46. Which Path Is Better To Build A Startup - Quit School vs MBA?

How an educated journey like Bergs, your favorite MBA and an uneducated journey with your favorite high school dropout. I did got to collective shift a crypto startup, how we both arrived here, the pros and cons of going down a path of not going through university, not doing your mba, not, you know, finishing school versus going down the path of more structured learning, finishing university, doing an mba, there's no best way to do it right. There's pros and cons of both. Welcome back to another episode of the Benneberg show with your favorite high school dropout and your favorite MBA bergs. How are you, mate?

I'm feeling awesome. How you going, lad?

I'm going good. I've only had, actually had a shitty latte this morning. I realized I don't make a good latte here in Thailand. The Americano is better though, so I need to fix that. Like it was half, like the cup was half froth, half coffee. Like I had to spoon the froth out and by the time I got to the coffee, like it was bang average. So I rotate into Americano.

This is the important stuff, mate.

Anyway, that's not what we're talking about today. Today we're talking about the difference of how an educated journey like Bergs, your favorite MBA and an uneducated journey with your favorite high school dropout. I did got to collective shift a crypto startup, how we both arrived here, the pros and cons of going down a path of not going through university, not doing your mba, not, you know, finishing school versus going down the path of more structured learning, finishing university, doing an mba. Because I think there's no, you know, there's no best way to do it right. There's pros and cons of both. And for those listening at home, maybe you have a qualification, maybe you have a qualification, something you're not really interested in. Maybe you're currently, you know, maybe you didn't go to university and you're doing a job you don't like and you want to do something but you don't have the qualification. Well, then I can probably share some lessons on what I've done and then burst and also share some lessons on what he's done with his MBA and how we got here. So this is going to be a cracking short, sharp comparison. Super keen to get started. Did you have anything you want to say about.

Yeah, mate, like we. So when Ben came over to Perth, worked super hard for like two and three quarter days and then the last quarter we played some golf and Ben was telling us a story about him in high school and the deal he had with his parents and how smart they were. And I found this absolutely fascinating. So, mate, why don't you tell us about when you were in school, what you decided and the deal you had with your folks.

So from, I guess, primary school, I've always been building businesses, very small businesses, you know, little like sort of literally bedroom operations, right? My first business was like. First proper business was an iPhone repair business. I shared a bedroom with my brother, I had bunk beds with him. We lived in a small, like, town in Launceston. Sorry, Launceston is a small suburb in Launceston. And fixing my friends at school's iPhones, that was the first business. Then it moved into a sportswear business. And my sportswear business was we manufactured sports uniforms and garments for sporting teams in Tasmania and we manufactured them in China and Pakistan, brought them over. So I started that when I was 15. Built that to like, I can't remember exact numbers. It was somewhere between 200 and 300,000 in annual revenue. I had. I had an employee to help me. I loved it, right? It was. It was all my life I was doing it at school. School just wasn't for me, right? It wasn't teaching me the things I wanted to learn. I was doing, you know, zero reconciliation or zero was in the zero accounting software reconciliation. In my finance class, when we're learning like manual bookkeeping, I'm like, like, I get it, we need to know this, but can you teach me how to use zero? I'm like, no, we don't teach it here. I was like, well, you can get. Then I'm leaving.

So that's a key. You can get back to my thing.

It just wasn't for me. Like, all my friends were doing different stuff, like during recess and lunch, like, I was just working on my business. They're like, what the fuck you doing, man? Like, we're going to the park and, you know, smoking weed or whatever the fuck they were doing. Like, I was like, nah, man, I got shit to do anyway. I was like, this school is for me. I'm done, I'm over. It went to my parents, my. And my mum's a school teacher, right? So this is going to be hard. I want to quit school. It's not for me. This is what's going on in school, not learning what I need to learn. And.

