Build Useful Skills Through Education and Mentorship

A young man asks me whether he should go to college to study physics or find a mentor to help him make money. He's done well in mathematics and physics, but says he's more interested in the life financial success could make possible than in those subjects themselves.

My answer is to pursue both education and mentorship. I don't see a reason to discard one because he's interested in the other. In this conversation, I explain what I value about university, why I sought people with practical business experience, and what I expect a student to do with the instruction he receives.

The starting point is the ability he's already developed. He's thinking seriously about his future and has worked at challenging subjects. I want him to build on that foundation.

Develop the literacy to understand the business

I begin with mathematics because it's a useful part of his preparation. In a business and finance context, I want to understand financial statements and statistics. A person who struggles to understand the numbers can have difficulty evaluating what he's looking at.

I tell the young man that the mathematics he would encounter in physics can be more sophisticated than much of the mathematics needed in business. The ability he's developed is a useful ingredient. He doesn't need to dismiss it because his interest has shifted toward earning money.

That doesn't mean a good grade in physics establishes business competence. I describe it as preparation he can build on. He still has to learn how to use his abilities in the setting where he wants to work.

My answer is shaped by his situation: a young person who has already pursued demanding schoolwork and is deciding what to study next. I'm encouraging him to continue developing that ability while learning from people who can show him its practical uses.

Use university as a place to exchange and test ideas

I describe a university as a place where people congregate to share knowledge, argue, debate, and become more knowledgeable. That environment is a large part of why I value it. I want to be around people who are willing to test their thinking against other people's ideas.

The social contacts matter too. Education can put me in conversations I wouldn't otherwise have, with people whose interests and experience differ from mine. In the video, I talk about seeking better information and greater clarity alongside the formal accomplishment of earning a degree.

I speak strongly in favor of college in this conversation. My point to the questioner is that education and practical ambition can coexist. Wanting financial success doesn't require deciding that academic learning has no place in his future.

Then I describe the limit of the credential. Nobody handed me a million-dollar check with my diploma. Completing the work gave me education I could take into the world. I still had to do something competent with it.

Learn from people who have applied what they teach

Some of the professors I most wanted to work with had experience building companies or working in finance. I was interested in people who had applied their knowledge to substantial business problems. Their practical experience gave me another reason to pay attention.

I mention clinical professors and people who had worked in private equity, developed finance businesses, or founded companies. Those examples explain the kind of experience I was seeking. I wanted to understand the connection between what someone could teach and what he had actually done.

That also explains why I don't answer the young man's question by making him choose between a university and a mentor. A university can introduce him to people with practical experience. Mentorship can help him work through questions that arise as he applies what he's learning.

Choosing those relationships takes attention. In my discussion of building a business network, I start with the goals I want to accomplish and the people whose experience fits that direction. Here, education is one of the places where I sought those people.

Pay attention to the work behind someone's position

I tell a story about a professor who often wore a sweater with a hole in it and an inexpensive watch. I had also seen him dressed formally, but that simple outfit was familiar in his day-to-day life.

What stayed with me was his attention to the things that drove his work. I was interested in the decisions and priorities behind them.

Being around people who had accomplished more than I had also changed my sense of what was possible. I could see an experienced person as a human being with his own quirks and problems. That made the distance between us feel different.

I describe gaining confidence and becoming more humble at the same time. I could believe there was more I might accomplish while recognizing how much I still had to learn. Feeling pleased with my progress didn't mean I had exhausted the possibilities.

Get one income-producing activity working before adding more

Later in the conversation, the other participant describes developing a working income stream and then coming to me with questions about additional ones. He emphasizes getting the first one going. I agree with that sequence.

I list several ways I've earned money, but a list of my activities doesn't tell someone else where to begin. Near the end of that discussion, I bring the answer back to the person's existing skills and current position.

“It depends on your skill set.”

That is more useful to the questioner than copying every activity I mention. A person with one skill set starts in a different place from a person with another. He needs to understand what he can do now and what he needs to learn next.

My separate explanation of giving one or two pursuits serious attention covers the practice that developing a skill requires. It provides the practical counterpart to this sequence: get something working, build your understanding, and then consider where to put attention next.

Do the work between conversations with a mentor

I spend the final part of the lesson describing the effort I expected from people in my mentoring program at the time. They had reading to do, exercises to complete, and accountability calls with my team. Access to the next conversation depended on doing that work.

The structure matters because it places responsibility on the student. I can explain a subject and answer questions, but the person receiving the instruction has to spend time with it. Showing up for a conversation without completing the exercises defeats the way I designed the learning process.

I describe a repeated sequence: discuss the material, do more exercises, study the topics, and return for the next conversation. Each stage gives the student something to bring into the next one. The work between meetings is part of the instruction.

These are expectations I explain before working with someone. My article on setting expectations at the beginning goes into why I want a person to understand that commitment before agreeing to it.

Come back to the next conversation having done the reading and the exercises. Then we have something to discuss beyond the ambition that brought you there: the material you studied, the work you completed, and the things you still don't understand.