After graduating from Berkeley's MBA program in 2006, I wanted to start Financial Tips. But even after taking entrepreneurship, marketing, and finance courses, everything I needed to launch a business, I didn't.
My excuse was that my firm, Credit Suisse, had paid for 80% of my MBA education, and I felt obligated to repay them with focus and loyalty. In addition, I wanted more experience before I launched. Most of my fellow MBA classmates made the same retreat back to corporate life.
Going back to corporate is the safe route. The cushy paycheck, the health and retirement benefits, the false sense of financial security, it's comfortable. Comforting, even. But comfort has a price, and that price is spiritual growth and potentially huge financial opportunity cost.
This year marks 20 years since I got my MBA, and one thing has never been clearer: you don't need one. You can do remarkable, profitable, meaningful things whether or not you have the credentials, the experience, or the pedigree. And if you live in a free country with unlimited potential, not taking the leap of faith might be the riskiest decision of all.
The Inspiring Audacity of Just Doing Things
In 2008, I was stopped cold by a bestselling book on how to get rich, written by a 26-year-old who wasn't rich. He had almost no relevant experience and was selling courses on how to get promoted at work. People loved it. They paid him a small fortune. It was the darndest thing.
Meanwhile, I was waiting until I had at least 10 years of post-finance experience, until I was 33 and credentialed enough to be “taken seriously,” before launching Financial Tips. Waiting three years after graduating business school was a costly mistake. I lost years of compounding readership, compounding trust, and compounding impact.
I should have just launched and figured it out along the way. The more you do, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you earn.
Today, that same 26-year-old author has pivoted to become a relationship guru, dispensing family advice despite having no kids of his own. It doesn't matter. He's out there doing things. Taking action. Making a fortune, and not caring what anybody thinks.
Related: A $20 Million Net Worth Should Be Enough To Feel Happy And Free
You Don't Need Permission – History Proves It
The most inspiring thing about the examples below isn't that these people succeeded. It's how little they started with.
Sara Blakely was a door-to-door fax machine salesperson when she had the idea for Spanx. She invested her entire life savings of $5,000 to launch the company, with no fashion background, no investors, and no retail experience. She personally cold-called manufacturers and taught herself patent law because she couldn't afford a lawyer. By 2012, she was one of the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.
Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp, came to America as a teenager from a small Ukrainian village. He lived on food stamps while his mother worked as a babysitter, and taught himself programming from library manuals. He never finished college. He went on to sell WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion.
Colonel Harland Sanders didn't open his first KFC franchise until he was in his 60s. The only cooking experience he had was making meals for his siblings as a child, plus a string of odd jobs. He drove across the country sleeping in his car, pitching his recipe to restaurant owners. He was rejected over 1,000 times.
Richard Branson was a high school dropout who started a student magazine before moving into mail-order records, then airlines, then space travel, freely admitting he knew little or nothing about the industries he entered.
None of these people waited until they were ready. None of them had the “right” background. They simply started, and pivoted accordingly. Here's a great talk from Jon Xu, a partner at YC Combinator, that talks about the act of just starting.
Make a Fortune in Money Management, Even with Poor Performance
In my previous post on how a FIRE investor can't be too wrong, I mentioned you can make $500,000 to $2 million a year as a Wall Street strategist and not have to actually be right most of the time. But even as a money manager, you can still make money losing people money.
All you need is one spectacular year, one big audacious bet that pays off, and you can collect fees from investors essentially forever, regardless of how you perform afterward. Michael Burry from The Big Short is the classic example. He made a fortune shorting subprime debt before the 2008 crisis. Since then, his performance has been consistently underwhelming. But his brand is set. His aura is intact.
In a more recent example, a fund manager below posted a refreshingly transparent tweet admitting his fund was down 25.5% for the first quarter of 2026, with a -3.4% return in March alone, net of fees. This compares to the S&P 500 being down 4.3% in 2026. Despite the 21.2% underperformance, the fund was still able to charge fees because that's what his clients signed up for.
Consistently outperforming the market is hard, but most of us always have hope we can.
You can just do things and build a fortune. The gatekeepers aren't as powerful as you think.
EQ and the Art of Human Connection
Here's something the credential obsessors seldom mention: perhaps the single biggest differentiator between people who succeed and people who don't isn't their resume. It's their emotional intelligence, their ability to connect, communicate, listen, and move people.
IQ gets you in the room. EQ keeps you in it.
Think about the entrepreneurs above. Sara Blakely didn't just have a good product. She personally demonstrated it to Neiman Marcus buyers in a bathroom fitting room. Colonel Sanders wasn't selling chicken. He was selling a story, a handshake, and a dream..
