How a Free, Open-Source Education can get you Closer to your Real Goals
Get the education you need, not the education you have.
Whether or not you spend your days in a classroom, you learn every day. Every experience you have teaches you something. That being said, we are all students in one way or another. Though this is written in the language of students and teachers, it applies to everyone.
This is an amazing age. As long as you have internet access, you can take advantage of some of the best instructors and greatest bases of knowledge that mankind has to offer.
With the advent of open courseware, blogs, e-books, podcasts, youtube, and a million other tools, knowledge and wisdom can flow with almost infinite bandwidth to those who want to learn, from those who can teach them.
The limiting factor is demand. Of all the people who have the capability to sit down and listen to a TED talk during breakfast, or watch a Stanford lecture during lunch, how many do? There are millions every day that could be pushing themselves, learning more about everything that they are curious about, and satiating a thirst for knowledge. But instead, we read TMZ. We watch Paris Hilton buy a dog and Lindsay Lohan go to jail.
My point is that just a few decades ago, the limiting factor of someone’s life was education. People went to school for as long as they could afford, learned what they could, and then were left with their life in its rut. Universities were ivory towers, with only a select few leaving every year with a piece of paper.
Today, there may still be only a few receiving that paper, but now anyone and everyone can walk those steps, hear those same words, and read those same books. There is no reason to settle for a second-rate education.
No matter where you are, or what you are doing on a daily basis, you can be getting a first-rate education every day. Whether or not you have a diploma from any university, learning about material that sparks your interest or applies to your area of work, will show in your work and speak for itself. Your education, no matter how official, will show itself in your work and your life. There is nothing stopping you from becoming better than Harvard’s Valedictorian in your practice. You have the tools, you have the potential.
There is no required curriculum for life. There are no prerequisites. Best of all, you don’t need anyone’s permission. There is just you, the resources you need, and the road ahead. The only obstacle is your own laziness. Get off your ass.
Whatever knowledge you need to be successful in any venture you have is out there somewhere. Not learning what you need to wherever you are is no excuse not to know it. Go find it.
Get the education you need, not the education you have.
I don’t mean to, and never would, imply that all the lessons of life are online somewhere. I believe that most valuable knowledge comes from the practical, experiential parts of education. But there are a lot of great stories, resources, and people out there that can teach you more than you ever dreamed.
Miles White, CEO of Abbot Labs: The Politician
I listened to and met Miles at a USA Today CEO Forum held at Michigan State University. He was interviewed by a reporter onstage, for a piece in USA Today. It was an interesting presentation, but not really for the content. Not knowing a lot about Abbot Labs, it was interesting in the way that new companies are, but the reporter seemed determined to talk only about the effect of the current politics on the company.
Mr. White is unique to this list in that he is the only one here who is not really an entrepreneur. He took this position, whereas everyone else here built their companies from the nothing. In reflecting on his presence and his speaking, this was very different. I really got no impression of any sense of business knowledge or skill. (Though I’m sure he had plenty, his credentials are ridiculous.) There was no impression that he made any choices or ‘ran’ his company in any way. It was like watching a politician. He was incredibly balanced in his answers, carefully calculated for optimal diplomacy. He had mastered the art of answering a question without touching on the nerve that the asker was really after. When you stepped back and looked at it, it was an incredible talent. He assumed no blame, but acknowledged difficulties, reflected underhanded criticism, but created a compliment, all with a huge smile to uproarious applause.
Personally, as much as you have to respect skill like that, and he is clearly a very powerful guy, CEO of a Fortune 500 and all that, I never want to be that kind of CEO. Even though he may have more credentials and preside over a bigger company than anyone else on this list, he would be the last one that I would trade places with. That in itself is a valuable lesson to me, and tells me something about what I value in my accomplishments and my businesses.
What about you? Who did you learn the most from? Who would you most like to meet? Who would you most like to trade places with?
The Big Chiefs of Biggby Coffee
(Biggby) Bob Fish, CEO of Biggby Coffee: The Proactive Public Pioneer
Bob Fish founded Biggby (then Beaner’s) Coffee with Mary Roszel in March 1995 in East Lansing, MI. He began franchising in 1999, and by mid 2009, had over 100 stores in 10 states.
Bob is the CEO who taught the most about being personable. He spends most of his time, not running his company, but representing it, traveling to Biggby franchises all over the country, talking to customers, employees, and everyone in between making sure that everyone is having a good coffee and a good time. He is a very nice, genial man and is obviously providing a huge benefit to his company by being a very approachable, public face.
