How to Get a Real Education
Forget art history and calculus. Most students need to learn how to run a business, says Scott Adams. I understand why the top students in America study physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature. The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes? That’s like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship
If you’re having a hard time imagining what an education in entrepreneurship should include, please review the bolded points below:
Combine Skills
The first thing you should learn in a course on entrepreneurship is how to make yourself valuable. It’s unlikely that any average student can develop a world-class skill in one particular area. But it’s easy to learn how to do several different things fairly well.
Fail Forward
If you’re taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90% of the time. The trick is to get paid while you’re doing the failing and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later. Students should be taught that failure is a process, not an obstacle.
Attract Luck
You can’t manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you. To succeed, first you must do something. And if that doesn’t work, which can be 90% of the time, do something else. Luck finds the doers. Readers of the Journal will find this point obvious. It’s not obvious to a teenager.
Conquer Fear
I took classes in public speaking in college and a few more during my corporate days. I also have theatrical training from The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. Theatrical training is THE BEST training for business and life that you will EVER get!! Then I took the Dale Carnegie as well as the Tony Robbins course. It was life-changing. The Dale Carnegie method ignores speaking technique entirely and trains you instead to enjoy the experience of speaking to a crowd. Once you become relaxed in front of people, technique comes automatically. The point is that people can be trained to replace fear and shyness with enthusiasm. Every entrepreneur can use that skill.
Write Simply
I took classes in business writing that taught me how to write direct sentences and to avoid extra words. Simplicity makes ideas powerful. Want examples? Read anything by Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett. I highly recommend the Gotham Writing Workshop for writing classes. They are both online and offline.
Learn Persuasion
Students of entrepreneurship should learn the art of persuasion in all its forms, including psychology, sales, marketing, negotiating, statistics and even design. Usually those skills are sprinkled across several disciplines. For entrepreneurs, it makes sense to teach them as a package.
That’s the starter list for the sort of classes that would serve B students well. The list is not meant to be complete. Obviously an entrepreneur would benefit from classes in finance, management and more. Remember, children are our future, and the majority of them are B students. If that doesn’t scare you, it probably should.
The Gotham Writing Workshop is the perfect example of a business started by a friend whom I greatly admire. Jeff started his own business out of his living room on the Upper West Side, offering free writing classes to eager students in order to launch his business. Now, The Gotham Writing Workshop is the leading writing workshop in the Country!
Taking into account that approximately 90% of jobs are created by new businesses that are 5 years old, you will either be an entrepreneur or will need the skills necessary to assist an entrepreneur grow his/her business or bring it to the next level. We live in a different world today and that is why our system of education needs an immediate and dramatic transformation! It is a state of emergency!
I’ll never forget a project I had to do in college where I had to start a business with a group for a grade in economics. I chose my friends, of course. Bad move! They wanted to open a beauty salon in the most ridiculous place. We were known on campus as Charlie’s Angels for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, I had the brains in the group. Rather than fight with them all the time, I jumped ship immediately to a team of guys who really knew what they were doing! Another important lesson, when your instinct tells you that you are on a sinking ship, jump and swim to a soaring one!