002. When There's No Right Answer - Critical Thinking in Real Life

High School Education Failed Me.

I’m someone who really hated school. I loved everything that came with going to school, but when it comes to the actual school work, I tried to game the system as much as possible. 

My problem was, until I reached college, school was just not that hard. I could get by with doing the absolute bare minimum. 

I was smart enough that just completing the homework and assignments prepared me enough for the exams which I aced. Or cheated a little when I had to… sorry Mr. Marquez. Spanish was never a strong suit.

Now, I wasn’t in any gifted and talented programs, nor did I graduate high school with a semester’s worth of college credits. But I sure felt smart. And I thought college would follow suit. My plan was to breeze through college, then med school, doing the same bare minimum. 

Fast forward to Christmas break of my sophomore year of college. I had a 2.5 GPA staring back on me. Passing yeah, but definitely not good enough to be considered for medical school. Something had to change. 

I realized my education up until that point had failed me. I was never taught how to truly study, nor how I learned best, and I had no idea about the effort required to excel in school. Showing up was no longer cutting it. 

College Education Schooled Me.

My game plan in high school was to remember exactly what I needed the night before, then show up and ace the test the next day. It was too easy. Or in case of Spanish…write the answers in pencil on my desk during the last period, then come up with an excuse to take the test before school starts the next day, erase off the desk. Easy peasy.

This same tactic in college didn’t cut it. Extreme short term memory and rote memorization didn’t apply. No longer were the choices just A through D, but A through E with multiple choices, write in, and pulling together multiple concepts from weeks of learning. Just attending class was not enough and my pencil trick came with a lot more risk and much harder to pull off. Wasn’t going to happen. 

So what did I do? I had to figure out how I learned best. The only problem is I learned best through rote memorization and there was a lot to memorize. 

If the tactic was sound, it must be the effort that was lacking. 

Over the next few months, my life changed pretty radically. I made the decision to no longer party and hang out with my friends from high school, and traded that in for time at the library. 

Instead of beers and flashing lights, it was coffee and flash cards. I tried to commit as much memory as possible for all of the classes.

Here’s how I did it: Write out everything you need to remember, over and over and over again. Put it on flash cards, speak it into a recorder, listen back as you go through your study material. Write it all again without the audio help. Write it down again as you listen to yourself. Teach it to a friend. See what topics they’re struggling with and talk it through. Give every hour that you can before the test, but ensure a good night sleep before.

Combine all the crucial information and fit it into a one page study guide. Memorize this study guide. Write it over and over and over again until you can’t forget it. 

I memorized this study guide word for word. When the exam would begin, I would flip it over and quickly jot down my entire study guide on a blank page. 

It worked…I finished college with a Biomedical Sciences degree and a GPA of 3.23. Not bad given the time I had to turn that around, but still not good enough for med school. 

I had learned how I learned best. Clearly, I’m what you would consider a slow learner. Was it the best way to do it? Probably not, but it worked for me. 

My First Business Made Me

Fast forward to today. No I’m no doctor - a lot of effort wasted I know. 

It wasn’t until I started my first business, an all natural supplement company and local gym, that I realized how much college had failed me. Talk about an expensive lesson.

The education I received did not have anything to do with business, marketing, HR, finances, social media, advertising, or anything else that’s required to be relevant and successful in entrepreneurship today. I picked biomedical sciences, I know, my bad. 

Except even if I majored in something to do with my now chosen career path, I’m hesitant to say it would have been helpful, even in the slightest sense. 

What I was taught in college, and what I see from my peers, is that none of what you’re taught, none of what you memorized and were tested on is used in your daily work life. A very small percentage anyway. 

The only exception are my doctor friends. Their education is built on the scientific foundation laid in undergrad and so on. But even then, does my orthopedic surgeon really need to know how to draw out the entirety of the Krebs Cycle? I don’t think so. 

I think the problem here lies not so much in the subject matter, but how we are tested and scored. 

In real life, there are no scantrons. There are no A through E multiple choice questions with only one right answer. 

