We have a major problem in America.
For several generations we’ve been taught that the way to prosperity is to go to college, get a good job and work for 40 years and then retire.
But there are massive flaws with this thought process and it’s destroying our children.
The biggest flaw being, that our children are graduating college in deep debt, with some carrying over $200,000 in debt that they will not pay off until they are 40 years old.
In most cases these kids have almost no income but yet these “for profit” entities are allowed to lend them 6 figures and no one batts an eye.
What is wrong with this picture?
Why is this not criminal?
If Visa or American Express loaned a half a million dollars each to a person making $40,000 per year, the judge would throw out the case and impose massive fines.
We have predatory lending laws but no one seems to enforce them when it comes to colleges and universities.
The real question is why?
I have a few thoughts but I believe the main reason is that our system of government is severely broken and those who report the news have become controlled by corporate interests.
Our government is broken because of greed and cronyism and the media, well I’m not sure there is much hope for them either.
If there is any hope for our children and the generations to come, we need to create a generation of entrepreneurs.
A generation that takes products and services and uses them to solve other people’s problems and makes other people’s lives better and gets paid handsomely to do it.
Colleges and universities teach knowledge but not skills.
Skills are taught in the real world and skills are where the money is made.
Look, we need professionals like doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers and college is required for them, but would you want surgery from someone who just graduated last week? Would you want the lawyer handling your case to be fresh out of law school?
Would someone please tell me why we don’t have colleges that teach entrepreneurialism where they could graduate and go to work applying what they learned and grow their skills?
I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because most parents do not understand entrepreneurialism and therefore would never promote it too their children.
It’s too risky, it’s hard and on and on.
It’s pretty damn hard to start out life deep in debt.
To make things worse, for the past 50 years society has been trying to paint profitability as evil. How is helping someone else solve their problems or make their life better, evil?
There is absolutely nothing evil about owning your own business regardless of how big or how small it is.
Profit is not evil and nor is money.
Granted, money and profit can expose an evil person’s true self, but in and of themselves, profit and money are neutral.
What is evil is allowing our children to incur massive amounts of debt instead of doing something that might be less prestigious.
Somehow we have become a society that looks differently at trades, service businesses and trading for profit.
I have a friend Eric, who is a carpenter but he is also skilled at tile, stone and a plethora of other construction related activities.
He gets paid pretty well for what he does and he’s one of the happiest people you would ever meet.
Trades should not be something you fall back on.
You might hear someone say, “well, I never was good in school so I guess I’ll go into the electrical business.”
I’m not being sarcastic, this is how many of our children ended up in a trade and they should not feel bad about it.
Trades are good and lots of them end up growing successful businesses and employing millions and millions of high paid workers all over this great country of ours.
In 1992 I purchased a business and have been self-employed ever since.
For me it was the only way because I was definitely not college material, sarcasm added.
1998 I started another company and since 2001 I’ve spent most of my time working with entrepreneurs to coach them on sales and marketing.
But I confess, I had an ulterior motive, some of them were selling my products and we were both making profits.
There it is, I must be evil.
Here’s the truth.
There is nothing wrong with making money helping others.
When you get your first job you have no skills so you get paid the minimum pay.
As your skills grow, so does your pay.
It’s a fact, people with skills do not get paid minimum wage.
It’s also a fact that people who do get paid minimum wage, will not stay at minimum wage if they have a strong desire to learn and a good attitude.
With these two characteristics they can learn to become skilled.
Your skill level determines your value, aka your pay.
You don’t go to work for a wage, you go to work for a company and your one desire should be to help that company become more profitable and in the process increase your skillset.
When you do, your value goes through the roof.
It’s the same when you are self-employed, your skills are used to solve people’s problems and make their lives better.
You need to become skilled at making sure your target audience knows you have that skill.
They need to know you are an expert.
This is the one thing that is missing from about 90% of all businesses.
Most businesses suck at sales and marketing with the emphasis being on marketing.
If you become skilled at marketing, profitable sales always follow.
Marketing does not have to be pretty, it does not have to be perfect, but to be effective, it does need to let your prospects and customers know how you can solve their problem or make their lives better.
If you do not do this effectively you will always play the low price game which is a losing battle in business.
Marketing is the most important skill to learn as an entrepreneur.
This one skill will change your business and your life forever and once you learn it, like any other skill, you will learn to master it over time.
So please, by all means, learn it and then master it.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney
P.S. If you would like to learn how you can make a dramatic leap in marketing using LinkedIn, you can attend a live webinar on Thursday. To get details click here.