Post: #1

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Your education BEGINS at graduation. It does not end at graduation.

MJ Demarco of The Millionaire Fastlane, explaining this point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDm7M3asO5o

To the young bucks - the things you learn in school and the types of skills/experiences you need to make a business profitable and successful are, for the most part, entirely separate.

Particularly in the context of entrepreneurship - understanding the skill in theory is not enough. Even understanding it in practice is not enough. Being able to execute upon that skill and deliver results superior to what your competitors can do (and keeping the cost of execution low) is what is going to set you apart.

A suggestion I would give to young bucks is that your ACADEMIC or SCHOLARLY learning should be kept absolutely and strictly separate from your HUSTLER TOOLS learning.

Academic/Scholar learning: East Asian Political Economy, British Literature 101, Finance 220, International Economics, Ethics, European History 420

Hustler Tools learning: learn how to code at http://www.codeacademy.com ; learn graphic design at http://www.udemy.com ; learn photoshop and finalcut pro also at udemy.com ; get on http://www.italki.com and take skype language lessons

There are certain kinds of learning that will make you an educated global citizen. This is scholarly and academic learning. That is why you go to university and study abroad.

Other kinds of learning will be hard technical skills and rigorously acquired experiences that will help you build cash. This is why you are learning how to code while your friends are at the bar. This is why you are doing internships with the chamber of commerce in Shanghai or working with prominent ecommerce startups in Brazil.

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I humbly suggest that you separate these two types of education in your mind.

Neither is more important or superior to the other. One will make you an educated citizen of the world and the other will make you wealthy.

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Post: #2

goodstuff!
I would add https://www.coursera.org/ to this list

Post: #3

http://www.duolingo.com

Using this to learn Brazilian Portuguese and catch up on Spanish.

Post: #4

thanks a lot for the links. I've been wanting to jump into python & portuguese

Post: #5

I've read his book and I like what he said about how to get rich:

You can either hit a bunch of singles or hit a home run. As an example, you can rent out 100 single-family homes or you can build a a high-rise hotel.

Post: #6

the coding hustler???

that's some ninja shit!

go forth, cyberpunk.

Post: #7

I see the importance of fluency in multiple languages - but if you are a finance guy like myself (who doesn't necessarily get into coding or IT specifics) - why is it important to learn coding?

Post: #8

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It is important to learn coding because you will be able to:


1. Build things from scratch, on your own, any time you want.

Clone a zappos for Colombia and sell it for $15M USD to Amazon or Rocket Internet. Create a crowdfunding site for Philanthropy. Design a bidding platform for plastic surgeons in SE Asia. These are things that a finance guy can't do on his own if he is inspired with the idea. He has to hire a dev guy to execute for him.

Finance guy will also have to continue bleeding cash, month on month, to pay for someone to execute for him who may not share his passion and vision for his startup.

Do you think a Filipino web dev virtual assistant cares that you want to sell your company for millions of dollars? Or do you think it's strategically in his interest to drag out the project for as long as possible so that you keep sending him cash?

2. Will not have to be dependent from a strategic or financial point of view on other developers - either a equity stakeholding partner or a web dev firm. Save cash and equity in startups. Having said that, I suggest you partner up for other reasons. Just saying, if you want to go solo you will be able to.

3. You will be able to screen and filter talent for your venture/startup so that you don't waste months of your time and tens of thousands of dollars with time-wasting idiot designers/developers from the Philippines and India, just to start from scratch. This alone is a good reason to learn how to code. I learned this the hard way. All of 2011 was mistakes and wasted time, cash, and energy for me. I wish that I had spent that time at least attempting to pick up coding on my own.

4. As we move further and further into the digital age (the internet is a teenager!) it is becoming increasingly important that a business be web savvy. With the rise of the mobile web in particular, it's becoming more crucial than ever that you be able to utilize all digital platforms available. In order to make intuitively intelligent decisions about security, risk, design, and execution, you will have to at least have a fundamental understanding of how the front and back end of your business operates from a design/development point of view.

5. Finance guys are a dime a dozen and more or less everyone I know on Wall Street (hundreds of people) is complaining about how their industry is dying/dead and asking me to help them transition into companies or entrepreneurship abroad and what skills to learn. In contrast, digital media and technology are only going to continue to accelerate in importance and relevance.

Research the rise of "the app economy" to understand what I mean. There is an entire industry that sprang up overnight since the app store was launched half a decade ago. It's creating new jobs and opening worlds of possibility that would not have been imaginable 5 years ago.

