Salaried position vs. your own business

The deeper I am into my MBA course, the clearer I understand for myself that starting and running a business is... well, a serious business ( I am waiting for those "doh"s..)
No, seriously, if , in perfect or near-perfect competition all you can count on is so called "normal" profit (by definition, it's enough profit to attract capital investment to your business), i.e. NO economic (that is, real in lay terms) profit, all this means to you is that you're just trying to keep your business running without slipping way into the red/bankruptcy etc.
That's it. (and, by the way, that's most small- and medium-size businesses, incl. doctor's practices). And all this comes at a great expense in terms of time/effort investments. ( and, obviously, money). It's a rat race , too, just a different kind. ( and I skip all this silliness about "being your own boss" because you are always under some sort of constraint- most of the time, financial, so it's not like you can do whatever you feel like). Becoming a near-monopolist (FedEx or UPS) has a bit of an entry barrier, like $2 bln.
So one needs to be truly passionate about it to start it and continue doing it.
On the other hand, if you have what you think is a brilliant idea (Facebook?), I would probably just go for it. Because I see it as one of the few (if not only) chances of making it big.
So... what do you think?

MBA for doctors, part 2

So I'm now well into my 2nd year of the MBA experience. So far, so good, the trouble is that I cannot really imagine what the experience would be had I've been at some renowned school, like Kellog or Wharton.
But the courses are useful- Corp. Finance was the most interesting, and before that -Management was very useful in practical sense ( since now my position is somewhat managerial; I will try to write on the art of managing people some other time).
So far, my understanding of how bonds/stocks are valued improved quite a bit. However, I don't think it will have any influence on how my retirement money are invested. My notion of passive, low-cost investing was strenghthened by seeing just how much time and effort a dilligent professional investor must spend to find suitable investments, and often she or he still picks a loser!

MBA for doctors

Like I said in my previous post, I enrolled into executive MBA a little over a year ago.

Good things:

1.they didn't ask me to take GMAT ( I would've failed miserably),

2.the tuition is not atrocious since it's a relatively obscure albeit real, as opposed to online, school of business ( consider this- the renowned schools like Kellogg and NYU ask for about 120k/2 yrs...)

3. The pace is not frenetic

4. There are several "concentrations", including Marketing, Health Care Administration, and Finance.

5. I'm in "fast track", 48-credit, program

The bad things:

1. You get what you paid for. Sometimes I feel I know more than a certain professor.

2. The new style teaching means asking your students to buy a particular textbook, and then in class use the PowerPoint slides from the same publisher, with identical color scheme and content. Good for teachers- in such case, no need to prepare for the class. Bad for students since the class doesn't add anything beyond a textbook material.

3. Too much reliance on group assignments.

Now, for the reasons to do an MBA... Probably in a different post.

1 year later

Not writing for more than a year deserves serious "splaining". Well, there you have it: I change my old place of employ, having moved a bit up on a food chain.

Also, enrolled in one of those executive MBA programs. Not sure what to select for a concentration, but for a time being thinking of Finance.

And tried to wage an unsuccessful attempt for a change with fringe benefit committee at my new place, failing miserably to show them that they're getting ripped-off with those enormous 401k agent fees.

Also read some good books, one of them by John Bogle "Don't count on it!"