The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [11]
Education is still necessary to learn how to do the great work that gets you paid. But these days, almost all of the education that ends up actually earning you money ends up being self-education in practical intelligence and skills, acquired outside of the bounds of traditional educational institutions.
I asked Bryan if he felt he learned more starting up his businesses during and after school than he did during school. “Oh, my God. There’s no question,” he answered. “It would be the difference between a very well-planned seven-course meal done by one of the world’s top nutritionists, and compare that in nutritional value to a gumdrop.”
Let’s say you want to eat the seven-course meal done by one of the world’s top nutritionists, rather than the gumdrop.
This book provides you with a guide for acquiring key success skills you are very unlikely to learn in college. These are the real-world skills the self-educated millionaires I interviewed in my book all focused on learning, instead of abstract academic skills.
The typical college education consists of thirty-two courses—four courses a semester for eight semesters. The courses in The Education of Millionaires consists of seven key areas of lifelong self-study. These courses can and should be followed in addition to (before, during, and after) your traditional formal schooling in a classroom. But these aren’t like normal college courses. Here are some key differences.
OK, drumroll please. Here they are, the courses in The Education of Millionaires.
SUCCESS SKILL #1: How to Make Your Work Meaningful and Your Meaning Work (or, How to Make a Difference in the World Without Going Broke)
SUCCESS SKILL #2: How to Find Great Mentors and Teachers, Connect with Powerful and Influential People, and Build a World-Class Network
SUCCESS SKILL #3: What Every Successful Person Needs to Know About Marketing, and How to Teach Yourself
SUCCESS SKILL #4: What Every Successful Person Needs to Know About Sales, and How to Teach Yourself
SUCCESS SKILL #5: How to Invest for Success (The Art of Bootstrapping)
SUCCESS SKILL #6: Build the Brand of You (or, To Hell with Resumes!)
SUCCESS SKILL #7: The Entrepreneurial Mind-set versus the Employee Mind-set: Become the Author of Your Own Life
These seven courses, which correspond to the seven core chapters of the book, focus primarily on skills related to success in career, money, work, and business. Of course, for a truly integrated sense of success, in the fullest sense of the word, we all need to learn many practical personal skills as well. These include skills such as how to find and maintain a wonderful, loving relationship, how to sustain vibrant health, and how to navigate our spiritual beliefs in a world that seems to get more chaotic every day. It is possible to be a financial millionaire and an emotional and spiritual pauper. All the money in the world provides little comfort if we are lonely, sick, or forlorn of love.
But I will leave those personal success skills (crucial as they are) for another book. Since this is a business book, I am focusing here on skills related to success in the realms of career, money, work, and business. The seven success skills I explore here are of course not exhaustive, even in the realm of career and financial success. But they go a long way.
My format in the chapter devoted to each of these skills is quite simple. First, I provide some stories of successful self-educated people who learned and applied these skills, to great effect, in their own lives. Then, I give some examples of how I applied the same skills in my own life and the results I got. (I would never recommend to you something I hadn’t battle-tested in my own life.) Then, based on the experience of my interviewees, as well as my own experience, I give some practical tips about how to go about learning and applying that