However, his presentation was largely a reflection of this passion for the people of his stores. It was very inspiring to see his pursuit of experiencing and understanding even the smallest things in his franchises. But, we did not learn much about the running of the company, the challenges faced, the daily moves made inside the company.
(This has changed slightly in light of his presentation at TEDxLansing, which you can find here: Bob Fish at TEDxLansing: Random Entrepreneurial Thoughts - where he talked much more in depth about his views on entrepreneurship and business. There are some wonderful insights here (especially 'choosing to be profitable'))
Which leads me to…
Mike McFall, President of Biggby Coffee: The Secret Weapon
Mike McFall is, in my opinion, and from what I thought when I met him, the real reason that Biggby is still growing and thriving today. I met him during a class (MGT 352) trip to Biggby World Headquarters in northern East Lansing. He had started out in some hourly-wage job in the very first Biggby that opened, and became a partner when the company started franchising. Proof that every workplace is an opportunity for the smart and hard-working.
He is quick, clever, brilliant and hardworking. He had a sparky, excited kind of energy about him. It was obvious that just talking about his business was truly exciting and interesting to him. After meeting him, it was clear to me that he was the real reason that Biggby was built the way that it was. He has awareness and control over every aspect of the company, and approves every dime that was spent.
It was truly an inspiring presence to be in, and I feel that I learned more in that hour than most other days of my life. Probably the most lasting impression that he left was that he was utterly unimpressed with himself and what he had accomplished in building 100 stores in less than 10 years. He still maintained that that was “hardly an accomplishment at all” and that he hoped to achieve exponentially more. Wow.
John Hantz, CEO of Hantz Group: The Financial Farmer
I went to see John Hantz speak on Entrepreneurship, hosted by MSU Entrepreneurship Association. He built Hantz Group, a financial advising group, up to being a hundred-million dollar company from humble beginnings in his garage. Based on a hunch, he predicted where the finance sector was going over a 20-year trend. This man understands the essence of Entrepreneurship. He was unrelentingly energetic, eager to convey as much knowledge and excitement about his passions. He was very personable, down-to-earth, and unabashedly opinionated.
He spoke most often of understand the difference between ‘employee’ and ‘employer’ mentalities. The point was made that “what was best for you parents could be the very worst for you.” To support this, he told the story of the safe, secure job he had lined up at Ford Motor Company falling through, and taking a surprising, winding path to end up in the financial district in Minneapolis. Acknowledging that this was one of the best things that could ever happen to him, as the financial sector was an unknown at that time, just beginning to grow. This concept of being where the explosive growth was happening was incredibly important. Exact quote: “Most of the game is already won, if you are in the right industry.”
He also had a very simple but insightful outlook on building relationships as an entrepreneur. He broke it down simply, that there is no way for you to know everything, but you can know people who do know everything about specific topics. This is a powerful archive of knowledge to call upon, and he said that he was still calling on contacts from college, and others with talents that he never knew he would need, for his next project.
John is currently working on a fascinating, inspiring project that aims to make Detroit the Urban-Agriculture capital of the world. He is a Detroit resident, committed to bettering his environment, and re-invigorating the economy of Detroit. I learned a lot about the economics of community/commerce interactions from his insight. If you want to learn more about the project, or Urban-Ag (and you should) check out his site: http://www.hantzfarmsdetroit.com/
Lessons from 3 CEOs (and 1 President), up close and personal
This past year, I have had the good fortune to observe, meet, and kick it with some incredible people. Most notably, four of them have been great leaders of companies of various sizes. I learned more per minute in the presence of these great men who have lived the life than any number of hours spent in lectures. Here is a condensed version of what was learned and observed from each of these very different, but equally interesting people.
Sometimes the best way to learn is by example; while these guys may not have been making much in college, they certainly made up for it later. Take what lessons and inspiration you can!
And now, the first installment of CEO Week:
The Innovation Workshop
Read time: ~5 mins
I had the great opportunity to conduct a workshop earlier this year, which has since caused some wonderful thoughts...
I was invited to an FFA gathering, of some 300+ high school students, to conduct a 'breakout session'. Awesome. My given topic was 'Entrepreneurship & Agribusiness'. Well, I am very aware that seeds go in the ground and plants eventually come up. Past that, I didn't know much. I was certain that each and every student supposedly there to learn from me would discover this very quickly. I gently suggested that we shift the topic to 'College Entrepreneurship'. I was told to 'do what I could'. So far, so good.
