Ben Laverack

Why did you decide to study an MBA?

I decided to study an MBA because I was in a leadership position and I wanted to take that even further. Additionally, I was also thinking about starting up my own private practice and in order to do that I wanted to have a very sound understanding of how business actually worked and how I could actually make myself move forward in my career, as not only a private psychologist but also as a business person.

Would you attribute any of your career success to having done the MBA?

I would attribute my professional development and my private practice to actually doing this MBA because of the fact I had no idea how to run a small business, such as my own, without all this knowledge. So, I think most of my success so far in my own private practice has come from doing the MBA.

I’ve acquired a lot of knowledge in a lot of different areas, including marketing as well and how to market myself as a private psychologist and as a small business. So I think definitely the MBA has been very beneficial in helping me to move forward in my career.

Looking back on your MBA journey, what were the best parts and greatest challenges for you?

Some of the best parts about doing an MBA was actually being able to study in my own time. Although I was studying in my own time, I did have to try and manage my time very effectively; otherwise, it would kind of get on top of me.

One of the things you do learn over time is that if you are able to remain structured in the way in which you study and the way in which you meet all the assessment tasks, you will succeed. But if you don’t then you will find yourself falling behind. So, I found that there was flexibility for me to be able to study when I wanted but I needed to time manage quite a bit.

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