Re: That's very odd...

> I have taken many undergraduate business courses in college and I find it
> hard to believe that Rudl's course is anywhere near a college level
> business course.

Oh, it isn't. But it goes into the same concepts that I had to learn, including niche marketing, test marketing, understanding the needs of the market and the environment, determining when to cut your losses, etc, etc. He includes quite a bit about what I learned about customers and consumers in my courses.

> I have found college level business courses to be very
> centered on corporate business and highly impractical for small and
> home-based businesses. In all the college level business courses I have
> taken, I have yet to apply any of the info I learned to small business in
> the real world.

It's a pity you were so badly educated. The business school at Texas Tech University was wonderful -- although hardly a world-class school. If you'd had the marvelous profs that I studied under, I feel very certain that you'd have a MUCH different view of business degrees!

Everything they taught turned out to be important, from understanding corporate structures (and learning how to get around in them and where the loci of power are) to micro and macro economics. Heck... the stuff I learned in economics even helped in running a local organization, and the leadership strategies and styles was immensely valuable (both in seeing what the leaders were doing (and not doing) and learning how to do better.) They covered a number of business and investing models, too.

But Rudl didn't cover leadership and economics (not necessary) but markets and marketing. His strategies are sound and workable and don't rely on "miracle occurances" but rather on stuff that's been proven to work (like "the customer really wants to know 'what is in it for ME?'")