Warren Buffett. Jack Welch. Bill Gates. Steve
Jobs. J.P. Morgan. John D. Rockefeller. Seth Godin. David Allen. Tim Ferriss. Guy Kawasaki. Dan Kennedy. Jay
Abraham. Chet Holmes. Michael Masterson. Dale Carnegie. Michael Porter. Jim
Collins. Peter Drucker. Gods and demigods in the pantheon of business success,
capable of wielding superhuman powers of profit creation, productivity,
insight, and decision making. Extremely rare geniuses who have more potential
in their shoelaces than normal people can muster in a lifetime, right? Wrong!
For me, one of the unexpected benefits of developing the Personal MBA
Masterclass has been the
realization/internalization of the fact that successful businesspeople (and
business authors) are normal, everyday people, just like you and me. Their work
is mundane, not magical — they have simply identified a need or opportunity,
developed their knowledge and skills, and created something of value that
satisfies the demand.
It’s easy to deify these figures because they seem so
exceptional and (many times) far removed from your current state. Unless you
have the opportunity to meet them in person or take a few minutes to write them
a letter, they remain enshrined in a place of honor on your bookshelf, encased
in a throne of paper, ink, and glue. It’s only after you come in close contact
with one of these notable people that you realize there’s really nothing
magical about them at all. They’ve just done what’s necessary.
Einstein’s Superpowers
Eliezer Yudkowsky is a very deep and intelligent thinker who
spends most of his time considering global catastrophic risk and future human
development. I had the pleasure of meeting Eliezer while he was in New York a
few months ago, and I’ve been
following his posts ever since. In Einstein’s Superpowers, Eliezer meditates on the tendency of
scientists (and the general public) to treat Albert Einstein as a mystical
scientific superhero:
“There’s this tendency to think that Einstein, even before he
was famous, already had an inherent disposition to be Einstein — a potential as
rare as his fame and as magical as his deeds. So that if you claim to have the
potential to do what Einstein did, it is just the same as claiming Einstein’s
rank, rising far above your assigned status in the tribe…
“…The problem is not that you need an aura of destiny and the
aura of destiny is missing. If you’d met Albert before he published his papers,
you would have perceived no aura of destiny about him to match his future high
status. He would seem like just another genius.
“This is not because the royal birthright is
concealed, but because it simply is not there. It is not necessary. There is no
separate magisterium for people who do important things.
“I say this, because I
want to do important things with my life, and I have a genuinely important
problem and an angle of attack, and I’ve been banging my head on it for years,
and I’ve managed to set up a support structure for it; and I very frequently
meet people who, in one way or another, say: ‘Yeah? Let’s see your aura of
destiny, buddy.’
“What impressed me about Julian Barbour (a great author of The End of Time) was a quality that I don’t think anyone
would have known how to fake without actually having it: Barbour seemed to have
seen through Einstein — he talked about Einstein as if everything Einstein had
done was perfectly understandable and mundane.
“Though even having realized this, to me it still came as a
shock, when Barbour said something along the lines of, ‘Now here’s where
Einstein failed to apply his own methods, and missed the key insight…‘ But the
shock was fleeting, I knew the Law: No gods, no magic, and ancient heroes are
milestones to tick off in your rearview mirror.”
I get a kick out of reading transcriptions of talks Warren
Buffett gives every so often to business students from various universities.
Invariably, someone will make the comment: “but he seems so
normal!” That’s because he is; he simply figured out a way to blend his
emotional fortitude with a well-developed analytical process that eliminates
risk from his investment decisions, and then he waited long enough for the cash
to inevitably accumulate. In all other respects, he’s a normal guy. There’s
nothing magical about him.
To become successful in the field you’re interested in, you
don’t need an “aura of destiny,” just an important problem (or need), the
desire to improve your knowledge and skills, and the determination to solve the
problem regardless of how much time and effort it takes.
To paraphrase Jim Rohn, the point of business is not simply to
accumulate more than $1 million. The real purpose is to become the type of
person who is worth more than $1 million, and there’s nothing magical about
that.
