Brent Snyder

Start-Up of You and The Education of Millionaires Book Review

I have recently read two profound books that examine the career paths and education of the smartest, wealthiest, and most resourceful business professionals in the world. The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn and Ben Casnocha, one of my favorite writers, collaborated on a book that reshapes the common assumptions of an employee’s and entrepreneur’s mindset. The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg, a successful writer on Forbes.com, challenges the conventional knowledge that is taught by universities and the value of a six-figure education.

By adapting to the future, investing in yourself with practical education that cannot be learned in a classroom, and transforming your career with your network, there are unlimited possibilities for your endeavors. The challenges that Reid, Ben, and Michael detail in their books are a call-to-action for business professionals and high school students planning their path for the future. The good news is that it’s never to late to adapt to the changing career environment. The two books will challenge you to think about careers and education with an unprecedented approach with a focus on execution and collaboration with your network.

The Start-Up of You

Everyone was born an entrepreneur. The society that everyone grows up in shapes the way people live and do business. Being able to adapt to the competitive economy and create a life that is honorable and respectful is a challenging goal.

“Aspirations and values are both important pieces of your career competitive advantage quite simply because when you’re doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better. The person passionate about what he or she is doing will outwork and outlast the guy motivated solely by making money. It can be easy to forget this when heading the start-up of you.”

In order to achieve true success, a person with the start-up of you mindset creates relationships with their peers. This is commonly known as “networking”. In the traditional viewpoint, networkers are thought of as being slimy and purely self-interested. In contrast to the common belief, the people who are able to have the most impact in the world have an incredibly strong network of supporters.

“Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on (at least) two things. The first is seeing the world from the other person’s perspective…the second requirement is thinking about how you can help and collaborate with the other person rather than thinking about what you can get from him or her.”

Empathy is an important part of being an entrepreneur and being an employee. Understanding what the customer demands and being able to generate value for the company depends on being acutely aware of other’s needs and desires. The same virtues apply to building a strong network. Reid and Ben taught me to always have the intention to give without ever being entitled to receive anything. This attitude is extremely attractive and will help build a network of people who will help you throughout your career.

In order to form a network and start a career, intelligent risks have to be taken. Without the initiative to understand the importance of a changing environment, you will never adjust to the demands of the labor market.

“Some entrepreneurs are irrational risk takers: cowboy types willing to bet the farm in pursuit of some crazy dream. But what sets the great entrepreneurs apart from the pack is not a high tolerance for risk per se, but their ability to judiciously access and manage it.”

That applies to an employee working for a corporation or small business as well. Taking the intelligent risk to improve a process can have great effects if the tolerance for the risk is justified. That is one of the greatest ways to advance within an organization. Understand the environment and look for areas to improve and don’t mistake uncertainty for risk.

The Start-Up of You is a book that is targeted towards employees and entrepreneurs. The safe and secure path of an employee in a large corporation has evolved to be not safe at all. The conditions have changed and employees need to think more like an entrepreneur. The Education of Millionaires touches on similar topics but underlines the importance of gaining real-world knowledge and not relying on the educational system.

The Education of Millionaires

Michael profiled and traveled across the country to learn about the outliers who did not finish college and became ultra-successful. The interviews that he conducted with millionaires and billionaires revealed the importance self-education—the art of learning by doing. The businesspeople profiled included Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and founding president Sean Parker, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg, and fashion designer Marc Ecko. The common element is that they did not finish their traditional education, but designed a learning style that led them to success. In this book, they revealed their stories about how they learned about business without racking up six-figures of debt.

Colleges teach the required skills that are necessary to succeed as an employee. They do not teach you the importance of dealing with failure, how to sale a product, or how to market yourself after graduation. Here are a few quotes that embody those traits and how you can apply them to your life and career.

“Without failure, there is no learning. These people are not addicts of gambling; they are addicts of learning in the real world. And learning in the real world involves failing. Lots of it.”

“No single skill you could possibly learn correlates more directly with your real-world success than learning sales. And yet—surprise, surprise, it’s nowhere to be found on the curriculum of formal education, from elementary school through graduate school.”

“The key to making money, and therefore living a life of less stress, is to cause someone to joyfully give you money in exchange for something that they perceive to be of greater value than the money they gave you.”

Michael goes on a riff about how the education system is an unforeseen bubble. I am fortunate and blessed that I never had to take a loan out for college. Having that luxury is not available to most college students. They accumulate six-figures of debt and are barely able to make the minimum payments even after graduation. Combined on top of that is the fact that the labor market is soft and the students have to take lesser quality jobs to pay down the debt. This restricts the amount of influence they can have on the world because they are burdened with a need for a quick paycheck. This is a concerning issue that is troubling to many recent graduates.

The learning process is being shaped and transformed. The Internet is making it more readily accessible to learn about any topic at any time. The gap between the value of academia learning and an entrepreneurial learning environment is closing. In order to succeed in business or life, it is now a requirement to challenge every assumption and work just as hard out of the classroom.

