GET LUCKY » Rants

Being a College Dropout can be a Great Thing

Amir Lehrer — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:32:53 +0000

I just wrote an article on Temphunt’s Blog where I threw out a thought about where formal education is going. I mentioned that in the 1950’s, parents (and others) gave kids the advice to “go to school and get a degree so that you can get a good job”. In the 1970’s parents started adding “getting a bachelors degree” to that advice. Today, a graduate degree is equivalent to what a bachelors was back then and a high school diploma was in the 50’s.

Steve Jobs just resigned as the CEO of Apple and I was really disappointed with the headline that the Montreal Gazette chose to use for their feature on him. The headline was something to the effect of “from college dropout to visionary”. They said “dropout” like it was a bad thing and he was a visionary even when he was in college.

I’ve been thinking about the value of formal education and I believe that there is value in it but I don’t think that it is the end all and be all. College can be a place where you learn about yourself, find out what you want to do in life and study to get a degree which will hopefully open some doors for you. I’ve had several arguments recently where people were so adamant about how important it was to get a college degree. I feel that they’re just missing the forest because all the trees are in the way.

Think about it. Why should you get a degree? The answers you will get are probably, “to open doors”, “to get a good job” or to “get a career”. You always hear stories about athletes in college who consider dropping out to play in the professional leagues. There are always naysayers who criticize them for dropping out of college but if making money and opening doors is the reason for the degree then why would they consider staying if they are offered a position on a professional team which will give them a better job that will make more money than anything they can possibly make with a college degree and they will be doing something that they love. You may say that they might get injured and then be stuck with no options. That’s not true because professional athletes buy disability insurance that will take care of them for the rest of their lives if anything ever happens to them. Besides, if anything happened to their career, they can always go back to school and start where they left off.

Not everybody is professional athlete material but finding a career that doesn’t need a college degree is not limited to athletes. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time are college dropouts such as Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple Computers), Michael Dell (Dell Computers) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook).

I see the value of a college degree but I also see that if a college student can start a business or find a career that will get him closer to his ultimate goal than the degree can, he should probably drop out. Sticking around would probably just be wasting his time. If your goal is making money, there is no reason to stick around college if you found a career or started a business that is already making you more money in college than you can make at your highest earning potential with a degree.

What I am saying is think about your ultimate goals and work backwards from there. Don’t just follow advice because everyone tells you to do it and everyone else is doing it. Wake up and focus, if you look hard enough, you’ll notice that the trees are part of the forest.

Do you agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Pic Cred: laughlin

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The Music Industry Doesn’t Get It and They Need to Change To Get Lucky

Amir Lehrer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:33:38 +0000

I was listening to a recent Media Hacks podcast (episode 10) where C.C. Chapman, Hugh McGuire, Julien Smith and host Mitch Joel discussed piracy of books online and music. Music piracy has been a hot topic for a while now and the music industry just does not get it.

Recently, there was a case where a woman was fined $1.9 million for illegally downloading 24 songs. That’s $80,000 per song. Not sure where they got those numbers but if you ask me, she didn’t do even close to that amount of damage because chances are that she wouldn’t have bought those songs in the first place. I can almost guarantee though that she in one way or another influenced others to buy those same songs and thereby promoted the songs for free. Either through recommendation, discussing or singing the songs or even playing them in her car while giving someone a lift.

The music industry has the same opportunity now to offer their music for free with ads or branding in between songs and let the advertisers pay the difference. Just as Hulu is doing for TV shows, if they make it easy to watch legally, even with a commercial or two, people are willing to sit through the commercials. These people then go on to discuss the latest shows at the water cooler the next day.

The benefit to the music industry is that these same people that are not paying for their listening rights are the ones that are promoting the music to their friends.

C.C. brought up a very good point that if a child wants to download a song and doesn’t have a credit card, there is no chance for him to legally acquire the song. People will be less likely to pirate music if it was easier to download it legally in the first place.