Mum was like, I don't think so. Like, I think, you know, you should finish, get a qualification. Da, da, da, da. And dad Was like that was more open to it. That was like, okay, I get it, you want to do this, we're happy to back you, but you have to achieve a result. If you don't achieve that result, you're going back to school. Like, okay, I can be on board with that. So said by this time next year. And I had an advisor at the time, his name was Stan. He was, he and he knew my parents and we brought Stan into it and he was going to be keeping me accountable by, by a year's time that this time the following year, this was when I was 16. This time next year you have to basically earn this amount of income and I think it was like 20 or $30,000. You have to pay board at this rate, you have to earn this and you have to basically pay your way to do this on your own. If you don't do it, you go back to school. If you do do it, awesome. Good on you, off you go. And that was the betrayed handshake. Done that sort of. Next few weeks I quit school and just grinded, built the business up, was able to pay my board, pay my wage, you know. And that was not shortly after I got into crypto and, and joined the other crypto business that I was part of. Sold their sportswear business and then been on a journey of like building businesses with no real qualification but learning on the job. So my first real entry in the crypto space was as operations marketing person.

And another crypto media business. I then all of a sudden had like a team below me and we're like building a product and eat like online products and marketing operations, scaling all this illegal pr, all of it, learn all that on the job. Had no idea what I was doing at all until I started and just, just got amongst it and been learning on the job, made a shitload of mistakes, lost money, didn't pay superannuation for a year because we know you need to pay superannuation like forgot to do stuff like weren't registered as a business, didn't know you had to do that. Like went through all the mistakes you could possibly think of, made all the mistakes. But I learned so much faster. It was super stressful. But you know, I found me by hands on learning. I've learned a lot versus you know, potentially doing you know, business course where you know and not necessarily MBA but business in university where you get in a heap of debt. It's mostly practically like theoretical. A lot of book work and I just can't, I don't do reading I can't learn and read. That's just not how I learn. I learn by on the job and that's how I sort of got into Collective shift. So my mix of startups, working business, working in crypto, learning a bunch of stuff, all colliding to start collective shift.

Two and a half years ago, that's phenomenal man. And you do you learn a lot. You get advisors amongst you, jump in the deep end, you're like I'm going to do this now and, and you just keep going till you get good.

Yeah, advisors is a big one. Yeah that then you're right. Like that's where I've learned a lot from. I do a lot like I listen every, every like waking second I'm not working. I'll listen to a podcast, I try and read books when I can, YouTube videos. I'm a part of entrepreneurs organization. I learned so much through that. I go to in like real world courses. I've traveled to the US to do like marketing courses, public speaking courses. I do a lot of like in person stuff. I love that. And then I have probably five to six advisors helping me and if you want to know those advisors, we did an episode on this on how I spent $55,000 on advisors last year. That is episode number 32. You can go listen to that if you want to know who I spend advice on. But I learned from other people. Bergs. I'm definitely not the smartest guy but I bring in the smartest people to help me make the smartest decision.

That's the thing like knowing your limitations and that self awareness piece but then bringing in those people and actually taking their advice and actioning it. I think that's why you succeed.

That's why I succeed. Now the downside to what I did is it's not structured and you miss things and there's gaps and you make a shitload of mistakes because you just honestly don't know what you're doing. So the downside of this is you don't pay superannuation for a year and you get fined and you learn from that or you, you know, you don't know the right strategy or the right decision making framework or you don't know the, you know, marketing is a big one that you know is very psychological. When you really need to know human behavior and different strategies and pricing strategies and mental frameworks and like all this sort of stuff you don't get at all. So one of the best things about how Bergs and I work together is that he has a complete different path to where we have. And his skill sets and his knowledge is completely. It's not, it's not different in a sense, but the way he thinks about the problems we have are completely different because of what he's been through with the NBA. And that is so, so valuable that I would like to do an NBA one day. Not anytime soon because I know. No, don't have any time to do it. But Bergs, talk us through how you got to collect your shift because you went through a much different journey than I did.

