“An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others. –”
On my quest to finding out what being an educated person really is, especially after reading Napoleon Hill’s valuable “The Law of Success in 16 Lessons”, I recently read a series of lectures by Michael Ellsberg and others that really blew me away .. I found out that our education system is not really of big value for success in life .. at least to a certain extend ..
The first idea on the list is the myth, believed by most people, that the only way to get an education is to go through the standard grade school program, and then go on to college or university .. These lectures seek to explain that this as nothing more than a myth.
In the lectures I learned about the Thiel Fellowship of Peter Thiel, the first outside investor in Facebook back in 2004 and co-founder of Paypal, which will pay would-be entrepreneurs under 20 $100,000 in cash to drop out of school .. In announcing the program, Thiel made clear his contempt for American universities which, like
governments, he believes, cost more than they’re worth and hinder what really matters in life, namely starting tech companies .. His scholarships are meant as an escape hatch from these insufficiently capitalist institutions of higher learning ..
I also found out that there are people out there who hate Peter Thiel’s guts for even daring to suggest that smart young people not go to college. In Slatemagazine, for example, the editor-in-chief, Jacob Weisberg, called the Thiel Fellowship “nasty” and “appalling.”
Well .. The concept behind this fellowship is that the best way to get a useful education for entrepreneurs is to find people smarter, more accomplished, and wiser than we are and hangout with them while we are soaking up the things they know .. That is real education, not memorizing facts from some book ..
Going to college is one way of exposing ourselves to wiser, more knowledgeable people .. That’s what our societies says we have to do .. It’s true, some college professors are among the smartest people on Earth .. But, depending on what you want to do, this may be a very inefficient way to get an education .. They have completed years of study, they may have several graduate degrees, and they are comfortably settled in to lifetime jobs as tenured professors .. What do they know about being an entrepreneur? Most know nothing at all ..
There are of course many professors, particularly in the science fields, who have contributed great improvements to our daily life .. So, if you are not looking to be an entrepreneur, by all means go for this kind of college education .. The same is true if you want a college degree just to make yourself feel better, which is what I did .. What you should realize, however, is something I knew nothing about .. That is what I’m about to reveal based on my findings .. finding a great mentor and learning from them.
FINDING YOUR MENTORS
As an entrepreneur, if you make mistakes, your business goes broke, and you automatically get fired .. That brings up something else about going the traditional education way .. Everything you get is handed to you because you, or your parents, have paid for the service .. You are told what books to read, and where to go for the services you have bought .. Nobody ever tells you how to find a mentor who can show you all about entrepreneurship; that’s what you miss with traditional education .. The people you want to hang out with, and learn from, don’t have office hours, and they don’t have a course book telling you where to sign up ..
The first thing we need to learn about finding mentors is that we must give something to them in return for what we expect from them .. We may think we have nothing to give, but we must figure something because one great connection can shape the rest of our life ..
Though you may think you are too inexperienced to have anything to offer a potential mentor, don’t overlook this important gift .. This gift is your willingness to put your whole self, without any restraints, into putting their advice into practice .. For starters, everyone wants to leave a well known legacy; the more people they have who are knocking themselves out to take the given advice, the more important will the legacy be ..
The right way to approach a mentor is to first find out all you can find out about them. Google will tell you a lot about your mentor .. You should spend hours reading newspaper articles and read their social media feeds to keep up with what they are doing .. Find and read any blog posts they may have made, and buy any books they wrote .. Read and study all this stuff so you will be informed enough to approach your mentor not acting like a taker ..
“I read your three books and I am just so blown away by this point you made in book X, and it really changed my perspective on that. But I’ve been reading all your stuff and there’s this one point, and I haven’t seen how it could apply to my business. I don’t quite get how that would apply in my business. Would it be okay if I just ask you a few questions at some point on how to apply such-and-such to what I’m doing?”
This kind of approach shows that you care about your possible mentor and that you are willing to put in a lot of time putting their advice to work .. You will be flattering your mentor while you are asking for help ..
An important thing to remember about mentors and their legacies is that mentors want to give their legacy to givers, not to the takers who show up empty handed, which is how most people approach a mentor .. They ask for help with nothing to give in return ..
Social media like Facebook and Twitter can be useful as business networking tools .. If you have met someone you want to stay in touch with, social media are an excellent way to do this .. You can establish a relationship this way by commenting on things your target is saying ..
If you persist, you will get your business up and running .. At this time, one of your main entrepreneurial functions is that of rainmaking .. To make rain, you must continue to network as often as possible .. The reason is that most everything your business needs comes from referrals, which result from some kind of networking activity …
From these activities you would generate things you can give to others .. you would learn enough so that you can give advice in some cases, and, most important, because you are networking you can bring relationships to the table ..
IS THIS AN EDUCATION REVOLUTION?
At the end of the lecture series the point is made that it seems the old model of traditional education may be undergoing a revolution ..
We have already seen that a large proportion of college graduates are working in jobs that have no career opportunities, and that are totally unrelated to their college training .. This ignores the fact that another group of people under 25 with BA degrees are unemployed .. All this information indicates an educational system that is broken .. The acquisition of mentors that has been discussed is a much better way to get the training we need as entrepreneurs ..
CONCLUSION
The intent of these lectures was not to discourage from going to college .. It is meant to show the need to acquire mentors that can actually help to become an entrepreneur .. It has also shown some ways to attract potential mentors .. This was very inspirational ..
Yet, everyone needs to decide what his/her course of action will be ..
