Why you should quit college.

How I got here…

21: Graduated Vanderbilt in 3 years Magna Cum Laude, and took a fancy consulting job.
23 yrs old: Left my fancy consulting job to start a business (a gym).
24 yrs old: Opened 5 gym locations.
26 yrs old: Closed down 6th gym. Lost everything.
26 yrs old: Got back to launching gyms (launched 33). Then, lost everything for a 2nd time.
26 yrs old: In desperation, started licensing model as a hail mary. It worked.
27 yrs old: "Gym Launch" does $3M profit the next 6 months. Then $17M profit next 12 months.
28 yrs old: Started Prestige Labs. $20M the first year.
29 yrs old: Launched ALAN, a software company for agencies to work leads for customers. Scaled to $1.7mmo within 6 months.
31 yrs old: Sold 75% of UseAlan to a strategic buyer in an all stock deal.
31 yrs old: Sold 66% of Gym Launch & Prestige Labs at $46.2M valuation in all-cash deal to American Pacific Group. (you can google it)
32 yrs old: Started making free content showing how we grow companies to make real business education accessible to everyone (and) to attract business owners to invest or scale their businesses.

Today: Our portfolio now does $200M/yr between 10 companies. The largest doing $100M/yr the smallest doing $5M per year. Our ownership varies between 20% and 100% ownership of the companies. Many of them we invested in early and helped grow (which is how we make our money - not youtube videos).

To all the gladiators in the arena, we’re all in the middle of writing our own stories. The worse the monsters, the more epic the story.

You either get an epic outcome or an epic story. Both mean you win.

Keep crushing. May your desires be greater than your obstacles.

Never quit,

Alex

*FULL DISCLOSURE*
I make content to make money - just - on a longer time horizon than most. I want to build trust with business owners so we can find the best ones and help them scale. And if they’re awesome, write them a check and go all the way as partners.

[AthleticEducation]

121k in debt; can’t even get a good paying job. Listen to this man

[justjosu]

After two years of being on and off with college I finally have fully committed to dropping out. I was definitely not doing it for myself but for other people. Now that I’m out I feel the most clear minded I’ve been in year. Currently focusing on building a construction company with my dad. Definitely going to take a lot of time and effort but I am super excited for the future. On top of that I am taking on copywriting to help with my marketing skills.

As ZYZZ said “we’re all going to make it”

[Stoetz]

*Me 70 grand in debt after just finishing college….* 😳

[andreasfanelli]

I spent 6 years of my life in college, simply because I believed that was the only way to make money. I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood, everyone was a doctor, lawyer, finance, management or whatever else white-collar esque-role you can think of. Growing up I was told that I needed a masters degree to make a 6-figure job.

I wanted to drop out of school when I was in 6th grade. I hated it. I always hated it. I knew at 12 years old that none of this was going to help me long term, I was just jumping through hoops, so I could be trained like a dog. A good little doggie that would do everything his future master would tell him.

When it came to college I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, but I choose an engineering degree because I've always been interested in science. I struggled with that choice for 6 years because I refused to not graduate, but I was also deeply depressed because I spent every day of my life doing something I didn't believe in.

After I graduated I spent a year or so trying to find a job in engineering, but struggled since my experience and skills were all over the place. I needed a job so I just went into a sales job. I had actually done a few sales jobs before this so I didn't really suck that much, but I hated the product.

By a stroke of luck someone working there owned a marketing agency and offered to collaborate. Another product that sucked (this guy knew nothing about marketing), but it sparked me unto something I now LOVE.

I started my own LLC since I had better marketing skills after learning everything I could. I struggled a lot starting, but now I'm making over $100k a year running my own one man agency, and building it up to take my income to the millions.

All from skills I learned on the internet. Admittedly the engineering degree is incredibly helpful in what I do, but realistically these are all things I could have learned without going to college.

I needed that experience though. I needed to be beat down by life beyond all belief in order to transform myself and my belief systems. If I had an Alex in my life I may have made different decisions, but I hold no regrets. I know that I'll reach my dream, and most importantly I enjoy my life because I'm being true to myself.

