Education in Business, Privave Equity and Venture Capital

I have a few very very smart people working for me and they started fresh out of college.  These smart people  achieved MBAs from top schools or they got degrees in mathematics studying things I can't pronounce let alone understand.  I've found these educated people have something in common, they are virtually worthless to me in business.  It's taken me 9 years to figure out why this is and why they get trapped in their jobs even though I provide guidance and training.  I've also sorted out a program for them to be successful, whether or not they follow it is up to them.

Since these smart people were children, their parents drilled into them the importance of schooling.  Their parents convinced them since practically birth that they were competing on a local scale against global academic opponents and the children needed to be the best.  The parents devised at a young age several plans for the children, the children were going to go to good schools, they were going to join a sport to learn how to work with a coach and other kids (maybe a scholarship for athleticism if we are lucky!), they were going to join an academic club like debate, they will know their teachers and they will study.  Since competition for spots in a good school is fierce, maybe they will need to pick up a specialized hobby like Falconeering or feign interest in green energy to get something on that college application.  All of these activities are geared towards college admission.

Some parents would extend their commute to their own work by an hour or more each way to move into a good school district.  I've seen instances where a parent will rent an apartment in a good district just so they had an address within the right zip code for the best high schools.

Then the kids started to study.  They studied a lot.  Morning noon and night.  If they said they didn't they are flat out liars.  They spent a chunk of their weekends studying for tests and nights were filled with college application related activities and more studying.  The plan worked, they got into the school they wanted to and went on to do a lot of the same studying (dropping the sports and hobbies once in college, of course, don't need them now).

So they graduate and I get them.  They come here, all degreed up, still talk about the Falconeering they did 10 years ago so they look somewhat interesting and I look em up and down and see their good grades and say, what the hell, let's give this kid a shot.  He comes in here, gets some training and completely bombs as an employee.  Why?

They completely abandon all of the concepts that made them successful.  The new employees are going to have to come up to speed quickly and training and mentor ship is only going to get you so far. In order for them to succeed, they need to do the following:

1)  Read a book on the subject they are working on (marketing, PR, sales, accounting, whatever).  Don't rely on my training or schooling they had 5 years ago.  Find a good book by looking on online forums for recommendations for books then copy pasting the title into Amazon.  From there, look at the reader reviews on Amazon to see if it's a good book or not.  Then look at the other books that Amazon recommends and see what those books are and if they are reviewed by the readers even better.  Settle on a book and read it.  Take notes on important things in the book in another notebook.

2)  Find a small study group of like minded people that are interested in talking about the book you are reading.  Hopefully it's someone you work with or your boss.  In absence of that, set up an online forum on websites like http://www.reddit.com or something within your specialty.  Discuss the book and post your questions.

3)  Network on the subject you are talking about with people you don't know.  How?  Do a search of occupation that you want to learn more about on Linked in and ask someone out to lunch.  I've learned about EVERYTHING this way and I've only been turned down 1 or 2 times.  If this is too much for you, do your best to get over it.

4)  Review your notes and the forums to make sure you understand your topic

5)  Start testing and applying the principles in the book

6)  Remember learning and your life doesn't always happen at once, it happens over time so you only START learning once, but you will never stop once you start.  There is no end.  Get more books, go to more lectures, talk to more people.

Recap or TL;DR - New Hires - the only thing that made you successful in school is you - read the book, went to the lecture, took notes and then studied.  Do that in your new job or you will completely suck.

Chicago Private Equity

One of the most difficult problems I had when I started my first business was who to trust. Since I didn't have any network to begin with, just an idea, I had to form a complete network myself. This was for everything, supplies, trucking contacts and suppliers. All of my employees came from ads, since there was just me and my partner in my business, there were no referrals for employees, we had to guess and do our best to interview. We really didn't have the budget or skills to hire the correct people.

I tried looking at joining entrepreneur groups at the beginning but I was working 16 hours a day for the first full year so there wasn't time and I don't know if my marriage would have been able to take more of me being away. So, I ended up making mistakes. Lots of them. All of them. End to end and back to back. I messed up my sales, marketing, plans and shipping. I didn't come from an entrepreneurial family so I didn't have someone saying "no, don't do it that way." Although I wish I had.

One of the things I wanted to establish here was not only funding, but the idea of the ability to tap into the network I have built over the years and then tap into my network's network. There is every conceivable type of help available, mostly in tit for tat arrangements, where advice is free as long as you pay back into the network at some point. Most mistakes are avoidable, some aren't. Choosing the right network should be your first goal.

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