve some very complicated business problem. That is what a consulting career can look like. What does that mean?
You get a lot of prestigious companies that you work with, Fortune 500 companies. You get on the job training, how to convince the CEOs or other C-suite members of these companies with nothing but a slide deck and your own speech. So that's a pretty cool job to have to do. The work is very intense. You're working at least 80 hours a week. You're traveling Monday through Thursday a lot of time, although that's changing recently with the remote and hybrid work things people are doing. Examples of companies that do this work are McKinsey, Bain,
Speaker 2 (12:02.958)
BCG, Alvarez and Marsal, Ernst & Young, KPMG, some of those big business companies that you've heard of that also have accounting arms. The brass ring in this career is that if you make partner, which can happen between 10 and 15 years after you start at one these companies after getting your MBA, you can make many millions of dollars in total compensation. And that makes a big difference in people's lives. That's wealth building income all of sudden. So a lot of people pursue an MBA,
as a way to find their way to that consulting career, hoping that pays off in that way for them. The other people spin out of the MBA consulting career and go work for a company they consulted for. If you go to work for, let's say Caterpillar, and you consult for them as a partner in McKinsey, and then Caterpillar says, hey, you're doing such great work for us, you understand our business, we just wanna hire you. That can often be a very lucrative proposition for people too.
I think you've done a great job explaining what an MBA is and why somebody might want to pursue it. Let's look at it from the other side of the coin for a minute. Sure. As an employer, I'm going to toss this question to Harry. As an employer, what would be the advantages or disadvantages of considering candidate that has an MBA versus a candidate that does not have an MBA?
Yeah, definitely. I would say for any company, someone with an advanced degree, whether it's a master's or an MBA, I think is going to be beneficial to the organization because of additional value that person could bring up to the organization. Like Brad mentioned, an MBA will definitely open the doors towards someone that has more knowledge about how businesses work, how businesses operate, what the strategies should be of a business. Someone with a technical master's from any specific degree will definitely have
but will add value to the organization in the sense of improving the way the business does something technical, whether it's engineering. If I'm working in the area of engineering consulting, then I'll have someone that has more knowledge on certain specific area. It could be a structural engineer that has a better knowledge on steel structures, or it could be a structural engineer that has more knowledge on concrete structures. Or if it's a construction, it could be someone that has knowledge on labor productivity. having people within our organization that have advanced degree,
Speaker 1 (14:26.39)
In my opinion, will always be an advantage to the organization. I do not see any disadvantage of just having someone with advanced knowledge. We will just simply add value. I think the important thing is to me for an advanced degree to really add value, I think it has to be combined with experience. So when you mix both of them and you have someone that has an advanced degree, but also has some good professional experience, that's where the real value added comes in. So what I would recommend organizations is hopefully try to find
people that have advanced degrees but that also have practical knowledge and they know how to implement that knowledge. They will always have a benefit in my opinion and the important thing is, and we could probably talk a little bit later in more depth about this, the leadership structure of organization is what is going to be very important, right? The organization has a very good leadership and by leadership really,
someone that cares about the employees within the organization thrive, someone that understands the responsibility that comes with leadership, which is really to lead people to make sure that they serve the clients the best way, but also that they're thriving on whatever they're doing. That's very important. You could have a company with a lot of MBAs, a lot of masters, but if you don't have a good leadership structure, the company may not survive.
That's really good input, Harry. Thank you. Do you think that a master's in business administration specifically is more or less value to an employer for people in leadership positions than a master's in a technical field?
Yeah, I would say they both have a place to be. But if we're just talking about an MBA, I think the MBA will definitely give you an advantage of how business operate, right? And what they have to do in order to be successful and in order to have sustainability, meaning being able to operate on the long term, right? That's where really the master's MBA would add value. I would say there's a part, there's a fine line that you have to be very careful.
