You don’t have to be top of the class to be an entrepreneur

You don’t need to have been top of your class to be a successful entrepreneur. In fact, it may help if you weren’t…

You don’t need to have been top of your class to be a successful entrepreneur. In fact, it may help if you weren’t…

Students with the best grades are the ones that get the best job offers with the higher starting salaries at big corporates. They are also the ones who are admitted to do further study (Masters, PHD, post doc etc). Neither of which will help you enter a life of entrepreneurship.

A high starting salary is appealing. Very appealing. For the first time in your life you’re able to afford fancy clothes, takeout food and expensive dates. It is hard to turn it down.

A PHD is great to say that you have. It makes you the expert in a field. it gives you boasting rights and the chance to correct people with “Doctor” when they call you “Mister” or “Miss”. Once a Dr. you’ll either enter academia, or head into that corporate job with a salary high enough for you to pay back your student loans.

Mark McCormack, founder of International Management Group and author of ‘What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School’, stresses that intellect does not necessarily mean “business smart” . He emphasises that business is about making money, and often you don’t need to be the smartest guy in the room to do this.

He sums this up nicely with the following short story in his book:

Two old friends once met on the street after not seeing each other for over twenty-five years. One, who had graduated at the top of his class, was now working as an assistant branch manager of the local bank. The other, who had never overwhelmed anyone with his intellect, owned his own company and was now a millionaire several times over. When his banking friend asked him the secret of this success, he said that is was really quite simple.

‘I have this product that I buy for two dollars and sell for five dollars’, he said. ‘It’s amazing how much money you can make on a three per cent markup.’