Tag: entrepreneurship

Why I Started Praxis

I didn’t start Praxis because I think college is bad, or because I want to convince people it is.  I didn’t start it to be hip and trendy and “disruptive”.  I didn’t start it because I want to point out problems with the world.  I started it because I want to create value for individuals.

There are a lot of young people hungry for valuable experiences and not finding them.  There are a lot of young people unhappy with the education, career, and life options they see before them, searching for something more.  Praxis exists for you.

Praxis is more than a program or a company to me.  It’s the embodiment of a mindset and a way of life.  It is a tangible way to help people live free, self-directed lives.  It’s a community and a set of resources and ideas and businesses and participants built around the understanding that no conveyor belt can lead you to the life you want, and no structure you don’t choose and create yourself will bring you fulfillment.

Praxis is a concrete opportunity, not a vague notion.  It offers an interesting, challenging, amazing job and an interesting, challenging, amazing self-guided educational experience, all with a relentless focus on deliverable results.  It’s a recognition that your life will be determined by the quality of your product more than the pedigree of your paper.  It’s a way to remove the fear and doubt and strictures of the linear ladder to imagined success.  It’s a way to reveal and fan into flame the deep human love of adventure, play, possibility, and experimentation.

I don’t believe doing things you don’t like and hoping it leads to unspecified things you do like is a recipe for success.  Praxis pushes you to define what you don’t like and what you do, to learn what you’re good at and what you’re not, to identify definite outcomes you wish to achieve and definite causality between those outcomes and your desired next step.  Praxis does not ask you to learn things or perform tasks in the hope that it will get you work experience, we give you that work experience from the start.  You cannot separate learning from doing.

Praxis is a recognition that, wherever you get your paycheck, you are your own firm.  The future does not belong to those who follow orders, but those who solve problems with creativity.  The future belongs to entrepreneurs, whether founders or builders within firms.  Entrepreneurial thinking and acting cannot be learned from study, but must be practiced.  Praxis exists to put those eager to learn it into environments right now – not tomorrow, not after more study and certification – where they can be around and become entrepreneurs.

Praxis exists to offer a valuable service to young people who are searching for a way to build their confidence, skills, experience, network, and knowledge.  Praxis is built upon questions like, “Why not now?”, and “Why not me?”

Praxis is about that powerful combination of big picture dreamers and blue-collar doers.  It’s all the imagination of Silicon Valley startups with all the work-ethic of Midwestern small businesses.  It’s grit plus grind plus greatness.  Praxis is the realization that the most radical thing you can do is often the most practical, and that the most practical thing you can do is sometimes be radical.

Praxis is an idea.  The idea is simple.  Find the best way to get from where you are to where you want to be.  If we can help you do that better and faster with a great job that comes with a great education and community, jump in.  If not, we’ll still be rooting for you every step of the way.

I didn’t start Praxis to make enemies or to make friends.  I started it to create value.  I started it because the idea was so powerful I had no choice but to bring it into the world.  I started it because theorizing about ways young people could build their lives wasn’t enough.  I started it because it’s fun, fulfilling, and harder than anything I’ve ever done.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Break the mold.

What You’ll Be Doing in 20 Years Doesn’t Exist Yet

From Medium.

Imagine telling your parents in 1960 or 1970 that you were going to design video games for a living. Or telling them in the 1980s that you were going to design websites. Or telling them in the 90s that you were going to get paid to create software applications for mobile telephones. Or in the early 2000s that you would be paid to “tweet” 140 character messages.

Chances are, whatever you’ll be doing in 20 years doesn’t yet exist, or at least not in any way you can imagine or describe. Not long ago the idea of work that didn’t require manual labor, or living in a big city, or going to an office was unthinkable. Today it’s ubiquitous.

Innovation keeps moving. That means picking that one clear career destination and forming a perfect path to it is probably unrealistic for an increasing number of people. It’s more important to start with a broad swath of things you’re interested in, get as much knowledge and experience as you can in many areas, and begin to add to the list of things you know you really don’t want to do. Eliminate the bad options. Anything else is fair game.

Do this and develop and refine general, transferable skills like critical thinking, communication, emotional intelligence, and a reputation for hard work, and you will be able to see and seize opportunities. Better yet, you’ll be able to create new ones.

You’ve got to think like an entrepreneur, whether you ever plan to start a business or not.

Ask around. How many people imagined 20 years ago they’d be doing what they do now? Neither will you.

The world can be your oyster. Be ready.

Consider the Costs (and Benefits) of Entrepreneurial Failure

From the Praxis blog, reposted here since I’m on the theme of failure lately.

photo-624x370Most new ventures fail.  In fact, depending on how you define failure and what data you look at, entrepreneurial failure rates can be as high as 95%.  That sounds terrifying.  The costs of failure should not be overlooked when considering an entrepreneurial path.  But neither should the benefits.

Data about startups end with the word failure.  But what actually happens to the people who launch them?  Is their life over?  Do they come out worse than they went in?

When I was 19 my brother and I started our first business.  We installed telephone and computer cables back before wi-fi made it mostly unnecessary.  The business lasted less than a year.  We had a few good jobs installing and terminating fiber optic cables (a service we sold, even though we’d never done it before.  We learned.  It’s not as exciting as it sounds), but many of our “jobs” consisted of me doing landscaping for relatives.  I like to think I made their yards beautiful, but it was mostly charity on their part.

