The World Doesn't Exist in a Textbook

"I Know That You've Read A Lot of Books About This and That"

In Season One of HBO’s Succession, there’s a scene between the hard charging corporate media magnate Logan Roy and his wannabe heir to the empire son Kendall. Kendall walks into his dad’s office after Kendall more or less got punked in a meeting with the CEO of a company that Logan’s Waystar Royco is looking to acquire.

Logan admonishes his son for being soft in the meeting and “bending” instead of firing back aggressively when the other CEO challenged him. Kendall responds that he “didn’t want to turn it into a big dick competition.”

“Son, you’re not a killer” IYKYK

Logan retorts, “I know that you’ve read a lot of books about business management and this and that, but you know what? Sometimes it IS a big dick competition.” Iconic.

Now, it is worth noting that Logan is a diabolical asshole. It’s part of what makes him great. He trampled everyone in his way on the path to building Waystar Royco into a global media and parks empire. I’m not advocating for doing business his way, although there are definitely times in the business world where you have to channel your inner Logan if someone is trying to take advantage of you. The greater point here is that learning about doing the “thing” and doing the “thing” are two different ballgames. Logan is a first generation immigrant who became a self made multi billionaire. His sorry ass son was raised with a silver spoon and knows nothing about what it took to build this business. Get out of my face with your fancy books and degrees. I have no need for them. Welcome to the jungle.

The real world is littered with people who operate in theoreticals. As Jay-Z said, “Everyone can tell you how to do it, they never did it.”

As a University of Puget Sound business major, I took classes in management, accounting, marketing, business law, etc. I found it odd that only one of the professors had ever started a business themselves. This isn’t a takedown of academia, I have numerous intelligent friends who are getting their MBAs at NYU as we speak. I have no doubt that they will go on to be successful. With that said, shouldn’t the people teaching the courses have “done it” at some point?

When I worked corporate, I never once had someone ask about my grades or University. Since becoming a business owner, I have also never asked these questions in an interview with a job prospect. Here in the real world, it’s a simple game. Can you help my business grow and make more money? Tuck away the Yale degree, I don’t care. As a guy who went to private school, I cringe when people act like private school puts them on a pedestal above public school grads or community/trade school grads. You can either do the job or you can’t. That diploma is better off as a paper airplane if you don’t know how to use it.

The best hire that I ever made in my business is a woman who lives in the Phillipines. To this day, I have no idea if or where she attended college. She is a single mom who simply wants to take care of her family and works her tail off to do so. She is the definition of a “doer.” Seriously, I am amazed by her work sometimes. If you set up a process and ask her to do it, she does it. If she runs into a roadblock, she will watch a YouTube video or read an article on how to solve the problem. I don’t know what her degrees are if any. She does graphic design, property management, social media, reporting, vendor/bill management etc. She just does it. It doesn’t matter to me if Princeton taught her or YouTube taught her.

I heard a very successful business guy say something the other day, “Want to be valuable to your boss? Find out the 10-20% of their job that they hate and take it off their plate.” This employee has done that for me. Diploma be damned. There’s plenty of diploma folk out there who will hit you with an “actually that’s not my job” or who want the boss to hop in the second something gets hard or confusing. If you do this you’re a line item on the expense sheet. You’re gone when a recession hits. Fancy degrees and knowledge of French Literature don’t pay the bills.

When I started off in real estate, I consumed a ton of books and podcasts. One thing I also did was I bought deals WHILE I was learning. The books and pods were great, the real life experience was better. We learn by doing. I lost a ton of money on a specific deal a few years ago. Lesson learned. A book wasn’t going to teach me that lesson. I still regularly lose thousands of dollars on mistakes. School of Hard Knocks isn’t free, but it’s cheaper than Harvard. And when you graduate you own a bunch of real estate and real life experiences instead of a piece of paper.

As I said above, none of this is an indictment of academia or learning for the sake of learning. I start every morning by reading a book at the coffee shop. Sometimes it’s a business book or self help book, but more often than not it’s history or similar. There’s no ROI from this, I just like it. The point here is that in business, there is a time for learning and a time for doing. Too many people get caught in the learning phase. Too many people who have never done it want to tell you how to do it. Want to be successful in real estate? Go talk to the guy or gal who’s done a hundred deals, not the one who has read a book on doing deals. Want to be a published author? Go get advice from someone who’s done it, not someone with a fancy English degree. The world is full of “advisers” who can’t execute. Theorists who can’t perform. Action is the highest form of intelligence. Logan Roy is a total prick, but damnit does he know this to be true.