Speaker 1 (16:32.94)
that is some of the, there's some famous book called From Good to Great that explains and analyzes some companies over a long period of time and they define what the practices were and what doing those practices wouldn't tell. But what has happened since the book was published until now is a lot of those companies went out of business. And what was happening is they were all missing the leadership.
aspect and by leadership, the human skills that you have to have if you're going to be in a leadership position. What happens is back since in the 70s, there was an agent called Milton Friedman that he even got maybe an award prize for what he published. And what he shifted the industry a lot from what he was in the earliest, the first 70 years of the last century. And he shifted that towards saying that the responsibility of the business
is just to increase the value of the shareholders. And a lot of companies initially accepted that. But however, what happened is that reduced the ability for these companies to stay alive for a long term because they started focusing just on short term results. And they just started looking at measurements that the company would succeed and they would meet their perly basis for revenue, for profit. And they forgot totally about the human aspect. And for example, Jack Welch,
to me is probably the big example of how applying that to the maximum could take a company and destroy it. Electric used to be one of the largest companies in the last century, And after many years of applying these type of business practices, which were just simply look at financial results and don't look at the human aspect of leadership, took the company down to the point that it is almost.
very small and non-existent. So you have to be very careful when you're going to a master's program to understand that not only I'm learning the technical aspects and the financial measures that I gotta have to make a company successful, but I also need to be mindful that I gotta have human skills in order to lead the organization to the next level.
Speaker 2 (18:44.142)
To jump off of that, think on behalf of Mr. Friedman, since he's not here, the argument would be that what has happened with shareholder supremacy is not what was intended by that argument. The idea that a company should primarily return value does not necessarily mean that it has to become a quarterly target machine and that you have to fire all the middle managers and fire left and right just to make those goals. I think it's...
What has happened in my opinion is that executives and consultants and other people have manipulated that that shareholder supremacy argument into saying making my quarterly goals is paramount and as long as I do that, the business must be running well. Like you're saying, Harry, that's not true. Having human skills to understand that firing employees to make quarterly earnings targets or to make the numbers and the books look good.
doesn't necessarily mean that firing was the right choice for the business. instead we take as managers a holistic view of what the right thing to do for the business is at every point and use economics and use the discounted cash flows to prove that keeping people here, even though we're going to miss our quarterly targets this year, is going to grow the business in the 10 years to come, then that's the best use of that argument. That look, I know we're going to miss these quarterly earnings now, but
shareholder value is being maximized if we do this. And that's a very tough argument to make. Nobody likes to make the arguments a harder argument to make than if we just fire these people now, Wall Street will be happy and the near term will be fine. Long term, who knows? We'll figure that out later. That's not our problem. That's the easy argument to make. But the argument gets made often. So there's certainly a pendulum swinging back in terms of that Milton Friedman shareholder supremacy misinterpretation, in my opinion.
I'm glad you guys brought that up. We recorded an episode a few episodes back that talked about the long game versus the short game in business. And as a job searcher, are you interviewing with a company that's got a long game view or a short game view of how they're running their business? And you can tell pretty quickly by how things are being done within an organization.
Speaker 3 (21:08.618)
what kind of view they have. And yeah, the short view, the quarterly returns is not going to make that company last long term. Absolutely. Brad, let me ask you a question. How much more can an employer expect to pay someone with an MBA?
I'm so glad you asked. hope that's a high enough number that justifies this degree for me. A couple of the traditional MBA post-grad careers like we already talked about consulting, investment banking, consumer packaged goods marketing, and venture capital private equity. Those are some of the most common. You can be looking to make about 200 grand a year in today's market. That was not true up until a couple of years ago. It was more like 175, 160 for most firms.
We've had a huge run up in demand for these post MBA grads and salaries have risen commensurately. But to go into some detail, what really you want to get out of the MBA in terms of compensation is to go work for these big groups and stick around long enough for the big bonuses to really make that big impact on your bottom line. Invest in banking people that are staying in five, six years, find themselves earning a lot of money very quickly. Quarter of a million dollar bonuses.
starting to come in after five or six years of your career there is not unheard of, especially in good years, because these companies just are able to create so much value in these periods of high &A transactions that it can be very lucrative.
I guess I would say it just depends on what industries you're willing to go work in and what you can get a job in, but it can pay off very quickly for lot of people.
Speaker 3 (22:55.47)
I don't know if Harry can answer this question or if you can answer this question. As a percentage, if I'm looking at a candidate with an MBA and I'm looking at a candidate without an MBA, what is the expected salary difference between the two? Just percentage wise, is it 10%, 20 %? Yes.