Novius failed.  But I didn’t fail, and neither did my brother.  I made a decent living for those nine months, I learned more than I’d ever learned, especially about people and businesses and how they operate (try cold-call selling people on data cable installation).  Our few customers got a good service at a good price and were happy.  A few relatives got some flower boxes.  I learned how to have confidence in myself and my ability, even if the business I ran wasn’t going well – that was the hardest and probably most valuable lesson.  We came out ahead.  Not really financially, but in terms of being closer to where we wanted to be in life.

There are ventures that could wipe you out.  There are ventures that could destroy your reputation, or your credit, or your relationships.  But those are rare.  Especially today when technology has made startup costs so low (Novius emails were @sbcglobal, because even ten years ago it was not so cheap to have your own email domain).  Various crowdfunding and investment tools let you wait until you know you’ll reach a certain level of capital, or customers, before any real resources are at stake.  The costs of entrepreneurial failure are falling.

The psychological costs remain high.  You have to be able to see your venture as an exploration, not as an indication of your worth as a person.  You have to simultaneously be so passionate about your idea that you can’t stop working on it, but so open about what might happen that failure won’t kill you.

If you make a go of it and fail, it is possible to reap amazing rewards in the process.  The analogies are endless.  95% of first attempts to ride a bike probably fail.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever ride a bike, or that you should wait until first-try success rates get higher.

If you are only interested in launching something that has a very high chance of success, it’s probably not a good idea to pursue it.  Failure will ruin you.  If, on the other hand, you are so excited about an idea, product, service, or vision that you feel you must give it a go even if it fails, just to discover for yourself whether it’s doable, then it’s probably not a bad idea to try it.  Ask yourself, “If I knew this idea was going to fail, but I didn’t know how or why, would I feel better having tried it to learn those things than never having tried at all?”  If the answer is yes, try it.

There’s a point at which repeated failures can begin to accumulate costs.  If you’re the person who always has a great new idea you can’t stop talking about, then two months later you never speak a word of it but focus on the latest idea, it will diminish your credibility fast.  The costs don’t come so much from failing, but from how you go about trying to succeed, how many other people’s assets you risk, who you blame and how you respond to failure.

Be real with yourself about the costs of entrepreneurial failure.  But be real about the benefits too.  How many people who make up the failure statistics are doing great stuff and living wonderful lives right now, in part because of the failure they created?  Sometimes the best way to the next level is to fail up.

There’s no rush.  Take time to immerse yourself in a lot of experiences, gain a lot of knowledge and self-knowledge, and poke your toe in the waters of the world a bit.  If you get bit by the entrepreneurial bug at some point, be realistic but don’t fear the failure.  It might be the best route to your goals.

It’s Not About Working for Free, It’s About Being Free

I recently posted about trying to be in a position where you could do awesome work with great people, even if for very low or no pay as it is more likely to lead to better results than doing work you don’t care as much for.

Many people said this was a luxury only the elite or wealthy could afford.  I couldn’t disagree more.  In fact, as I’ve written elsewhere, lack of income can be an asset.  We tend to live up to our earnings.  Those with a less costly lifestyle are more able to jump on opportunities that don’t pay well upfront.  The whole point of the post was that it’s good to be in a position where you are most free to seize on opportunities even if they don’t have an immediate paycheck.  Avoid or reduce debt, cut expenses, maintain a minimalist life, be productive so you can do more with less time, try to save some money, etc.

You may have to or want to work a job you don’t care for and earn money for 60 hours a week but that still doesn’t preclude you from going to that awesome local marketing firm you’re interested in and begging them to do 20 hours a week of work even if they can’t pay you.  I contend that the latter will be more beneficial to you long term than the former, and if you work hard and well might turn into more pay as well.

The post was not about working for free.  The post was about being free.  The freer you are to jump on great opportunities the better, and the more things that make that hard you can eliminate the better.

The Sleep In Your Car Test

We have a simple test for applicants to Praxis.  I call it the sleep in your car test.  There are people who are willing to sleep in their car to get what they want and those who aren’t.  We’re only interested in the former.

No, we don’t actually ask people to sleep in their cars.  Yes, we have an application and interview process that looks at intelligence, communication skill, evidence of ability to create value, and other skills and knowledge.  But those are relatively common compared to those who pass the sleep in your car test.  It’s about effort, grit, determination.  It’s about attitude and not being too good or too pampered to roll up your sleeves.  It represents that blend of wild, Silicon Valley idealism with down to earth, Midwestern work ethic.

The sleep in your car test is our way of identifying blue collar entrepreneurs.  The type who seek autonomy, freedom, responsibility, and growth, both personally and professionally.  They don’t need to be only in software or tech.  Self-directed living and entrepreneurial thinking aren’t only for the app economy, but they can only be had by those who care more about success on their own terms than the pleasure of the crowd.

We get it.  It’s easier to do what everyone else does and succeed within the confines of the given system.  All the smart people are capable of doing this.  But we don’t want just smart people.  We want people not afraid to ask why they’re doing it.  We want people who don’t care what will get them the easy applause of others, but only what will help them discover and create a life worth living.  You’ve got to have the thing.  If you know the journey might require hardships and you still charge boldly ahead, you’ve got the thing.

The world is awash in guarantees.  Those who seek guarantees, and worse those who trust them, are not the sleep in your car type.  The reality is that there are no guarantees.  There are only varying degrees of probability.  And the things with the highest probability of leading you to a life identical to the crowd’s idea of success are often those with the lowest probability of leading you to being fully alive.

