Summer School 1: Planet Money goes to business school

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Find all episodes of Planet Money Summer School here.

Planet Money Summer School is back! It's the free economics class you can take from anywhere... for everyone! For Season 4 of Summer School, we are taking you to business school. It's time to get your MBA, the easy way!

In this first class: Everyone has a million dollar business idea (e.g., "Shazam but for movies"), but not everyone has what it takes to be an entrepreneur. We have two stories about founders who learned the hard way what goes into starting a small business, and getting it up and running.

First, a story about Frederick Hutson, who learned about pain points and unique value propositions when he founded a company to help inmates and their families share photos. Then, we take a trip to Columbia, Maryland with chefs RaeShawn and LaShone Middleton. Their steamed crab delivery service taught them the challenges of "bootstrapping" to grow their business. And throughout the episode, Columbia Business School professor Angela Lee explains why entrepreneurship can be really difficult, but also incredibly rewarding, if you have the stomach for it.

(And, we should say, we are open to investors for "Shazam but for movies." Just sayin'.)

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:07.0	That bell can only mean one thing.
0:15.6	It's time for Planet Money Summer School.
0:18.1	Whenever the temperature rises and the beach beckons, we show up with a batch of easy lessons
0:23.5	to make those lazy afternoons a wee bit more productive.
0:27.4	In summer's past, Planet Money Summer School has taught us to think like an economist
0:31.6	and invest like a boss.
0:34.3	This year, I think we're ready for graduate school.
0:38.4	Oh yeah, a master's in business administration, an MBA the easy way.
0:45.1	I should trademark that.
0:47.0	I'm your host, Robert Smith.
0:49.2	Now some might be thinking, Robert, I don't want to spend my precious summer doing hostile
0:55.7	takeovers of underperforming businesses.
0:58.4	I want to fire up my barbeque, not fire all my workers.
1:02.4	Why do I need a cut rate MBA?
1:05.5	Once upon a time, I thought the same thing.
1:07.9	I'm a reporter.
1:08.9	I teach journalism at Columbia and yet I got an MBA.
1:13.6	And I found that what business school does is very similar to our jobs here at Planet
1:17.6	Money.
1:18.6	You try to understand the nuts and bolts of how a business works.
1:21.9	The principles that drive this fierce competition for our attention and our dollars.
	...

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