Should I Go To College? | #FFLTV 21

Hey, fastlaners, welcome to Freedom Fastlane tv. Today we're gonna analyze if you should go to college or if you should start a business from your dorm room like I did, or any of the people that we're gonna talk about on today's episode. So let's do it.

A couple years ago, somebody sent me a Facebook message and said that they were having some success in their business. They had joined one of our trainings, they were in the tribe and they were growing their business and they were doing it from their college dorm room. So he sent me the message and he said, hey, I'm thinking about dropping out of college. What do you think? And I said, if you drop out of college, I'll reach through this computer, I'll grab you by the throat and I will choke slam you. Because I would give up everything that I have built, all the money that I have made, all the income streams that I have generated for one more year back in the dorm room, hanging out with my best friends. At the end of the day, everything that we want in life is connection with other human beings. And I had the greatest connection with other people. The best time of my life when I was in a dorm room at Indiana Wesleyan University in Hodson Hall. Those are my favorite memories as a human being. I didn't even drink in college. I'd had no sips of anything until I graduated. Guys weren't allowed in girls dorms and vice versa. I had the most boring college experience ever compared to most people. And I had the best time of my life. Probably tells you something a little about, about my life, but we won't go there. I miss college more than anything else in my life. So should you go to college or should you be an entrepreneur? Both. And I totally think you should go to college and I totally think that you should study for a very specific skill if you're not going to be an entrepreneur. But they are not related to one another. They are completely opposite of one another. No school that I have found, even the schools that claim to prepare you to be an entrepreneur, in my opinion, don't do a very good job most of the time. It's about indoctrinating you into a system that has completely crumbled. The 9 to 5 is a dinosaur. We need to become more entrepreneurial. So you should learn how to be an entrepreneur and you're not going to get that in school. I would still give up everything if I could go be 21 again and hang out with some of my best friends. So go for the experience. And if you're studying for a specific trade, go all in. But you're not going to learn how to be an entrepreneur in college. However, college is the time for you to discover how to create value in the world and discover how the world works. Now, they won't teach you that in college because most are pretty left leaning and will tell you that you should suck the system, not create a new system. I'm of the opinion that you can create whatever you want in life. So you're gonna have to learn that on your own, whether it is in college or out of college building a real business. But I would still go for the experience if it were up to me. So if you're studying for specific skill or, or you're going for the experience, absolutely. Go to college, but you're not going to learn how to be an entrepreneur there. So build a business on the side in between classes, or skip classes and build a business. And we'll talk about exactly how to do that and show you some case studies coming up next. Right before I went off to college, I did not think that college was for me. I had a business that was starting to blossom. I was 18 and in love. I didn't want to go away to college and it was still the best experience of my life because of the people that I met. And it made me a more educated person. As a result of studying economics, which was one of my fields of study, I think I learned more about the world than anything that I could have done during that time. And I was an entrepreneur, which accelerated my learning. It made me a more well rounded person studying and running a business. So putting your kid into some sort of entrepreneurial experience is a good idea at any age. I have a friend who is a 9 year old who's starting to build a business. Go for it. It will accelerate your learning about how the world works. Regardless of how old or young you are. If school is not for your son or daughter, or if it's not for you, if you feel like it's going to limit your future. Actually the question was about entrepreneurship. Limiting your future. Entrepreneurship will never limit your future. It will accelerate the growth at which you the growth that you experience, regardless of what path you are on. Because it's the fastest way to realize that you are responsible for your own results. What might limit your future is three or four years in college or going into debt to do it. That might limit your future, especially since the traditional model of going to college is going away. So I think that limiting entrepreneurial spirit will limit your future more than will limiting traditional education. I still think you should do both. I would not recommend going into an absurd amount of debt to do it. And I would not sacrifice studies to. I'm sorry, I would sacrifice studies for an entrepreneurial journey because I think you'll learn more from the entrepreneurial experience. But having both, I think creates the most well rounded individuals. But we should not be subsidizing it through government. That's how we enslave people into debt, drive up the cost of education and drive down quality. So this ridiculous idea that college should be completely free, all that will do is make college as worthless as a high school diploma. There's my political rant for the day. Let's look at a case study.