This is a big adventure.  You’ve got roads to travel, ideas to explore, people to meet, things to test, challenges to face and overcome, failures to learn and bounce back from, and the kind of sweet success that can only be enjoyed when hard-earned.  If sleeping in your car for a dream sounds exciting, that’s a good sign you’re awake.

It’s hard to define exactly how we identify those who pass the sleep in your car test.  You know it when you see it.  It’s visible through attitude and action.  There’s something just a little different.  It’s not fearlessness – we’re all afraid – but the way in which fear isn’t treated as an insurmountable obstacle, but a game.

Are you willing to sleep in your car?

Are You Living on Purpose?

Humans are not like other earthly creatures.  We cannot live for only the biological imperative to survive and procreate.  Humans require purpose.  Lack of purpose is the greatest disease against which all of humanity must daily fight.  It is the one disease that will not and cannot be overcome by advances in medicine.

You can’t have purpose on accident

Our existence is couched in a series of accidents.  That we were born, when, where, and to whom are accidents (they were not accidents to our progenitors, but from our own point of view).  Our genetic structure is an accident.  The first language we hear, and therefore learn, and the first beliefs to which we are exposed, and therefore predisposed to, are accidents.  Purpose can not come from accidents.  We do not discover or live with purpose naturally, the way we grow physically.

None of these accidents are good or bad.  The simply are.  In your exploration and creation of purpose you may find that a meaningful life demands radical differences from the norms and beliefs in which you were raised.  You may find that it demands beliefs and norms almost identical to those in which you were raised.  Whatever the end result, the one consistent demand is that you choose it.  You cannot discover and live a purposeful life by simply following rules handed down to you, taking the path of least resistance, and sitting idly on the conveyor belt you were plopped on.  It’s not where it takes you that matters as much as who decided to go there.  If it was not your decision, you will never find fulfillment from it.

Suffering with and without purpose

Suffering is terrible.  It can also be valuable, in the same way the physical sensation of pain is valuable.  Without it we would soon die of unattended wounds.  Because pain is valuable doesn’t mean it’s noble or to be sought.  Psychological suffering is the same.

To suffer is no noble deed.  If the suffering is avoidable it’s a worthless or even cowardly thing to suffer.  If the suffering is unavoidable your response to it can be heroic.  There is nothing heroic about the suffering itself, but heroism can be found in someone who chooses to respond by finding meaning in unavoidable suffering.

Do not mistake your suffering for heroism.  If it’s at all avoidable, the heroic thing to do is to escape from it.  If not, create purpose in it.

There is no right decision

There is no decision that will give you purpose.  Your life is not a series of binary choices, with the door on the left leading to meaninglessness and the door on the right leading to purposefulness.  What you choose at each juncture of your life matters little compared to the fact that you, not someone else, choose.  You can’t find a perfect version of your purposeful life.  You have to create it by the undivided, definite choices you make.  Consciously choose to do things you value and find meaningful.  Consciously exit those that aren’t.  It doesn’t matter what you choose so much as that you choose.  Complaining about a path someone else pushed you down and against which you did not resist will not do.

Purposeful living is a process of exploration, experimentation, feedback, adjustment, and joy in the midst of it.  There is no pressure to get it right because there is no right.  There is better and worse, as determined by you.  It requires self-knowledge and self-honesty to find your own scale of better and worse.  It requires courage to abide by it.

Are you the 2%?

At any given moment 98% of us will choose – or rather not  choose – to live by default.  It is only the 2% who decide with definite purpose to act according to their own wishes who are really living.  How often are you among them?

The Doomsayers are Right (but so are the optimists)

One hundred years of horror

The first visitor looks grim. He tells you that “the war to end all wars” will soon begin. It will encompass the globe and destroy millions of lives. Cities will be decimated. The Great War will have a scope and level of brutality never before imagined in human history. It will be followed by economic collapse, political upheaval, and tremendous human suffering.

A decade later, the largest economies in the world will teeter, then collapse. Hyperinflation, panic, stock market crashes, breadlines, and financial ruin will be the norm. Hunger, poverty, and desperation like no modern society has ever experienced will span a decade. Before recovery, war will break out again — this one even more catastrophic than the last. Tens of millions will die.

A new form of evil will show its head. Totalitarian regimes aided by advanced weaponry and propaganda machines will lead the mass execution of millions. Weapons of mass destruction will be created, and two will be deployed, leveling cities in minutes with effects lasting years. Governments the world over will grow in power and brutality. Control over all facets of personal and economic life will expand.

The second great war will end and economic growth will resume, but not without constant smaller wars across the globe. Government will balloon out of all proportion. Surveillance will become ever present, even in the freest states. Acts of terrorism will be all over the news. Inflation, regulation, and taxation will increase once again to levels rivaling those that led to the great economic collapse. Countries will go bankrupt, drowning in debt. Police will turn on citizens regularly. Finally, the first traveler concludes, all signs in 2015 point to another painful reckoning.

But the other traveler seems unfazed by his companion’s tale. “Do you have anything to add?” you ask hesitantly.

One hundred years of human achievement

He smiles and begins to recount the next century with excitement. Automobiles are mass produced. Soon, they are everywhere. Temperature-controlled vehicles, homes, and workplaces pop up and spread. New forms of communication that instantly connect people across countries and then the world proliferate at incredible speed. People get healthier and wealthier the world over.