I hurried to create an outline, make bullet points, create a powerpoint, and structure a nearly hour-long presentation about 'College Entrepreneurship'. Eager for a test-drive I showed this to some fellow college entrepreneurs who, by the third slide, were bored, and stopped me abruptly. They were quick to point out that I was being stupid, archaic, and far too professor-y. They asked me what I would tell myself if I tried to present this to me(what?). They were very right. I would have called myself boring, unoriginal, uncreative, and completely un-engaging. It was a profound moment, to realize just how easy it was to follow the well-worn path, throw a powerpoint together, be boring, and just generally suck. Disgusted with myself, I immediately scrapped everything I had done, and went back to the whiteboard.
I was determined to create a workshop that would engage and excite even the most riddilin-addled little crack-monkey of a high-schooler I could imagine. I tried to think back to high school, back before I was used to giant lectures and being surrounded by academia. The main goal was to not just engage, but force real thought, in an exciting way. Nothing complicated, nothing incredibly difficult. But also absolutely nothing passive, nothing mundane, and nothing that they'd done before.
I pulled in a few other college entrepreneurs, and was fortunate enough to be teamed up with a fancy Angel investor. We had a loose plan, and some good experiences, and for the most part, we winged it. We set very huge parameters, and let the students lead the thoughts. Guess what? We succeeded. By dispensing with almost all formalities (literally immediate engagement-we barely even introduced ourselves), and very quickly challenging them to think within out-of-the-box scenarios, interact and refine those thoughts within groups, and to share their work with the whole group, to be publicly discussed, praised and evaluated, we created a very engaged, excited, and thoughtful group.
After sitting through a few hours of lectures by men in suits so boring that I'm relatively sure I watched one kid count his own breaths, they were elated to have a chance to participate, to speak up, to innovate, to demonstrate to other students the originality of their thoughts. It was a beautiful sight. Each and every kid participated, and had very different but similarly new and fresh ideas. Some students were even suggesting products that had only just been discovered recently, with no prior knowledge at all. It really was an incredible experience.
So really, we didn't 'conduct a breakout session', we didn't 'give a presentation'; We enabled thought. We created an Innovative Environment . In the end, they learned almost nothing about 'Entrepreneurship & Agribusiness', but they had a glimmer of experience with the innovative mindset necessary to be a successful entrepreneur. And they loved it. Everyone loved it. Every teacher in attendance told us that they were blown away, and that it was a wonderful experience for them. One said: "I have never seen a more engaged group of students"
The take-away here is that anyone will respond to a lesson if it is well-crafted and engaging. People love participation, challenges, and fun. The conveyance and integration of new ideas is not hard when approached in this way. Another is that anyone and everyone can and should innovate on a regular basis. Think new thoughts, meet new people, imagine new worlds. My greatest hope is that one hour stays with them for a long, long time, and pays dividends for the rest of their lives.
We have since polished and refined this workshop, and are now prepared to give it anywhere that wants to have us. We would love to give this workshop at your school (any K-12), college, place of work, camel racing team, or anything else.) Send me an email anytime if you are interested. Nothing gives us a greater thrill.
The Semester by the Numbers
Read time: ~2 mins
As the semester draws to a close, I took a minute to reflect before the madness of finals took over. Since I seem to have such an affinity for crunching numbers, I decided to look back in a data-oriented fashion, and paint a picture of how this semester went with a series of statistics. I would be very curious to see others' self-stats as well. So, here we are- my life quantified...
These numbers are figured as extended averages of the semester to date, and are calculated through the end of the semester.
Days - 115
Class Days - 64
Credits - 18 (six classes-not doing that again)
Hours in Class - 304
Exams - 20
Multiple Choice Questions Answered - 540 (additional 280 for homework)
Textbooks Purchased - 0 (not counting two coursepacks) (Most books are completely unnecessary, but that is another post)
GPA: Average < [My GPA] < Exemplary
E-mails - 700+
Texts - 5864+ (Over 50 per day! Thats incredible....I need to put myself in text rehab)
Websites - 4
Twitter Accounts - 8
Tweets - 400+
Blog Posts - 10 (Just getting started)
Business Started - 1
Businesses planned - 3
Hours worked - 224 (at the actual job, I haven't kept track of start-up hours)
Sleep - <6 Hours (on average)
Mg of Caffeine - 389,941,672,378,641,935,671,989
Incredible People - Too many to count...
