The Disruptors: ‘An Entire MBA In 1 Course’ — And More

Q&A WITH CHRIS HAROUN, AUTHOR OF 101 CRUCIAL LESSONS THEY DON’T TEACH YOU IN BUSINESS SCHOOL

How has coronavirus affected you? Have you seen a boost in signups for all these programs?

Yeah. I did. And I felt guilty. I saw a big bump up in March, and so what I did was, I gave away a million courses for free all over the world on my Udemy platform and other platforms.

My dad’s from Egypt originally, and he left in ’67 to come to Canada. But I worry about places like Egypt, where there’s a big congregation of people living in small places, along the Nile, for example. And so about 70,000 people in Egypt signed up and then the rest, the other 930,000, whatever, all over the world, every country. And I had to actually hire a couple more people just to answer the questions, to help me, because we were flooded with it. But it’s the right thing to do, because we’re all in this together.

So with such a big surge in signups and interest, how are you running this? How many people work for you now?

I have a couple of people that help out part-time and full-time, helping me with questions. I have a full-time chief creative officer that helps with the videography. So I’ve got a great team and they’re scattered all over the world as well. I have people in Toronto, the guy that does my promotional trailer is in the Czech Republic. It’s been fun.

Can I ask you to walk through a typical week for you, if there is such a thing? Monday through Friday, when you’re not talking to Poets&Quants, you must never sleep.

I used to work in venture capital, hedge funds, Goldman Sachs, and stuff. And I was never happy. And I thought I was depressed. And the only times I was happy was when I was mentoring other people or helping other people. And so I started teaching at night and it gave me this unbelievable euphoric feeling to be able to help people. And so I don’t see it like a job. I see like a passion. I love it.

So my work is as follows. Sunday is a day of rest for the family, always. I don’t do any work. But Monday and Tuesday I teach my MBA students live in the Platinum and Gold programs in two different time zones. So time zone one on Monday and Tuesdays is 9 a.m. our (Pacific) time. And that goes for three to five hours. And then time zone two on Mondays and Tuesdays is from 4 p.m. to whenever, it’s usually four or five hours long or whatever it is. So that’s time zones one and two. And I’ve got 41 countries represented in the Platinum program now. So I need to service my students all over the world.

Wednesday what I do is, I record three hours of new content for the following Monday. Thursday, I have my general weekly webcast on YouTube. If you’re having trouble sleeping, I promise you this will help you. That’s from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. The webcast is on week 96 now. At 11:15 a.m. on Thursdays, for a couple of hours, I do MBA students-only office hours. And then I have just a ton of one-on-ones with students that last 20 minutes each, which is why I’ve got a special timer. It looks like it’s from a hockey stadium.

And then on Fridays I record more content for the next week. And so I have six hours of brand-new lessons each week. Yeah, it’s fun. So after this, I’m actually recording a lesson for next Tuesday on venture capital. I have all the props over here, and I’m a bit of a nerd, but it’s fun for me. And then I vlog every day, you can go there if you’re interested.

It was a while ago, but how much of the experience of your Columbia MBA still informs what you’re doing? How much of that do you still return to when you’re designing these courses, for example?

Well, I found that when I graduated from business school, all my friends and I that have MBAs in finance and friends of mine that went to Harvard and other schools — by the way, I got rejected from Harvard. And two-thirds of HBS is BS. But you can’t say that about Haroun Business School. I’m just kidding. I’m totally kidding. Sort of.

But I found that when I graduated and when my friends graduated, the most important lessons in business, they just didn’t teach us in school. Like how to interview, how to sell, how to get a job, how to manage our own money. We know how to manage other people’s but we might not our own.

Years after business school when I was in my thirties, I called my buddies that graduated with me and I said, “How does a mortgage work?” They’re like, “I don’t know. I asked my mom.” So they don’t teach you the most important skills. The most important skillset in business is selling. That’s what a great entrepreneur and CEO does.

And so it was frustrating. I learned this on the fly when I worked at Goldman, in venture capital, in other industries, in my own companies. And then I started teaching during the evenings and volunteering. This is what made me do this.

I’m on the board of this great not-for-profit in East Palo Alto, where the high school graduation rates are like 40%. It’s called the LEMO Foundation. And we give full-ride scholarships to students to go to high school, the best schools, private schools, all that stuff. My kids are in public school, but we can give full rides. And the issue with east Palo Alto — and in many places in the world — is there are a lot of deadbeat fathers. I don’t believe in such things as a deadbeat mother. I know that’s opinionated, but only 40% of people have high school degrees there. And so what I did was, I started teaching them on the weekends. And this whole MBA thing on Udemy was accidental.

One Saturday I was teaching them, and there were 17 students. And I made a degree for them in early January of 2016. And these kids were unbelievable, they were so focused. And this event really changed my life and made me want to just teach forever. And then what happened was the next day I taught them over 12 hours, and I called it “An Entire MBA in 1 Day.” And then I put up a camera at home and just recorded myself. And it took off.

And I just wanted to help. That’s all. It was never about money. I think if you chase money, you lose your dreams and your money. But if you chase your dreams, as long as you’re willing to fail at least a couple of times — and I certainly have more than a couple of times — then good things can happen.