In his article 8 Alternatives to College, James Altucher brilliantly tackles one of the largest myths about entrepreneurship: “not everyone can be an entrepreneur”. This is a myth, and this is why it is wrong to say that not everyone can be an entrepreneur:
First off, there’s no law against being an entrepreneur. In fact, everyone can be an entrepreneur. So what they really mean is: “not everyone can be a successful entrepreneur”. And as far as I know, there’s no law against failure either. When someone loses a tennis match or a chess game. how do they improve? They study their loss. As anyone who has mastered any field in life knows: studying your losses is infinitely more valuable than studying your wins. I failed at my first three attempts at being an entrepreneur before I finally learned how to spell it and I finally had a success (i.e. a company with profits that I was then able to sell).
Failure is a part of life. Better to learn it at 18 than at 23 or older when you’ve been coddled by ivory blankets and hypnotized into thinking success was yours for the taking. Get baptized in the river of failure as a youth so you can blossom in entrepreneurial blessings as an adult.
What do you learn when you are young and start a business (regardless of success or failure):
- you learn how to come up with ideas that will be accepted by other people
- you begin to build your bullshit detector (something that definitely does not happen in college)
- you learn how to sell your idea
- you learn how to build and execute on an idea
- you meet and socialize with other people in your space. They might not all be the same age but, lets face it, thats life as an adult. You just spent 18 years with kids your age. Grow up!
- you might learn how to delegate and manage people
- you learn how to eat what you kill, a skill also not learned by college-goers
Source: 8 Alternatives to College
Nice article, just like a bird believes in its wings, I always believe in my self. 🙂