Real talk. What did school really teach us? That in 1942, Columbus sailed the ocean blue? I can’t tell you how many times THAT fact has helped me in my life. NOT. Okay well, it was kinda nice to learn about taxes and how much we need to pay and how we need to go about doing it, right? Oh, wait a second, school didn’t teach me that. I had to learn that all on my own, and I still feel like I’m not quite doing it right…do you know what I’m saying? I want to discuss How the Education System Stops Entrepreneurs (like me) from pursuing their biggest dreams and goals and what you need to do to break free from the things you learned in school in order to become a true entrepreneur.
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I Knew Nothing About Business From School
So it wasn’t that long ago that I started selling party decorations on Etsy. I loved decorating for parties and knew you could sell things on Etsy, so I designed a few decorations, and voila, I had a business. But it was safe to say that I knew nothing about business. Maybe you can relate to this if you’re thinking about starting a business or have already started a side hustle. But why is it that we feel so intimidated by business? Well, it could be that I didn’t take any business classes in college because I was a Pysch and Journalism major, but could it also be because of the fact that traditional school was literally created to push you away from entrepreneurship?
Breaking the Chains of Conventional Education
Now, I don’t want to get all conspiratorial on you (but I will if you come over to my house with a glass of wine), but the truth is, school is not designed for you to go out and build a successful business on your own. School is designed to make you a cog in the machine. You know that famous song by Pink Floyd about becoming just another brick in the wall? As it turns out, maybe the British rock band was onto something because if we look at the modern history of the school, we can see that the modern education system was designed to teach future factory workers to be “punctual, docile, and sober.” Now, I went to Chico State, so I think we missed the mark on the sober part, but everything else seems pretty on par.
The truth is that the factory workers needed to train people just to do the work- not to really reason or think critically about anything. And if you think, well, Lindsay, that might have been true, but that’s not the case now. Education has evolved and changed with the times. Well, then, I want to ask you. Have you seen a car from 200 years ago? Well, compare it to today’s cars, and you wouldn’t even recognize it. However, have you seen a schoolroom from 200 years ago? Well, 200 years later, it literally looks exactly the same.
Unlearning the Myths That Hinder Entrepreneurial Success
The first thing is that school taught you that you need to get permission to do everything. I mean, you could have the runs and they still wouldn’t let you run to the bathroom unless they okayed it first. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you? The fact is that this type of mentality has trained us that we need to get permission to do things. We need someone to say, yes, I think you should pursue this, or yes, I think you are good at this in order to get started. But that’s just NOT how starting a business is going to be. In fact, most of the people around you are going to tell you that you probably shouldn’t be doing it because it’s too risky or that maybe you’re not ready.
The truth is, as a business owner, you’re going to have to make decisions and start new things without permission from anyone but yourself – and, of course, you’re higher self as well. But it’s not going to be anyone in the physical that says to you, hey girl, you can do this. And it’s not even going to come from me. You’ve got to be that person for yourself. And you’ll have to continue to be that person for yourself as you grow, as you face challenges, and as you wonder if this is something you should even be doing. So give yourself that permission to go after your dreams because no one’s going to do it for you.
How The Education System Stops Entrepreneurs: We Think We Need to Know it All
The next thing for How The Education System Stops Entrepreneurs is that school teaches us that we need to remove as entrepreneurs is that we have to learn something BEFORE we do it. I have a course where I teach women to sell printables on Etsy, and one of the number one reasons people don’t want to start is because they’re scared of what will happen when they start to make money. What about taxes? What about laws and regulations, they ask. But that’s the trick about school. Education taught us that we need to learn all the things BEFORE we get started. But listen, I don’t know about you, but when I was pregnant, I read a lot of books about sleep schedules. But then, when my daughter was born, I had to read them all over again because, newsflash, she wasn’t following the book’s sleep schedules.
When we try to learn EVERYTHING first, not only do we not retain the information, but we also just don’t think it’s that important. However, when you start something FIRST and then decide to learn as you go, you will retain the information so much more easily because you’re going to be applying it to your life and business in real-time, and it’s imperative at that point that you learn it because it’s the difference between failing and succeeding.
