Top Five Reasons You Don’t Need a Degree to Start a Business

1. Bill Gates

Although no longer the world’s richest man, Gates is still among the list of the world’s wealthiest people. He entered Harvard in 1973 and dropped out two years later to found Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen. In 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, and at commencement, Gates said, “I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.”

2.  Steve Jobs

The founder of Apple and Pixar had to drop out of Reed College after just six months. In a 2005 commencement speech he gave at Stanford University, Jobs credited a calligraphy class he took at Reed College with forming the basis for the typography used in the first Macintosh computer.

3.   Sir Richard Branson

Branson’s first successful business was publishing a magazine called Student, which is ironic since he left school when he was only 16. Today, Branson’s brand Virgin includes Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and more than 300 other companies. When he was just 24, Sir Branson bought his own 79-acre Caribbean island. He was knighted in 1999.

4.   Mark Zuckerberg

Another famous Harvard dropout, Mark Zuckerberg developed Facebook in his school dorm. As Facebook’s became one of the world’s most popular social networking sites, Zuckerberg chose to leave school and relocate his company to California. Forbes named Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire in the world, with a 2010 net worth of 4 billion U.S. dollars. He recently donated $100 million to the Newark, NJ public schools.

5. Michael Dell

Dell Computers is another company founded in a college dorm room. Among top ten wealthiest Americans, Dell dropped out of the University of Texas at Austin to run the company. In 2006, Dell and his wife gave a $50 million grant to the University which he attended but never graduated from.

Find more famous college dropouts at the College Dropouts Hall of Fame.

I Need a Place to Hang Out

Pasquini’s Pizzeria is a homegrown Italian restaurant in a turn of the century building featuring exposed brick walls, antique brass chandeliers, mismatched plates, and to-die-for breadsticks and grilled sandwiches. When I walk in, the waitstaff calls me by name and remembers my usual order. They don’t mind when I stay for a couple of hours reading and writing or working at my computer.

It’s what sociologists call my “third place,” a place separate from home (the first place) and work (the second place) where people congregate for social and creative interaction. I always looked forward to going there, until suddenly I couldn’t anymore.

When I got sick last fall and was diagnosed with diabetes, I had to quit going to Pasquini’s because I could no longer eat their food. I miss it and have been looking for another hangout ever since. The local coffee shop discourages people from hanging around taking up their limited table space. A nearby bakery, like Pasquini’s, has nothing made with whole wheat or whole grain bread. Other places in walking distance specialize in burgers, fries, Mexican food, and the like—all off limits to me.

So I continue to search for a place I can walk to, eat the food, and hang around. If you’d like to open such a place, I know a couple of empty storefronts that are available.

Why I’m Finally Reading Un-Marketing and Why it Took Me So Long

I just started reading Scott Stratten’s Un-Marketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging and I’m enjoying it very much. I think it may turn out to be one of my favorite books of the year, and it’s only the second week in January. So why, when I ordered it last September, am I just now reading it?

First, I need to explain that I am a bookaholic. Several years ago, after running out of shelf space, I resolved to stop buying books and instead check them out of the library. That decision has worked pretty well—not that I completely stopped buying books (let’s be honest: that will never happen). But I did start using the library and quickly became what most people would consider a heavy user.

Now, when I hear about an interesting book, my first instinct is to go to the library website and request that it be delivered to my local library branch. I don’t think I quite understood at the time how well this would work. It turns out that the library almost always has whatever book I might want. The only drawback is that sometimes I have to wait a few weeks to get it.

With some books, however, I don’t want to wait, and so I buy those books. That was what happened last fall with Un-Marketing. I’d heard good things about it and didn’t want to wait until it was available from the library, so I bought it. Unfortunately, when it arrived, I had all these books from the library and they had a DUE date when I would have to return them. Obviously, I had to read them first.

Every week, more requested books would appear on the hold shelf at the library, and I had to read them first, too. As the weeks passed, Un-Marketing got buried. I almost forgot I had it. Consider the irony here. I bought it so I wouldn’t have to wait for the library and then didn’t read it because I had to read library books first. I may have to reconsider my book buying strategy.

Then a funny thing happened. I read a tweet from Barbara Winter @joblessmuse pointing me to Scott Stratten’s blog. I learned that many people consider his book not only wildly useful, but also funny. As it happened, I had just finished a book and was looking for the next one to read. Funny as well as useful sounded good to me.

So far, I’ve only sampled a few chapters and have found much to love about this book. The ideas are outstanding, it is funny, and the chapters are short (that may be another post). It gave me several ideas for future posts, so expect to read more about it over the next several days.

