Education vs. Experience

There is a debate that rages throughout the halls of academia and the business world. The debate is not new, nor can it easily be settled. You see, it revolves around whether experience is superior to education and visa-versa.  You can imagine that the experience side of the argument doesn’t get very much support in academia. So, most of the debate occurs within the boardrooms of businesses all over.

Let’s face it, education is expensive. The average cost for a private university is roughly $39,000 a year. Multiply that out by 4 and you just paid almost $160,000 for your bachelor’s degree. Granted there are ways to make this less expensive, but even in those cases you will end up spending roughly $40k to $60,000 for your bachelor’s. That is a difficult pill to swallow for someone thinking about coming out of college and not being able to find a decent job right away.

 I attended a financial seminar about 10 months ago from a guy who wrote a book on the cost of college. As he was doing his research, he discovered that the average student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in very average subjects like communications were leaving college owing on an average $180,000. This is because everything is charged, and the students don’t pay attention to what they are spending.  They just swipe their student card and go. This blind spending creates a problem for these students coming out of college, in that they are cash broke and unable to maintain a lifestyle that allows them to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

It’s no wonder why the “give me my schooling for free” crowd seems to be getting louder. They see the writing on the wall, and they don’t want to be held responsible for their poor choices. This is a topic for another article, and I had better stop there or this will become a very lengthy treatise on the entitled mindset of today’s young society.

So, as many individuals who are unable to afford higher education beyond High School look at their options, many are opting out of pursuing a degree. They are going right to work trying to make something out of their lives. They gain tons of experience and can do their jobs with great effectiveness.

Sounds good right? These people are good at what they do. They are loyal to their employers. They have years of hands on experience over their counterpart just coming out of college. So, what seems to be the problem? Where’s this debate that I mentioned?

The debate lies in what happens to these non-college educated peers over their college educated counterparts. Many times, they are passed over for a promotion to allow someone with a degree to take the position. How is this justified in the eyes of these employers? Simply put, a degree to many employers is a sign that you can take orders and follow a prescribed regiment to accomplish a task, or in other words, you can jump through hoops and bark like a dog to come out on top. I know, that was a little harsh, but the truth hurts, so get over it.

In my businesses I’ve always placed experience over education. I view it as the best educator. A text book can only take you so far, and lecture and demonstration can only prepare you for a very finite list of experiences. While on the other hand, experience is a real hands-on education. The employee is learning and gaining a deep understanding of the needs of the organization and the area in which they work. This education is priceless and should never be dismissed as being less important than the education received at college.

As a financial advisor I would rather hire a person that I felt that I could train and teach to my specifications, rather than try to fix the errors instilled by a professor teaching out of a text book. Life is organic and changes rapidly. It takes someone with life experience to be just as fluid and empathetic. I am a very particular person when it comes to how I do business and what I expect from my employees, and I’ve found that experience serves me better when it comes to hiring.

That’s not the case in all things. When it comes to a doctor, I would rather have an educated person practice his trade rather than someone who grew up with an interest in medicine and practiced on others. Education has its place in society. I just believe that it is disingenuous to make a blanket statement that education is always paramount to anything else and trumps experience.

So, in conclusion; education is important, and experience is important. Society should never tell a person that they have no empirical value to society, but rather that worth is based on knowledge regardless of where you acquired that knowledge.

The Truth About Low Hanging Fruit: What I learned as a seven year old working in an orchard.

When I was between seven and eight years old my father was reeling from a recent job loss. We had moved from Wyoming to Washington and were trying our best to get back on our feet. My Grandfather, my dad’s dad had passed away during our move; so that was adding to his difficulty in getting things really going.

It was during this time that my Grandmother suggested that my brother and I join them in the Cherry Orchards to pick cherries to earn money. My mother had grown up in a migrant worker family and at this time they were still in this line of work. So, with no better alternative my older brother and I woke up early in the morning (the sooner you get to the orchard the more cherries you pick and the more money you make) and began our labors to help support the family. 

I remember the work was hard. I was small and didn’t like ladders much because I was prone to accidents, so I stayed down low for most of the morning picking the fruit that was down at the bottom. The low hanging fruit if you will. Since this is the easiest fruit to get, everybody was picking the lower fruit, and I soon realized that if I was going to be successful, I was going to have to climb the ladder and go for the higher fruit, which appeared to be more desirable. I got into the tree and spent the entire day traversing the branches and filled bucket after bucket of cherries. Everybody else stayed on the outside and low, while I, being small, went as high as I could and did so from within the tree. The buckets were heavy for a small kid, and at the end of the day I was tired, but I had been successful. I earned the respect of my grandmother that day.