You Don’t Need to Know it All Before Your Start
And not just that, but we don’t know what we don’t know before we start something. I certainly didn’t know what I was doing when I brought my daughter home from the hospital. And I certainly didn’t know what the heck I was doing when I first started my business, but in neither of those situations did I say, well, I don’t know it all, so I can’t start. Nope. I just had to figure it out as I went. And that’s what it takes to be successful. So forget what you learned in school about how you have to pass one level before you go on to another or get an A in this grade before moving on. START first and worry about what it takes later. It’s the only way you can succeed.
How The Education System Stops Entrepreneurs: We Thought Grades Were Everything
Now, we’re going to talk about grades. Grades are another reason for How The Education System Stops Entrepreneurs. Did you get good grades in school, or were you barely hanging on by a thread? You’ve probably heard the saying that says “C’s get degrees.” However, there was a feeling that was instilled very early on that if you weren’t getting A’s you weren’t smart. We tend to take these feelings all the way into adulthood. This is hilarious because the grade you got in geometry probably has little to no influence on how successful you can become.
In fact, your grades really don’t determine A LOT of things when it comes to what it takes to be an entrepreneur. For example, your SAT scores can’t measure your ability to solve problems. Your AP English score cannot measure your emotional intelligence. It can’t measure your ability to seek out new opportunities or make things happen in life and in business. And yet, we get these arbitrary scores in school that really impact the way that we see ourselves and what we’re capable of for the rest of our lives.
Your Grades Don’t Define Your Success: How The Education System Stops Entrepreneurs
I know for me that because I did really poorly on my SAT scores, I always felt that I wasn’t that smart. I literally took this feeling of not being smart all the way into my 30s, and I never questioned why I felt that way. And it was because of this feeling of not being smart enough I always felt like running a business just wasn’t for me. So, if this is you, I want to help you understand that your grades, your SAT scores, and those smiley faces on your papers meant diddly squat.
In fact, data shows that more self-made millionaires were C students, NOT A students. But the point is that we have to remember that we are NOT our grades from high school or college. In the grand scheme of things, those things indicate NOTHING about who you can be and who you can become. So if you’re not pursuing something because a grade in school said that you weren’t great at it, I recommend that you wad that report card up and throw it in the trash can and decide that that doesn’t get to define you.
Shifting Your Identity and Unlearning Limiting Beliefs for Entrepreneurial Triumph
And that’s kind of what this is all about, right? The school helped mold us into the identity that we have today. That mixed with beliefs that were passed on from our parents and their parents and their parents. From indoctrination in our churches and our communities. But what I want you to take away from this video is that in order to become successful in business, you have to CHANGE your identity to be the KIND of person who can run a business. And to be the kind of person who runs a successful business, you have to look really long and hard at your beliefs about yourself and the world around you.
We have been taught a lot of things. Things that have made us feel like we can’t find success outside of this cookie-cutter way of living. But the truth is that everything you want is really on the other side of everything we’ve been taught. We have to UNLEARN everything that we’ve learned in school. This is because a lot of it is truly what is holding us back from being successful. Now, I don’t want to rag on school totally. I learned a lot of great things, too. We need to develop the understanding that there are some things that school taught that aren’t serving us. Because awareness is 95% of the journey. Once you become aware, you can then take the steps to get where you want to be. You can start to look for the education you actually need in order to find success.
Success in Business is All About Your Habits
I think it’s so important to look at our habits. People want to be successful overnight, but that’s just not people’s typical path to success. The truth is that successful entrepreneurs have created habits that they do all the time. They do it without fail, which gets them step by step to where they want to be. So if you want to make sure you have the right habits to be successful selling on Etsy, make sure to check out my free guide that’s going to teach you what habits you need to be successful on Etsy and how to get them.
Thanks so much for reading How The Education System Stops Entrepreneurs. I love to help you celebrate life through printables and personal development! But above all, I’d love to connect with you. Reach out to me on Instagram, and let’s chat.
xoxo, Lindsay
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