The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [49]
Compare these forms of modestly valuable collegiate human capital with the kinds of things you can (and have to) learn on your own, educating yourself out in the real world: How to network and connect with powerful teachers and mentors (the subject of this chapter). How to start and manage a business. How to market and sell effectively (Success Skills #3 and #4). How to lead others. How to discover your sense of purpose and meaning (Success Skill #1). These forms of human capital produce mountains of value and are handsomely rewarded, either by the marketplace or by your own life satisfaction and well-being.
It is possible to learn these things in college, but they are usually learned through extracurricular activities such as student government; leadership in cultural, charitable, political, or Greek organizations; sports teams; peer support groups; and so forth. Yet extracurriculars are essentially a form of free (or low-cost) self-education. The more you focus on these, the less you’ll be focusing on the formal curriculum you’re paying (and going into debt) to study in college.
Elliott Bisnow is vastly more successful than most twenty-five-year-olds (by wild orders of magnitude) because he focused entirely on investing in developing this kind of real-world human capital, the kind that actually produces real-world results and is valued in the real world, rather than bullshit academic-based human capital, which is only valued in the sheltered context of academia, or by out-of-touch, large bureaucratic employers seeking fresh drones for their entry-level jobs.
Elliott wasn’t born with this valuable human capital; he didn’t inherit it. He bootstrapped investments of time and elbow grease to develop it, putting in the effort of learning how to sell, during those first two years (while skipping class) in his Madison, Wisconsin, dorm room. Those investments paid off in the form of the ability to sell, which is hands down one of the most economically valuable forms of human capital in existence (see Success Skill #4). He parlayed these sales skills into financial capital in the form of his seven-figure business, which gave him access to credit, which allowed him to buy those ski trips. He parlayed those ski trips into honest-to-goodness human relationships (i.e., connection capital) with people who are themselves tremendously connected.
In other words, he invested his other forms of capital (sales skills, financial capital) into connection capital—the ability to help people massively in the space of two minutes just by making introductions within his network. Multiply two-minute periods like that, day in and day out as Elliott gives, gives, gives to all the people around him (and they give, give, give back to him) in this highly leveraged way (small amount of time, big impact), and you begin to see the genius of what Elliott has created for himself. You begin to see what separates him from nearly all other twentysomethings, indeed, from nearly everyone else in the working world: Elliott has decoupled his labor from his capital, and focused on building some pretty amazing capital for himself: a world-class tribe of people he helps and who help him. He has become a capitalist—a capitalist of giving and service to others.
The second form of connection capital—that is, the second form of giving that can expand your network of teachers, mentors, and guides in life—is as we’ve seen, advice giving.
There’s a paradoxical aspect