There is a lot to be said about “low hanging fruit” in the world of business. Those ripe customers just sitting there waiting for you to come by like a knight on a white stallion to give them what they want. They want what you have, and you are ready to give it to them. You don’t have to try much just reach up and the customer just lands there at your desk/counter/table/etc. Is there a problem with this? No, not really. Ready customers, willing and anxious to purchase is a good thing. You owe it to your business to take advantage of their willingness to purchase your good or service. It is the logical thing to do. But there is a point where it becomes unwise to go after low hanging fruit.

When your primary focus is going after this particular segment of your market base, you will eventually run out of business. Just like the fruit on a tree becomes sparse when everybody is picking at it, you have competition (if you don’t you are my hero), and they are going after the same ready customer that you want and need for your business. You never know when these customers are going to stop being so readily available, but they eventually do. I would venture to declare that there is no industry in existence that consists 100% of ready-to-purchase customers, or low hanging fruit.

You must be willing to do the hard work along with the easy work to ensure a long-running and viable enterprise. Meaning, that while you go after those ready-to-purchase customers, you are simultaneously marketing to those who are not yet aware that they need your service or goods, or those who will need it soon. A full and complete branding strategy must be established in order to be truly competitive.

Success based on strategies that focus on immediate ROI such as those ready-to-purchase customers will eventually run out of steam and produce lower and lower returns, and if you’re not careful you will strategize yourself out of business especially if your competition is aware of the need to have a more diverse approach to marketing.

This runs even more true when you focus on a niche market in a broader market segment. If your competition is effective at not only servicing the needs of the niche, but the broader market in general they will eventually win the race to that customer. Take Wal-Mart for example, they offer such a variety of products and services that customers go there for the convenience of getting what they want in one location without having to jump around from place to place. Although it is true that there are customers willing to go from place to place to avoid Wal-Mart in its entirety, those individuals are few and far between. If you are going to service a niche market you must be willing to do the necessary leg work to constantly put yourself in front of the potential customer and lead as the subject matter leader, or you will be left in the dust.

I recently had the experience provided to me of working with a dental company that focuses primarily on dental implants and nothing else. The principal doctor who started the company believes that he has a brand that is known by the market and that customers should be knocking on his door constantly for dental implant surgery. The problem is that he doesn’t have a widely know brand. His “brand” as he calls it is known by the low hanging fruit that he focused on and nobody else. When I met him, I recognized this, and in my proposal, I established a plan that would pull him out of obscurity and help him develop top of mind recollection within his very niche market. 

I came on board and began creating a marketing strategy that would effectively do this. I developed a multi-tiered approach to separate him from his competition and establish him as the subject matter leader. He waivered and hesitated for over two weeks to decide or move forward. Finally, he requested that I create alternative plans, so I did, and he chose one. The plan was not as robust as it should have been. It had been stripped down to accommodate his lack of understanding and unwillingness to meet with me to discuss how everything fit together.

In the three months that I was working with him; I changed the plan three times trying to accommodate his lack of initiative and ability to decide at crucial moments. He wanted the phone to ring off the hook, and I would explain that I was trying to create a long-term effect and not a short-term flash in the pan solution. He demanded all digital advertising stop and that he be returned to a print marketing strategy because that is what worked for him in the past. I tried using an analogy of picking fruit and how at some point you must climb the ladder, which was completely lost on him. I created a print marketing plan for him which he “accepted” but refused to decide on what to spend or what to offer as an incentive to get the call to come in.

Needless to say, I am no longer assisting him with his marketing strategies. He refused to provide a viable incentive to get patients to call in because he was used to them just calling from his ads. He refused to see that since last year his call volume has been steadily decreasing. He refused to see the writing on the wall that if he didn’t change his approach, that he would be out of business within a matter of a few years.

The low hanging fruit of the business world dries up. Businesses that are proactive, rather than reactive in their marketing will position themselves to capture business and smash their competition. It is imperative that those individuals upon whom the responsibility for marketing rests develop viable long-term goals along with their short-term goals with which they create strong messaging that communicates to the heart and mind of the ready-to-purchase customer and the customer who might not be aware that they currently or will shortly need the product or service that is offered.

