I Know A Guy

I know this guy in school who can do anything. OK, before you imagine that he is some sort of superman mutant I’ll explain. He is the one person I know in my age bracket who has got it figured out. And don’t get me wrong. It’s not in the snake oil sales man, smoke and mirrors con artist type of way. Don’t ask me what proof I have because I don’t have any. Buuut, I will tell you why I think this way.

Always going out of the way to learn more about something. He, we’ll call him K, does pretty well in class, I think. (I say this without certainty though, because, while I haven’t seen any of his transcripts, I feel that he is always keen with his class work. He just takes school more seriously than most people I know. ) But he’s not a nerd.

In fact, you’d probably consider him a hustler. But he is legit. I remember my earlier opinion of him was pretty… meh, until we sat down one time and had a conversation about what we wanted to do in the future. It was an eye opener.

This guy was on point. He already had stuff going on that was earning him money. I wouldn’t say he knows everything about everything, but his understanding of business is so extensive , I would ask him about business ventures start ups that I was considering, and he would have a lot of info at his fingertips. Probably because he’d already thought about it or tried it himself. The pros, the cons, whether it’s a saturated market or there is a niche I could exploit, or if the idea was feasible and what it would take to make it happen at my level. such details and more.

And he is never negative, and I think this helped. He is realistic, knows what he wants and is fearless to after it.

Honestly, I am in awe of him. I wish I was like that. I wish I was as certain about what I wanted. And as fearless.

I was having a similar conversation with some other friends about entrepreneurship and Start-ups and we came to the unanimous conclusion (we are all business students) that the reason book- smart people almost always, end up working for companies started by people not nearly as educated as them, is because you end up knowing too much about business to ignore the risks that exist and therefore talk and/or think yourself out of it. You get too cautious and you end up not taking the chance.

K started young, before even business school so he wasn’t smart enough to be weary of the risks and by the time he got to our level, he had already done it enough times to not fear the risk. And I think this is something that’s worked in his favor

I conclude therefore that if I were ever to get out of the rat race and become the employer I had to

1.) Drop out of school ( Too late for this. 🙁 as I mentioned earlier I’ve more or less finished degree. All that’s left is a formality)

2. ) Stop at degree level, before I lock myself away in the prison of over education by getting a doctorate or masters or something,

3. ) Actively ignore all I’ve learned in risk management class for a while, as I actively endeavour to become an entrepreneur.

Knowing how many successful people today were school dropouts or were complete novices in business when they started out, I suspect, I would be in really good company 🙂