Here's what developing your EQ actually looks like in practice:
Listen more than you talk. Most people are waiting for their turn to speak. The rare person who genuinely listens, who asks follow-up questions and remembers what you said last week, becomes unforgettable. Clients, investors, and partners are drawn to people who make them feel heard.
Learn to communicate clearly and compellingly. Whether you're writing a newsletter, pitching a product, or posting on social media, the ability to put ideas into clear, honest, relatable language is a superpower. You don't need an MFA. You need to practice. Write every day. Speak in public. Embarrass yourself a few times. Get better.
Build genuine relationships, not just a network. There's a difference between collecting LinkedIn connections and actually knowing people. The former is hollow. The latter is how opportunities appear out of nowhere. Show up for people when they don't need you, and they'll show up for you when you do.
Market yourself unapologetically. This one makes a lot of introverted, smart people squirm. But if you've done something good and nobody knows about it, it might as well not have happened. You don't have to be loud, but you have to be visible.
Develop empathy as a business skill. The best products, services, and pieces of content all start with a deep understanding of what someone else is feeling. What problems do you feel in your own life that nobody has solved well yet?
EQ doesn't show up on a diploma. You can't buy it at a top school. But you can build it, starting today, and it will take you further than almost anything else.
What Do You Have to Lose?
I left my day job in 2012 because I thought I had enough and wanted to be free. These days I almost always do school pickup and drop-off, and volunteer regularly. And something there worries me a little.
I see shy kids who seem afraid to say hello to a stranger or start a conversation. And I wonder if school is quietly training them to stay inside the box. Get good grades. Attend the best university you can. Then go sell your time to a company whose product you don't even love.
I'm not sure I want this for my children.
Yes, get that steady paycheck if you like your work and need to grow a financial base. I ground away for 13 years on Wall Street before I'd had enough, and that paycheck built the foundation I have now.
But if you've had enough of being part of the red army, if you lie awake wondering what would have happened if you'd tried, something has to change. Because failure fades. Regret compounds.
Look Past the Gatekeepers
People will still notice where you went to school or what title is on your business card. That's human nature and it probably won't disappear entirely. But the gatekeepers' power is eroding fast.
With technology and AI, there is no monopoly on knowledge. You can start something real, from scratch, for almost nothing. You don't need a prestigious degree, a VC check, or a famous last name. You don't need permission.
So please, dear son, dear daughter, dear reader, start before you're ready. The best entrepreneurs in history did exactly that. Not because they were reckless, but because they understood that the cost of inaction, the slow erosion of possibility, is far higher than the cost of failure.
If you wait for permission, I promise the outcome won't be as profound as if you take the leap and try.
The stacks of $100 bills won't come find you. But if you start walking, you might just stumble right into them.
Related posts:
Why I'll Always Regret Selling My Online Business for Millions
The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Person
Readers, why don't more people take a leap of faith and just do things without the experience or credentials? What's stopping you from starting a business that solves a problem you and others have? And how much more important is marketing and creating the illusion of competency than actually being competent?
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By the way, Harlan Sanders ran a restaurant where he developed his fried chicken recipe and then later started franchising it.
Whoa – this was such a good one! So many excellent lines up there. Thank you for this bit of inspiration and reminders first thing in the morning!
This is why sports are an integral part of school – not just for the benefits to your physical health, but for developing your confidence, courage, and ambition. Great article!
Thanks for this post. Partyly due to your writing I launched a new protein couscous business and it’s doing more than $2 million in revenue now.
Take some rest, everyone!
Sam,
I don’t typically reach out to authors whose work I read online, but after following Financial Tips for several years and reading your recent post on distribution as the last moat, I thought I’d send a brief note of appreciation.
While I may not fit the profile of your typical reader, much of what you write resonates with me. I retired earlier than most after a long career, though retirement has proven to be more of a transition into new pursuits than an ending. Yet I continue to find your writing thoughtful and useful because it goes beyond personal finance and often explores the broader questions that follow financial independence.
One point from your recent article particularly resonated with me: the importance of having the courage to pursue different avenues of growth and experience. Looking back, that willingness to embrace change shaped much of my own journey. Over the years, I’ve lived in seven cities across six states, changed industries multiple times, taken on progressively larger leadership responsibilities, led a company as CEO, founded and eventually sold a business, and later built a family investment firm. None of those moves—geographic or professional—were obvious at the outset, but each opened doors that would have remained closed had I chosen the safer path. Your observation about having the courage to try something new, whether a different career, venture, or city, struck a familiar chord.