Assuming the person has the combination of experience and expertise, enough experience, but also the advanced degree, that's where really the value added comes in. And I would say, in my opinion, that could probably be around the 20, 25 % mark because of the value that people can bring to the organization. In my experience has been that the salary increase won't be something like automatic, that it's going to be more on the long term because
It takes time for companies to identify the value that you add to the organization. Or if you're on a new job, it takes time for the organization to know the value that you can bring to them. You come up with new ideas, you implement new ways of doing things. After you implement those things, it takes time to see really what the value added will be of those. And when you start implementing all those new ideas in your organization, in the way they do business, after a couple of years, that's when they start seeing really the benefit.
of having those implemented. And that's where the organization starts seeing the value that you have. And therefore, you're going to have more opportunities to grow within the organization, to be better compensated. In my opinion, it just takes a little bit of time for you to be able to display the additional value that you can bring to the organization. So it's not something that, hey, I'm going to graduate from my MBA next month, and then the following month, then now I'm working.
25 % more because I can add more value. I would say he's not that straightforward.
Speaker 2 (24:45.9)
Just to put a framework around that here, I think you're making a great point there. When we go to work in a company like a construction firm or an engineering firm or architecture firm and you have an MBA, you're not necessarily going to make so much more money that moment that you get hired on. What it's going to do is it's going to enable you to succeed and see the strategic battlefield for what it is in the business world. And it's going to help you get promoted faster. One of the ways that
anybody in their traditional career looks to achieve financially and in their careers to get promoted. And knowing the things that an MBA gives you, understanding marketing, understanding strategy, understanding how to read a profit and loss statement, those are the things that are going to accelerate your career, get you promoted faster. And that's what's going to end up making that MBA pay off for you. If you get promoted faster, if you achieve a leadership position at a big company, if you can go off and spin off into your own
entrepreneurial organization and capture that equity for yourself. Those are the ways that an MBA pays off in non-MBA career, such as
So that brings me to the question in the AEC world, does an MBA provide a competitive advantage compared to other industries? When most of us think of an MBA, we think of the finance world and some of the other industries that you mentioned where you're going to get half million dollar bonus. It's not so much the salary potential, but it's the bonus potential and stuff like that. The construction industry
Is a little bit different in that way. So do you think Harry that there is more or less or about the same competitive advantage for an MBA in the AEC market?
Speaker 1 (26:34.274)
Yeah, I would say it's probably slightly different in our architectural, engineering and construction industry. Because with an MBA, it's going to be different if you're going to consulting versus working in our industry. think it's different the level of compensations and all that. Like Brad mentioned some examples of the big four companies, like you mentioned Ernest and Yon, KPMG, Price Waterhouse, Coopers and Deloitte. are the big four. Those are companies that definitely employ people that...
not only have advanced degrees, but also have a lot of experience and a lot of technical expertise in a certain area. And they do because they have a lot of people that have basically this pool of people that have advanced degrees and they have the technical expertise and experience. That's why they're able basically to add a lot of value to their clients. And therefore, basically they have higher salaries than normal. In our industry, we're very technical. There's only a handful of people that are going to be really
focusing on the management aspect of the company and the direction where the company is going. So if that's an area you like, I would say definitely the MBA will help. But on the day to day of our industry, we tend to be very technical, where it's construction, engineering, design. So I would say also having an advanced degree on a technical area is going to add a lot of value. The reason why I say this is because I think it's very important for people that, in my opinion, to have
be able to identify before they go and pursue a master's, try to work for a few years and try to see which area you like. It's important that you are being fulfilled doing whatever you're doing. So it's important that you get a chance to work and experience, maybe work for a year or two in the engineering industry, work for a couple of years or two in the construction industry, work maybe even on the management side of the business, and try to identify what area really basically you make a click with.
Because it's important in your full field, you're doing something that you like, you'll definitely do better. And once you've tested what it is and you identify what you like, then you go ahead and say, yeah, I want to get an advanced degree on a technical aspect. could be engineering, project management, or I want to get an advanced degree on business because I want to really work on how business operates, what strategy do they follow. I think it's important that people identify what they like because sometimes when you just graduate from school, right, from your bachelor's, you haven't really worked.
