Escape From the Institutional Straightjacket, Part 3

How Dumbed-Down Education Stifles and Crushes Entrepreneurs

Like I said, I'm in the education business. My job is to inform and assist people in the fine art of telling their story to the world. And the pre-conditioning that all of us get from that education limits us in the following ways:

1. Conformity

One of the hardest things to teach people is the concept of a USP, a Unique Selling Proposition. What's truly unique about you? What can you uniquely guarantee? Why should I buy from you instead of anyone else on the planet? Why should I do that instead of procrastinating? Why should I listen to you over others? What do you that nobody else can do?

Most people really struggle to get their arms around this. It's very counter-intuitive.

I think I know why.

It's because school is all about conformity.

If you get an “A” in school, it's simply because you did the exact same thing as 29 other kids, but you did it a little bit better than most of ‘em. It's almost never because you did something unique or expressed yourself as an individual.

My friends, doing the exact same thing as 29 other people, but doing it just a little bit better (or cheaper) than most of them, is the very definition of being in a commodity market, and staying just above broke. It sucks. And the bigger the class is, the more brutal the competition and the lower the morale. If you want to see an extreme example of this, just look at the inexcusably bad customer service you get from Sprint, MCI or AT&T.

Now the reality is that you have totally unique fingerprints & DNA, a totally unique mind, body, talents, interests, passions and God-given proclivities. There is no one like you. There is no one else who is equipped to do what you are equipped to do. Your USP in business is simply an extension of your identity as a singular individual who has no equal and no clone anywhere in the world. Having a USP should be as natural as breathing.

So one of the most important things that you will do in your life is to discover yourself. Find out who you are and what you can do. Find out what is that special blend of passions and capabilities that you bring to the world.

You will learn almost nothing about this in school. But square one on the marketing game board is having a unique identity and personality. Doing something that's different from everyone else, or at least combining the familiar in an unfamiliar way. And doing it with style and flair.

Before I go on to the next idea, a critical factor in this uniqueness / USP element is personality. One of the most insidious and destructive small business aspirations is the desire to present a corporate, institutional, impersonal face to the world. Because it's more “professional.”

Nothing will put your customers to sleep faster. Nothing kills sales like institutional monotone. And nothing grabs peoples' attention like real personality and human touch. You can be conversational and personal without being unprofessional.

2.  Permission

The next thing that most entrepreneurs have a hard time with is being conditioned to think they need permission from someone else in order to be whatever they want to be.

Again, this “permission complex” is something that is pounded into your head in school.

When the industrial revolution really began in earnest, the captains of industry (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan and the like) were deeply concerned that a highly educated, independent-thinking work force was a Very Bad Thing. A truly educated, independent thinker will not stand there all day and run your machine. He will open up shop across the street from you and compete with you. That would be a disaster for a planned, monopolized economy.

These men set up foundations whose job would be to ensure that their educational agenda was carried out. And they sought out earnest, well-meaning, idealistic minions who would carry out their social engineering “for the good of the children.”

The statistics show that the intellectual life of Americans has been in steady decline for the last 150 years. “Dick and Jane” was chosen specifically because it had a narrower vocabulary than the books they used before. Dick and Jane was Double-Plus Un-Good.

“Mankind can be freed from the tryanny of intelligence by faithful obedience to system!” This is the message that is pounded into your brain from kindergarten on up. So most people think that in order to be an expert, they need to be anointed by someone.

This is totally false.

Lee Milteer, who is a professional speaker and coach, was asked to speak at a conference of certified professional trainers. When she told them she charges $250 per hour for her personal coaching services, they were outraged. “You have no right to charge $250 per hour! Certified Professional Trainers are only supposed to charge $85 per hour. And you're not even certified!”

Lee replied “Who says I have to be certified? And who says what I should be able to charge? And who certified the people who are handing out the certifications?”

That really made them mad.

Most people don't realize that they're living in an artificially constructed world in which the only reason others have power over them is that they allow them to have the power. Most of the people who certify you are actually your competitors. It's their job to impede your progress. Stop giving them permission.

You do not wait for someone else to tell you it's OK to be an expert, or innovate, or claim a title, or dispense advise. You just do it – and you let the laws of supply and demand take care of the rest.

If you have this idea in your head that you need to wait for someone's permission, you need to re-examine your assumptions, and the education that formed those assumptions.

3.  The Drudgery of Reading

When I was a sophomore in High School, my classes were held in a windowless compound. In English I had to read a bunch of really dumb books, like Death of A Salesman. These books were boring and pointless; as a matter of fact I think the only reason kids are forced to read Death of a Salesman is because people in academia hate salesmen.

  Go on to the next installment, How The Machine Teaches People to Hate Reading