In a candid, humor‑tinged talk, a college dropout who once earned more than his professors shares his core message to current students: focus on side hustles while in school because classroom learning is superficial. He recounts making $40,000 selling Grateful Dead stickers in high school, which taught him Photoshop and design, and running a music blog in college that gave him experience interviewing artists, building a website, and creating graphics. Though the blog never turned a profit, the skills it generated propelled his later ventures. He argues that degrees are largely useless without hard, marketable skills, and that students should pursue any side project that teaches a tangible ability, even if it’s not a unicorn‑scale startup. The talk blends sarcasm, motivational language, and blunt criticism of traditional academia, urging students to treat college as a time to acquire practical, money‑making capabilities.
Chapters
I dropped out of college when I was making more than my professors. This year I spoke at NYU Stern. Number one thing that I told college kids was to party more and hit it raw. Just kidding. All right, so the number one thing that I told college kids was to work on side hustles as much as possible when you're in college. Your classes are not going to teach you nearly anything, right? They are the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Think of them like the, the bread at a fancy 14-course meal, right? They are nothing, okay? Like, I— everything I do now, all my businesses, everything that I run None of it was learned in the classroom. It was all learned hustling on the internet on the side. When I was in high school, I made $40,000 selling Grateful Dead stickers. And all of that was just me hustling online, learning Photoshop, learning how to design, all this stuff, right? And then when I was in college, I started a music blog, right? That music blog, it taught me how to hit up celebrities. It taught me how to hit up musicians and interview them. It taught me how to build a website. It taught me graphic design 'cause I was making all these logos and stuff, right? Shut down the music blog because it wasn't making money, but it got me the skills to get me where I am today, right? So just work on as many side hustles as you possibly can. Work on side hustles and hit it raw. That is really all you need to know for college. No, but seriously, work on as many side hustles as you possibly can. It doesn't need to be the next unicorn. It doesn't need to be a giant project. It just needs to teach you something. If you can make a little bit of money, that's awesome. But at the end of the day, like, you just need to learn skills, right? A lot of kids go to college, they think a degree is what's gonna get them a job. No, the skills do. You need skills. You walk outta college with a degree that's useless today, right? Like, absolutely useless. What you need is hard fucking skills.
