Should I quit college to pursue my business?

Parents Forum
1

<p>Don't know what forum to post this in so I guess I'll just post it here, adult advice is probably best.</p>

<p>Basically, I just want some sober advice from a stranger on whether leaving school might make sense for me.</p>

<p>Right now, I'm finishing up my freshman year at a top-20 university with a good business school and my intended major is entrepreneurship. To pay for college, I have an online business (retailing) that I run part-time that's making me around $30K a year that I've been running for a little over 2 years now. A lot of that money goes to tuition but parents still help. I am highly confident that if I weren't fettered by school I could expand it to make me six figures within a year and hopefully a lot more with time and I have a solid plan of how I can achieve this.</p>

<p>I basically hate going to school and am not doing too well in most of my classes and struggle to find any motivation to try in boring classes that have no relevance to what I know I will be doing with my life. I pulled a 3.5 last semester but that will dip to maybe a 2.6 this semester. Besides that, I am tired of the extended childhood that is college life and tired with the environment at my school (my school's values are quite different from my own), and want to be independent. I was thinking of transferring to solve at least part of the problem, but it does not seem realistic at this point with my grades.</p>

<p>My parents are pressuring me to stay in school, but I feel that they've given me awful advice before and as such their opinion is not important to me.</p>

<p>Anyhow, I have two choices. Stay in college for another 3 years, probably be rather unhappy and unfulfilled, pay a lot of my own money for tuition and lose potential income, and graduate from a good school but with a poor GPA, and have no debt (will probably have a solid chunk of savings) and a business that probably won't be any more developed than what I have now and maybe miss out on some business opportunities.
Or quit school now, save money and make a lot more money (at least in the short run) and be happier doing what I really want to do and be free. </p>

<p>Either way I will be running my business eventually- the difference is just tuition cost and time. The degree will not get me a job and that is of little concern, school might teach me some things about running a business but I am skeptical that first-hand experience wouldn't teach me more.</p>

<p>The thing is that my worst-case scenario upon dropping out is probably making around $50-60K profit per year, which is around the average starting salary for my b-school anyways.</p>

<p>So, what do you think seems to be the wisest decision, looking from a long-term financial perspective? Does the benefit of a top college degree in entrepreneurship in helping me run my business outweigh the cost of being miserable for 3 more years, missing out on income and paying tuition?</p>

2

<p>“I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.” - J.D. Rockefeller</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Ok whiz kid, do you want to make $100,000 or $1,000,000? I will assume that you can make $100,000/yr on your own. But do you have any clue what it takes to make $1 million/yr? You can have an idea that makes you a million, but very few people can run a business on their own that makes them a million a year.</p>

<p>Do you have the marketing, finance, accounting, logistics, product development, web design, IT, legal, etc. skills to grow your company? Do you know how to hire the expertise for those areas? Do you even know what you don’t know so you can hire someone to do it?</p>

<p>Ok, let’s assume that you just happen to hire the right people. Do you have any clue how to interpret what they are going to be telling you? Production is running at 80%, and a salesman just landed a large order for the Christmas season. What do you do?</p>

<p>You can spend another $150,000 and 3 years of your life and learn from other people’s mistakes. Or, …</p>

3

<p>Are you sure you want advice from other parents whose own children believe they have been given awful advice? The wealthiest entrepreneur I know never attended college, but his children do. Make of this what you wish.</p>

4

<p>If your school will allow you to return easily after a leave of absence, then you can take a leave of absence, try to grow your business, and then:</p>

<ul>
<li>if the business becomes very successful, continue with it</li>
<li>if the business is not successful enough to be a good long term venture for you, return to school (probably with much more motivation to succeed in school than you do now)</li>
</ul>

<p>Find out from your school what its withdrawal and readmission policies are.</p>

5

<p>@OperaDad-actually my business is very scalable. Even if I handled all the purchasing, accounting, and management and had employees only for menial duties like packing my packages and handling products, I’m sure I could pull in at least $400,000/yr. It might take a few years to get there though as can be expected. Now hiring ppl for more involved duties is a big step but not an impossible one. And I know two family friends that are multi-millionaire entrepreneurs that did not in fact go to college at all so it doesnt seem quite as hard as u make it out to be.</p>

<p>@ucb- I think that seems like the best choice. I wasnt planning on burning the bridge anyways</p>

6

<p>Oh for goodness sake - the only thing you lose by dropping out now is whatever merit aid you’ve been awarded that’s reducing the cost of school. And if you can earn enough to make up for that, then who cares?</p>

<p>If you don’t want to stay in school, don’t stay in school! And if you have a business that provides enough income for you to live on, then why not?</p>

<p>If and when you hit a stumbling block in your business, and need more education, or simply decide you want more education, then go back to school - part-time, if you prefer, with other older, non-traditional students.</p>

<p>There are lots of kids who would do anything to have the four-year college experience that’s making you miserable - and you would do anything to get out of it! The difference between them and you is that you absolutely have a choice - and as long as you’re making enough money to support yourself, you don’t need your parents’ permission!</p>

7

<p>You don’t have to complete a degree in 4 straight years. Finish out the semester, then take a leave of absence for a year, and spend that time focusing on your business-- and then see where you are in a year’s time. Given your major, running the business is educational as well – in fact, you might want to see whether you can get any sort of credit for yourself at your university now or later on for an independent study or clinical experience. You are probably better off in the long run with a degree, but you certainly don’t have to earn that degree attending college full time for four years straight. Maybe down the line it will make sense for you to attend school part time while working.</p>