Yeah, absolutely. And just looking back on our golf day, you were with three other MBAs and you were talking at our level, which was incredibly fascinating. You're a 24 year old bloke and you've run companies and you were asking the questions and understanding the things that we were talking about, which was just absolutely incredible to say, man.

Yeah, no, there was a couple of things that were. There was one of the core segments that you said that it was something about data.

Computational data or what was.

It what we're talking about. So we did this data unit in our MBA data driven decision making and we were talking about, I think it's linear regression. Linear regression. Okay, fair enough. Most business people wouldn't know or understand that. Like that, that's a bit of an out there thing. But then when I explain to you like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

Man. So, so my journey, your high school thing, that sounded very familiar. Where I was entrepreneurial in high school as well. And I remember I was the first one of the first kids to get like a CD and DVD burner in my school. So man, I had a little side hustle. Hopefully the statute of limitations for all the copyright laws are done. Because I was young.

Man, I was like, I was burning CDs, copying them, downloading software, putting it on and it's like selling it to everyone. Like five bucks a pop. Had a little book, had a little register, like how much I was making. Made like a couple of grand that year, which was just heaps of money for someone that's like, you know, 14, 15, it's incredible. And I was always buying and I had the Internet early, so I was buying and selling stuff on ebay. Like if local shops had a clearance on some item that was like some electronic thing that was $10 I knew I could sell for 60, I go and buy that, go and sell it. And my path was, it was very interesting actually. Like I was very bored at school and in year 11 they recommended I did TE and they recommended that I didn't do it for year 12. And then I did it for year 12 and I got a pretty decent score, I got awards and I went on to do computer science. But the entry level for computer science was like your TR had to be 70 something and I ended up getting like 88 point something, right? So in the end I'm like, why even bother, right? Like it's, it's like I could get like really bad grades and just get in. So I went on, went to uni straight away, did computer science, did computer science for like a year and a half or two years. Realized I didn't like coding, hated it, Swapped to information systems. So it's more about data designing systems.

Databases, managing them, pulling data out, doing manipulations on it, that kind of thing. And commercial application development. So everything apart from the coding aspect. And I left with a degree in business information systems and information system development. And that was. That took like probably four years to do because I farted around a bit. Look, honestly, at uni I was very, very arrogant. I spent most of my time at the publisher. I realized the, the exams worth 55 and a lot of it was not mandatory to go to. So I didn't do the assignments, didn't do the tutorials and got like 90 something percent in the exam. And yeah, I was, I was a.

So graduated that. And then I never had a gap year or anything. So I was at home, I was playing like Xbox. I'd go down to like Pizza Hut because back in the day you had like Blockbuster next door. Order some pizza at lunchtime, go and grab some Xbox games, take the pizza home, you know, smoke a bit of weed, play that. I still live with the folks. And like after, after like a month I was like, now I get you getting a job. So she found me a job in like payroll in Health, like a three month kind of thing. Smashed it in like three weeks. Like the job they wanted me to do is I automated everything in Excel, smashed it and then stayed there for like, I don't know, another month or something. Then went to IT help desk in.

