I am a high school dropout that should, by traditional thinking, be asking if you would like fries with your order not providing business insight. However, hard work, continued education and surrounding myself with inspirational individuals has led me to where I am today.
To tell the truth, I didn’t actually drop out of high school. I was that kid that never applied himself at school and consistently brought home a report card full of failing grades. While my friends were picking colleges and accepting diplomas, I was 10 credits short of graduating and trying to find a job where college didn’t matter. As I entered the workforce and began finding opportunities for advancement, I quickly realized that I needed more than just my good looks and work ethic if I ever wanted to get paid for my brain and not just my brawn.
Throughout life, I have been blessed to surround myself with highly intelligent individuals from varied backgrounds including managers, entrepreneurs, trained businesses coaches and thought leaders in their industry. These people were willing to share their knowledge and help coach me to success. Along the way, I developed a passion for helping my customers succeed while honing my business acumen.
I also realized the importance of learning from successful organizations through my love of business books. Books like Good to Great, Delivering Happiness and The New Gold Standard began to consume my iBooks account. All the while, I was extracting as much information as possible and adapting my learnings to apply to my business.
As I continue my quest for education, I am constantly impressed with how much free content is available on the Internet with no strings attached. There are numerous New York Times best-selling authors creating daily content and releasing it free of charge to anyone who is “hungry” and in search of “highly nutritious” content to consume.
For me, I have dedicated my commute to work each day to personal development. Each morning with a Starbucks in hand, I play my favorite podcasts or YouTube speeches (don’t worry; I just listen to the audio as the phone sits in the cup holder). By consuming content this way I am able to learn about a diverse group of innovators and thought starters that I would never have known about prior to my drive. I always arrive at work with a page full of notes about software applications, business practices, measurement philosophies or other academics that provide insight into life lessons.
There is an Ivy League education available, free of charge to anyone that dedicates the time to learning, has the trust of their management to put those learnings to work and the confidence they are no different than Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg who all have no more than a high school education and the ability to learn in nontraditional ways.
I am hungry for opportunities to learn and this blog is part of that process. Thank you for reading and making me feel comfortable that even though our paths to this point might be different we are all growing together.
Cheers,
Michael
P.S. – If you have a child that’s not doing well in school and you need someone to talk to them or just someone to vent to, feel free to give me a shout. My mother lost years of sleep thinking about my future and I could payback some of that time by helping others.
P.P.S. – Here are some of my favorite educators that I hope you get a chance to learn from:
