Billionaire-investor, Warren Buffet once said that “teaching a person how to start a business is like teaching a fish how to live on land”.
How can a university professor who has never run a successful business, teach you how to run a business?
It’s simply not taught in school.
What universities teach you is mere theory; which, by the way, they actually learned from the real world, from real successful business people in the real-world.
One of the most heralded accomplishments in today’s world of urban culture is securing the coveted 9 to 5 job. The prospects of a monthly pay-check with full benefits, and a loving community of fellow office workers striving towards a similar goal as laid out by a board of directors, is regarded as the ultimate achievement.
After all, landing a decently paying job after years of hard work, investing time and money to earn that prestigious college degree from an Ivy League university is an opportunity only a few people can ignore.
This is the message hammered on you as you grow up right from your childhood to your adulthood; starting with your parents, your teachers in school, college and university, and your peers in the real world.
“Go to school, study very hard to pass with high grades, so that you may secure a high-paying secure job in a large corporation”, is the message we keep hearing even today.
By the way, the word “secure”, doesn’t exist anymore. It only exists in prisons.
Don’t be alarmed. People are not taught in school to start businesses. They’re taught to get a secure, high-paying job in “businesses”.
This is exactly what the pioneers of the 19th century industrial revolution intended – to develop an education system and embed it in our school curriculums with a view to provide constant supply of labour to our factories, offices and corporations.
This has not changed one bit in the 21st century. Our school systems are still teaching industrial revolution education.
So why don't more people start businesses?
Because most people are comfortable working for someone else in a 9 to 5 job, making someone else rich, while they work their ass off for the rest of their miserable lives for a monthly paycheck and a pension, without much hustle and risk.
If this describes you, then you’ve been caught up in a vicious cycle known as “the rat-race”.
This is how people have been conditioned. It’s very difficult to change. Just take a look at the kind of questions you get on Quora:
How can I get a high-paying job?
Where can I get a high-paying job?
What are the best high-paying jobs?
Which are the best high-paying careers?
And things like that…
What business schools teach is quite the opposite of “real-world” business education.
eCommerce billionaire Jack Ma, the richest man in China said:
“If you put bananas and money in front of monkeys, monkeys will choose bananas because monkeys do not know that money can buy many bananas”.
In reality, if you offer JOB and BUSINESS to people, they would choose JOB because most people do not know that BUSINESS can bring them more money than wages.
Robert Kiyosaki, author of the bestselling book, “RICH DAD, POOR DAD”, and also a business partner of President Donald Trump said:
“One of the reasons poor people are poor, is because they are NOT TRAINED TO RECOGNIZE ENTREPRENEURSHIP OPPORTUNITIES”.
“They spend too much time in school and what they have learned in school is to WORK FOR MONEY instead of MONEY WORKING FOR THEM”.
In school, you could graduate as the best student in Finance, but it doesn’t mean you will make more money than everybody else.
The fact is that life requires more than the ability to understand a concept, memorize it, and reproduce it in an exam.
Schools reward people for their memory; life rewards people for their imagination.
Schools reward CAUTION; life rewards RISK.
Schools reward academic success; life rewards FAILURE.
Schools exalt those who play by the rules; life exalts those who break the rules and set new ones.
Starting a business requires a different kind of game, different kind of mindset, different kind of training and different kind of thinking…
In fact there are many answers to questions about business right here on Quora than anywhere else, but guess what? Fewer people ever pay any attention.
One of the BIGGEST factors that prevent people from starting a business is FEAR.
FEAR of failure.
FEAR of success.
FEAR of losing your status.
FEAR of losing your job.
FEAR of losing your money.
FEAR of losing your security.
FEAR of losing your pension.
FEAR of losing your friends.
FEAR of looking stupid.
FEAR of money.
etc.,etc.
(FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real)
The fact is that even if you start a business and fail, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that you spend thousands of dollars studying for an MBA from an Ivy League university or college only to discover later that there are no jobs to compensate your investment. You then end up doing any kind of job you can get. Yet most people don’t consider this a loss on investment.
The truth is that when you start a business you will definitely lose money, regardless of your training, status, family background, geographic location, or where you went to school. However, you will also learn more from your mistakes than in any Ivy League university and correct your mistakes or do it differently.
Life teaches that success comes from failing as many times as possible. That’s the lesson we learn from Thomas Edison, who is said to have failed 10,000 times before he invented the light bulb.
Schools don’t teach us about failure. We learn this from real-life experiences.
If you want to start a business, then you must approach it differently. You must first equip yourself with “real-life” entrepreneurship and business education.
The problem is that most entrepreneurship and business courses are not created by real entrepreneurs and business people who are experienced in running a successful “real-life” business.
Fortunately, good entrepreneurship and business education is all over the place if you know where to look. The best place to start educating yourself in entrepreneurship and business is to find good courses and books on entrepreneurship and business, created by real successful entrepreneurs and business people, who have actually started and run real successful businesses.
Opportunities in business are more than there are jobs. Yet most people choose to spend the rest of their lives working for a boss they hate. Just look around you. The opportunities for business are as many as there human needs. In fact, your very professional skill could be converted into a business if you can identify a human problem that can be solved with your professional skills.
The level of financial risk required to start a successful business is significantly lower today (almost zero), compared to what it was several decades ago, thanks to the Internet. Therefore you have no excuse.
There are tons of free resources on the internet on how to start a business. In fact if you’d like to learn more on how to start an online business, my own website, QuitYourDaySystem. com, has a ton of free and premium resources on how to start an online business.
Entrepreneurship and business courses cost a fraction of a pinch compared to an Ivy League MBA degree that will get you nowhere. These courses are created by real entrepreneurs and business people who have been through it all. Most of these people are real-life millionaires who are now living their lifelong dreams of financial freedom and helping other people to achieve their own dreams.
If you’re interested in business, here’s a list of some courses and books that will help you jumpstart your journey towards entrepreneurship and business from real, successful people. These are the same courses and books I used to set up a successful online business, which helped me quit my dead-end 9 to 5 job in the corporate world, and live according to my own terms.
Recommended BOOKS
1) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
2) Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill & W. Clement Stone
3) The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles
4) DotComSecrets by Russel Brunson
5) The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
6) The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris
7) Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
8) Think Like An Entrepreneur by Erick Bulatowicz
9) The Entrepreneurial Mindset by Rita Gunther McGrath & Ian MacMillan
10) The Power of FOCUS by Jack Canfield
11) UNSCRIPTED: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship by MJ DeMarco
12) The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5 by Taylor Pearson
13) Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki
14) The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
15) Launch Your Business: The 5 Step Solution to Do What You Love, Quit Your Job and Have the Freedom to Travel and Live Life on Your Own Terms by Rosetta Thurman
16) Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out - by Farrah Gray
17) COMFORT is the ENEMY of ACHIEVEMENT by Farrah Gray
18) Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
19) Multiple Streams of Internet Income by Robert G. Allen
20) Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin
21) The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Garber
22) Shut Up, Stop Whinning and Get A Life by Larry Winget
23) The Zero Hour Work Week by Jonathan Mead
24) The Little Guide To Un-Procrastination by Leo Babauta
(NB: The video courses will give you a definite advantage compared to reading the books only).
Recommended Video Courses
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