How school teaches you to fail in life

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.

[DonTwanX]

Success used to be a train on a track (convergent thinking). Now it’s an ATV creating a new path through the woods (divergent thinking).

[marcus.guitarist]

Ye recently said in an interview with Lex Fridman that all we should be teaching in school is engineering.

[GeraldLFordCMC]

I love how Into the conversation the listeners across the table are.

[friedrichmacz]

The wisdom in here is just phenomenal, I‘m really astonished by you!

[korgond]

Schools screwed my life literally. My friends from the neighbourhood have better life than me.

[andyzimmerman]

He’s correct in his assessment about most school systems. There are some of us out there that teach forms of divergent thinking, however, and challenge our students to be creative, problem solvers (I’m a high school business teacher).

[DonTwanX]

Pick the “right answer” versus create something that gets the job done. I’m an educated dude so it comes naturally to me to want to pick the right answer, but it’s not getting the job done. I’m broke, resentful, and running out of time. I don’t want to be old and poor.

[Anon-qpkt]

he's not wrong but there are always teachers that encourage their students to do/make divergent thinking as a habit

[YouilAushana]

Different strokes for different folks. Don't let someone beat you down, guilt and shame you for not being stuck they way they are. Dare to be different! I saw two paths in the road and I chose the one less traveled and it worked for me!

[timothywilson]

Public education is free, what value should be expected out of a system that is not offered at a price, the underlying cost is to be programmed with thier programming

[beermoneyshow]

💯 % right, but they don't want you to be creative in your thinking

[ThePhilosophyOfNature]

I don't know where He found this. If this is His words He is genius.

[wb.droneography]

Love the content and the podcasts ! would suggest to put the link of the podcast in the comments of the shorts !

[nathanthompson]

I am a divergent thinker. Always have been since school.

[Twosheets]

How many most efficient ways can we use a brick.

[khonazzz]

Many of our schools in South Africa test us like this and it's really hard. Lol I hated it. You fail unless you studied to reeeaaally understand.

[janhorak]

This is so fucking true it shakes my bones.

[DCfreerunner]

If you know how something works and the entire theory then you can arrive at the correct conclusion anyway you want to. Teaching how people learn by forcing them to learn one specific way is so wrong. You've never heard of a billionaire that was a valedictorian for a reason.

[xCestLaVie]

Actually math teaches you multiple ways to get to a solution, instills logical thinking. This is how astronomers could get a few variables to determine the answers of an unknown variable, THEN double check their answer using that unknown variable with other variables. Way off on this one bud. There's not enough math or sciences being taught, leading to people being easily swayed without thinking in depth into a topic.

[unpopularcounselor]

Talking about curriculum is frowned upon in most of the public school systems. Yet, the curriculum is made up of politics, teachers are required to outline their lessons around. If you ever wonder why a community is falling apart; review your local politics.