• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Then my dad said, “Second, you just learned how to hire your first accountant. You are hiring someone to do the work that entrepreneurs shouldn’t be doing.”

Now, I don’t advocate cheating in college. But I do believe Cameron’s story raises an incredibly important point. Our educational system, from kindergarten through college, basically tells kids, “Work hard, do this busywork, do this set of problems, wade through this long text and make notes on it.” It completely trains kids to be the doers in business, rather than the people who hire doers. We have way too many doers right now relative to the people hiring the doers (a.k.a., high unemployment). This is why. It goes right back to our education system, designed in its current form over a century ago to crank out masses of compliant factory workers and organization men—for which there are no longer jobs.

Which brings us back to Peter Thiel’s vision. “We want to help young people create something that totally disrupts the current establishment, the current system. That’s entrepreneurialism at its best. I think people are a lot more open to rethinking this today than they were five years ago. You have people who are going to college, they don’t get a job, then they have to move back in with their parents. This was not what was expected.”

Thiel told me he asks a simple question of people who are seeking employment with him, as well as asking it of the young people applying to his fellowship program. He says that many young people, raised for years and years through the hoop-jumping and conformism of the formal schooling system, have an incredibly hard time answering it. So it weeds out most applicants: “Tell me something that you think is true that very few people agree with.”

We’ve seen that those who have clung to outmoded, rigid, stale, conformist notions of formal higher education are now getting slaughtered economically, as their formerly safe jobs get outsourced, downsized, offshored, and automated, and as once-secure establishments crumble into the wireless, digital, networked ethers.

What do you think is true about your own education, and about your own path to success in the real world, which very few people agree with?

I hope this book has inspired at least a few disobedient thoughts.

GRATITUDE

This book would not exist without the encouragement of Marie Forleo. At a small dinner party in the spring of 2009 in New York, just after I handed in my first book to HarperCollins, I decided to test out several book ideas on my guests for my next one.

I mentioned my three top book concepts to the guests. Honestly, I can’t even remember what they were, but the response to all of them was lukewarm at best. I felt despairing at this response. Figuring I didn’t have much to lose at this point, I decided to try one idea on the group, an idea I’d been thinking about for a while but had always dismissed, as it seemed way too controversial.

“Well, I have one other, really crazy idea,” I said to the guests. “I want to write a book about billionaires and millionaires who educated themselves, and didn’t finish college.”

“THAT’S your next book!” Marie shouted instantly in excitement. “I’d buy that in a second.”

Marie’s validation was all the encouragement I needed, and I chose that topic. Thank you, Marie!

I am incredibly grateful to all the self-educated people and other experts who shared their stories and opinions for this book. This book would be nothing without you. I give all my thanks to the following interviewees:

Maria Andros; David Ash; James Bach; Andy Bailey; Steve Baines; Scott and Cyan Banister; Howard Behar; James Bell; Elliott Bisnow; Michael Bissonnette; Jeff Black; Opher Brayer; Gurbash Chahal; Rose Cole; Christine Comaford; Richard Cooper; Jade Craven; Decker Cunov; John Paul DeJoria; Felix Dennis; Erica Douglas; Marc Ecko; Hal Elrod; Kent Emmons; Mike Faith; Lauren Frances; Bryan Franklin; Marijo Franklin; David Gilmour; Paul Hawken; Dennis Hoffman; Mike Jagger; Cameron