Speaker 1 (28:56.812)
but you like certain concepts. But once you start working in that field, you realize, maybe this is not for me. And then you could switch areas. So it's important that people maybe have a lot of experience work. And once they identify an area that they like, then they go on pursue an advanced degree in that area. Because you're going to be doing something that you like. Besides the monetary aspect of your salary compensation, you're going to get fulfillment for doing something that you like and helping people that you like.
You bring up some great points there. I do go speak to a lot of graduating mechanical engineering students and I see a lot of apprehension from these folks that are about ready to graduate with their bachelor's in engineering and they are concerned that they're not competitive enough, that they don't have enough education. It's a little bit scary getting out there.
And a degree like mechanical engineering is so broad, you can do so much with it that I think that the potential of opportunity is a little bit overwhelming for some of these students. And so they get a little bit scared and they think I need to jump right into that master's degree in mechanical engineering. But as you say,
They don't have the practical experience yet. And from there, you could go to aerospace, you could do design, construction, you could do medical devices. There's a zillion ways that you could take that degree and go apply it. And without having an understanding yet of how it is that you want to do it, the potential is endless. So I think it's great advice to get out there.
with your bachelor's degree, start working, start figuring out what it is exactly that you want to do. I have been surprised many times in the construction industry with somebody that is owning and operating a mechanical engineering firm and their degree isn't something else entirely. Different kind of engineering. Sometimes it's not even in engineering.
Speaker 3 (31:10.014)
These people are very technically savvy. They could have fooled me. wasn't until I saw their their stamp that I realized that, their degree is actually civil or something else entirely. That's a great point. Brad, did you have anything to add to that?
Yeah, I think just as the most recent college graduate among us, who was recently in those shoes, is currently in those shoes of trying to find ways to differentiate yourself in a very competitive labor market. Some of the studies we're reading these days is we're approaching the end of the degree. About how competitive it is to get some of these jobs, it's very hard, especially for young people with the competition that they're facing coming out of college and even coming out of master's programs.
Differentiating yourself on the basis of signaling the way you can with an MBA by showing, hey, I'm committing to knowing a lot of stuff, to getting smart on some things that I may not have needed to for this degree, for this career, is a great signal to employers to say, I'm somebody who's thoughtful, I'm somebody who's gonna take the time to go learn, I'm somebody who's gonna be continuously improving myself. And...
That as a signal beyond how much the degree costs, beyond how difficult the degree is, means a lot to some employers. They can say, okay, this is not just another mechanical engineer. This is a mechanical engineer who's gonna live their whole life as somebody who continues learning. That was certainly something I had in mind when I took on this program. And what Harry said about trying to find things that interest you, I got to the point where sitting on projects and solving budget problems and convincing subcontractors to get aligned with our
needs and convincing owners that yes, you really do have to pay $2,500 per valve at this pharma job. It's realized that the majority of the value to be brought to construction was not coming from the activities I was doing. There was so much more work to be done in the pre-construction phase, in the planning phase, in the putting a team together to go be on that job and leading them. That's where the real value gets added.
Speaker 2 (33:17.806)
that made me curious about how I could contribute in that area. Turns out learning how to lead people, learning how to set up a profit and loss statement, learning how to run a business, learning how to market that business's service, that's where a lot of that stuff comes from when you try to go run a construction company or an architecture firm or an engineering firm. So that was why I came to get the MBA, to be able to do those things, to be able to solve those kinds of problems.
Thank you. I have a question. As somebody who's a little further on in their career, I think some of our listeners might be in the same boat. Is there a tipping point where the advantages to getting an advanced degree, an MBA or any other kind of advanced degree outweigh the advantages and the costs just don't make sense anymore? If I'm 40 or if I'm 50, is it too late? Harry?
Yeah, definitely. would say, my opinion, it's never too late. If that's something that you're really interested in, I think you should just go for it. There's a saying from Jim Brown, which is an old life coach. Maybe some of the listeners might be familiar with Tony Robbins, the life coach. Jim Brown was Tony Robbins' mentor, right? And Jim Brown used to say, if you want to improve your situation in life, you want to work harder on yourself than on your job.
