What to Do After University – A Different Path To Success After University

We all know the story. You get good grades in school. You get into a “prestigious University” and study hard. You get a high-paying job, get married, and a mortgage before starting a family. You get a promotion, you pay your taxes, raise the kids, retire, and die. But there is another path on what to do after University.

I haven’t done any of this, and you don’t have to either.

Watch my full speech that I gave at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain:

The job-to-job life is a low-reward, low-risk, and easy process. You get paid per hour, and your incentive to work hard is close to nil. When you retire from the job life, it’s over. Even if you retire at 25 – it’s over. What are you going to do if you retire at 25? Party? You’ll get tired of that. I tried partying for a month straight and at the end all I thought was, what the hell am I doing? I went back to working. It’s better to hustle. With a business, you get paid forever, and can actually change the world by working with and for the people you want to.

Who am I and why should you listen to me?

Alot of people in business talk a good game, but do they execute consistently? Do they truly do what they say they do?

Here’s a quick summary what I’ve been up to:

In two years, I’ve helped build a company from $2 million to $5 million while traveling to 23 countries and living in nine of them. I’ve managed interns, contractors, events – you name it. I have two degrees in marketing and communications, but that’s probably the least important thing on the list. I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of people and seeing success and failure in real time. I’ve seen who makes it and who doesn’t, and why… Marketing a coaching-based company with a diverse clientele help you see that. Working with employees from literally all over the world will help you see that. To sum it up, I’m offering you a different viewpoint on how to spend the next 5-10 years of your life in entrepreneurship from someone who’s taken the unique approach.

What do you focus on to become an entrepreneur?

Sales Experience

Sales is an indispensable skill, no matter what your ultimate career goals are. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a CEO or a teacher – learning how to sell a project, a product, or an idea is essential. When I was in college, I sold art from my Mother’s home country of Russia door-to-door to gain personal sales experience. Between the ages of 16-22, I had thirteen student jobs – everything from waiting tables to working in a factory. Slowly but surely, I started getting internships. Every internship I got, I presented my own project rather than just taking what the company told me to do. Taking the initiative in sales is always a good thing.

Consulting Experience

Right out of college, I began to consult companies. I know, I know – you’re thinking, what does a guy straight out of college know about consulting? The honest truth is: not a lot. I was self-taught through the internet, particularly from marketing gurus such as Eben Pagan, Frank Kern, etc.

What set me apart was I offered my services practically for free. On the surface, this seems absolutely insane, but when you’re fresh out of college and just learning your way around the world – it’s essential you learn how to offer value to a company first. When you can master this art, you can capture jobs that require “five years of experience” when you only have two, as I did during the recent economic recession. By freelancing, selling your own unique project plans, and offering value in a clear manner, many companies will meet you more than half way.

Even if it’s free, give value

Even if you’re not getting paid upfront for your work, still do it 100% in order to develop the skill of giving value. Part of the way you do this is by getting around people who know how to give value. Get around people who “get it” – how to become wealthy, live independently, and how the business world works. Keep the old self-development maxim in mind – “You are the average of the five people you hang out with most”.

Read the great books in your field. People have spent 10, 20, 30 years of their life learning from their mistakes, enjoying their successes, and have compressed all of that knowledge into 100-200 pages for your development. Some of these books will help your career far more than a full college education, dare I say. The more you read, the less you focus on the negatives of the world around you – the government, your personal circumstances, whatever – and the more your mind fills with your larger path to success.

Learn quickly, start quickly

The most successful entrepreneurs and freelancers I know have two indispensable skills – they know how to learn and start quickly. Regardless of the job, project, goal… they know how to implement the minute they have even a general idea of what needs get to done. They don’t overthink or overplan – they just execute and implement. 80% of any startup (or anything else in life, really) is implementation.

Furthermore, you have to be ready to push things forward, regardless of the circumstances. Old emails, old ideas, old business partners – you need to be ready to push past them and implement the plan, no matter what. The best employees I see are very, very persistent. If I tell them “no” five times, they’ll ask six times. If I tell them “no” in January, they’ll ask again in March. People with kind of mentality get hired. Education barely matters. A persistent intern from a small town can be more successful than a student from Harvard if they work hard.

How to Actually Get Hired by a Start-up

So how do you actually get hired by a start-up? Well, the first and most obvious answer is “choose one”. You have to demonstrate a genuine interest in their product, their vision, and their needs. The saying goes, “If you don’t choose them, they won’t choose you”. Think of the makings of Facebook. In their early days, some people took a gamble, believed in them from day one, and ended on the road to becoming a billionaire. That’s the sort of mindset you need – this is a company I could work for 10 years. Even if you won’t, your passion and dedication to the culture of the organization, for the company’s values, will shine through.