Business owners must establish a mindset that not everybody needs or think that they need their product or service. And with that realization create the message that communicates the reason why they do need it or will need it. Especially when they operate within a niche market, like for example, dental implant dentistry.

NewLine Consulting Services is here to help you if you have questions or would like to have help in developing your strategies and plans. We will review what you have and help you establish a plan that will grow your business. 

Regardless of what you do, stay the course. Build a brand, cultivate your market and harvest the whole tree and not just the easy stuff. If you do this you will experience steady and prolonged growth, and you will outlive the competition because they will be gleaning the scraps that you leave them.

The Power of Words

As a father of small children I've had the opportunity to watch a lot of educational television with them. Since I've worked from home for most of my career I have had that privilege.
Two shows that my children have watched are found on PBS called "Word Girl" and "Super Why!". They depict superhero styled characters who are infused with the power of words. The shows focus on teaching vocabulary and reading skills, but are geared toward helping the young child begin their higher level thinking that is so popular in the educational system these days.

I bring these two shows up because of the super power that the characters have. The power of words. Do words have power? And if so, what power do they have? Growing up we often repeated the defiant rhyme "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It seemed like sound logic at the time. I mean come on, words can't hurt, right? Or can they?


Words have tremendous power. They have the power to make us or break us. Our emotional well-being is affected by words. Our careers are defined by words. You name it, and I will argue that words matter to it.

How often do we tell someone they are acting "stupid" or "irrational"? In our minds we might be thinking nothing of it, but the person receiving the rebuke might hear that they are stupid and it begins to stick and define their actions. When we make fun of somebody because of their clothes, hairdo, looks or whatever it may be; those words that we use stay with the person and they do hurt. Sticks and stones may indeed break your bones, but those broken bones will heal and you will forget about it. The words on the other hand may not leave a physical mark, but the wounds and scars that they leave will last a lifetime if not treated properly.

Sometimes the words we use in our interactions with others are chosen in the heat of the moment, on the spot without much thought going into them. We tell ourselves, "they are only words, they mean nothing", but in reality they mean everything. I've heard countless stories of people who were about to commit suicide when one person said a kind word to them and it changed the course of their lives. I've also heard many stories of the opposite.

Not too long ago in my community a young woman committed suicide. Her brother upon hearing it was inconsolable, for obvious reasons. But his pain went deeper. That very morning in an argument with his sister he told her that she was annoying and that he wanted her out of his life and to go away. These words could have been the final words that anybody had spoken to her. Once again, words have power.

About 3 years ago I had the interesting experience thrust upon me of stepping into a classroom and becoming a High School teacher. The story behind this is lengthy and interesting, but I won't get into that here. Let's just say a few words spoken to me caused a chain reaction which led me to feel that I had something to offer the kids at this isolated and small High School on the border of Utah and Nevada.

As I interacted with the students on a daily basis I quickly learned that the words which had been spoken to them during the course of their lives had been very powerful, but in a negative way. This particular school is very small with a student population that is about 95% Hispanic and under performs repeatedly on State and Federal Tests. Many of the students feel like they don't need to try because they've been told that they can't do better and more shouldn't be expected from them. When I started at the beginning of the school year I noticed this mentality in the students and it angered me. They really didn't feel a need to try to do better because they just expected the teachers or administrators to make it right for them. This allowed them to blissfully waste away into nothing academically.

Since I myself don't buy into this mentality, I repeatedly pushed my students to think deeper. I gave them college level economic lessons and dived into the inner workings of the government and the Constitution. Many failed test after test as I pushed them to think on a higher level. I repeatedly told them that I was there because I believed in them and in their abilities. They all knew that I drove three hours every day to be there to teach them and that I put my business on hold while I did it. Many respected me for that, and they respected me for the respect that I show towards them.
I had one particular student come into my class one day after school. He was failing with a pretty solid F; I believe his class grading percentage was at 14% or less. He told me that he couldn't do it, that he was too stupid, and my classes were too hard for him. I listened to him and told him to pay better attention and try harder. The next day in class I gave a 15-minute pep talk about how I never wanted to hear anybody come to me and tell me that they couldn't do it or that they were too stupid to understand. I told them all that they were powerful and could do anything that they truly wanted to do. I told them not to let negative influences define them, but to daily look in the mirror and tell themselves that they were capable of anything. The student that had come to me after school sat there and listened and mouthed to me that he understood. He started working harder and improved his grade to a B. His last test that he took in my class he got an 86%; I never saw someone with more pride in a grade than him, and I was proud of him as well. The students in my classes that I taught each got the same talk from me periodically.