Air travel takes over where automobiles leave off. Humans safely traverse the world many thousands of feet in the air. Appliances do all the most tedious, painful, and time-consuming tasks — and not just in wealthy homes.

Hunger is no longer a problem in developed countries, and it is increasingly rare throughout the world. Common diseases like polio and malaria are all but eradicated with medical and pharmaceutical developments. Average lifespan dramatically increases; infant mortality plummets.

Information is freed in ways never before imaginable. Every book ever written can be transmitted anywhere in the world through crisscrossing networks of data transmission. Humans enter outer space. Satellites beam information, video, and voices back and forth around the globe. Rich and poor alike hold in their hands devices more powerful than anything kings or tycoons of ages past could have hoped for.

Money and memories alike can be sent anywhere, anytime, easily. Anyone can learn anything without access to prestigious centers of knowledge. Gatekeepers for information are no longer impediments to human cooperation and progress. Laboring in fields and factories is decreasingly necessary, as a host of new and intelligent machines take on these tasks.

Finally, the second traveler concludes, humans focus more than ever on creativity, freedom, and fulfillment.

Who’s correct?

Both travelers have described the same future for the same planet. Neither description is untrue, and both are important.

It’s easy to feel confused by conflicting theories about the future. If you have a firm grasp on economics and political philosophy and get stuck in the political news cycle, it’s depressing. You look at the state of our economy and government intervention and see nothing but storm clouds on the horizon. There’s no way the mountains of debt, the constant currency debasement, the damaging social programs and interventions, and the buildup of regulations and nanny-statism can result in anything but an ugly future.

But if you’re up on the start-up scene, you hear tech optimists describing a future of 3-D printing, cryptocurrency, robotics advancements, colonizing Mars, and mapping the human genome, and you can’t help but see the future burning bright.

Both groups are accurately describing the possible and probable future, and there are lessons to be drawn from each.

Will history repeat?

There are striking similarities between today’s developed democracies and ancient Rome. Bread and circuses and political decay may lead to a Roman-style collapse. Then again, we have something today that the citizens of the Roman-ruled world did not: digital technology.

We are able to coordinate and collaborate via dispersed networks in ways individuals in the past never could. The centrally planned state, with all its military and monetary might, is a lumbering beast compared to the nimble, adaptive entrepreneur and citizen today. Yes, the state may use technology to spy and oppress, but always through a top-down management structure. We are a headless conglomerate of individual nodes, networked across the globe, that cannot be destroyed.

Maybe the US dollar will, in fact, collapse. Maybe states will go bankrupt. Maybe government services will fall into disarray. And maybe in the middle of it all, individual humans and civil society won’t even notice.

Do you remember how the Cold War ended? Neither do I. It just kind of did. Do you remember the great collapse of government-monopolized phone lines? Neither do I. Cell phones just emerged and it stopped mattering. The post office is in perpetual deficit. So what? Email and FedEx and Amazon drones will continue to make it irrelevant.

You see, striking as the similarities to great collapses of the past may be, history is not an inevitable indicator of the future. Collapse of government systems in an increasingly complex, market-oriented world may not spell disaster for society at large. It may spell improvement.

Problems are real … real opportunities

Take your knowledge of unsustainable government and extrapolate it into the future. Yes, these bloated systems are unsustainable. Don’t turn a blind eye and pretend it doesn’t matter. Instead, let the insights of your inner doomsayer inform the actions of your inner optimist.

Every government problem is an entrepreneurial opportunity. Stifling licensing or work restrictions or immigration bans can be overcome with peer-to-peer technology, the sharing economy, virtual work software, and more. Bad monetary policy can be sidestepped with cryptocurrency. Defunct educational institutions bubbling over with debt and devalued credentials can be ignored while private alternatives emerge. Clumsy socialized medicine, transportation, and communication systems are all begging for innovation. Entire countries can be exited — physically or digitally.

The innovators must be realistic enough to see problems with the status quo and optimistic enough to innovate around them instead of merely shaking their fists.

Informed optimism as adventure

It’s good to wake up to the tragic missteps of government policy that surround us. But if lovers of liberty only ever point to the problems, predict trouble, and head for the hills, the future may indeed be lost. If, instead, we see those problems as opportunities and talk about the possibility in front of us, we stand a chance. Optimism is a powerfully attractive force that invites bright minds to join us. As F.A. Hayek once said,

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.… Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.

We must recapture the intellectual and practical adventure of not just demonstrating the failures of a planned society, but building the glories of a free one. Only then will the world look at us and say, “Why are you so optimistic? What do you know? How can I be a part of it?”

One hundred years from now

There are two stories we can see unfolding in our future. One of increasing political foolishness leading to dystopia. One of emerging technology and innovation leading to utopia. Neither is untrue. Both are instructive.

What would you expect to hear from a traveler from 2115? Which story brings out your best self and inspires you to live free and help others do the same?

We need doomsayers: they help discover and highlight the greatest areas of opportunity for optimists and entrepreneurs to seize on. Listen to them, then act to overcome or sidestep or make irrelevant the problems they predict.

Bonus Episode: What is Voice & Exit? Max Borders

Max Borders joins me on this bonus episode to discuss the upcoming “Festival of the Future” called Voice & Exit. We talk about what V&E is, why it’s important to provide a safe space for radical ideas, and how to criticize by creating.

Max is the co-founder of Voice & Exit and the managing editor of The Freeman.  V&E is creating an exciting environment where no idea is too big or crazy and humans are free to be relentless optimists and builders for the future.  This year’s event is June 20-21 in Austin, TX.