What It Really Takes to Be an Entrepreneur
“When things get too complicated, it sometimes
makes sense to stop and wonder: Have I asked the right question?” — Enrico Bombieri
What does it take to start your own business? Less than you
think!
1. Create something other people want or need.
(If you don’t know, test ideas in low-risk ways until you find something that
works.)
2. Attract the attention of prospects, and make
them interested in learning more about what you’re offering.
3. Encourage your prospects to trust you enough
that they give you money in exchange for your offer.
4. Deliver the value promised in a way that makes
your customers happy.
5. Collect more money than you spend, and enough
to sufficiently compensate you for the time/energy/money invested.
That’s it! Those are the five parts of every business. Anyone
who tells you entrepreneurship is more complicated than this is either trying
to impress you or sell you something you don’t need.
What’s holding you back from getting started right
now?
How to Get a Valuable Education Without
Mortgaging Your Life
Maybe one of the things holding you back is thinking you need a
better education. Well, here are nine ways to get a valuable and practical
education without mortgaging your life:
1. Recognize that most of the value of a
higher education degree is in social signaling. It’s true that many employers will screen out
your resume if you don’t have at least a bachelor’s degree. It’s a short-sighted
policy, but it’s a reality, so the best thing to do is find ways to obtain a
bachelor’s degree as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Reputable online
accredited colleges like Excelsior offer test-out options, minimizing your time
investment and cost.
2. Recognize that higher education is not as
useful if you plan on starting your own business. If you already have skills you can use to
create value for other people, no one cares where you went to school. If your goal is to become an
independent entrepreneur, you’re best served by investing your time in
improving your skills and actually launching the business.
3. Recognize that all education (including
higher education) is fundamentally self-education. Teachers, professors, and advisers can help guide
your learning, but it’s always ultimately your responsibility to learn the
material. If you’re capable of succeeding after graduating from a highly
selective private college, you’re capable of succeeding after graduating from a
state college/community college/online program — or without graduating at all.
In the words of Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at
Stanford, “If you are good enough to get in, you obviously have enough
talent to do well, regardless.”
4. Separate price from value. It’s common for people to associate high
prices with high quality, but you can often find huge educational value by
taking advantage of inexpensive resources. If you do your research, there are
many ways to minimize your educational costs: borrowing books from the library,
using the Internet for research, taking online courses, volunteering as an
assistant or apprentice, etc.
5. Self-finance as much as possible. The less debt you take on, the better — look
into ways to generate income while learning, either by working a day job or
running a side business to cover living expenses. Avoid the temptation to rack
up credit card debt — find creative alternative ways to fund your education.
6. Minimize your living expenses. The less money you need to live on, the more
resources you can devote to educational opportunities and tools while
minimizing your total debt burden. Resist the temptation to keep up with your
peers when it comes to material possessions; realize that you can live a very rich
life without much stuff.
7. Invest in quality tools and experiences. Trying to teach yourself on crappy tools
doesn’t make sense — effective learning relies on fast and accurate feedback,
and the friction created by poor tools is a very real drag on your ability to
improve your skills. If you’re teaching yourself computer programming, get a
good computer; if you’re learning a second language, find a way to live in a
country where that language is the primary dialect. As a rule of thumb, get the
best-quality tools you can afford.
8. Focus on learning economically valuable
skills. In the immortal words
of Zig Ziglar: “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other
people get what they want.”
The more you increase your ability to create real value for other people in the
real world, the more you’ll prosper, regardless of what aspect of life you
choose to focus on. Don’t ignore less economically useful skills like
philosophy and history, but avoid operating under the assumption that knowledge
in these areas will somehow translate directly into income.
9. Focus on learning directly from
practitioners. Find a few people who
are already successfully doing what you want to do; then find or arrange some
way to learn from them directly. The lessons practitioners teach you will
always be the most valuable, and you’ll learn how to make your goals a reality
by following their example.
Follow these tips, and
you’ll be well on your way to obtaining a practical education without giving up
your personal and financial freedom. Education is great, but education with
freedom is even better.
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