Real World, Real Money, Real Time

I got an e-mail from someone who had just read a 651-word e-zine I wrote, to say that he enjoyed the message and had actually printed and filed it. Ten minutes later, I got an e-mail from someone who had noticed three grammatical errors and a spelling mistake in the same document. The first person (the one who liked the message) is a millionaire and the one who discovered the horrendous mistakes is currently unemployed and living off her father’s pension. I had a question for this wanna-be teacher: “Tell, me, how many books have you written, how many did you sell, and how much money did you make?” Of course, she has never written anything that anyone read and never made any money, but she did study English. Big deal!

Here’s the truth: I make grammatical errors and I make spelling mistakes and I DON’T CARE. I am not interested in grammar; I am interested in getting a message across. Some parrot that used daddy’s money to study for years does not impress me – I am impressed with someone who gets real results in the real world. There are many educated derelicts out there. The only MBA that counts is a Massive Bank Account. I recently had someone e mail me and ask me to mentor her. She proceeded to tell me all about how well educated she was. I said I wasn’t going to mentor her but I gave her three things that she could do to achieve her goals. Guess what? She never got back to me after that. Education is great, but results in the real world are more important.

The bottom line is the bottom line. A = A. If you are able to apply your education, that’s great. However, education in itself is useless. The university or college made money and you feel important for getting your degree. That’s the beginning. That’s the starting line, not the end of the race. I don’t like promises and pie in the sky – I like real world results. Don’t pay for promises and words – pay for results. When Colleges start offering courses by real entrepreneurs who actually run businesses and make money, the courses will be well worth what you spend on them. Education that works in the real world is what we need. We’re working on creating just that. Theory is great until you hit reality. I have been reading a wonderful book by Brian Klemmer. I really learnt a lot from it. When I saw that a word was missing from one of his idea boxes, I had to laugh. I could just imagine some loser contacting Mr. Klemmer to try to sell him some editing service. I’m going to call him right now and tell him what a great book he wrote.