The Department of Health, which was just horrendous. It was gross. Quit that within a couple of months. And then mum heard of another job from actually from Dale, the guy I had dinner with. So I rock up to this job thing and it's supposed to be like a data entry job. Three days a week I sit there and this lovely lady comes out, she goes, oh, you know, she'll be here in like, you know, she's running late. Sit there. 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes. I'm like this in my ill fitting suit. 22 years old, Fiona Wood comes out in her scrubs. This is 2006, right? So the year before she was the Australian year. I'm like, me, that's Fiona Wood. Holy. So anyway, walk into her office and we just start nerding out about data, talking about all this stuff. She hires me and then basically I've been in the. I was in the Fiona wood Foundation from 2006 until last year. So 16 years. And the role progression from that was basically I started as data entry, but it wasn't data entries. Like, hey, we got this system, we got a web app, a win app, go and design it, go and roll it out. So my job was literally, you got all these 50 year old nurses, you have to digitize everything they're doing, you have to train them and get them using the system and get the data out on the back end and give it to all the researchers. So did that for absolute years. Learned how to build product, how to talk to people, how to customize things, how to be compliant and just did different things around the business. It was whatever I wanted to do. I would bring my skill set and apply it to the business. And right up, I think 2014, I had the conversation with Fiona because there was a pivotal moment where you have a conversation with her and it's either, what do you want to do, you want to do a PhD, do you want to go study medicine or do you want to do something else? And mine was like, I want to do an mba. And she's like, that's weird. All right, tell me about it. And that was at the point where we're actually opening Fiona Stanley Hospital as well. So I was involved in the commissioning there, all the setup of everything, the it, it was just, it was huge. And by that time we had a full digital system. I was really able to do a lot of awesome work within health. So 2015, I started my MBA. I got married in 2014, had a kid in 2015, lots going on. MBA was a complete game changer for me. So this was like learning different languages. Like I could now speak, you know, economics or marketing or legal, whatever it may be. And I had a much better understanding. I could apply that back to the business I was in. And I did my MBA from 2015 to 2019 and just being able to talk strategy at a higher level and even doing things like the company directors course, being able to pitch to A board being like, this is what you need to do, this is your responsibility. This is, you know, how you will de risking speaking their language at their level. I was able to do things that other people weren't able to do. And the top notes were implement heaps of technology, do things like, you know, voice to text integration, mobile development, public apps in the app store, allowing clinicians to use their apps anywhere in the world with patient data, sending it two ways with images. Things that people freak out about, we were able to achieve. And I really tie that to being strategic and learning that from my mba, being able to convince directors and executives, but also like marketing and building the demand side and just all of these ways that people don't really think unless they've been exposed to it. Like you would have been exposed to it through collective shift. You have to experience it or you have to be taught. Yeah. So it opened lots of doors for me. And you now feel like you belong in any room. You can have a conversation with absolutely anyone. The downside to all of this is that you are taught in a structured way. You, you are in a structured business. And I was in a very bureaucratic business. So I had to unlearn all of those processes that I was taught for 16 years where it's a very fixed mindset. This is the amount of money you have for the year, you need to protect it. This is all you have. Whereas in business it's more of a growth mindset. How do we work together? How do we grow the pie, how do we both provide each other value? And unlearning that mindset to a growth mindset was very, very hard to do.

That's really fascinating. And I think from my perspective, you know, Burke's coming in, like there's a lot of, just a lot of good thinking and mental models and as I said, strategies that Berg has been able to bring across, whether it's like, you know, market penetration or whether it's like, you know, brand, whether it's like, who our target Persona. There's been so much like strategy stuff that we've been able to work through together. When you've been able to pull on that learning, that structured learning that you've had prior and implement it in a particular, in a way where I haven't, I haven't had that. If I have a problem or I think I need, you know, for example, right. We need to, you know, we need to develop a new email sequence to, you know, take someone from a lead to a conversion. I'm just going to Google that shit and spend four hours learning as much as I can about it. And then I'll go and make it right. Where Bergson can bring that stuff that you've already had in the past forward, you know, through the sort of MBA and learnings you've had. So it's a different way.

Yeah. And they, with the mba, they teach you in a structured way and you're constantly looking at the latest research. You're doing business cases as well. Like things like, let's say you've got a new market development strategy. The classic one was Coke went into Spain and all they did was copy paste. Here you go, here's the bottles we have here. You'll get it over there. They didn't think about distribution trucks. They were selling two liter bottles. Spanish people don't have big fridges. Two liter bottles don't fit in your fridge. Like all these little things. Or like Harley Davidson and the Harley Owners group and Brand Love and just learning through what other businesses have done, but applying business models to it, you learn so much and it's absolutely incredible. And all the assignments you do, like literally for 12 weeks, you are a marketer, you have to apply those assignments to your business. I apply it to a service business. I even presented to my boss. It was really practical in that aspect. And then like, that's like your base level of knowledge when you finish and when, once you've done that, then you start applying it either in your work or in your business. The other, I guess I don't know if you'd really look at it as a downside, but it is expensive. It costs 60 grand to do an MBA. So if you're doing it and you're getting a higher position, yes, you can claim the tax portion on that. But over four years, about 15 grand a year, five grand a unit, it is a lot of cash, but definitely worth it. You come out a completely different.