What I’ve appreciated most about your writing is the combination of firsthand experience, intellectual curiosity, and willingness to share both successes and uncertainties. There are plenty of sites that focus on tactics. Far fewer explore what comes next—purpose, reinvention, entrepreneurship, family, investing, and the challenge of building a meaningful life after achieving financial security.
Your reference to ikigai also resonated with me. It remains a personal compass of sorts, though also an elusive one. I have many interests and pursuits that occupy my time, and only one that generates income through investment returns. I’ve come to realize that purpose is not always found in a single calling, but sometimes in the combination of pursuits that continue to challenge, engage, and energize us.
In any case, I simply wanted to thank you for the consistency and effort you’ve put into Financial Tips over the years. Seventeen years of showing up, thinking, writing, and sharing is no small accomplishment. While we’ve never corresponded, your work has provided perspective and encouragement at several points along my own journey.
Wishing you continued success as you begin year eighteen.
Best regards,
Steve
How about Kane Parsons – wrote and directed the current horror movie hit “Back Rooms”. Taught himself how to make movies on YouTube. Turns 21 today.
Great example! You can just do things, folks. So go out there and do things!
Started my company at 42 with every penny I owned. $60,000 to start and cash flow my healthcare company. No vacations for the first 3 years and on call 24/7/365. Long story short, retired at 56 with an 8 figure net worth. Yes a lot of work, but timing, relationships built and a little luck is needed to succeed.
Way to bet on yourself!
The thing some people don’t realize is that when you bet on yourself and build your own company, you are far more motivated and energized to keep going versus building someone else’s vision.
I know the then 26 year old entrepreneur who’s currently selling relationship advice you talk about!
is it Ramit? lol
I was an electrical engineer before becoming FIRE but I still hang with many programmers and engineers. In my free time since quitting my job I have dived into several hobbies: music, languages, winemaking, and now I am testing my skills at landscape design and interior decorating. I have turned my home and yard into a “test kitchen” for my design ideas. I have received genuine compliments. It is not a business, yet, but maybe I will take the leap.
Anyway, I have noticed some pushback from my fellow engineers when I start explaining, rhythm and repetition, 60-30-10 rule, groupings, color, materials, antiques, period architecture. How could I know these things without having a degree in them? Hint–I have a brain and I read books. But the credentialism reigns supreme. It is a serious blind spot for the highly educated. I call it the “smarty pants syndrome”.
Schools don’t even train anymore. There are very strong incentives to sicken people with tech addictions which leads to children, and teachers, that can’t focus for 5 minutes. Over-medicalization is another issue that happens to healthy children, and it’s a pipeline starting from school (or frankly, the doctors’ office). Schools furthermore suffer from tremendous bureucratic bloat and ivory tower social agendas that are out of touch with reality, leaving kids undereducated and confused.
Parents should focus on teaching children how to socialize, how to form healthy habits, and how to view down upon all the terrible practices that go in schools these days: ipads, big tech invasion, participation awards, elitist social agendas, compliance and punishment, reliance on drugs (“medication” for made up things like ADHD from third-rate soft science “scientists”), fear of authority, fear of failure, censorship, and on so many other issues, the list can go on forever.
An EQ course would be great for grade school.
We have a no electronics policy for our school, and it goes through the 8th grade.
I love your line “IQ gets you in the room. EQ keeps you in it.” I love the inspirational stories of the entrepreneurs you highlighted. It’s amazing how some people can go from nothing to greatness.
I was also reminded of a video clip I watched yesterday about how those who have and project clarity, confidence, and conviction in their daily desires in life tend to get that same energy projected back into their lives. They know who they are and what they’re creating. There’s so much clarity. But those who get tangled up in fear, self doubt, and judgement and unclear desires in life tend to receive that same muddled energy back at them.
Great topic, thanks!
I completely agree on the devaluing of educational diploma. The piece of paper does not necessarily mean EQ, empathy, genuine relationships etc.
But until we find a place to put somewhat random people in the same place at the same time, I would still determine that attending post-secondary schools is a worthy goal for ok-ish teens. Other than extraordinary circumstances, I would not tell teens to skip post secondary school altogether. Note that some great business ideas brewed from people doing things together (often without seeking permission).
“Other than extraordinary circumstances, I would not tell teens to skip post secondary school altogether.”
Agree. My hope is that we parents can teach them more creativity and entrepreneurship during their first 18 years of life before they go to college or wherever.
So many opportunities to just do things with big downside risk.