So that means you got to take some sacrifices. You got to spend some time getting that advanced knowledge. In my opinion, to me, there's no time or age limit to do that. What you learn by itself from one of those programs, you just want to add so much value and it's just going to make you enjoy your work. And you're going to get more fulfilled because you're adding more value to the organization or whether you decide to do it late on your.
career and maybe you decide to go into academia or you decide to go into research, you're going to get fulfillment just by just basically adding value to the people around you. So in my opinion, there's no age limit. You will always find a way to add value. Right. I don't know what you think, but.
Speaker 2 (35:25.646)
Yeah, think jumping off of that, there's so many unquantifiable things that the MBA experience has given me. The three big things in the MBA that people talk about are the academics, the recruiting, and the social aspect of it. And I would say certainly that the academics of an MBA program are not as rigorous as the academics are of a technical program, like a master's of science. I have a master's of science in construction management effectively. It's called sustainable design construction. That was a really hard degree.
tons of math, tons of science, design this, solve this problem, very hardcore, very into the weeds in terms of the technical aspect. This degree, not so much. There are finance courses where you're gonna do projected cash flows, where you're gonna calculate the present value of a bond, where you can create a spreadsheet to model a leveraged buyout of a firm, and you can choose to take the advanced courses in finance, where you get pretty technical in the finance side of it.
but there are also some pretty fluffy classes. Marketing, some people think is fluffy. There are fluffy marketing classes, but there are also very rigorous marketing classes. I took a marketing class on how to do conjoint analysis, which is a very specific kind of data science, and that was fascinating. But there was also a class called leading a good life taught by a professor, just trying to help people understand what makes human beings tick and how to have a more fulfilling career and how to be a better person.
It's much more of a choose your own adventure in an MBA program in terms of the academics. So if you don't want to have an academically rigorous experience and you want to focus more on the recruiting and the social aspect, that avenue is certainly open to you. But you can also go pretty hardcore on the technical aspects of things in most programs at least. As far as the recruiting goes, just the things you learn by trying to pitch yourself to companies that have the greatest talent pool in the world.
That challenge in itself is a great teacher and trying to explain your story in under a minute, trying to convince somebody that you're worth what they're gonna pay you in that 60 minute interview is a good challenge for anybody to take on. So there's certainly benefit there. Plus the social aspect, the networking that you get in an MBA program, especially a full-time program or any program where you're part-time, but in a classroom with other people and working in groups with those people.
Speaker 2 (37:47.68)
invaluable. The people that I have met here, the relationships I've made, the experiences they've had, and then shared with me has been invaluable. I would not have traded this for the world. But when it comes to the money on it, like Dee was saying, at what age does this no longer make financial sense? You can do math on that. You can say, okay, I'm making this much money now. I might expect projects to make this much more money if I go get an MBA later on in my life. You can do the math and figure out that
as there are fewer and fewer years left in your career, the money makes less and less sense because there's less and less time for the gap between your no MBA wages and your yes MBA wages to grow. whether that's deciding factor for you depends entirely on the money for you. If you can afford to go get an MBA and you want to get an MBA to expand your horizons, to learn, to become a more well-rounded business person,
It's a great choice. If you can't afford to, unless the money works out for you, then that's the choice you gotta make. There are tons of avenues available to people in terms of applying for financial aid, especially the bigger schools, to assuage those financial constraints. it's certainly a decision everybody has to make on their own.
Yeah, I think there's the metrics of what is the internal rate of return and does this calc out and the left brain side of me wants to go to that. the relationship side, the camaraderie side, the networking side, I'd like to ask Harry, what, that seems like, it seems like a very tight cohort that you would be in one of these programs and that those relationships.
can last and potentially be leveraged and helpful as time goes on. What's been your experience with that, Harry?