The last thing I'll say on the downside of my route is like, it's, it's an upside if you're looking to start a business. I do think, unfortunately still for most businesses, maybe not tech or startups that, you know, a lot of businesses still look at your qualifications as a way to hire you. We don't have collective shift. I couldn't even tell you some of the qualifications that our team has. It's, it's proof of work. You show me your work and if it's good shit, you're hired. That's what we look at. But for a lot of Other businesses. It's not that. It's qualifications first. So that can be a downside when you, when you quit school.

But also think about the other flip side of that. So if I went for a job, yeah, my CV looks amazing, right? And I'll get the interview, but who are you really hiring? And now that was last year and now this year, yeah, I'll have that banging cv. And I've also worked for Collective Shift, done a bunch of crazy stuff, I'm a different human. But also go look on the Internet, go look at the product I've built, go look at the podcast, listen to the podcast, listen to my communication episode. All of this distribution and proof of work, this is where people are going nowadays. Because think about interviews, they're so artificial. Like, we just did the People Day for eo. You go there, you have a cv, you listen to someone and then you're like, oh, Great, I spent 20 minutes with them, I'm going to hire them. They're like, no, you don't do that. Like, you just. That's how you make lots of mistakes. You need to be slow in hiring, fast in firing. And I think once you have proof of work and you know they can do the skill, they've already proved it. That is a very strong signal for that person.

So there's two different routes you can go down, you know. Well, there's more than two, but like, that's two perspectives. One, you can definitely make it without education. You can definitely make it with the education. I don't think it really matters where you're at. Even if you're in corporate right now, you can switch to a startup, whether in one job, you're not liking it, you can start your mba, you can do education, or you can just go out with without it.

Yeah, there's different routes.

There's no, it doesn't. It's not one true. Fits all.

I forgot to say as well, while I was doing my mba, the corporate role I was in, like, I would move so fast, I would have to wait for other teams to catch up and implement things. And I got very bored. So I actually started a side hustle and started consulting with Ben. So I was testing the waters, did a day here, a day there, or take some annual leave from my job, do a week with Ben, then go back to my job. And that allowed me to apply all those learnings and also test what the other side of the fence was like, like. So it's not, it doesn't have to be one or the other. You can just do a little bit here and there.

Yeah. And a lot of our full time employees actually started that way as well. You know, Matt started as just a contractor. He was working in another business, started writing some content for us as a contractor and then build up from there. So it's a good way to sort of just test the waters and make sure it's a good fit for everyone. Yeah.

And just reach out. The way I did it was I was a moderator in the group and then I saw some things like can I help out? Helped him bit for free. And like, hey, I can help you more start creating my business. And then it just escalated from there.

Top stuff. Awesome. Great episode. If you have any questions around that or our journeys or how we got to where we are, please you can tweet at us or DM us on Twitter, insimpsonau on Twitter and at Babyback Berg. If you haven't listened to the communication episode either. All you business owners and professionals out there wanting to upgrade your communication. I have actually done this off the back of last episode. It has been a bit of a game changer for me. I learn a lot about how I communicate. Now I should communicate. So head over there. That's episode 43. Cracking episode. And if you're wanting to level up your crypto portfolio, we're now offering complimentary crypto strategy calls. You can book in a one on one 15 minutes with one of our team. Look at your portfolio, look at your security, make sure you're using the latest strategy, set yourself up for success. Because bitcoin is primed to have a cracking next couple of years. So head over there. The link is in the description. Or you can head to CollectiveShift IO to check that out. And burgs. I'll see you on the next episode.

See you next week, champions.