The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [91]
In an age when 40 percent of American twentysomethings move back with their parents at least once, this is something many people in our society now don’t begin learning in earnest until their early thirties. By having learned how to support herself in the real world, Cyan bought herself a crucial ingredient for investing in her own career success and earning power: a buffer that allowed her to experiment with entrepreneurial career paths, without having to worry about “living in Dumpsters.”
Most significantly for her later life trajectory, during this time Cyan was also learning a great deal about starting her own business, and made quite a bit of money on the side, beyond her day jobs. “Sometime in between all of this, I started my first business. It was a T-shirt company. Even though my path in life was not to become a T-shirt maker, that venture got me exposed to ideas of entrepreneurialism. That was my first time learning about distribution, marketing, sales. I was nineteen years old. This was before it would have been possible to sell on the Internet, so most of my sales were local. But I got to the point where I had to buy my own printing press, with friends. It was wildly profitable.”
While Cyan did later start a venture, Zivity, which received venture funding, her story before that point is a perfect example of what I call “bootstrapping your education.” Bootstrapping your education involves getting on solid footing financially, and then making incremental investments in your earning power, over time, out of the cash flow—so you’re constantly learning and never going into debt.
Here are some key points that all the people featured in this book, who bootstrapped their own self-education and self-investment as Cyan did, addressed early on in their lives: Assuming you want to earn more than you currently do, will it be in the same field that you’re currently working in, or in a new field?
If you want to earn more in the same field that you’re currently working in, are there ways you can inexpensively learn about how to market and sell more effectively within this field? (Learning more about effective marketing and sales as they apply to the organizations/fields you work in is almost always the best and fastest way to earn more money in your career. See Success Skills #3 and #4.)
If you want to earn more money in a different field or industry than you currently work in, how can you gain the experience you need in your new chosen field without abandoning your current cash flow? Perhaps you could learn at night or on weekends, or start small and moonlight in the new business. Perhaps you can “learn while you earn” in some way. Maybe you can find people out there who are already successful in that field, who can mentor you for free, or with whom you can apprentice for free. (See Success Skill #2 on finding a mentor.)
What are your specific life goals and dreams? (See Success Skill #1.) Figure out the most laser-targeted, lean, focused, efficient, cost-effective, well-researched educational investments you could make to put yourself on the path of reaching those goals and dreams. (My guess is, unless you want to go into a traditional profession, which requires a formal credential, such investments probably lie outside of formal academic institutions and instead will involve self-education.)
If you wanted to get the education you needed to reach your dreams without going into debt, what would you do? The point is not that debt is always bad—it’s that the decisions you make when you’re spending your own hard-earned money now, rather than spending “play money” on credit, tend to be more realistic, focused, and reasoned, and less risky and speculative.
■ PHILLIP RUFFIN—BOOTSTRAPPING YOUR CAPITAL
Phillip Ruffin’s first paid employment after dropping out of college—on his way to becoming a billionaire—involved repossessing a pet monkey.
In the fifties, Ruffin told me, “I