[drop_messages]

I can relate to the fork in the road analogy. I grewup in a semi poor area. People either worked entry level jobs or did not work at all. I grew up listening to teachers who kept repeating "If you do not go to college, you will end up working at McDonalds". I took that at face value and studied hard all through high school. I started at a community college. I was going to college to get a job (not for the social life). I took a humanities class in my first semester, it was alright, it was part of the general ed. By the 2nd semester, I took a philosophy class, and the teacher really leaned into the whole "college is for learning, not about getting a job"

That was when it dawned on me, college was about ideology, not making you marketable. I dropped out of college and yeah, it was a punch to the gut. I drifted from job to job. I got tired of getting by. I discovered a lot of online tutorials on programming. I started typing the code I saw in the tutorials. It was fun, I could code in my spare time, there was no deadline because it was not like In a class where there is a due date. Eventually I became a web developer based on skills, not a degree.

the main lesson is, it is difficult to drop out of college because it is expected of us to go. However, if you can overcome that initial guilt, you can make it.

[nathanp.]

I’m in the exact same situation as Jacob; using college as a crutch. I just started and can’t decide if I want to go all in on sales because I don’t know if I feel confident enough in basic skills - being able to actually push myself on my own and really work hard to ‘make it’ without traditional due dates and such. I think school has really fucked a lot of kids up in that sense - were terrible at time management and doing anything on our own without supervision.

[awh]

Man what a blessing for Jacob. For the rest of you, it's possible to learn sales/persuasion and apply it in any field to help you progress. It's not fun or easy but eventually you will sharpen your skills and with focus, really make a difference. Good luck!

[RoloTube]

The dude is so lucky to have been your neighbor! I wish I had a mentor like you Alex when I was a kid. But for now I'll just binge watch all your videos and reels

[OreApampa]

This helped me put a lot of thoughts I had about University/College in perspective. The key is not dropping out without a plan but switching tracks to something greater and something that would help move you in the direction you want to head towards - faster and better.

[peterjmcadam]

Alex brings up a good point. I think another huge factor that many people miss is self-awareness. Awareness of your own skills, values, preferences, personality traits etc. If you are not aware of these it will categorically hinder your ability to choose a long term fulfilling career path.

The main issue here is that most people are too busy keeping up with the Joneses that they never spend the time reflecting on this.

[raylubin]

Words can't express how much I love this. Thank you Alex

[Seth__Martins]

The editing for key points and attention grabbing couldn’t get better. All of your videos are extremely well done. Thank you for sharing your knowledge 🙏

[andrewdavidcourtney]

Gold! This is a prerequisite video for all the youngsters dreaming to make it big one day 🙌🏼

[eboyd]

I wish I knew you or someone like you 50 years ago! Where would I be Happy to have found your content and I'm continuing to learn and shift my positioning and goals.

[PippenFTS]

I considered this channel my guilty pleasure of mine for a long time with all the value that you offer. Now that you're putting resources into the production quality its very quickly becoming the best content on youtube imo

[travisbalthasar]

Valuable breakdown Alex 🙏 great video editing/flow too! 👏

[slymm]

I really wish this was around 25 years ago when I was in high school and decided to go to a junior college. However, for the future generation, they need to watch this all day everyday and then apply what they've learned from this video

[joshuathinkingoutloud]

Couldn't agree more. I made a video about this a couple years ago on my channel. I'm proud of it, although it's no where near as good as Alex's. I will NOT be pushing my kids to go to college. If they want a career that requires it, so be it. I have a couple degrees and I have not used either for any of my career paths.

[CakeLABOR]

Hi Alex. I started to adopt your money, buisness and lifestyle philosophy for about 6-8 months now and the quality of my life increased tremendously. Forever grateful for the genuine good will to help others, inspiring me and thousands others to be like that.

[christopherazorbli]

Great analysis and foresight.. Love this Alex.