This and all other episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Stitcher.

5 Signs You Might Be Too Good for College

From the Praxis blog.

There is a common myth that only Steve Jobs-like geniuses and cheese puff eating flunkies should opt out of college.  For college to be a poor fit, you’ve either gotta be sitting on the next billion dollar startup idea or sitting on your mom’s couch.  This is nonsense.  There is a large and growing group of smart, hard-working young people who are way too good for the rigmarole and time-wasting conformity of even elite colleges.  I’ve met lots of them.

These are what I call “blue collar entrepreneurs”.  They’re quick, curious, eager, and in-touch with their core values and goals.  They want to learn about themselves and the world and won’t wait for permission.  These are the people for whom college is the biggest waste.

The mediocre, the minimum acceptable regurgitators, and the mildly enthusiastic are those who get the most value from college.  After all, their degree signals that they are about as good as all the other degree holders; average.  But the most ambitious young people gain little from such a signal.  In fact, a degree that lumps them in with all other degree holders undersells them.  They’re too good for college, and they have the power to send a much more valuable signal outside of the one-size-fits-all system.  They can create a better credential than the off-the-shelf version that takes four years and six figures.

“There’s no question that increased formal credentials can give you an advantage. The question is, is it the best advantage you can buy with the amount of money and time you’re going to spend?” –Michael Ellsberg

How to know if you’re too good for college?  Here are five signs to look for…

1) Your classmates frighten you.

You look around the classroom and it dawns on you: these people will walk out of here with the same credential as you.  All this time and money just to buy a degree that says, “Hey, I’m at least as good as the snoring sleeper next to me in Psych 101″.  Not only that, but your future accountant, doctor, marketing director, or editor might be sitting in that classroom.  You read the essay they turned in last week.  It wasn’t pretty.  If it’s clear this education isn’t preparing them for the world and the thought of them living and working as adults gives you a start, you might consider separating yourself from the crowd.

2) You feel a little annoyed being treated like a burden instead of a customer.

You might begin to feel most of your professors don’t see you as a customer, but a hindrance they’d like to get out of the way with minimal interaction and deviation.  Sure, there are always some good profs, but how many of them act annoyed at a teaching load of a few classes per semester, or give minimal and inconvenient office hours, or don’t seem to care if their lectures are boring, or get angry when you challenge their ideology or assumptions, or shame students on Facebook for asking questions about the syllabus?  You’re the customer and are right to wish to be treated as such.  You can always take your business and walk.

3) You learned more about how government functions from watching ‘The Wire’ than an entire year of political science classes.

The cat’s out of the bag.  Pandora’s box is open.  Whatever metaphor you use, the university is not the font of wisdom it once was.  Books have always been there for the curious, but with online courses, podcasts, audiobooks, eBooks, streaming videos, and social networks, you might find yourself eagerly consuming information relevant to you everywhere but the classroom.  The learning method at universities is older than the wheel, and it’s a crap-shoot whether you’ll get a decent teacher.  If you get your learn on outside of the graded conveyor belt already, why keep taxing yourself with class?

4) Your degree is the least impressive part of your resume.

If you’ve already done a lot of things, or you’re capable of doing a lot of things, that are rarer and more interesting than getting a BA, why get one?  If you’ve started a business, worked for a year or longer at a good company, traveled the world on your own steam and your own dime, built a website, written some articles, sold products, learned a foreign or programming language, or any number of interesting things, those will be more valuable on your resume and in building your network and reputation than a generic degree.  Ask yourself what you’d want an employee to bring to the table if you owned a business.  Can you get those things right now, without school?

5) You’re happy when class is cancelled.

What an odd thing that students pay up front for a university education and then get excited when the service is not provided.  What other product is treated this way?  If classes are a distraction from running student clubs or newspapers, working, blogging, hobbies, startups, or other things that make you come alive, why not get it out of the way?  The idea of a degree as a fallback is pretty weak.  It’s not going to magically lift you out of poverty or aimlessness.  You’ve got to do that yourself.  Why not start now with all your energy and not have nagging classes and exams hanging over your head?

If you see yourself in these signs, you might be too good for college.  Jump off the conveyor belt and create your own path.  Fortune favors the bold, so break free.

If you know you’re worth more than college but you’re not quite sure how to plot your own path and discover what makes you come alive, we can help.  That’s what Praxis was created for. Contact us or Apply today!

The Biggest Problems are the Biggest Opportunities

In their book Bold: How to Go Big, Achieve Success, and Impact the World, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler talk about the fact that the biggest problems in the world are also the biggest opportunities.  Higher education is no exception.

We are by now well acquainted with the myriad problems with the traditional higher ed conveyor belt system.  Student debt is reaching astronomical levels, institutions have become little more than degree mills spitting out graduates unequipped for the world, students are bored and restless, employers aren’t finding skilled workers, and nobody’s happy.  This is a big problem, and therefore a big opportunity.

It’s not only an opportunity for entrepreneurs to create new education models like Praxis, Minerva, Gap-Year, Enstitute, and others; it’s also an opportunity for you as an individual.  You can capitalize on the problem by creating your own path.  The degree is declining in value and the classroom is fast becoming one of the weakest ways to gain relevant information, skill, confidence, network, and knowledge.  This is an opportunity for you to gain a first-mover advantage and step out of the classroom and into the world.

Those who can boldly say, “I opted-out of the stagnant status quo to create my own path”, and demonstrate the value they can produce will have a tremendous advantage over the throngs of young people hoping that BA on their resume will get them an interview.