Speaker 1 (39:43.334)
yeah, definitely. I think that's a very good aspect. I think the social aspect, I think to me in general, is just getting a bachelor's or a master's program. think one of the big values that adds to the individual is the fact that it really incorporates them into society. Even for young kids that have a link with their parents and they just go to college, the fact that they're just going to start becoming independent and they need to be responsible for their own, that's just...
add so much value as probably the degree itself. And now if I go to a master's program and maybe taking my case as an example, I created so many good connections with professors that I still meet and I still reach out. Some of them became like mentors to me. I don't live in Arizona, I in California, but when I go back to Arizona, I try to meet with some of my professors and maybe set up lunch and try to catch up from our personal lives, but also maybe get some recommendations on a technical question that I may have. So those really
relationships that I built become really invaluable. You meet people that could really make big changes in your life. And at the same time, some of the colleagues that you work with, some of the fellow students could become clients in the future, or they could become a service provider in the future, or we could become colleagues. So those relationships are really, I think, in my opinion.
there's a saying that you are the five closest friends you keep. And if that's true, then the friends that you make in the NBA program are going to improve you. You're going to find yourself among some of the smartest people you ever met, some of the most driven people you've ever met, some of the most well-rounded and variably experienced people you've ever met. I know people here who have served in the military. know here people here who have been venture capitalists, who have started their own businesses and come here, who are starting their own businesses as they come out of the NBA.
It's just a very exciting group of
Speaker 1 (41:34.554)
Yeah, definitely something that you do not realize because once we start working and we start implementing what we knew, especially maybe whether I have a bachelor's or I'm done, you start getting really very busy on your day to do activities. And sometimes maybe you become good at something and then you're successful and then you keep doing what you're doing. And when you take a pause and you just go and get an advanced degree and then what you realize is, my God.
how little do I know and how much there is to learn, right? And I think that's, I think a very good aspect that I like about getting advanced degrees, or even if you start to do, if you like a certain topic and you like to do some research on your own and you like to read books about certain aspect, just having that level of curiosity about what is out there, you realize, I really know very little. There's so much there to learn. So,
It brings that curiosity. start learning about different topics, whether it's an informal degree or whether it's informal research that you're doing. And then you start absorbing that knowledge. I'm a very passionate reader. I have taken the author's maybe 30 years of research and publications to publish that book. It takes me a month to read a book. Within a month, I get to read some of the effort that someone spent 30 years of their life just doing some research. So I could just learn so much, right?
by doing so. So I would say I would encourage people not only to pursue advanced degrees, for whatever reason, their financial position doesn't allow them to do that. Just be passionate, be curious, start reading as many books, listening to podcasts on a certain aspect and try to absorb that knowledge and that wisdoms from that people that you could apply within whatever area that you're doing.
Absolutely. For anybody listening who's just thinking, my gosh, there's no way I can afford to do this. I'm excited. I like want to go look at some MBA programs myself right now. I love all this intellectual stuff. I love to learn. I'm a very passionate learner. But there's definitely some dollar costs here that might be out of range for people. Brad mentioned that there's a lot of scholarships available and financial assistance that's available. There's also the auto didactics.
Speaker 3 (43:56.726)
The person that self taught and Harry brings that up is that look, even if for whatever reason your personal situation, whether it's cost or it's just time, whatever the issue is that you can't go do this or maybe you can't go do this right now. Look at what you can do. There's always something you can do.
Is it just reading? I take random classes here and there. I'll go through stages where I'll say, you know what, I'm going to go get another degree and I'm all in for a couple of years to get that next degree. And then I back off for a little bit because I need a break or because I have another thing that's going to take up my time. And then I just find books to read or I find one class to take. I find different ways. And I absolutely do what Brad said is you surround yourself with people.
that are smarter than you. Every single person I hang around with is smarter than me because they teach me so much. So no matter where you are in your career, no matter where you are in your life, there is an option for you. And maybe some people are just not very good test takers. They're not very good at being in school. That's okay. There's still other ways that you can learn.
So I encourage everybody who's listening to find something new to learn today and absolutely find a way to continue to learn. Brad, I'm going to ask you, do you have any closing comments for our audience today?