Recently on the Freedom Fast Lane podcast, I interviewed mark and Jack McGraw. They're a father son duo and Jack is a 16 year old, not even old enough to go to college. And they started a tiny little physical products business. It was a handle that attached to, I think it was a yeti coffee mug. Really simple idea. And They've sold over 100,000 units of this single product. Now this is a great example of teaching a young person what it means to put something out there in the world and to get a result. Rather than just learning through high school, learning through college, but actually seeing something real, real in the world, creating value and also making money. So this simple product sold over 100,000 units and it's continuing to grow, it's continuing to sell. And they were excited if they had sold a thousand units. I think they said that they dreamed of maybe selling 10,000 units. So this is a father son duo that came together. The father was the capital partner. The son is doing a lot of the hustle. It's a great example of what happens when the right partners, whether they're related or not related, come together with defined roles of how each person is going to contribute to the business. Whether you're partnering with a family member, you're partnering with somebody that you just know. If you can get a piece of a bigger pie by partnering with someone and you're learning something along the way and getting paid for it, that is the beauty of capitalism. That is the beauty of, of entrepreneurship. So if you are struggling with this question of do I want to go to college or how do I get my son or daughter interested in being an entrepreneur, go listen to the podcast episode with mark and Jack McGraw and listen to the story about how they navigated the difficulties of being a father son duo. Starting a business and also wrestling with this question of I'm a 16 year old, I'm building a business now that's successful, what the heck do I do with my life next? Do I build this business full time? Do I go to college? And I wrestled with these questions too. What I discovered was as a result of having a cash flow machine in college, it forced me to wrestle with much bigger questions once I graduated. So I had this cash flow machine. Now I've got to actually figure out what my life is going to look like. That was the most difficult part of my life. The those few years of trying to wrestle with. Now I actually have to define what my life is gonna look like. These are challenges that most of my peers didn't have to deal with because it was, I gotta make money, so I'm gonna pick a career and just go for it. There's some peace in that direction. These are questions that we're going to have to deal with because things are getting cheaper. Whether or not the media tells you, as automation goes, continues to climb, prices are going to come down, we're going to have more free time, we're going to have more freedom and we're going to have to figure out what our lives are going to look like. So the idea of starting a business in college, graduating and having something profitable that forces you to define your life, whether you use your degree or not, are challenges that are going to be very real for the next generation. We might as well start talking about them now. I have said this before and I will say this again. One of the greatest gifts my parents gave me was they never tried to force me into any specific path. They instead encouraged whatever path felt natural to me. For me, that was being an entrepreneur. Now, neither of my parents were entrepreneurs. That was the furthest thing from their mind. My dad was a teacher for 30 some odd years. My mom was a mom and then she worked as a secretary and she worked at my school. And they never thought anybody in our family being an entrepreneur, that came from the cloud. God gave me that one. I was born an entrepreneur. I was drawing pictures on cutout paper and trying to sell it door to door at 5 years old for a penny each. That was my first business. So my parents fostered whatever I showed interest in, which wasn't, wasn't like anything that they were interested in. That was the greatest gift that they could have given me. So if your son or your daughter is not wanting to go to college and they show interest somewhere else, encourage that. The one thing that I hope to pass on to Esther, my daughter, my 2 year old. If nothing else, wherever she shows interest, I plan to encourage that. Whether that is ponies, which I know nothing about, whether that is Pokemon, which I caught all 150 of when I was in junior high, or whether it's being an entrepreneur, which I know a thing or two about, I'll encourage wherever she shows interest or wherever she shows her pursuits. Because what a world this would be if we doubled down on our interests and our strengths and trying to turn our weaknesses into strengths. We're all born with a certain amount of of gifts. We might as well maximize those gifts and not waste time on our weaknesses. Last year at Freedom Fast Lane Live here in Austin, Texas, we featured a buddy of mine named Nathan Latka who had built and sold a successful software as a service company called Heyo. While he was in his dorm room now, Nathan talked about how his experience founding that company was all about basically picking up the phone and finding out where people needed help and then building that solution. That is entrepreneurship at its core. It is solving problems and identifying how you can be the solution to that problem and getting paid for it. Now, Nathan did it in his dorm room. Some people do it once they've worked in the corporate world. But the way that this world works, the way that the world goes round, is by people providing value for one another. That is what capitalism is. That's what entrepreneurship is all about. It's why I believe that success should be edified and not demonized. So whether you're in college or you are not yet in college, know this. You will get ahead in life by providing value. Sometimes getting a college degree allows you to provide more value. But the faster that you can learn that you are responsible for the results that you get in life and you are responsible for the amount of problems you solve and the amount of value that you create. That is when your career takes off. If you can start providing value now, start providing value now. My best friend in the world is named Mark. Jenny started his business when he was 13 years old. Started learning how to buy and sell wholesale. Then he learned copywriting as a teenager. I think he was a millionaire by his early 20s.