The Start-Up of You and The Education of Millionaires are now two of my favorite books about career paths and education. The authors identify that the current surroundings of education and learning is evolving. The old way of doing things is not applicable in this competitive environment. Prepared with these lessons, a business professional will be able to compete and succeed in the competitive landscape of entrepreneurship or Corporate America.

Learning History from Biographies

One of my toughest subjects in school was always history. I relentlessly struggled to remember the important names and dates that were tested. Studying history by memorizing can be difficult and devastating to the learning process. In result, I decided to embark on a self-learning sabbatical that eliminated traditional history classes and textbooks. I picked a mode of instruction by reading biographies of outstanding men that changed the United States forever. Three biographies broadened my knowledge and helped shape my views of United States history over the past century.

Truman by David McCullough

The first biography that I read profiled President Harry S. Truman’s life as a Democratic leader from Missouri. I wrote a book review that analyzed the impact that Truman made on the United States.

From a historical standpoint, McCullough starts the story of Truman’s ancestors beginning on the Missouri frontier. He then plots the gruesome battle of War World I and advances to the intricacies of World War II. The decision of dropping the atomic bomb was the most impactful and in-depth part of the biography. Truman was plagued with a decision that only a strong person could handle. The factors were weighed and he was forced to make a decision.

Global and political policies were expressed when the meetings of Potsdam were revealed in immense detail. Stalin and Churchill were described in a way that expressed each of their powerful personalities.

The decision of sending troops to Korea, and the firing of General McArthur caused Truman to consider the implications of being a president and facing public sentiments. In order to be President of the United States, Truman proved that it takes courage, risks, and a willingness to stand by the decisions that one makes.

From a historical standpoint, Truman had the opportunity to live through the decades that had the most progress for America. He was a leader of the United States and had the responsibility of conducting policy matters in a way that appeased other nations. He was a role model for all citizens and his biography was fantastic for learning United States history from inside of the system. In order to understand this period of history from both sides, an alternate view must be presented. In the next book that I read, the financial history of the United States was revealed. Seeing the finance world through Warren Buffett provided a unique perspective of history.

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

Warren Buffett is more knowledgeable about the United States financial system than possibly any other person. In this biography, Schroeder takes the reader through the transition of Buffett from his modest beginnings to his billionaire status.

The most striking aspect of Buffett is that he is frugal his entire life and does not burn cash. He keeps his modest values that he learned on a small farm in Omaha, Nebraska.

Buffett is an investment genius that is able to see trends in companies that no one else can. He developed the skill of finding undervalued investments by hard and dedicated research. There was not a time when he was not constantly taking in information—whether it was reading the newspaper, watching the news, or savaging through financial reports.

The biography provided a financial history of the United States that the biography Truman did not touch on. Buffett’s biography complimented Truman perfectly because the same issues were being discussed in both books. Buffett had an alternate view of Truman and probably disliked him as a President.

Understanding both sides of events from two different viewpoints is important for learning about the people who lived before us. Now, to sum up the self-directed history learning, I picked up a biography that featured a controversial war veteran and scientific genius of airplane design.

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram

Colonel John Boyd was a fighter pilot in the Air Force and questioned the status quo to the day that he died. He was highly controversial and was not afraid to emphasize and speak the truth. The Air Force is a highly structured bureaucratic system that forced Boyd to break down the barriers of traditional practices.

Nicknamed forty-second Boyd, there was not a person alive that was able to set their target on Boyd and hose him. He had a bet that if any person was able to set their sights on him and yell Guns! Guns! Guns!, he would give the fighter pilot forty bucks. There was never a person that was able to hose forty-second Boyd.

Not only was Boyd a cocky, flamboyant fighter pilot, he was extremely smart. The most significant achievements were the creation of the F-15 and F-16 fighter pilots for the Air Force. It was almost an impossible task to go against the grain and design aircrafts that went against everything that the Air Force believed.

The confident and rebellious nature of Boyd was exacerbated when the intellectual portion of his life emerged. He stopped flying fighter jets and went into a sabbatical of learning. During this time, he developed an Energy Maneuverability Theory that was briefed to members of the armed forces. Boyd did not stop there as he researched a new theory and named it Destruction and Creation. The paper analyzes how the creative process evolves and how mental models are used.

The biography provided an account of history from the vantage point of a person who worked and lived in the system. Boyd had to develop his theories in secrecy and had to make sure his ideas were one hundred percent accurate. If anything were wrong with one of his theories, his credibility would be deflated.

Colonel John Boyd was a strong and defiant person and there was not a person that could stand in his way of presenting the truth. The military strategy that he developed was profound and provided an inside view of the intentions of the Air Force and Marines in prior wars. The biography provided me with the most information and inside knowledge. It was interesting to learn how the armed forces are structured and the process that must be completed to change a military strategy.

What’s Next?

After reading these biographies, I was provided with an education that cannot be duplicated by reading textbooks. There weren’t any facts and figures that I forced myself to memorize. I read for comprehension and with the intention of understanding how the three men progressed through their lives.

The next biography that I will read will most likely be Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. I will explore the earlier history of America through the eyes of the person who invented bifocal glasses.