I think one of the things that stood out to me about my MBA experience, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this Harry, was that it varied drastically from my Masters of Science experience in that the dominant culture in a scientific degree was that of everybody is in it together to do the work and to learn through doing the work. And if you don't do the work in a group project, you're ostracized, you're a loser for not
Speaker 2 (45:58.126)
pulling your weight. In the MBA, especially the full-time MBA program, which is predominantly people that drop whatever career they had to come to school and then get a new career, recruiting starts in August when you get on campus. There's no break. There's no take a couple classes, figure out what you like. You have to know what you're doing. And most people have a very good idea of what they're going to try to do to make this work out with them financially, to make as much money as they can. So the dominant culture becomes
Recruiting is number one. If you make time for school, great. But if you are not spending every waking moment trying to get that MBB offer or that investment banking offer or that venture capital offer that you're dreaming of, you're wasting your time in a full-time MBA program. That's a lot of the culture. So when it comes to group projects, especially in the first year of the academics, people say, yeah, sorry, I can't make that. I'm recruiting at this event. Or I can't do my part in this assignment. I'll get you next time.
In the second year, as people are getting their offers, as things are calming down, I'm finding that to be less and less the case. But some people just use an excuse. The academics don't really matter for the MBA program. So why would I even try? not going to go part of it. I'm going to go have fun. I'm going to go travel. I'm going to go do other things. And the economics of it are such that it's an incentive structure. The academics really don't matter at these full-time MBA programs. The grades are not reported.
full-time MBA programs have a grade non-disclosure policy, meaning that they do not, if a company asks, share your grades. I have no GPA. The federal government, my future employer, is going to ask. They're pretty strenuous about that kind of thing. They get to play their trump card. Or the federal government, we need to know what your grades were. But McKinsey, Bain, BCG, the big investment banks, Sequoia Capital, they do not care what your grades were at the MBA program. They just care that you went to your MBA and that you interviewed.
And then they... Yeah, if you get the... So it becomes a very interesting environment where if you're a bookworm, if you're an academic person, you need to put that part of yourself into that space knowing that not everyone's gonna pull their weight, that you're gonna do the work for the sake of doing it for yourself, not for the sake of doing it with other people who wanna do it as badly as you. But the social aspect, the networking aspect,
Speaker 3 (47:53.55)
It's a pass no pass. I had no idea.
Speaker 2 (48:22.658)
That I have surprisingly found people to be super supportive on. People that worked in consulting before they came to this school were like, yeah, I'll give you an hour and half of my time to teach you how to interview for this job. I will review your resume. I will spend time with you to help you write your cover letter. They will go to any length to help you in those aspects. But a lot of people just don't see the value in academics here and don't put the time forward in that. But I'd love to hear your inputs, Harry. Was that the same way in your part-time program where there were people that were just like,
hey, I've got kids, I've got a job, I'm not putting this time into this, somebody else needs to pull their weight here for me. What was your experience?
Yeah, it definitely is very depending on the situation of the people. When I went into my program, there were people from all ages. There were people relatively young who got their degrees recently. There were people that were maybe half way into their professional life. And there were older people that have lots of kids. I remember one of my friends from Arizona, he liked eight families. So he had eight kids and he was probably my age. He was like 33, maybe at the time. All kinds of backgrounds. What I was going to...
try to add maybe as you mentioned, closing comments, I would say is, I wanna add two things. One is just to give you a couple of examples of how and when you can decide whether you wanna pursue a degree and whether you wanna do it in something managerial, such an MBA or something more technical. And also maybe give some thoughts about what we're talking about. How else besides getting a master, how you could improve your knowledge. In my case, when I was...