It’s Not About GDP

I’ve been thinking lately about GDP, and common ideas of economic progress more generally.

I just attended an event about the causes of and cures for poverty in the poorest countries.  So much of the discussion utilized comparisons between countries based on measures of GDP, GDP growth, and the like.  The more I thought about it, the less sense this made.  Not that GDP doesn’t decently correlate to overall wealth, opportunity, and progress – it does – but that it does less and less as technology and markets change.  GDP charts would fail to show, for example, the tremendous progress made in many poor countries by the fact that nearly everyone now has access to cell phones.  In fact, GDP does a bad job at measuring the progress of information/communication/data in general.

Consider MOOC’s and the abundance of free online learning.  Since the education industry is a chunk of GDP, putting it all out there for free can actually bring GDP numbers down, even as human well-being and human capital increase.

Think about other areas of misleading measures.  What you can do with a computer or smart phone in terms of sending data across the globe means fewer freight ships, the things easily measured in GDP calculations, but not less progress and opportunity.

Automation, information technology, decentralized networks, open-source…these make the world better and increase human flourishing, though they don’t do much for old-school metrics like employment and GDP.  Being listed as on the payroll of a company doesn’t always equal being better off (depending upon what else you might be doing of course), and having a larger number of physical objects to count doesn’t either.

For this reason, I don’t take much stock in those who lament slowed economic growth and fear it will bring an end to the complex market systems in countries like the US.  We used to consider farming the only thing that really mattered for economic well-being.  Then manufacturing.  As machines can do more of both of these, we humans can be redeployed in myriad ways previously unimagined.  Think about all the micro entrepreneurship going on today.  Think of crowdfunding for one-off projects.  I know authors who probably aren’t technically “employed” most of the time, if at all, and don’t produce GDP enhancing widgets, but they live wonderful lives by pitching book ideas on kickstarter, raising the money, travelling the world, doing the writing, and selling ebooks.  They may make aggregate data appear we’re economically worse off, but they’d rather not trade their life for one hoeing rows or assembling buggies.

The fact that no one quite knows how to calculate the value of the internet and other information age technologies probably causes us all to underestimate just how well-off we are today, and how bright the future is.  It’s the perfect time to seize the opportunity and do something new.  Carpe diem.

The Real Education Podcast with Blake Boles

Can you combine liberal arts and work experience?  Can you combine virtual and real-world?  That’s what Praxis is all about and what I discuss with Blake Boles on this episode of his Real Education Podcast.

Blake is an author and pioneer in the world of self-directed learning.  He’s got his hand in numerous projects and programs and his podcast is one of my new favorites.  Give a listen to the episode, and check out Blake’s stuff at his website.

What Liberal Arts Education Misses

I’m a big fan of liberal arts education.  Not in the classical sense of churning out dutiful citizen soldiers, but in the modern sense of a broad exploration into the humanities rather than a narrow vocational specialization.

The dichotomy between learning for “work” and learning “for its own sake” is ridiculous.  All meaningful learning has an end desired by the learner, whether to have fun or gain knowledge that helps earn money or both.  Liberal arts education is incredibly valuable as a tool to sharpen thinking and broaden the mind.  Despite all the names given to the disciplines therein, it all really boils down to the master discipline of philosophy.  Philosophy is valuable if for no other reason than that we all have a philosophy whether we want to or not.  It’s either examined or unexamined, and we are better at achieving our goals and ends if we examine our philosophy.

Still liberal arts education has a huge, gaping hole.  It’s not that it doesn’t teach enough hard skills or vocational specialization.  One could argue those are something that could be learned on top of a liberal arts foundation for those who want to master a particular skill.  Yet it is true that liberal arts education often makes it hard for individuals to bridge this gap between general critical thinking and particular ways they might apply it to create a meaningful life and career.  The missing piece is something a little more concrete than liberal arts but a little more abstract than vocational skill.  It’s an understanding of value creation.

Value creation is the only thing that matters when it comes to involvement in commercial life.  This is where philosophy meets action.  This is where theory meets practice.  An entirely pragmatic practitioner who only performs tasks may find herself flustered with limited career options just as easily as an abstract theorist who doesn’t know how to concretely practice his ideas.  The pragmatist misses the fact that it’s not just getting your hands dirty that brings career success, but creating value for others, which may or may not correlate to how many hours you work or how much you master a particular skill.  The theorist misses the fact that all the clear thinking in the world about the nature of people and the universe won’t put bread on the table unless they can translate it into something of value to others and exchange with them.

A truly powerful liberal arts education would include learning value creation.  What it is, and more importantly, how to do it.  The thing about value creation that differs from other things learned studying liberal arts is that it cannot be learned by intellectual examination alone.  You have to do it.  You have to enter the messy marketplace and bump into other humans with unique goals and desires and find a way to bring something of value to exchange.  If philosophy begins with ‘know thyself’ then working for pay is one of the most philosophical activities possible.  Getting others to voluntarily part with their resources because you can create something they value more will reveal more than you can imagine about yourself, your desires, habits, and unknown abilities you never would have guessed are valued by others.

It shouldn’t stop with merely performing the action.  Reflection and dissection of what’s happening will take you to the next level.  All the best entrepreneurs are deeply philosophical people.  They don’t merely work and try stuff and suddenly get lucky when people value something they created.  The analyze why, how it might be made better, what fundamental causes brought about success, etc.  They get to know whether their key value was the big idea, the management and execution, the network of talent, the sales job, or some combination.  This allows them to replicate success by focusing on the areas with highest return.

