Recently, I finished a great book called The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg. Below are some of my notes.
Do you want to chase degrees or do you want to chase success?
Sir Ken Robison, author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Chances Everything, says if an alien were to visit earth and comment on our education system, he would infer that the purpose of public education is to produce university professors.”
There is little evidence that grades bear any casual relationship at all to real world results, success, achievement or satisfaction in life.
There are boatloads of good freelancers who are broke because they don’t know how to market their services. Learn the business side of your craft.
Education is not the same thing as school. Despite 16 years or more of schooling, most of what you’ll need to learn to be successful you’ll have to learn on your own, outside of school, whether you go to college or not.
Skill #1: Make your work meaningful.
- The world doesn’t care whether we want to make a difference or have an impact. When we dream about the things we want to do, we don’t dream about things achieved with little to no risk. The bigger impact you want to make, the more risk you will have to take.
- It’s easier to figure out how to make a difference in the world and find meaning in your life when your bills are covered.
- Trailblazing is a problem if nobody wants to go whoever the trail you are blazing leads.
- The best things you can do in business are to keep your overhead low and make sure you’re getting recurring revenue as quickly as possible.
Skill #2: Find great mentors and teachers.
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. – Jim Rohn
The secret to finding mentors is giving. Hope to get something in return but don’t expect anything. Two great questions to ask:
- What’s most exciting for you right now in your life or business?
- What’s challenging for you in your life or business right now?
Skill #3: Marketing
- “I am a 100% self educated direct marketing expert. No college, no apprenticeship. Just a study of everything I could get my hands on and diligent application.” – Dan Kennedy
- You are in the marketing business. You are not in the dry cleaning or restaurant or widget manufacturing or wedding planning business.
- Good marketing starts with the problem you can solve for a customer who realizes he has a brpblem.
- Marketing is one of your most important jobs, period. Nothing happens until something gets sold. Safe doesn’t sell. Good marketing isn’t pushing products…it’s about listening to your audience.
- The Paul Mitchell logo was designed in black and white because it was cheaper to print the bottles that way.
- Keep expenses low, generate income right away (even if it’s a little bit) and continually reinvest as much as effectively possible into expanding your future income.
- Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content oriented. Millionaires tend to have a passion for life-long learning.
- “One characteristic of a lot of entrepreneurs its hat they’re relatively unemployable.” – Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress.
- Pay great attention to what YOU can contribute to any given person or situation.
- Great leaders find out what people in their organization need, and give it to them. You get through school by giving expected answers. You don’t make it in business using that same formula.
- People who don’t have an owner mindset will not move toward big decisions, because they will be afraid of making the wrong one.
- If you have an owner mindset, you see yourself as RESPONSIBLE for the impact you have in your usiness or workplace, and for your own success and advancement in life.
- Henry Ford: “An educated man is not one who is trained to carry a few dates in history – he is one who can accomplish things.”
After a dozen years as a student pastor, and five years a church-starter, I'm the Chief Operating Officer of 