doing my civil engineering undergraduate. I thought, and I love structural engineering, and I thought that I was going to be a structural engineer. And I even, right after I graduated, I started maybe researching university because I was thinking, maybe I'm just going to get a master's in structural engineering design. And then I started working while I was doing that, I was working on the engineering side. It was an environmental engineering company, was not structural engineering. But then I realized after working, being a year there, that the engineering aspect
Speaker 1 (50:20.276)
was not as exciting to me. And I ventured into moving into a construction and that's when it became really exciting. And I'm glad that I didn't pursue that degree right away and I got a chance to work for some years. And then I went and got a master's in construction management, which was something that I liked better and it allowed me to add value in the organization on that aspect. And the good thing was like an MBA program with emphasis in construction. I still got some of the benefits of an MBA program, but I also got some of the benefits of
getting into a technical aspect. A different case, for example, my girlfriend is the total opposite to me. Her undergraduate degree was in business and after she became a CPA and she started working the first few years of her career for one of the big form for consulting firms. And she started working with clients that were in the manufacturing industry or clients that were in the software as a service industry. realized that
if she wanted to do better on her job, she needed to understand the technical aspects. So then she went and got a technical master's, which was a master's in project management. She spent two years doing that. And after that, think Brad mentioned this earlier, one of the firms that she was consulting offered her a job to move for that organization. And when the fact that she had gotten that degree, that advanced degree on project management, allow her
to work for a company that is a server, as a service company, a SaaS company. And she's now a senior executive of that company. So she took basically initially the management aspect, and then she combined it with a technical aspect and gave her a very good, made her very valuable for that organization. And the last thing that I wanted to add is for people that are interested into learning more about advanced.
knowledge in the area of business like an MBA and maybe you do not have the ability to engage into one of those programs. I learned this from Jim Quick, which is one of the coaches on learning. He says that there are three phases for you to acquire knowledge. Make sure that knowledge stays with you. The first part is acquiring the knowledge. The second part is applying the knowledge. And the third part is teaching that knowledge to others. When you know those three only in specific area, that's when you really
Speaker 1 (52:37.486)
that knowledge really becomes very accessible for you. would recommend for example readers listeners that they could read books for example from Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker has a lot of very good books in the areas of business management. Peter Drucker is really the founder of modern management. A lot of the topics that we see in modern business degrees are based on the research that Peter Drucker did as far as
basically defining the concepts of business administration. And if you want to know something about more hands-on, more technical, Edward Deming, who is considered basically the father of the lean manufacturing principles, he has some very good books as well. And he's more hands-on into trying to improve basically processes as a whole. So those two authors will give you a lot of...
knowledge and expertise that you could just learn, then you can apply. And after you do that, then you can teach it to others and improve that knowledge for yourself and for the organization that you work.
That's fantastic advice, Harry. Thank you so much. How can people reach out to you, Harry?
Yeah, definitely. As I mentioned before, I'm very passionate about leadership. I came to realize that leadership on any organization, whether it's a profit or nonprofit organization, is very important aspect. And you could have the most and the best technical experts. But if you don't have good leadership within the organization, you're going to have a long-term success. Because of that, I decided to open a newsletter in the area of leadership, which I published on LinkedIn. I'm going to start publishing some of those.
Speaker 1 (54:17.504)
articles that I write about on YouTube. But for now, they can go and find me on LinkedIn. They can just look for my profile. That's where people can reach out to me. Thank you.
Okay, so go to LinkedIn, find Harry Reynolds and subscribe to his newsletter. I just wanted to comment on a personal note. You talked about people taking years and years, decades even, to amass knowledge and publish it in a book. I just did that.
No.
Self-paced sustainability, reducing impact on your terms. This book has been a 20 year saga for me. I started writing the first story in this book over 20 years ago and I decided that 2025 was the year that it was going to get published. It's super easy, guilt-free sustainability. You can find it on Amazon, either in ebook or in printed book, Self-paced Sustainability by DM Davis. I can tell you as an author who has spent
years and years amassing knowledge, experimenting, doing all those things and putting it into a book to share that with people. It's a massive feat and you can take those years and years of information and it's 12 chapters. It's shocking when you condense that information down, like you said, can be read in a few weeks or a month. It's a humbling experience to
Speaker 3 (55:47.256)
condense that information down into chapters and put it in print. So I feel the pain of all those other authors who've done that same thing. Thank you so much, Harry, for joining us today. And Brad, as usual, wonderful contributions. You guys have inspired me. The one thing I think we can all agree on, that in order to be leaders in our given marketplaces, we have to continue to learn. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks. We'll talk to you next time.
Watch us on YouTube at YellowstoneProfessionalEd.co. Don't forget to like, share, and follow us. Apple, Spotify, everywhere you listen to your podcasts. You can email us with questions, comments, and suggestions at heyd at management under construction, H-E-Y-D-E-E to get me or Brad at managementunderconstruction.com.