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(I don't know if the whole "finance industry is dead" thing is exaggerated or not, I'm directly quoting things that investment banking, sales/trading, and PE guys are saying to me. Please do not turn this into a "is finance dead or not" conversation)

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Post: #9

As a followup to this, read "The Millionaire Fastlane".

This is a guy who had a finance/business/marketing background from university yet was able to sell his startup, limos.com, for millions of dollars because he taught himself how to code from scratch.

Ditto Mark Cuban.

Post: #10

(03-17-2013 09:52 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Other kinds of learning will be hard technical skills and rigorously acquired experiences that will help you build cash. This is why you are learning how to code while your friends are at the bar. This is why you are doing internships with the chamber of commerce in Shanghai or working with prominent ecommerce startups in Brazil.
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I have friends that work full-time while taking 2 graduate classes at night per semester. Though their time management is pretty good on paper, their spare hours are always spent at the bar with old friends instead of networking, getting their foot inside different doors, and developing new skills.

As a result, these guys are complaining about how their job market leads have remained stagnant (about to graduate with their MBAs) since the time they started their programs. I wonder why that's the case...

Post: #11

(03-17-2013 09:52 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Academic/Scholar learning: East Asian Political Economy, British Literature 101, Finance 220, International Economics, Ethics, European History 420

Yes, scholarship is different from entrepreneurship, which is different from baseball, which is different from auto repair.

I think scholar means someone with advanced education, not a freshman literature course and sophmore finance course. You don't list any math courses. Which is more "scholarly", modular functions or topology?

Post: #12

(03-17-2013 10:18 PM)Divorco Wrote:  

(03-17-2013 09:52 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Academic/Scholar learning: East Asian Political Economy, British Literature 101, Finance 220, International Economics, Ethics, European History 420

Yes, scholarship is different from entrepreneurship, which is different from baseball, which is different from auto repair.

I think scholar means someone with advanced education, not a freshman literature course and sophmore finance course. You don't list any math courses. Which is more "scholarly", modular functions or topology?

That's clearly subjective. I just threw out a bunch of random university courses that I personally took (or was considering taking) that did not really end up helping my specific situation as an entrepreneur right now. Sure, you could include mathematics courses in there. I am not discounting any particular type of curriculum, I just happened to not list math courses.

My goal is not to start a thread about the semantics of scholarship and what it means to be an enlightened individual.

My goal is mainly to point out that college courses will not prepare an individual for entrepreneurship and the best way to do this is to acquire practical skills as you face hurdles/obstacles in your entrepreneurial path.

Your criticisms are well received but outside the scope of the point I was trying to raise in this thread. Thank you for your input Divorco.

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Post: #13

(03-17-2013 10:18 PM)Divorco Wrote:  

(03-17-2013 09:52 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Academic/Scholar learning: East Asian Political Economy, British Literature 101, Finance 220, International Economics, Ethics, European History 420

Yes, scholarship is different from entrepreneurship, which is different from baseball, which is different from auto repair.

I think scholar means someone with advanced education, not a freshman literature course and sophmore finance course. You don't list any math courses. Which is more "scholarly", modular functions or topology?

LOL one of your rep points is "Not a Female Troll"

Post: #14

Thing is, it's best to continue your "formal education" after you've completed your first degree along with getting some sort of entry level work experience. Once you've had a combination of those two along with some professional networking, you'll get a better feel of what you want to accomplish long-term and what it is going to take to get to that point. Once you've come to that realization, you'll know which courses you want to take in the future whether it be graduate or continuing ed. that will help you accomplish those desired goals. That's why I think the best form of education stems from a mix of 1) in class, 2) professional, and 3) travel experiences...especially in a global economy that is constantly evolving.

Excellent thread again YMG.

Post: #15

(03-17-2013 11:12 PM)yb13 Wrote:  Thing is, it's best to continue your "formal education" after you've completed your first degree along with getting some sort of entry level work experience. Once you've had a combination of those two along with some professional networking, you'll get a better feel of what you want to accomplish long-term and what it is going to take to get to that point. Once you've come to that realization, you'll know which courses you want to take in the future whether it be graduate or continuing ed. that will help you accomplish those desired goals.

That's why I think the best form of education stems from a mix of 1) in class, 2) professional, and 3) travel experiences...especially in a global economy that is constantly evolving.

Excellent thread again YMG.

You nailed it on the head there.

My goal from this thread to have guys start thinking about developing entrepreneurial skills independently from the classroom and to apply it everywhere they go.

Thanks for the compliment as well.

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Post: #16

About coding: I would learn some language (like python) until you feel a bit confident, then go over to projecteuler.net. There are tons of mathematical puzzles that require you to code. But you need to do it SMART, otherwise your machine will be running for over a day. The accompanying forums (per puzzle) are VERY helpful and basically learned me how to program smart and correctly. You can't access the forums unless you give the correct answer to the puzzle first.