Some of these numbers are surprising and horrifying (texts), but it was an interesting exercise. If you can think of any other interesting metrics that I should add, let me know. Or if you want to share your 'semester by the numbers" I would be very interested to see it. All in all, it has been an incredible semester, the best yet in terms of progress and amazingly exciting opportunities.
The real point here is so see how much the life of a college student has changed in recent years. I bet our professors did not send over 700 emails over the course of a semester, or send over 50 texts a day. They damn sure didn't manage 8 twitter accounts, start websites, or have Facebook. The life of a college student has undoubtedly changed. Has college changed enough to keep up?
EJ
Deconstructing the Challenge (pt. 3) – Eureka!
Read Time: ~3 mins
Once again, the goal is to make $47,000 per year, as a full-time student. We have been through every traditional method of making money, and a slew of rather nontraditional ones as well. We have been through drug dealing, blood donations, and swim lessons. They weren't very promising for reaching our goal.
There is a fundamental problem that underlies all of these different options. An assumption that leads most of the world to lead lives that are constrained by self-imposed limits. You may notice that almost every potential income calculation was in comparison to a unit of time. The problem is how people perceive the relationship between money and time.
Most opportunities for employment or methods of generating income involve sacrifice, most commonly time, but in our examples you would also sacrifice your vitality (blood and plasma), safety (drug dealing), etc. Most jobs, from the highest level officers, to minimum wage laborers, pay you for your time (which is worth more depending on your skill set and knowledge base.) As the previous two posts worth of math have shown, this is probably not a viable way to create the kind of income that we are looking for. The reason is that none of these methods are scalable.
Not scalable means that there is a direct, one-to-one, correlation between the time that you put into making money, and how much you receive. For most college students, and many people worldwide, they do not have the skills or reputation to create a substantial amount of income just by trading their time for money.
So we have to challenge this base assumption, we have to escape the endless cycle of the cash-per-hour way of life. So if income generation is our goal, let’s take a look at someone at the extremes of success. Pick someone rich, the people who are among the richest in the world: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Oil Sheiks, Ted Turner, etc. They all own their businesses (or did, before going public).
Do you think Bill Gates would make any more money on a day that he goes into the office than on a day that he does not? Hell no. His income is largely independent of how he spends his time. This is not a characteristic that is only because he has thousands of employees or a giant company, this is something that is very possible even for one savvy person starting a business.
It's all about building a scalable business. That means that your business functions in a nearly identical way whether you have one, ten, 1,000, or 10,000 customers. There are almost infinite options for this; almost any business can be scalable if framed correctly. But all of these options are dependent on how you, as the business owner, organize the company. The key to successful business practices, as far as creating a scalable company that suits our purposes, is to organize it in such a way so that it does not depend on your time.
There will be much more on this topic in future posts. For now, this is the main take-away: In order to generate significantly above-average income in less time, it's crucial to create a highly scalable business to generate high levels of income from a standard time investment.
More to come... stay in touch!
EJ
Deconstructing the Challenge (pt. 2.5)
Read time: ~3 mins
Ok, so it seems that I overlooked some options for creating income. How about investments? People seem to be making lots of money in the stock market, right? Why don't I just hit a long ball there, and be done with it? Lets take a look...
So if you wanted to play the stock market to try, to make some serious money, there are a number of considerations. First, you can only play with, and thus get returns on, however much you already have (aside from 'margin trading' - another thing altogether) . For most college students, and I suspect most people overall, there is not a lot of spare cash laying around. What kind of money are we talking here?
So an uncommonly awesome stock portfolio would return about 10% annually(this does not take into account trading cost, taxes, etc.). Individual stocks could do better/worse, but overall a well-diversified portfolio doing well would return 10%. So lets use that return. How much money would you need to invest, in order to have that 10% return earn us $47,000 each year? To return 47k, you would need to have $470,000 invested in the stock market. Almost a half-million dollars. Probably not a realistic scenario. If you do have that kind of cash lying around, rock on. You should probably stop reading this and go buy another car.