In business…oftentimes there is no right answer. 

I feel like in life there are too many options for success in front of us. But none of them are “right” or “correct.” It comes down to what’s right for you, right now, with the amount of information available to you. 

For example, I have built up a little portfolio of owner financed notes on the land I sell. This brings in monthly income on the regular, but can leave your bank account on the hungry side if I don’t have larger cash sales coming in. So what do you do? 

• Option 1: cash out the notes as needed to recapitalize and put that money back to work. Not a bad option, but another friend once said, “businesses with no cash flow, go the way of the dodo.” But a big cash infusion sure would feel nice. Watch out for the taxman though.

• Option 2: Hypothecate the notes and get a loan from the bank. This allows you to borrow against the notes, and use the monthly cash flow to pay down the loan, and frees up some cash to put back to work in new projects. Not a bad idea. How do you feel about bank debt? Are you even bankable? Don’t mess up or they’ll be coming for your house.

• Option 3: Use private money. Pool together private investors as needed for your projects and partner with them as equity partners, or as a private loan, using the cash flow of the monthly notes to make the monthly payment. Again, not a bad option, but much higher interest and could be more expensive if your product sits longer than anticipated. 

• Option 4: Start a fund. Cheaper capital, but harder to acquire. Upfront entity fees, dealing with regulatory bodies, and then you’ll need to raise capital and continually massage those investor relations. I hate massaging.

There are countless other examples of the decisions we face as business owners daily. What I’ve realized is nothing I learned in school taught this level of critical thinking required to wade through the muck and mud of decisions like these. 

None of these decisions would break me, and I could see how they could all get me to the place I’m trying to go. But in the end, there is no right answer. 

I have to decide for myself, what’s right for me? What’s right for right now, given the information I have, and what level of risk am I most comfortable with? Then I must move forward with tenacity and not question my decision unless it becomes absolutely necessary. 

How to Decide with No Right Answers - Critical Thinking in Real Life

The only way I’ve seen to make these decisions is through talking it out; with others and then with yourself. This is critical thinking in real life is accomplished.

You must talk it out with others in your space and who have faced these decisions prior to you. 

They’ll give you the pros and cons and angles you’ve never thought about. In talking with a mentor of mine about the above example, he knew that we had some personal money that could be put to work. 

His thought was to “loan” the business our own personal capital and pay that loan back using the monthly income from the notes. Wow, an option I had never really considered. Not only would this help with our capital needs, but it would also help with our taxes down the road too. 

I say talk it out with others in your space because they get it. Land investors get land investors because we face the same problems. Podcasters will get podcasters. Contractors will get contractors. So on and so on. 

I can and do talk about these things with others I trust like family members. But remember, your family has a different risk tolerance for you, than you do. It’s how we’re built. We protect those that we love and sometimes that can lead to stifling decisions in our business. 

Had I listened to my parents, I never would have taken the leap to start my first two businesses. I never would have experienced the pain from their collapse, but I never would have that experience to learn from either. 

I wrote in a previous post that my wife is my sounding board. I’ll always talk through these big decisions with her because they do affect her, but she’s also wise, I trust her, and she has my best interest at heart.

Lastly, you have to talk it out with yourself. Whether that’s you in prayer, in your journal, meditation, exercising, walking or any combination of the above. You need to take the time to wrestle with the pros and cons of each option. Weigh them against each other and see how they stack up with your current information and risk tolerance. 

Then go for it. 

Business is Pass or Fail

I once had a business friend explain it to me like this, “in business it’s just pass/fail. Either you did the work you didn’t. Either you got the sale or you didn’t. Either you’re still in business or you’re not. It’s a pass or fail game.”

His expression came from a conversation about how he’s terrible with paperwork, emails, and the admin work in his small business. His sentiment means you don’t get credit for extracurriculars. Not everything in your business has to be neat, tidy, and professional. 

And at the end of the day you’re the only one grading you.

Is the work getting done? Are you going up and to the right? Are you still in operation and good standing? Cool. You’re passing. 

Keep going.