Philosophy is known for thought experiments, but the market is where its field experiments take place.  The most powerful liberal arts education is one that includes the study and practice of value creation.  This could mean digging into ideas in the humanities while simultaneously working at a company and trying to make it and yourself more money, not just as a practical but a philosophical exercise.  I’ve never understood people who’ve studied for decades but never entered the marketplace to exchange.  Perhaps it’s a carry-over from the Greek’s high-minded condescension towards merchants, but an attitude that treats value creation as beneath contemplation is impractical and illogical.

This passion for theory and big ideas and liberal arts combined with the thrill of value creation in the marketplace is what animates Praxis and what gets me up and working every day.  I’ve gotten to the point where I do not have any way to distinguish work from study.  In the office I’m as likely to be reading Seneca as going over an expense report.  I see both as equally important for my long term success and happiness.

We don’t need Plato’s philosopher kings.  The worst thing is to confer the use of force upon smart people who leave the production to others.  We could use more philosopher merchants who constantly examine themselves and seek to understand the world while testing their ideas in the voluntary marketplace of goods and services; who imagine a better world and then go out and create it themselves.

Failure Does Not Make You a Failure

“I can’t afford to fail.”  A young person recently told me this.  He was deciding whether to try something he was really excited about, but that was new and different (not even particularly risky).  He meant it.  It was clear that he saw this as a make or break moment in his life, and it broke my heart.  You can afford to fail.  In fact, you can’t afford to avoid failure.

I’m not sure all the causes, though I believe schooling is a very deep part of the root system, but young people are terrified of failure.  It’s completely backwards.  Never in human history has there been such a soft landing.  Never has it been easier to recover.  When a business or an event or a project fails it doesn’t mean you fail.  In fact, a failed business can be the surest path to personal success.  If you don’t let it ruin you.

Failure is not catastrophic.  It’s just a part of the process of success.  You try to ride a bike and you fall down.  You try to play video games and you lose.  Kids seem able to recover from failure at these pretty easily.  Maybe because their parents don’t care and don’t show anxiety and anger and send them into remedial video game classes and summer camps.  Whatever the reason, there’s something to be taken from these failures.  Apply that same nonchalance to life.  Life is nothing but a series of games.

The desire to succeed and frustration at failure is normal and can be productive and motivating, but only when you’re doing something you know you want to be doing.  The real killer is crippling fear of failing at some arbitrary standard set by someone else, or fear of what other people will think even when you don’t really care about the end goal itself.  When exploring and learning something new, failure is to be expected.  Don’t internalize it.  Learn from it, laugh at it, and move on.

One you’ve gained some level of mastery, then competitive pressure and desire to be perfect can be helpful.  I read about a study where pool players were observed.  When they were told they were being observed and judged the amateur pool players started playing a lot worse.  The really good players started playing better.  We need a lot of judgement free space to explore and learn and decide what we like and get better at it.  Self-judgement needs to be the first to go.  After you’ve mastered something you can choose to take failure personally if it helps you and motivates you, but not before.

I think a lot of people are scared of entrepreneurship because they hear statistics about what percent of new businesses fail.  But notice what’s happening here.  You hear that a business failed, and in your mind you subtly converge the business with the founder and assume that the founder failed.  You assume if you start a business odds say it will fail, and therefore you will fail and you don’t want to fail.  But that’s not what happens.  When a business fails the people involved don’t fail.  They typically walk away with some great experience, knowledge, new connections, sometimes even money.

Stop being afraid of failure.  Stop worrying about being average or above average on some arbitrary scale created by someone besides yourself.  Freely explore and try things and learn things and get better at the stuff you love.  You’ve got to stop avoiding failure if you want to succeed.

5 Reasons to Rethink College

Originally published on Thought Catalog.

Everyone knows you have to go to college to be successful.  Sometimes everyone is wrong.  Here are five reasons to rethink college as the best path to a fulfilling career and life.

1) It’s expensive.

Here’s a chart showing college debt and earnings for degree holders.

Guess what?  It doesn’t matter.  Charts and graphs and studies like this can’t help you make your decision about college for two reasons:  Because data can never show causality and aggregates are not individuals.

When it comes to causality, it’s pretty unclear college is doing the work.  Yes, degree holders on average earn more money than those without degrees.  People in Florida on average are older than people in the rest of the country.  Does Florida magically speed the aging process?  Degrees don’t magically make people more productive workers either.

College is a sorting mechanism more than it is a forming mechanism.  The types of people who get into and complete college are the kind who would command higher salaries anyway.  Some studies have followed people who attended Ivy League schools and others accepted to those schools but who chose lower ranked schools instead.  There wasn’t a difference in lifetime earnings.  In other words, Ivy League caliber people don’t need an Ivy League education to have high earnings.

As for aggregates and individuals, consider the following question: Are pickup trucks a good idea for 18-25 year olds?  Are they worth the cost?  How many studies would it take to prove it?  It’s obviously a dumb question.  There is no one answer for all 18-25 year olds.  Aggregate cost/benefit analyses for all 18-25 year olds buying pickup trucks won’t mean much to you in your highly personalized experience.  It’s just as ridiculous to come up with a single answer to questions about whether college is worth it for young people.