Meanwhile, you might want to find a copy. No matter what your business, this book can probably help. Now, I’m going to stop writing and get back to reading.

Computer + Wild West + library = a very good day

I didn’t have much time to spare today. Thirty papers came through for me to review. This is my “day” job, although I can do the work day or night, whenever I feel like it. Anyway, it was a full load and I knew I didn’t have all day to do it.

That’s because today was the day for my birthday lunch with my brother and sister-in-law. We went to the Buckhorn Exchange, Denver’s oldest restaurant and bar featuring over 500 mounted animal heads plus historic artifacts of the wild west. It isn’t exactly politically correct. This time of year, when the National Western Stock Show is in town, the animals sport Santa hats, which strikes me as wildly funny. It’s the kind of place to take out of town visitors. My brother, who’s lived in Denver all his life, had never been there, so I thought it was time for him to go. I think he was pleasantly surprised because the food is quite good (you don’t have to eat Rocky Mountain oysters) and the ambience can’t be beat.

My old writing group met there every other Tuesday for a couple of years and I miss that–the people, the writing, the place. Since I learned that I have diabetes, there are many restaurants that just don’t serve food I can eat any more. Luckily, I can eat the food at the Buckhorn Exchange. I may have to become a regular there again.

After lunch, I had to get to the library to return some books that were due today. Amazingly, I still managed to get all my papers reviewed. It was a good day–the kind that makes me look forward to whatever tomorrow brings.

Learning vs. Education

Universities are full of knowledge; the freshmen bring a little in and the seniors take none away, and knowledge accumulates.” Lawrence Lowell

Okay, I admit I’m a cynic about education. While I’m a passionate lifelong learner, I’m skeptical about how much learning comes from institutionalized education. Too much bureaucracy. Too much compartmentalization. Too much homogenization. Too little time for reflection and curiosity and pursuit of passion.

I started this blog to show people how they could learn outside the walls of higher education. I don’t want to discourage people from attending college because I know good things (like self-confidence) can come from having a college education. However, I think the world of higher education is broken. Colleges have priced themselves out of the reach of too many people and become places for the elite or those who are willing to take on enormous debt before they’re old enough to know what they really want to do with their lives. It’s crazy.

I see too many stories about people who graduate at age 22 with $80,000 of debt before they even start their adult lives.

In our world of globalization and the Internet, it is now possible to bypass the traditional sources of higher education and save both time and money in the process. DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education by Anya Kamanetz provides a comprehensive overview of some innovative and forward-thinking options, but even more have  appeared since her book was published earlier this year.

So, I’ll be looking at some of those and profiling creative learners in my posts here. To get started, take a look at this video by the author of Brain Rules 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina.

I’m rerunning this post in honor of the late, great Les Paul. For more information, Click Here.

Question Everything

Curiosity may be the primary ingredient for imagination innovation. It made Leonardo da Vinci the quintessential renaissance man. In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael J. Gelb lists curiosità: “An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning” as the first of his seven Da Vincian principles. A later book, Innovate Like Edison, advises readers to “seek knowledge relentlessly.”

Albert Einstein famously said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But he also warned, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Maybe dropping out of high school allowed Les Paul to pursue his curiosity and develop the electric guitar and the recording innovations of overdubbing and multitrack recording. In the documentary, Les Paul Chasing Sound, Paul recalls that when his brother flicked a light switch the light came on. When he flicked the switch he wanted to know why the light came on. He continued his search for a sound that no one had ever made before that led to his many inventions, took him to the top of the record charts in the 40s and 50s. Remember Mockingbird Hill and Vaya Con Dios with Mary Ford? Paul’s curiosity eventually took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DVD shows him being admired by musicians from Bing Crosby to Paul McCartney. An insatiable curiosity doesn’t retire at 65. At the age of 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

Gelb suggests several exercises to increase your curiosity, including make a list of 100 questions that are important to you. “Do the entire list in one sitting. Write quickly, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or repeating the same question in different words.” Then go about finding some answers.

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The University vs. The Universe

The university has always been a poor substitute for the universe as a learning resource.

The world’s first universities were established in the 5th century CE in various places including Constantinople, Egypt, India, China, and Persia. The University of Pennsylvania, the first university in the U.S., was founded hundreds of years later in 1740 by none other than Benjamin Franklin. They performed adequately, if not always admirably, through the industrial age. These days they aren’t doing such a good job.

