Where are you right now? Are you sitting in an office surfing the web on company time? I used to do it myself. If that’s the case you’ve no doubt mastered the ALT+TAB trick…perhaps your thumb is on the ALT button and another finger is on the TAB button at this very moment. You’ll read a sentence or paragraph and then quickly scan the office horizon to see if anyone is coming. And if so, a swift flick on ALT+TAB keys quickly changes the screen to something work related. For me it was usually an Excel spreadsheet.
That was back in the days when I was building someone else’s business. Sure they paid me pretty well by conventional standards and there were 401(k) plans, and insurance benefits, paid vacation, (worthless) stock options etc. But at the end of the day I was part of someone else’s plan helping create wealth for them. They dictated what I did for most of my waking hours, when I did it, when it would be finished, and I had to ask permission to use any vacation time. And then I was always reminded to check my voicemail and/or email just in case some emergency came up. What a bunch of crap!
For years, I looked around and saw people who had broken away from the herd, started their own business, didn’t seem to work much, and made millions. I didn’t know many of them personally because I mostly associated with people who had the “employee mindset” like I did at the time. But the few I did know didn’t seem any smarter than me. In fact, I thought I was brighter than most of them. So what was the difference? One of the big differences is that they think differently. None of them followed conventional wisdom.
Let’s take Jimmy Prince for example. I haven’t seen or spoken to Jimmy in probably 10 years but I certainly remember him and thank him for his positive influence on me. I met Jimmy through a friend of a friend when I lived in Atlanta. We played in a recreational basketball league together. He seemed like a pretty average guy - a really nice guy - but a normal guy just like the rest of us.
One night Jimmy invited all of us over to his house to play basketball. What? Was there a park, or a gym, or a YMCA nearby? Nope. It turned out Jimmy lived in a mansion in a very nice part of Atlanta. It was gated and I don’t remember the number of bedrooms and bathrooms but they were in the double digits. And in a separate building on the estate he had his own basketball court. It had everything…glass backboards, an electronic scoreboard, newly refinished hardwood floors, a 3-point line, etc. And he lived in this mansion alone. Or perhaps his girlfriend had moved in by then. I can’t remember.
Of course being the frustrated corporate type that I was, I had to ask him the standard question: “What do you do?” That was way before I truly understood the power of leverage and the concepts shared in books like The 4-Hour Work Week. I’ve grown to hate the question myself and now that I see the other side of the coin, I understand why Jimmy probably didn’t care for the question either but he liked me so he answered. This was also before I had come to the conclusion the conventional wisdom sucks. Surely he had attended an Ivy league school or had an MBA or was born into a wealthy family or “knew somebody” or any of the other lame excuses most people use to explain why they aren’t successful. It turned out to be none of that.
Jimmy was a college dropout. What? How could this be? All these years the conventional wisdom about the importance of a college education and how college dropouts are failures had been drilled in to me. I had never challenged conventional wisdom. I just accepted it because that’s what everyone else was doing. And now as I conducted the most basic initial investigation of my own, conventional wisdom was being exposed as a fraud on the very first question posed to a successful person. But Jimmy is the exception to rule, the losers will argue. Wrong answer. Bill Gates and Michael Dell are college dropouts too. Richard Branson is a high school dropout. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps you’ll recognize a few names on this list of successful dropouts.
When I asked Jimmy why he had dropped out of college, he said “I was making too much money.” He had started a printing business and quickly realized the job he would get after college would pay him nowhere near what he was making with the printing business he owned. That made college a waste of time and money. At the point in time where I met Jimmy, he owned several business…printing businesses, restaurants, etc. And he made it clear that he “owned” the businesses. The businesses didn’t own him. He hired people (i.e. employees) to run the business. He hardly worked at all. In fact, he was constantly going on vacations as I recall.
It was an enlightening conversation. And the next day the damn alarm clock woke me up to go to the stupid job I didn’t like to help someone like Jimmy build their business. Someone like Jimmy was using me as leverage to live a life of luxury. Meanwhile Jimmy was out on the golf course, on vacation, or doing whatever else he chose to do with his time. Which side of that equation would you prefer to be on?
If you want to live a life of mediocrity, follow conventional wisdom. Following the herd and doing what everyone else is doing is a plan proven by generation after generation to produce average results. People who achieve extraordinary results don’t follow the herd. They generally do the opposite. If you still don’t believe it make the effort to seek out someone who has already achieved the results you desire and ask them the few simple questions I asked Jimmy. Reading books about successful people is good but meeting them in person is better. At the end of the day, who’s business are you building? Wouldn’t it be a better use of your time to build your own business?
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Tags: Create Your Own Products, Success
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2 Comments
We used to call ALT+TAB the “supervisor” button. ha ha
Why do you suppose most of the millionaires of well known corporations require a college degree.
Although not on this list, Donald Trump was quoted recently on CNBC as saying you really should have a college degree because there is a lot of value in it.
I agree with you regarding conventional wisdom as it relates to overstating college importance, but I’m pretty sure Microsoft and Dell wouldn’t look twice at an applicant without one to work for their companies.
Do you think this is hypercritical?
[Jen,
Good question. First of all Donald Trump is not a dropout. He's an Ivy League graduate...Wharton. It's not surprising he would see more value in a college education than someone who is successful without a college diploma. Not all dropouts turn out to be billionaires like Richard Branson, Michael Dell, and Bill Gates just like not all Ivy League graduates don't turn out to be billionaires.
On average, college graduates earn more than dropouts over their lifetimes. I don't dispute that. The qualifier that bothers me is "on average." I think comparing yourself against "average" is a terrible idea. It doesn't take much effort to be average so it doesn't take much effort to be a little above average either. Who cares about being better than average? I want to be at the top, not just "better than average." Comparing yourself against average is an easy way to make yourself feel good about a false sense of accomplishment.
You're certainly right that it's not likely Dell or Microsoft would strongly consider an applicant without a college degree. The difference is that they are hiring worker bees. The dropouts like Branson, Dell, & Gates quit school because they already knew they wanted to build businesses and were so anxious to get started that they started while they were still in school.
College basically teaches you how to develop skills that will make you a good employee. These dropouts had no interest in being employees. They were building a company. But when the business grows and they need to hire people, why not hire the best & the brightest of those who went to college and now choose to work for someone else? Any dropout worth hiring is likely busy building their own business. It makes sense to me.
I remember from the Richard Branson interview I listened to this week (and mentioned in a post too) that he almost always promotes from within his organization. That way he knows the strengths & weaknesses of the individual and they have a history of producing results within his organization.
Robert]
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