Ok, 3-min rant on people that choose to put "MBA" after their names:

You're not impressing anyone.

If it's an issue of insecurity, see a therapist, buy a Corvette, or start working out - just do something other than be so transparent as to put "MBA" after your name.

I had a conversation with a guy (yes, a Clown) a couple weeks ago in which I advised him that it's still a huge business faux-pas to include those 3 letters after your name. To this he commented, "Well, it's too bad you haven't gained anything from earning one yourself." Of course, this came after the stale-toast aggrandizing sales pitch, "After finishing my MBA with a 4.0 GPA, I was even recruited out of the blue for a very justified professional move." Yeah, sure. My guess is that he heard that line years before even starting biz school, but in his mind, it somehow means more once you get an MBA . . . sorry, but no, it doesn't.

This is the deal about an MBA: Business school is a new phenomena, having started in the 60s'. As Seth Godin says, 'Biz School's time has come and gone.' It's pretty simple why: Because times have changed. About the only thing I picked up in biz school was some debt, less of a tolerance for bureacracy, and a few statistical equations that mean nothing to a small business owner. This is what should be taught in biz school, and isn't:

1. Sales, and more importantly New Biz Dev.
2. Finding & Hiring Superstars.
3. Burning up red-tape . . . and firing anyone who thinks it's necessary. ("MBA" might as well stand for 'Master of Bureacratic Astrology').
4. Learning to dump Big-Company groupthink and realizing that success in the entrepreneurial world is about shifting gears on a dime . . .
5. More sales.

Sure, if you went to Kellog, Wharton, or Harvard, you can get an interview just about anywhere in the world . . . and you also have a network that will forgive you a few addt'l times if you're a clown. But a Clown is still a Clown -- you can put a lemon on 22" rims and at the end of the day, it's still a lemon.

In closing, I understand that those 3 letters might make some feel better about themselves, but the truth is that they mean nothing anymore. Just use the letters CLC instead -- "Confidence-Lacking Clown".

P.S. What was interesting about this clown was that he didn't delineate where he got his MBA in his resume or his professional profile on LinkedIn, social networking sites, etc. So I had to ask about 5 times, assuming it must be a top-flight school to justify putting the letters after his name in the first place . . . to which he finally replied with what sounded like a simultaneous cough and whisper: . . . .

"Strayer Online . . . but I had a 4.0!".

It suddenly all made sense to me, and I imagine he understood the subsequent 'click' and dial-tone a few seconds later. The easiest way to failure is to waste time speaking with Clowns.

I originally posted this at ERE.net, and after all the comical emails I received, I thought to toss it out here for the rest of the community.