Remember when we used to tape songs right off the radio and they had little bits of the radio announcer at the beginning and end of each song? Even when it was a top 10 at 10 songs marathon, there was still a little bit of speaking as the songs faded into each other. Fans shared their music with their friends and true fans went out and bought the tape (or CD) so they could own a good quality version of their own.

We are now in the information age where information and products are very often free. You can find almost anything online and companies are giving away advice and industry secrets for free, hoping that if you need specialized help, you will be back as a paying customer. The music industry needs to figure out a way to do the same. They can make their money off merchandising, concerts, ads and I’m sure thousands of other ways. The main thing is, they’re not doing themselves a favor by suing their fans.

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Mass Media: The News We Want You to Know

Amir Lehrer — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:42:27 +0000

picture taken from news video at http://www.khon2.com/news/local/40518362.html

Last week during my stay in Hawaii, I was interviewed by Brianne Randle of KHON2, an affiliate of Fox News about homelessness in Hawaii and how it affects tourism. Apparently, there have been streams of discussions on expedia.com and tripadvisor.com about the homeless problem in Waikiki, which is discouraging tourism. Brianne pointed to a group of camping tents in an open field along the beach and asked if it bothered me at all and if it affected me as a tourist. I told her that before she told me that it was illegal and that these people were homeless, I was considering camping out for a night myself.

Media Spins the News, “you see it everywhere you go”

I spoke to Brianne on camera for at least five minutes discussing my thoughts on the situation. I explained that the homeless people on Waikiki Beach did not affect me but the only statement that they took out of the discussion was an out of context “you see it everywhere you go”. It made me seem like I was disgusted by the problem, which is very far from the truth. When I made the comment I was not talking about Hawaii, I was talking about the unfortunate reality that there are homeless people everywhere in the world. I also told Brianne that the problem in Hawaii was made worse than it actually was because of the direction of the discussions on the travel site forums which gives the Waikiki Government a tremendous opportunity to join the forums and show all the positives about Waikiki so that it will retain it’s appeal to tourists.

The Media Spins Me Right Round, Like a Record

The reason I bring this up is to show how the media spins their stories to get whatever outcome they want. When Brianne asked me if the homeless problem affects me one way or the other, she may as well have asked “why does the homeless problem affect you as a tourist?” with the note that if it doesn’t bother you, she is not interested.

It’s Easy to Find a Source to Support your Story

For any story, you can always find sources to support any side of an argument. Even if 99% of the world feels one way, you can take the 1% who feels the other way and use them as your sources. You can also take the first 99% of people, cut and paste little pieces of what they say out of context and presto! You have your story supporting your original hypothesis. Every book in Barnes and Noble has a quote from some publication on it making it seem like it is the greatest read since War and Peace. There can’t be that many “best reads of the year”.

Mark Twain was quoted as saying “if you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” He could not be more on the money.

Social Media is Taking us Back in Time

I love to tell the story of how social media is bringing us back to the days before mass media took over as our primary source of information. In the olden days, if someone wanted to get their story out, they would put together a pamphlet with their story on it and pass it around in the marketplace. Then someone else would come along and give out a pamphlet with their version of the story and maybe even a third or fourth person or more would do the same. People in the marketplace would be able to read multiple sides of the story and come to their own conclusions of what really took place. Along came mass media and started to deliver the “news” but it was from their perspective with their own biases and twists.

Blogs are the New Pamphlets

Today, we have access to thousands of blogs on any subject and no longer have to rely on mass media to “misinform” us. We can now read a few blog posts on any given subject and come to our own conclusions just as people did with pamphlets many years ago. By building up our own personal social networks and filling up our rss readers with what we consider reliable sources, we will become the most informed generation ever.

How do you feel about using mass media vs. social media to get informed? Please leave a comment.

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Lucky Site Maintenance

Amir Lehrer — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:10:48 +0000

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to my readers or at least the ones that are left, for not updating this Get Lucky in a while. I have been having major issues with the backend and coding associated with my design and was therefore, forced to trash the original design and start from scratch with this new design. I will resume posting regularly this week.

