People constantly learn from all of their life experiences. The process of ‘education’ is a relatively small part of the learning experience. Consider how much a person has to learn before they can attend public school. They must learn a lot about the society they are in and how to conform to its requirements, right? A ‘school’ education is really a relatively small part of what we learn. Much of what we learn in school provides us with tools that we need to succeed in business, such as language skills, math skills, and some social skills as relate law, history, etc.
I often think of the famous song writer, Billy Rose, who was far more skilled at using shorthand than anyone who worked for him. He was a world champion, taking over 200 words per minute, yet it would have been a waste of his more valuable time to take dictation for another person. It is what you know that counts. You can usually hire tourneys, engineers, secretaries, etc. to fill in where you don’t have the time or skills. Irving Berlin, another famous composer, could play a piano in only one key, so he used a transposing keyboard.
Again, it is not so much what you don’t know as it is what you do know that counts. Success is really not so much a matter of education as it is vision, confidence, and determination, and the willingness to take a risk. In other words, knowing who you are!
Most people believe that a ‘college degree’ is necessary in order to be ‘successful’. Of course, it is vital to some professions such as law and medicine, but a liberal arts degree simply means that you have been socialized in a college environment, more than it represents salable skills. A bachelor degree may provide the advantage of getting a first interview for a job. It can open doors to opportunity, but it most often leads to job placement as a cog in the wheel of a big corporation where you find that you are a small fish in a big pond.
Michael Dell, the father of Dell computers is a college drop-out. He is worth over 13 billion dollars. The same is true of Bill Gates whose wealth is estimated to be 100 billion dollars. Richard Branson the owner of the several ‘Virgin’ enterprises is worth 4 billion dollars. What they have in common is ‘they just ‘went out and did it’ without a college degree.
There is a tremendous advantage to entering business this way. You are in a position to make decisions regarding the kind of work you do and what changes you want to make. How many people with law degrees are ‘stuck in a rut’ as a law clerk doing case research in a law office?
The first requirement is to believe in yourself rather than to put you confidence in some nameless, faceless corporate structure. The larger the business, the less the company will know that you even exist. Then you will have the undisclosed ‘company politics’ to work with. Read chapter 41 for more information on this subject.
Just as in any venture, you must have the confidence that comes from knowing who you are, the determination (passion) to drive your engine, the vision that lets you see what to do, and the willingness to be wrong and lose your investment, and the courage to learn from your mistakes and try again.
Life is not easy, sometimes - you may have a ‘hunch’, an insight that will give you a great advantage, but mostly it is determination and hard work. Wouldn’t it be a shame to put all that effort into a dead-end job somewhere that you got because you had a ‘degree’?
If you can see that not having a degree is a great advantage, you are half way there. This does not say that you are uneducated, does it? It simply says that you have not been processed through a standard college curriculum which includes social studies, speech classes, and the repertoire of other liberal subjects that are mandatory fare for college students.
I worked for a man who was not trained in the area of his expertise. He was trained in law and made his fortune of millions of dollars in research. How was he able to do that? He had the vision and he hired the scientists and engineers to make it happen.