A colleague of mine, whose brains and good sense I
respect, made an impassioned case to a group of women this week, about an
upcoming book she was planning, in which she intends to encourage women to
forget about college and just start a business.
I’m simplifying in the interests of making this article shorter than her
book, but at the 20,000 foot level, she believes that 1) economic independence
is the key to every other form of empowerment, and 2) sexism is rampant so 3)
start your own business. And you don’t
need a college degree to be successful in business.
Sounds good?
Well, I see some problems. There are some kinds of work that just do not
lend themselves to self-employment at all – police detective, forensics
scientist and firefighter come to mind – and for others, entrepreneurship is
the Hard Way. It is possible to be a
sole practitioner MD, for example, but the realities of business life in the
USA make that a suicidal choice. You can
be an organizational whiz and start a business, but there ain’t much
low-hanging fruit in that market.
Contrast that with the joys of being able to focus exclusively on what
you do well, because the 40 hours/week of marketing for business is on someone
else’s shoulders. A good senior admin
can have salary, benefits, vacations, praise and advancement in a government or
business. I needed two master’s degrees
plus a year’s study in hypnotherapy to be able to rapidly and permanently
demolish the barriers keeping my entrepreneur clients from their heart’s
desire. Not to mention state licensing. The number of occupations that can yield much
better results for economic independence within an organization are
legion. My own choice to solopreneur
does not mean that I buy into the “everyone should be an entrepreneur” ideology.
The 2nd problem I have with my estimable
colleague’s advice is the Don’t Go To College.
If you are eschewing academics in order to get an AA in an in-demand,
highly-saleable skill like radiology/solography tech (another business you
can’t set up in your garage, thank you, legislature), or take on a plumbing
apprenticeship, then hooray, I agree with you 100%. Now close your eyes and imagine an army of
women taking up the plumbing tape. Six
figure income entrepreneurship and very little marketing moxie required. Auto mechanics is mostly computer programming
and intelligence at this point in history.
Electricians. Drool, drool, drool.
So, yes, let’s stop pushing everyone into college, and get most young
Americans into job-ready occupational training.
I know that the USA has an understandable wariness about repeating the
“black kids go to trade school, white kids go to college and then law school”
or “boys get trained, girls get typing” paradigm. Our President is a black lawyer; our First
Lady is another black lawyer, but that’s not the norm. Yes, I get it. BUT – a focus on giving kids career-ready training
does not have to become a vehicle for holding back races or sexes. What we have now is an entire generation
crippled by education debt getting a BA/BS or even graduate degree in a field
like Documentary Film Production that doesn’t have much chance of leading to
economic stability. In contrast, you can create a product and huckster it with
no formal education at all, beyond basic literacy. I
understand the disillusion with college.
The You Don’t Need College argument misses a key point
though: College teaches you how to think
rationally and critically, possibly for the first time in your life. It forces people who have no knowledge of how
science works to learn about experimentation, reproducibility and some basic
statistics. And it requires you to
sacrifice your time and your impulsive choices to a dedicated quest for a goal.
On the same day that my colleague denounced wasted time
in college, I read about Angela Duckworth’s research on grit, the ability to
stick to a long-term course of action, and delay gratification of short-term
urges in the pursuit of a big reward.
Many researchers before her have impressive results on the advantage of
persistence and emotional resilience, over other factors like talent,
intelligence or other gifts of one’s DNA.
Here’s her TED talk, for some details:
Here is a national Geo article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015
Listen
to this:
“…what college admissions officers and business leaders have told her they're looking for these days from applicants is in keeping with her findings. It's no longer students who've padded their résumés by doing a little bit of everything or just prospects with the best college grades; they want people who stuck with something meaningful to them over time and demonstrated some level of mastery, and it doesn't necessarily matter in what.”
“…what college admissions officers and business leaders have told her they're looking for these days from applicants is in keeping with her findings. It's no longer students who've padded their résumés by doing a little bit of everything or just prospects with the best college grades; they want people who stuck with something meaningful to them over time and demonstrated some level of mastery, and it doesn't necessarily matter in what.”
Business leaders have told me this over
and over again: they want to hire someone who has a college degree, in
anything. Why? Because it proves that the person can persist
in a goal FOR YEARS. Including jumping
through hoops that don’t always make sense to the 18-year-old mind. Academia has some crazy hoops indeed.
The ability to persist at a goal for
years, and the ability to jump through your client’s hoops, are essential skills
of any worthwhile undertaking, including being successful in business. If you genuinely don’t want anyone telling
you what to do, about anything, ever, you only have two options: a lower
business income than your potential or therapy to blow up the mental blockage
caused by an early-life authority figure.
I’m serious. Nobody who is both
honest with you and successful in business has the psychology of a tantruming
two-year-old. Clients expect you to be working for them, not doing what you
damn well please, when you damn well please.
If you don’t serve their needs, they won’t buy from you. The sweet spot is finding something that
makes you want to soar with creativity and joy AND is the solution to a major
pain-point experienced by people with lots of money.
When I took the grit test (URL below),
one of the items asks you about persisting in a goal for years – one of the
attributes of a college grad.
So, no, I don’t think you should ditch college and just
go straight into business. For one
thing, knowing some history, geography, anthropology, math, English grammar
and vocabulary will enhance your business potential and keep you from
embarrassing yourself with stupid mistakes. Get that broad education that you didn’t get
in high school, distracted as you were by blazing hormones and immaturity, and
couple it with a concentration in something sale-able, which could include
business. If you really love creating
documentaries, make it a double major and prepare yourself to use one
profession to bankroll the other.
At least an AA in something sale-able is more relevant
than ever before, and the full education of your mind and soul through all
those basic subjects toward a bachelor’s at an inexpensive university is even
more essential. Take that preparation
and then fly into entrepreneurship, if that fits your personality and your
market analysis. Or fly with another set
of dragons, into another form of lifetime fulfillment and joy, like I did.
Victoria C. Leo blasts through the barriers that keep
her clients from their heart’s desire.
Find the program that blasts through your problem at www.soaringdragon.com,
join her Facebook group Healing Minds, Healing Bodies, or email for a FREE
Getting Unstuck session at victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com.