At age 23, he had been an entrepreneur for a decade. He was a decade into his career when most people graduate and say, well, I gotta figure out what I'm gonna be when I grow up now. So the faster that you can start experimenting, the faster that you start providing value in the world, even if it is starting some Random physical products, business and just throwing it up on Amazon, ebay, Kickstarter, whatever, just to get feedback on the marketplace of what it feels like to put yourself out there and ask someone for the sale. The faster you can do that, the faster you will learn about how this world works and how you create success. If you expect that four years at an institution that is regulated and usually funded by people sitting in Washington D.C. if you think that is going to make you somehow valuable in the marketplace, you've been sold a lie. You're valuable in the marketplace because of the value you provide and for no other reason. So sometimes having that diploma makes you more valuable because of what you learned, but only because of the experiences that you had. That doesn't mean that you are more capable of providing value for someone else. That comes from solving problems and being an entrepreneur. And that's a good idea. No matter how old you are. The old model of education is going away. I personally am still thankful for my time in college because it made me a more well rounded person. But to believe the idea that college makes you more valuable or it makes you more marketable in the workforce is a lie. One of the worst things that we could do is try and prop that up. Now we see that coming from politicians. The state of New York just, I believe, said that all public colleges are now gonna be free. That's gonna be a crazy mess. Just watch what happens there. It's gonna completely devastate the value of a college education even faster than it's already happening. So the worst thing we can do is try and prop up a broken system. But if you have the opportunity to go and you're disattached from the results or it somehow making you more marketable in the workforce, course it won't. So remove that from your idea of what to expect from college. The fastest way that you can learn about how this world works is to become an entrepreneur. So go to college, have a great time, soak up every experience possible. Study something you enjoy. That's my biggest regret.

I had business as one of my majors. I hated every second in my business classes, but I thought maybe it might help me in my business. Study something you enjoy. Study something that you will actually get excited about. You might start a business around it at some point. So if you've got the entrepreneurial itch. Scratch that itch. Scratch it now. Start getting feedback on the marketplace now. And if you're gonna go to college, please just study something you enjoy. Because whatever you learn is not gonna be used in the workforce anyway. Cause that model's going away, so you might as well enjoy your time. Maybe it'll introduce you to some people to put you in a field so you can continue practicing what you enjoy. Or if you want to go into a specific trade, go for it. Go get the trade school certification or whatever it is and go into that trade. But if you're going to be an entrepreneur like me, start your business now. Go study something you enjoy, have a great time, and send me pictures on Instagram. Thanks for watching Freedom Fastlane tv. We'll see you on the next show.