As John Naisbitt pointed out twenty plus years ago in his groundbreaking research on Megatrends, “Things are changing too fast for people to specialize their education.” Therefore, the most important skill to master is learning how to learn. “Tasks are going to change, careers are going to change. If you know how to learn, you can continue to grow. If you don’t you’re going to be handicapped.”

Now that the Internet brings the universe into our homes, if we know how to learn, we no longer need huge bureaucracies to standardize learning for us. Three sites allow all of us to listen to lectures covering just about any topic we’d like to learn.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public for free.

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

This non-profit is “working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.” It vows to give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.

Launched less than two years ago, Apple’s iTunes university offers college lectures on everything from Proust to particle physics to students and the public. Some universities make their lectures available to all, while others restrict access to enrolled students. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.

Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who led the study.

As the iTunes website, explains, learning no longer happens only at a desk. Students now expect constant access to information, no matter where they are, which is exactly why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students.

The next time you have an immediate need to learn something, check out these sites and learn from the best.

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Question Everything

Curiosity may be the primary ingredient for imagination innovation. It made Leonardo da Vinci the quintessential renaissance man. In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael J. Gelb lists curiosità: “An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning” as the first of his seven Da Vincian principles. A later book, Innovate Like Edison, advises readers to “seek knowledge relentlessly.”

Albert Einstein famously said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But he also warned, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Maybe dropping out of high school allowed Les Paul to pursue his curiosity and develop the electric guitar and the recording innovations of overdubbing and multitrack recording. In the documentary, Les Paul Chasing Sound, Paul recalls that when his brother flicked a light switch the light came on. When he flicked the switch he wanted to know why the light came on. He continued his search for a sound that no one had ever made before that led to his many inventions, took him to the top of the record charts in the 40s and 50s. Remember Mockingbird Hill and Vaya Con Dios with Mary Ford? Paul’s curiosity eventually took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DVD shows him being admired by musicians from Bing Crosby to Paul McCartney. An insatiable curiosity doesn’t retire at 65. At the age of 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

Gelb suggests several exercises to increase your curiosity, including make a list of 100 questions that are important to you. “Do the entire list in one sitting. Write quickly, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or repeating the same question in different words.” Then go about finding some answers.

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The Return of the Liberal Arts Degree

I’m not a big fan of Fox News. Calling yourself fair and balanced doesn’t make it so. I know this because I’m a good critical thinker, and my critical thinking skills come largely from my liberal arts background. In the 30 years since I earned my degree in sociology from the University of Colorado at Denver, the liberal arts have fallen more and more out of fashion, surpassed by the ubiquitous business major.

So I was more than a little surprised, when channel surfing during the Super Bowl, to find erstwhile Republican presidential candidate turned Fox talk show host Mike Huckabee holding forth on the advantages of a liberal arts degree. A college with an undecided major asked his advice on choosing a major. Go with liberal arts, he said, not to be confused with liberal politics. The more general degree offers exposure to different fields and arms the student with the capacity for adaptability and ability to retrain.

Steven Rothberg, founder and president of CollegeRecruiter.com, agrees. When interviewed by Fortune magazine, he explained, “Most employers look for candidates who are bright, well-rounded, and have some practical experience under their belts.” A liberal-arts degree, plus good communications and computer skills, signal to recruiters that you’ll be adaptable to a wide range of jobs.

Strong communications skills are the single most important attribute a candidate can have – as well as the one most lacking among job applicants, according to a poll of hiring managers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

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Five Ways to Squeeze as Much Learning as Possible from your Job

One of the benefits people look for from their jobs is the opportunity to learn and grow. Here are five ways to take advantage of the resources available:

1. Tuition Reimbursement. This is a huge benefit because education is something you don’t lose when the job ends. Even if you already have the degree(s) you want, find individual courses or certificate programs that will help in your career. Technology and innovation are moving so quickly now that there is always something new to learn. Online classes make sure that anything you want to learn is available wherever you are.

2. Corporate training. Take advantage of all the corporate training available. Make sure to document everything and add it to your resume or portfolio.

3. Informal on-the-job training. Most learning occurs casually, outside the classroom. Make it a point to learn whatever you can about the industry/company/department through discussions with your colleagues. Cross training can also be valuable and give you more flexibility for your next job.

4. Professional organizations. Join and participate in at least one professional organization related to your job, especially if the company pays for your membership. This gives you additional learning or certification opportunities and the chance to get to know people in your field from other companies—always a plus when job hunting.

5. Magazines, books, software. Use every resource available to enhance your skills. Even if you don’t have to know Visio (or whatever) in your current job, learn how to use it. The more you know, the more valuable you are to your employer and the more you have going for you in the job hunt.

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