This is not to discredit the stock market. It is a great institution, and a great investment (usually) for long-term investments. However, unless you are very knowledgeable, and very dedicated to making short-term gains in the market, it is probably not very feasible. (When I say knowledgeable and dedicated, I mean have a serious working knowledge, and work on it full-time, as a day job.) I am proceeding under the assumption that we do not want to just sit in front of a computer all day, following stocks. I have a few fellow students that I know that do or did participate in the market at this level, and let me assure you it is not highly profitable. In fact, it is as likely to lose your initial investment as it is to increase it. I am not interested in potentially losing money, over which I have little control. Lets assume that you don't either. No one should ever be in the market with money they could need in the next five years.
This conclusion includes other, similar investment areas like Currency Arbitrage, Commodity Trading, and Real Estate. All viable areas of investment. The point is, there are millions of ways to make millions, but not all of them are suited for taking on our challenge.
Final word on stock and other such investments: Awesome, great and necessary. However, not for our purposes. The market is not, and is not to be perceived as, a get-rich-quick method. That is a very, very dangerous misconception. You have been warned.
Thanks for reading...Conclusion is next to come!
EJ
(Much credit to my father for inspiring and advising on this post. And in appreciation for a lifetime of finance lessons.)
Deconstructing the Challenge (pt. 2)
Read Time: ~3 mins
Back to the drawing board. We need $47K while enrolled as a full-time student. Traditional job-type math didn't work out very well, so we are going to have to be a bit more creative.
So lets make it more interesting. What about some more extreme measures? Ever heard of people selling blood plasma, sperm, eggs, drugs, and themselves? Think its profitable? I went back to work with some Googling, and some more number crunching. Even more interesting results.
Lets start with drug dealing. Easy way to make a quick buck, right? So long as you don't get arrested, anyway. According to an excerpt from Freakonomics, (awesome book) the average earnings of a lower-level drug dealer are about $3.30 per hour. That's 45% of minimum wage.
The TI-89 reports that to reach 47k, an average drug dealer would have to work over 39 hours/day, 365 days/year. Does not leave much time for dilly-dally. Anyway, this calculation does not include the fact that in the average year, you would be arrested 1.475 times, be injured 1.2 times, and your odds of death are 25%. Madness. Moving on, then...
So what about selling your natural assets? There seem to be a number of ways to go about this. Lets start nice and easy: blood plasma. Most clinics pay about $30-50 per visit, each of which takes about 90 minutes. At a maximum of twice a week, this could only yield a bit over $4,000 per year. Also (according to reliable, experienced sources) each visit leaves you very tired, and useless for the rest of the day. Not worth it.
Selling sperm. Sounds wonderful at first, assuming you have no moral issue with it. However, the selection process for sperm donation is very rigorous, takes about 6 months, and less than 5% of candidates are accepted. Most clinics require college graduates, which is less than ideal for our purposes. If this still sounds like a good idea, consider this: most clinics will not allow you to engage in any sexual activity outside the donation center. At all. If you still think its a good idea, and can pull it off (lol) you can expect to earn maybe $10,000 over a year at the very best. You will also probably only be eligible for 6 months to a year.
Ladies, I'm not neglecting you. You may not be able to donate sperm, but you do have the opportunity to donate eggs, or be a surrogate. And while an average surrogacy could pay around $25,000, that obviously comes with a large... inconvenience. So maybe just sell the eggs? You could stand to make somewhere around 5k, but again, this comes with a lot of stipulations. Egg harvesting usually means a lifestyle of no drinking, no smoking, no sex. You will also be subject to daily hormone injections, constant blood tests, ultrasound scans, and plenty of other medical jibberjabber. I believe in a woman's right to choose, and will not even offer an opinion on this paragraph...
If you're considering selling a kidney, stop it. Its not even legal in this country. If you find a country in which it is legal, you probably should not elect for surgery there. So there.
Prostitution. Not legal, but this is an exercise in expansive thinking, so that shouldn't stop us. Assuming you were an 'independent contractor' meaning that no one was taking a cut of your earnings, and that you wanted to work an average of 6 hrs/week, so just weekend nights, you would need to find some clients willing to pay about $157 each hour. I even built in two weeks off each year. Everyone loves a vacation.
So there are some of your more unconventional, and significantly more unpleasant options as far as generating money. There really wasn't even a remotely good choice in there. Well, maybe prostitution, that wasn't too bad. Minus that whole jail potential. And the potentially horrifying 'clientele'.
So another post, and pretty much another set of strike-outs. Might have seemed ridiculous, but just trying to cover all the bases. However, I promise that all of this has a point, and I promise that the point will be well made in the third and final post.
Thanks for reading, and check back for the conclusion!