Data can’t do the work of deciding.  The only answer that matters is whether a particular path is worth it for you.  What do you want to get?  What are the possible ways of getting it?  What do they cost?  The cost is not just money but time, foregone opportunities, etc.  Whatever your decision, know why you’re doing it.  Which brings me to…

2) Most people don’t know why they’re doing it.

I ask high school students if they plan to go to college.  They all say yes.  When I ask “why” I have never heard anything but some variation on,

“Because I have to”, or, “To get a job”.

Then I ask what kind of job they want.  Crickets.  They don’t have any idea.

That’s perfectly fine – most teenagers don’t know and probably can’t know what they’ll be doing in ten or twenty years – but it’s pretty odd considering their entire reason for going to college is to get something about which they know nothing, including whether or not a degree will help them.

So the formula is, “I want X.  I have no idea what X is or what’s required to get it.  Therefore I’ll spend four years and tens of thousands of dollars on college.”  Maybe logic classes aren’t taught in high schools.

College may be a necessary or valuable way for you to get what you want out of life.  Then again maybe not.  The point is, you need to do some exploring and experimenting to find out.  You won’t know if your calling in life is marketing by sitting in a classroom and reading about it.  Spend some time around people who do it and see what it’s like.  If you love it, do you need a degree to do it?

The cultural narrative on college is, “Buy it!  Buy it!  No amount of cost or debt should factor into your decision, because it’s always worth it!”.  That’s a terrible way to make sound decisions about anything.  Remember the last time everyone was saying, “Buy! Buy! The price can only ever go up!”? (Housing bubble anyone…)

But maybe you’re going to college just for fun, which leads me to…

3) Most don’t enjoy it (and the parts they do enjoy can be had for free).

Parents and students tell me all the time that they’re unhappy with college.  Do you know what the number one complaint is?  Surprisingly, it’s not how much it costs.  It’s how much it sucks.

The number of young people who are bored in class and disappointed with the caliber of professors and students is staggering.  Students feel disengaged.  The part they like least about college is attending class and official duties.

If you sent a visitor from another planet to a typical college class and asked them to observe and report back to you what they thought they were witnessing they’d probably guess by the pained, dreary looks and lack of engagement it was some kind of penal colony or experiment where the students are being paid huge sums to endure fluorescently lit torment.  Nope, you tell them, these people are actually paying thousands to sit in the squeaky chairs and Snapchat their friends with a distracting TA in the background.

The things they love the most – parties, socialization, late night conversations, football games – can all be had without paying tuition.  Heck, if you really love a particular class or professor, I bet you can sneak into her class without registering and take it anyway.  I’ve never seen professors checking who’s current on tuition before the lecture.  They’d be thrilled to have someone in the class who was actually interested!

So why do people go?  Most don’t do it to stand out from the crowd, but to be normal; to blend in.  In that sense, it works.  But that might not be such a good thing…

4) It’s one size fits all in a world that demands customization.

Sure, there are lots of different majors and classes, but the approach is almost exactly the same in every case.  Follow rules, meet arbitrary deadlines with arbitrary assignments that will be glanced at by TA’s, passively listen to lectures and memorize answers you never need to know (because, you know, Google exists now).  

Chances are the job you’ll have in ten or twenty years doesn’t even exist yet.  That means the most valuable life and career skills are the very ones the classroom setting isn’t conducive for.  Adaptability, entrepreneurial thinking, creative problem solving, networking with people who can help you, etc.  In the classroom setting entrepreneurship is called cheating and networking is called missing class.

You can’t rely on your university to be your brand.  You are your own company, “Me, Inc.”, and you have to develop valuable skills and knowledge and find ways to communicate them to others.

The good news is, things you’ll really need to succeed are available in myriad forms, most much cheaper than the university.  Get a job.  Get a bunch of jobs.  Travel.  Talk to a lot of people.  Read.  Take online courses.  Write.  Figure out what you enjoy and practice it.  Work your butt off.  Anyone can graduate college.  It takes a lot more work to list what you want to gain and find the best way to get it.  Customize your life.  Don’t assume a degree can do this for you, because…

5) It doesn’t signal much anymore.

I overheard a classmate in college talking about how hard the test was (it wasn’t) and how many girls he wooed the previous night (he didn’t) and how hung-over he was (he was).  Right then and there I had an epiphany: He, like everyone else in the classroom, would probably graduate from this place.  Like me, they’d go on the job market and have the same degree.  Suddenly I felt the market value of my impending accomplishment plummet.

Let’s be real.  The only reason people keep paying so much for college is for the signal a degree sends to employers.  Sure, the other parts of the college bundle are great, but they can all be had in other, better and cheaper ways.  It’s the signal that keeps people buying.  But that signal is weakening and the value declining.

I talk to a lot of business owners.  They don’t care much about degrees anymore.  They want experience, proof of work ethic, and ability to quickly and coherently answer an email (only about seven people under the age of 25 have this ability).  College is the new high school.  Everyone does it, so it doesn’t make anyone stand out.  In fact, not going to college and having a damn good reason why might stand out a lot more.

Top venture capital firm Andreessen Horwitz specifically looks for entrepreneurs who were college dropouts, because it’s a good sign they are courageous and confident in their idea.  Google is one among many businesses to recently remove degrees from job requirements.

Get experience, gain confidence, learn what you like and don’t like, work hard, build skills, knowledge, and a network around your interests and goals.

College is one option among many.  Don’t do it just because everyone else does.  Those are the same people who bought a bunch of Beanie Babies as a retirement fund because everyone else was.