I think learning to program trains you immensely in indepently solving problems. There's no one there to help you, just the internet (or books) you can search.

Post: #17

(03-18-2013 03:11 AM)GreenGranted Wrote:  About coding: I would learn some language (like python) until you feel a bit confident, then go over to projecteuler.net. There are tons of mathematical puzzles that require you to code. But you need to do it SMART, otherwise your machine will be running for over a day. The accompanying forums (per puzzle) are VERY helpful and basically learned me how to program smart and correctly. You can't access the forums unless you give the correct answer to the puzzle first.

I think learning to program trains you immensely in indepently solving problems. There's no one there to help you, just the internet (or books) you can search.

perfect, thanks for this suggestion!

Post: #18

(03-17-2013 09:52 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  -

I humbly suggest that you separate these two types of education in your mind.

Neither is more important or superior to the other. One will make you an educated citizen of the world and the other will make you wealthy.

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and your academic qualifications, so you know both sides of this are...??..

I'm hired almost exclusively due to my professional license, which is largely based on my academic education. (Don't want to get into the exact area) . I agree that programming is good training because it teaches you that intuitive knowledge can be completely wrong. "I KNOW that piece of code 'should' work. "

I'd like to think I also know what I'm doing, but the idea that only people who go out and self-teach as entrepreneurs make money is not true. A lot of people have no business ability, "hustler" sounds like a disgusting deceptive criminal, and academics is the way they are going to get money, although granted you do have to function in the real business world.

Grad degrees in select fields are worth a lot, but you do have to pick:

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-gra...ate-degree

Post: #19

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Post: #20

There are a lot of options in Code Academy, which programming language has the best return on investment? HTML, JAVA, Python, Ruby?

I want to build medical apps, if that is at all helpful.

Post: #21

Great post, and I totally agree with respect to core Hustler skills like marketing, sales, negotiation, basic accounting, language skills.

But I'm not at all sold on the value of coding, at least as a transferrable "Hustler" skill, unless you really do want to be a programmer.

I think it takes a long time to really get good (to the point you can earn money from it), like 1-3 years, and you end up with something that's not very transferrable. In contrast, if you were to learn PPC or Web Analytics, then yes, you've got something technical but also very transferable to future businesses because you'll also learn general marketing, tracking, analysing and testing skills that can directly improve the bottom line and be used in any business.

Coding is like engineering - Very skill intensive and not transferrable to other areas of business. (and it's getting more specialised and less necessary to "know a little code" - the "under the hood" side of things gets further removed from users over time)... (It is frikkin cool though).

Post: #22

(03-20-2013 11:12 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  There are a lot of options in Code Academy, which programming language has the best return on investment? HTML, JAVA, Python, Ruby?

I want to build medical apps, if that is at all helpful.

If you haven't done any programming I recommend you start with JavaScript and then move on to Ruby after you've got a good grounding in JS.

Post: #23

(03-22-2013 12:55 PM)Caligula Wrote:  

(03-20-2013 11:12 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  There are a lot of options in Code Academy, which programming language has the best return on investment? HTML, JAVA, Python, Ruby?

I want to build medical apps, if that is at all helpful.

If you haven't done any programming I recommend you start with JavaScript and then move on to Ruby after you've got a good grounding in JS.

I disagree. Learn a strongly typed language first, like java or c#. Those two are also used in medical field as far as i know. Moving to higher level language is always easier than moving to lower level language. Keep in mind that java is also the language used in android apps.

Post: #24

(03-20-2013 03:22 PM)RichieP Wrote:  Great post, and I totally agree with respect to core Hustler skills like marketing, sales, negotiation, basic accounting, language skills.

But I'm not at all sold on the value of coding, at least as a transferrable "Hustler" skill, unless you really do want to be a programmer.

I think it takes a long time to really get good (to the point you can earn money from it), like 1-3 years, and you end up with something that's not very transferrable. In contrast, if you were to learn PPC or Web Analytics, then yes, you've got something technical but also very transferable to future businesses because you'll also learn general marketing, tracking, analysing and testing skills that can directly improve the bottom line and be used in any business.

Coding is like engineering - Very skill intensive and not transferrable to other areas of business. (and it's getting more specialised and less necessary to "know a little code" - the "under the hood" side of things gets further removed from users over time)... (It is frikkin cool though).

One of the benefits of coding is that once you complete the app it becomes an asset that cna produce income without much more active involvement, unlike being a doctor, accountant, attorney, etc. who are generally only making money when they are working.