I never let on, but I cared about each of those kids. I wanted them to succeed and achieve great things. I found myself caring for them more than some cared for themselves and that was hard. When I finally stepped away from the classroom to return to my business, it was bitter-sweet. To this day I still stay in contact with some students and I like to see how they are progressing in life. In their minds I might have not had much of an impact, but in my heart, they impacted me.

We as adults need to be careful with how we use words in our interactions with our children and the youth that we interact with. Even adults can be negatively affected by the words that we use when we interact with them. Each one of us has been infused with the power of words. We chose daily whether we are going to be superheroes or super villains. It is my hope that each of us chooses to be the superhero in someone else's life. The kind that swoops down and rescues them from the negative effects of their mental and emotional kryptonite.

What the Chameleon Teaches Us about Leadership

Leaders today face a myriad of issues on a minute-by-minute basis.  Each of these situations calls for the same person to react completely differently to each in order to come to a reasonable solution and ultimately resolution of the problem.  As such unless a Leader is willing to adapt and re-organize, their efforts will be futile and they will ultimately fail.

Adaptive Leadership is the name given to the style of leadership that adjusts as needed to meet the challenge at hand.  It is an evolutionary process undertaken to ensure the success of an organization.  In order to succeed a Leader needs to pattern their leadership style to become like a chameleon. 

Like chameleons, Leaders need to be able to focus on two items simultaneously and independently.  This allows Leaders to be aware of situations happening in several locations at the same time, which allows them to be proactive in dismantling potential conflicts and other unwanted situations.  When Leaders are able to lead proactively rather than re-actively, organizations are able to function at full potential.

When a chameleon eats, their tongue, which is their primary method used to secure food for survival, can exceed the length of the chameleon’s body by double and deploy at speeds in excess of 41 G’s.  When you think about it that is tremendously fast.  Leaders have to act fast to ensure the survival of the organization.  They cannot mope around expecting things to work themselves out or waiting for “inspiration”.  They have to be immediate in their actions and confident in the outcome.

Most species of chameleons can change color and adapt to their surroundings.  Leaders need to be able to adapt their style and approach to the situation and individual or group that they are dealing with.  This is most difficult with larger organizations where the Leader has to interact with large numbers, but just because something is difficult, that does not make it impossible.  Nevertheless, good Leaders are able to quickly analyze the individual need of their subordinates, adapt to the situation, and employ a style of leadership that best meets the needs of the individual with whom they are interacting.  Those Leaders who refuse to adapt to the situation are often stuck in a rut and will find themselves consistently moving towards a less practical style of leadership when dealing with individuals.  You cannot effectively use a one-size fits all mentality when you are dealing with individuals that come from all types of backgrounds and personal situations.

Real Leaders are those Leaders who, despite of the challenges and difficulties that they face can adapt their approach to the circumstance that surrounds them and move forward with an effective style that meets the needs of their subordinates.  This is true in the work place, on a team, or in the home. 

There are countless books and seminars available to teach Leaders how to be more effective Adaptive Leaders—these books have been written by very smart people who have dedicated their lives to developing Leaders that are effective and successful. Nevertheless, you can read every book ever written and attend every seminar and convention on leadership available, and never be an effective leader unless you put into practice what you learn.  Stop to ask yourself some important questions about your personal leadership style.  Start with these two and make a list that focuses on yourself rather than on how you perceive how others perceive you.

Does my approach to leadership help my team to succeed?

As you approach this question, you have to be willing to evaluate yourself and listen to constructive feedback from your team members.  They know whether you help them, and they will tell you— and tell you what you need to hear. 

Do I care about the members of my team enough to figure out what they need from me?

If you do not care about the members of your team to determine what they need from you as a Leader, then maybe you should reevaluate your style to include the needs of your members in order to ensure the success of the organization.

These two questions will help you as you pivot towards a more adaptive style of leadership.  As you employ more personal leadership inventories on a regular basis, you will begin to see your effectiveness increase and the success of your organization as a whole.