<p>I would point out that after taxes (and I hope that you are filing your schedule C & 1040, paying self-employment taxes quarterly)-- $30,000 is barely enough to live on. You’ll find that the money that has gone toward tuition will go toward living expenses if you aren’t living at home, so you may be no better off financially if the business doesn’t improve substantially. (I assume your parents are contributing to your support while you are in school). If you are right and you can boost your business revenues, no problem – but if you are mistaken and you find that the business hasn’t improved significantly in a year’s time, then you might want to reconsider your options.</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>Odds are, if you drop out, you are not likely to ever finish. If you ever want to get an MBA to pick up missing skills, …</p>

9

<p>Don’t forget as you progress the classes will be more interesting and relevant. If you were not going for a bschool degree I would say quit. However my suggestion would be to stay and hire another student to assist with your business.</p>

<p>Edited to add Move off campus next year, that will also help the way you feel.</p>

10

<p>Take a LOA. Are you the same poster who had the reshipping or warehouse fulfillment business? I cant quite recall teh correct terminology.</p>

11

<p>success is very hard to achieve. make no mistake famous dropouts like zuckerberg, dell, and bill gates are the exception not the rule. it is not that you can not be happier and successful without finishing school…but always try and stack the odds in your favor (IMO) i.e. stay in school!</p>

12

<p>Hypothetical question to the group-
What if she were commercially successful at acting or music or sports and wanted to take it to the next level by leaving school that she wasn’t happy in. Would your advice be the same?</p>

13

<p>I agree with the leave of absence option. And I would say this for the aspiring musician or actress as well.</p>

<p>BUT I will say, if you complete college, you will always have that degree. Your business could be successful forever…or not…just saying!</p>

14

<p>flyaround, the same applies to acting and music. the tiny number of people you hear about who pursue an acting /singing career and become the next brad pitt is not worth the risk. for every person who takes that plunge 1000x’s try and wind up on the blvd of broken dreams. for athletes, if you are offered a contract for millions you have to take it! you can get injured before your graduate or as time goes on you may look not so awesome ,and that opportunity disappears. make your millions and you can always go back to college later. but again that applies to a tiny tiny group of college athletes every year and they at least have a contract not just a DREAM!</p>

15

<p>I recall the term and the discussion now. Is your business drop shipping or cross docking?</p>

16

<p>I remember this also…but the story was with a “different poster”.</p>

17

<p>OP- if you are running your own business, it seems to me that you would find classes in Tax Policy, Developing Economies (i.e. why Brazil is different from India is different from China), History of Currency, Monetary Policy, History of Capitalism, Anarchy and Facism, etc. quite fascinating.</p>

<p>Maybe the problem isn’t the college; maybe it’s your major. Successful business people need to know more than accounting and distribution. What made Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Nathan Myrvold successful was not their content knowledge (as significant as it was) but their incessant curiosity.</p>

<p>So go be curious. You can build your business; great. You can support yourself; great. What happens when there’s a fundamental shift in technology, or the economics of your business change due to competition, or your customer base erodes? Don’t take classes in how to read a balance sheet if you already know how. Go take classes in history and economics and political science and understand why some societies have been supportive of entrepreneurship and growth and why others have not. Take classes in demography and understand what’s happening in Italy and Japan and other graying societies. Or take classes in anthropology or art history and understand how savvy entrepreneurs create needs that didn’t exist based on a deep realization of how culture and our surroundings impact us.</p>

<p>It seems like a short sighted solution to drop out of college just because Marketing 101 bores the pants off you.</p>

<p>Take Renaissance History and understand the Medicis and the Borzias; or Asian History and get a grip of Confucius. And then take a history course so you understand Karl Marx and Mao.</p>

<p>But drop out now? For 40K? Even if it becomes 400K for a year or two- what do you have that’s proprietary that assures you that you won’t get knocked off or ripped off by a savvy competitor? And then what??? Where’s your next big idea going to come from if you only have a high school education and a missed opportunity?</p>

18

<p>I took a job after a year in college and have done fairly well. I had various experiences working for companies and starting up a business with a friend of mine. I got a lot of valuable experiences from those gigs.</p>

<p>Various companies paid for my degrees later on.</p>

<p>If your business is your dream and it sounds like it’s already running, I’d say go for it. If it doesn’t work out, school is always an option or you could do some kind of a part-time model, partially supported by Federal tax credits.</p>

19

<p>What do you expect to hear in a parent’s forum?</p>

<p>I tell my son that even if he was Bill Gates I would still complain to him from dropping off from school…</p>

20

<p>

</p>

<p>Don’t you see the irony. You are studying entrepreneurship, which is a career fraught with the risk of going at it alone. Yet the rewards are huge if you are successful. You think that you already KNOW how to go at it alone.</p>

<p>Take a leave of absence to launch your business. Make it huge. Then sell it. Then if you think there is something to learn, return to school and study what you need to learn to do it again. </p>

<p>If for some reason it’s not successful you are still likely to learn more than you would in school. You’ll also know what you don’t know. Then go back and learn. You’ll be motivated and you’ll do well. Then you’ll try again. </p>

<p>Sure it’s risky, but entrepreneurship is by it’s nature. You are probably right that you will learn more than you will in school either way. Go for it!</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>