Would You Drop Out of College If You Knew...

Would you drop out of college if you knew deep down you didn't want to work for anyone else?  I'm not sure if this is the best reason for calling it quits.  There are majors that are conducive to being able to start your own business.  For example, major in Accounting and you can probably end up as a CPA working from home.  Let's see, what else?  With a Business degree, you could have the necessary knowledge to start your own business and manage it well enough, I guess.  An English degree could make you available for a bunch of freelance jobs as a writer or being an author.  I can't think of any other major where you could avoid graduate school, and still have viable job skills that transfer directly into working for yourself.  So maybe going to college is a pathway to the world of finding a boss.  And therefore the decision that this young man made was a great one: 24-old-college-dropout-explains-how…

This story describes fairly well the choice one young man made several years ago, knowing in his heart his true calling was NOT following someone else's rules, policies, and direction.  What I like about this story is that it isn't one of those typical success stories where only triumphs are shared but not the tribulations that came before.  Mr. Henkel took advantage of his youth and acted with conviction, not underestimating what was in store for him for his business decisions.  He realized the dangers of tapping into credit cards, cash advances, loans, i.e., OPM (Other People's Money), and acted with haste to rid himself of each obligation before they took the wind out of his sail.  More importantly, and a great lesson for everyone, he had a strategy, dare I say, a plan!  He went with what he knew, buying properties near his university, and renting them out to his friends.  I'm sure that his inner friend circle served as word of mouth advertising for future tenanting.  In other words, he tapped into his network, made good on servicing his network, improving each place he bought and making it more student friendly, and banked on this reputation on subsequent projects.

What Mr. Henkel did takes lots of cojones.  We've all heard of the genius college student who drops out to launch a software, computer based, multi-million dollar privately financed company that goes IPO and reaches billion status.  There's Gates, Zuckerberg, etc.  But dropping out to become a real estate agent and investor?  You don't even have to start college to do this!  However, let's give Mr. Henkel some credit.  He realized his mistake during his soph year, and bailed.  Killed his RE agent licensing test, took his total savings of $10K, and said: "Here goes nothing!"  If you're in college right now, reader, would you do this?  99% of you wouldn't, even knowing your feelings for college/being an employee weren't all there.  That's alright.  Don't beat yourself up.  It's not like the alternative is any easier.  There are no guarantees in life other than taxes and death.

How about you reader who is currently employed and working for someone else, resenting every minute of it?  Would you drop everything, take your savings and embark on an entrepreneurial journey?  Not with bills to pay, right?  Not if it means you'll lose health insurance, right?  Not if you have kids.  Not if…

You only live once.  That's all I got left to say.  Boom!