so you want to know what it's like to be a Harvard Business School student well I did too so I reached out to my good friend Jay who's the founder of a multi-million dollar business and an HBS student that's him right there jumped on a plane to Boston and followed him around for a full HBS day in the life people come from all over the world to study at HBS to learn how to build successful companies many of them started their careers at top Banks consultancies private Equity firms Tech businesses and Global corporates although there are people from the military in a range of past occupations some of them like Jay already have their own businesses Jay is the co-founder of opfx so if you hear us talking about that later in the video we're talking about the 50 plus person business J started buying and renting construction equipment in Austin Texas where he's from so I'm definitely Keen to understand how Jay balances life at HBS with being the CFO of a business that recently raised 65 million dollars in growth financing other people at HBS are looking to found startups or just learn how to run or advise big companies and today we're going to see an early morning three HBS classes life around the stunning HBS campus and business meetings so let's find out what a day at Harvard Business School is really like foreign [Music] yesterday was legs and core today is just going to be an upper body yeah I usually wake up this freaking hourly yes on class day is the only way to exercise do classes do all the work is to just get up early and is obviously [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so Jay how did you get into HBS so I'd say it's a three-step process and I'd break it down into one taking the test to preparing your application and then three the interviews so the first thing you need to do is you have to take the GMAT or the GRE I did a really aggressive just crash course get the GMAT done some people will study for a couple months you then will prep your application you have to write a personal statement which is you know your essay and that's about two pages that might take some time you might want to have somebody read it so assuming that your test is good and your application is good you'll be invited to an interview I think the numbers are like 20 of people who apply get invited to an interview you do an hour long or half hour long interview and about 50 of the people move on and get accepted from that round and what is the HBS program actually like like how long and what do you actually do when you're there so it's a 21-month program the first nine months it's on your classic American academic calendar so fall spring your first year fall you you take five required courses which are accounting Finance leadership marketing and then operations management the second semester the spring of your first year you take business government International economy which is a global macroeconomics course you take a strategy course you take an ethics course you take Finance two and then you also take entrepreneurial management so those are your 10 required courses that you take during your first year you're in the exact same seat with the exact same 90 people called your section for the entirety of that first year so once you've done those two semesters you'll go into a summer break where people will go do an internship the school has great resources to help you find an internship you can start a business it's required that you work though in some sort of capacity quite a few do Consulting banking but there's other routes and then when you come back from your summer work you do what's called the elective curriculum that's your second year and you're required to take 10 courses five each semester I'd say the first year is more about breath the second year is about it's about getting into whatever you want to study and spending a lot of time on it so if you're running a business like I am or starting a business like some others are there's classes that you take that support that activity so you won't have as much work in the class but you have to present deliverables on how you're building your business if you're really into real estate There's real estate Finance classes There's real estate private Equity classes if you're really into the environment or sustainability there's classes for that if you're really into Finance there's classes for that so you can tailor your second year experience to be whatever it is you want to be and you control your schedule quite a bit more once you've done those two years you finished you graduate the course is over and you go out into the Working World studying at HBS how many hours a day are you actually in school for and studying you so your first year you're in class five or six hours a day every day of the week including your study group time which is mandatory you're also doing two to three case readings a night and those are probably 20 25 pages each so depending on how quick you read how quickly you digest could be as little as 30 minutes to 45 minutes or a few hours and then you come to class prepared to argue your point in the first year the second year there might be days where you don't have to be on campus or maybe you only have one class on campus so you really get to control your schedule a lot in the second year it's really hard to give a definitive answer of how much time you're spending on campus and how much homework you have because it's so broad on what you can do foreign so on my right is Aldridge Hall which is where all your first year classes are and quite literally you will sit in the same classroom for the entirety of the year right across to my left is a lot of the on-campus housing it really is a residential campus so the vast majority of students live on campus and just walk across the street to come to class I don't I live downtown to accommodate my wife's work I'm walking towards Hawes Hall which is again in the same area it's where a lot of your second year classes will take place so it's you know a nice size campus it's beautiful but everything is walkable you don't need a car if you live on campus and it's really convenient when the weather is this nice to take a stroll to class so Jay's first class of the day is becoming a general manager Costa's HBS are usually 80 minutes long and I am able to attend as a guest which is pretty awesome classes generally cover a real life business case with teachers calling on people to give their opinions using the Socratic method and with a guest speaker often invited to come and give concluding remarks as to how the case actually played out following discussion amongst the students today's class was all about Building Company culture to handle crisis and how businesses balance ethical decision making with profit Jayden heads pretty much straight away into his second class of the day negotiation this class involves roles being given to each student in a negotiation scenario the one today was about how a budget would be spent when building a new port and each student then has certain things they can and cannot give during the course of the negotiations scoring points based on the ultimate outcome of the negotiation after the Practical session there's then a separate 80-minute class where the students run through what they learned during the course of their negotiation negotiation class complete and Jay very happy with the deal managed to get for himself we then head for lunch with one of Jay's friends from HBS the canteen is pretty epic with tons of food options generally just a pretty amazing place to get to come and eat every day foreign class of the day at 2PM and because Jay just can't get enough of negotiation it's Advanced negotiation and this is a class that studies rather than practices negotiation and I've got to say it's absolutely awesome the concept is that the professor takes historical figures artists business people politicians and change makers and explores the techniques that they use to effectively achieve desired outcomes the particular class that I got to go to was on Henry Kissinger and how he is Secretary of State for the US managed to get white minority Rhodesian leader Ian Smith to exceed to Black majority rule that amazing Clause ends at 320 and Jay has to get to a remote business meeting at four times a day time to go home and get to work so we rush home from Harvard to his apartment downtown and soak up the Boston sites along the way and while we're in the car inspired by HBS I get to work on menos for half an hour and Menos is the brand that Beth and I created for ambitious students and professionals made from 15 recycled plastic bottles the menos backpack has all you need from a commuter backpack laptop sleeve notepad pouch pocket water bottle holder plus unlike top loaders it opens 180 degrees so you can easily pack all your weekend Essentials or reach something in the bottom of your bag we collect 100 ocean bound plastic bottles and plant a tree with every purchase so yeah head over to we are menos.com to support me and to grab yourself a stunning minimalist backpack and we are giving viewers of this channel an exclusive 10 discount link down in the description and now back to Jay so Jay what are you up to so I just wrapped the open FX weekly sales meeting which is a time for me to interact with the entirety of the sales team it helps keep them accountable to their metrics and their goals it also gives me a window into the business I'm the CFO for the business so a lot of what I do is I'm doing Fleet planning to make sure we have the right assets on the ground at the right time and the meeting gives me a window into what revenue is going to look like on our profit and loss statement as well so it helps me control the balance sheet via Fleet planning and helps me to control the profit and loss statement by understanding how revenue is going to filter through the business I'm about to jump into the open FX staff meeting which attended by the leadership from the sales team and the leadership from the operations team to make sure that the two departments are working together so the guys that are focused on generating Revenue are interacting weekly with the guys that process that Revenue get the machines delivered get the machines repaired get the machines picked up we want to make sure that those two departments don't become siled so we have a weekly time for those those two departments to communicate so the company can be working the best for both parties Jay finishes up his second business meeting at around six and then takes around an hour and a half preparing for classes tomorrow by reading over and considering the cases he'll be covering he then finishes up the day unwinding making dinner with his wife Olivia before a very early night and a solid eight to nine hours of sleep before this all starts again