Episode 8 - David Langille - Opportunity costs, feedback, the 3 questions people ask you in an EMBA!

TheBREWCAST

This is an exciting episode for me because Dave was one of the key people that helped me through the decision process when I was considering my MBA, and I’m pumped to share some of his knowledge with you. Dave has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, a master’s in petroleum engineering and has over 10 years of work experience as a petroleum (reservoir) engineer. He talks about how doing an MBA is “finishing school for an engineer.” We talk about the EMBA program he completed in terms of the structure, and the value proposition of getting two MBAs (Queen’s and Cornell). Not only does this add a US component to the expansion of the network, it never hurts to have an Ivy league school on your transcript! We dive into my favourite topic and one of the most critical for the decision to take an MBA - opportunity costs. I’m glad another engineer came on the show to back-up Raphael (Episode 2), and Dave calls me out for “tech shaming.” Fair enough! Throughout the program, Dave tracked every hour he put into his MBA. At the end of the program, this ended up being about 21 hours per week on average. If you are thinking about an MBA, consider where the 21 hours a week are going to come from. What are your trade-offs going to be? This discussion is also a great follow up to the previous episode on the cost, because we really get into the value and investment: • How much of the return on investment is real and how much of it is intangible? • The often vague the correlation between career progression and completing an MBA can be in the first few years. However, we do agree that it is directly correlated to your performance. Some other highlights from the episode: • Dave talks about the three questions you will likely be asked, especially in an EMBA: Where’d you do it? Why’d you do it? And who paid for it? • The 5 major things Dave got out of his EMBA • We explore the idea of creating your own MBA • Why Dave is an advocate for having more work experience before doing an EMBA. Finally, some of the best advice from Dave when considering an MBA is to think about these 2 questions: 1) Why you are doing it and 2) What is the end game? A huge thanks to Dave for being on the show and sharing some of his wisdom. Talking with Dave was extremely helpful for me when I was going through the decision process, and it’s great to have some of these thoughts out on TheBREWCAST for you to listen to as well. Enjoy the show!