Secondly, you should find out what they need. Don’t go to them asking for a job – they have too many people already doing that. You need to find their number one sticking point, what they need most in the next 5 years. They have investors to court, stockholders to please – they don’t need another person asking for a “handout”. They need their problem solved now, and if you can offer that, they will give you that position, especially if you make your own project.

The easiest way to do this is create a specific plan with a timetable and the result they can expect: “I’m offering you a three-month plan that will increase lead generation by 50% for your start-up”. Give them a plan, and then execute it.

What’s the Difference Between Liking Entrepreneurship and Being an Entrepreneur?

Execution is the difference between liking entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur. Don’t be “the idea guy” who protects his “precious” thoughts like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Broadcast your idea to everyone you know, and then execute. Ideas are cheap and easy to find. You can have the best idea in the world, have little to no execution, and get nothing out of it. I knew a guy in college who had the same social-networking idea as Facebook. He even got it up and running. A few months later, he was offered a €2,000 job from a bank, said “screw my social network idea”. He went for the instant gratification of a “fat check” (that’s how he saw that amount of money). I think he’s still working at that bank, and it’s since gone bankrupt once or twice. From the Facebook of Belgium to a bank that is literally bankrupt. Ideas are nothing – execution is everything.

Real entrepreneurs view failure and success in a completely different way than the average person is used to. Failure is a lesson that is to be avoided a second time. One of the classic sayings I’ve heard is “A lesson is repeated until it is learned”. In business, that is usually a very expensive lesson. Success is when you achieve a process that works for a short time, and must be expanded upon. It’s fleeting, small, and temporary. It must be implemented again and again, then expanded. It’s continuous.

Real entrepreneurs plan their day based on what their company needs. Every behavior is tied together. You don’t plan your day around your breaks or your night out – you plan your night out based on how much relaxation you need to function well in your business. With practice and time, you’ll also know how and when to rest in the best way to recharge your energy.

What about business plans? Are they useful or necessary?

I personally see business plans as part of the “old system”; they are used by banks to judge whether they should invest in you. It’s not a bad system, but it’s not necessary for your business to succeed. The “new system” is online business, and in the online world, everything changes day-to-day. You need to be flexible and ready to change at a moment’s notice as soon as new information becomes necessary to implement. That business plan that you wrote one month ago may not be valid tomorrow if the online market changes. If you’re going to do a business plan, make it simple and flexible. Think of www.Mindvalley.com, a $20 million company with a one page colorful business plan.

How to Convince Others to Join Your Start-Up, Especially “Techies”?

You need to have a larger vision than just “I provide service A to person B to generate money”. You need to have what they call a game-changer in your field – a company with values and a refreshing way of seeing things in your industry. Broadcast what you stand for, and people will want to get in on the action. If you don’t broadcast it, people are less likely to even hear of you, let alone want to help you build your vision.

Additionally, give them a say in your company. It doesn’t necessarily mean give them a share of the profits, but if they feel like they are a “part of the team”, they will invest in the work a lot more. Think of when you were in school and the teacher seemed to believe the class project was perfect for your skills… you were much more likely to do the project than any old homework assigned. The same goes here: give them a say, a feeling of involvement, and they will come along.

Should I Invest all of my Time in my Star-Up?

You need to invest 100% of your focus and commitment to your start-up. If you don’t invest all of your being into the company, you split your time, energy, and leadership into too many things. Don’t do that. It just doesn’t work most of the time. Hustle, hustle, hustle.

How do I attract foreign investment?

Investment is investment, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Create something people care about, and investment will come from all ends of the earth. Put it on Kickstarter or other fundraising sites. Put a basic product like a water bottle up for sale, and early clientele can buy that, thus “investing” in your company without giving away all of your shares early on. Soon, it will be possible to do equity crowd-funding, where you give equity in your company to a crowd, much like Kickstarter.

A Different Path

YOU are 100% responsible for every aspect of your life – not society, not your friends, not your parents. You. You get 100% of what you deserve at any given moment.

With the dawn of the Internet age, accessibility to work from anywhere, and practically every bit of information needed at your fingertips, you can take any route toward your goals you want. People have walked the same path before and left clues for you. Search them out, work hard, and hustle, hustle, hustle.