On a more positive note, I have a new design which I happen to really like. What do you think? Please let me know in the comments.

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Winners and Losers: K-mart and Best Buy

Amir Lehrer — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:09:04 +0000

Joseph Jaffe from Jaffe Juice has a podcast that I have been listening to over the last week and a bit. I found him on ITunes while looking for good marketing podcasts (and it is good) to listen to while I commute. I downloaded his last 11 episodes, starting from his 100^th episode and have enjoyed every second of it. His shows average at above an hour so if you do the math, I listened to about 11 or so hours of this guy speak over the last week. Joseph, if you’re reading, you are that good and “thank you”.

On his podcast I fell in love with one of the segments called “Winners and Losers” where he mentions major companies that either did a great job marketing or made a major marketing screw-up. One example he’s been ranting about is a really bad experience with Delta Airlines where they treated him, a business class platinum member frequent flyer like garbage and they refused to really do anything about it. The amount of bad publicity that caused for delta made them a huge “loser”.

Since I like the segment so much, I wanted to give a winner and loser of my own:

Winner – K-Mart

My wife has been really busy running errands all week with my 2 kids (ages 3 and 1) which is not an easy job. One of her stops was at K-Mart where to her delight they had shopping carts for kids. These were not the typical mini carts for kids to push or cars for kids to sit in, they were trucks with little TVs in the front so kids can sit inside and watch while their parents shop and dump the articles they are buying in the back of the truck. The TVs had all the shows that kids love and keep them busy.

Any kid with that experience will beg their parents to shop at K-Mart on a regular basis and any parent will gladly go back to have a calm shopping experience without kids driving them crazy.

Loser – Best Buy

A bit over 2 years ago I bought a laptop computer at Best Buy. While I was buying it, they convinced me to buy the 3 year complete warranty for close to $400. I decided to buy it when the salesman told me that if anything happens to the computer, they will replace it. He even went as far to say that after 2 ½ years, I could throw it down the stairs and smash the computer and get a brand new one. It sounded like a great deal and well worth the money so I went for it.

It was a great computer but there was a little flaw in the screen that they gave me. After about a year, lines started appearing on the screen. Happy that I had a warranty, I took it back to the store to be fixed or replaced. There were also some other small issues with the computer so I asked them to fix them as well. They took my computer and sent it off to their service center. After 2 weeks, they called me up and told me to come pick it up. I rushed over to the store only to find out that it was still at the service center and they made a mistake.

I finally got the computer back a few days later and the screen was fixed but the other issues were not fixed. They asked me if I wanted to send it back for another 2 weeks but I opted not to since I needed my laptop for work. When I got home, I realized that my battery which used to hold a 4 hour charge, now only held a 10 minute charge. I don’t know if they killed my battery or replaced it with a dead battery but the fact was that my computer wouldn’t work unless it was attached to a wall.

They took my computer back for another 2 weeks and when I got it back, the power cord was loose. Another 2 weeks go by, I get the computer back and it doesn’t charge at all. I kept sending it back and each time, they call me up 2 weeks later to pick it up but when I get there, I realize that they haven’t fixed anything and even made it worse at times.

I spoke to the Geek Squad, customer service, the managers and even some of their managers about the situation and I asked if I can have a new computer because it has now been about 7 months that I have been without my laptop and they are not fixing it. I got the same answer from every one of them, “all we can do is send it to the service center and they decide what to do”.

According to the warranty, if the computer needs to be repaired more than 3 times, it’s considered a “lemon” and qualifies for a replacement. My computer doesn’t qualify because they never do anything to fix it when it’s sent back. They just waste a lot of postage.

To make a long story short, they still have my computer and have refused to give me a replacement or even a $10 gift card for my troubles and inconvenience.

I have had several other bad experiences with Best Buy and if you do a Google search for “I hate best buy”, you’ll see that many other people feel the same way I do.

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