6 career moves that are worth more than an MBA

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If your career plan is to become a hedge fund trader or play some other role in the financial services business, you probably need an MBA just as the price of admission.

If that's you, don't bother reading this post.

For everyone else, you may be considering an MBA program as a way to increase your business acumen, enhance your personal brand, and make yourself more competitive.

If that's the case, there may be some cheaper and better alternatives.

Let's run some quick numbers.

Tuition and fees for a two year degree program at a top private college will cost you about $120,000. If you earn $50,000 a year, you won't be making $100,000 during that time. If your living expenses are $45,000 a year, you'll still need to pay that $90,000.

In other words, an MBA from a top business school could cost you as much as $320,000. Invest that amount at an annual return of 5%. and you'll have roughly $2.3 million when you retire in 40 years.

With an MBA, of course, you will earn more in the future. According to New Accountant, an MBA will earn a CFO an estimated $463,440 in extra lifetime income. But that's only an extra $11,586 a year, which compounds over 40 years to only $1.6 million.

Of course, if you get your MBA from a lower tier school, tuition and fees will be less, and you may get your current employer to pay some of your costs. Still, even if you earn the degree in your spare time, there's still lost opportunity cost.

With that in mind, here are six career moves that cost lest than earning an MBA but will probably do more to advance your career and make you more money, too:

1. Develop strong sales skills.

Selling is the heart and soul of capitalism. Without selling, there can be no exchange of money or goods except by robbery or taxation. I think it's fair to say that having great sales skills is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Just look at the real world. Mediocre performers who know how to sell always beat out exceptional performers who don't. As for exceptional performers who are exceptionally good at selling-they're the ones who win BIG in the business world.

That's especially true for entrepreneurs. You may have the greatest idea in the business world, but if you can't sell that idea, you won't and can't attract investors, customers, or talented employees.

It's true for everyone else, too. Finding a great job always involves selling yourself and your skills. And being successful at any job means constantly selling the value of the services that you're providing.

Weirdly, though, only a small percentage of MBA programs have even a single course in selling. Many of the most prestigious ignore selling completely under the long-discredited belief that Marketing makes selling unnecessary.

Fortunately, there are hundreds of sales training programs available to corporations, some of which also cater to individuals. There's also books, videos, and online training galore, much of it free.

2. Gain fluency in another language.

While this may seem like a lot of work, remember we're comparing the effort to full years at a business school. The average businessperson should have no problem achieving fluency in two years spending six hours a day.

Since China increasingly dominates the world economy and is now world's largest manufacturer of consumer goods, the obvious language choice for an upcoming, forward-looking businessperson is Mandarin.

Conversing with Chinese business partners in their native language gives you a distinct advantage over competitors who must use translators. And it certainly gives your personal brand a big bump in China. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg.

3. Learn to write code.

Learning to code has become a bit of a business fad, but I can vouch for the fact that it's a skill that can positively ripple though everything that you do in business:

First, coding anything significant requires logical and organized thinking. It forced you to break down something complex into smaller, simpler discrete chunks, which is the essence of time and resource management.

Second, you quickly discover that it's easier to create and update a subroutine than to update bits of code that do the same thing in multiple places in the program. A well-design program thus resembles a well-designed organization.

Third, programming languages (like all languages) influence the way people think. Quite aside from the technical jargon, understanding a technical discipline makes it much easier to understand and empathize with engineers.

Finally, every business crutches on software from the supply chain system to the apps on customers' phones. For today's decision-maker, not understanding code is like a 19th century railroad magnate not knowing how a steam-engine works.