3 Lies They Tell You in School That Hurt You in Business If you hold on to everything you learned at school, you'll fail in business. Here's what you need to unlearn.
By Samuel Leeds Edited by Amanda Breen
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
When I started out in property and business, there were many lessons that I had to unlearn. If your job is to learn a task and follow someone else's process, then school is great preparation. School teaches you how to be a good employee, not a good entrepreneur. If you hold on to these ideas, they will prevent you from reaching your full potential as a business leader.
Don't get me wrong, there are certainly things that you can learn in the traditional education system that can help you as a business owner, but there are other things that will certainly limit your mindset if you carry them into the world of entrepreneurship. It is important to weed out these limiting beliefs while retaining anything that is useful.
Here are three school-taught lessons that you absolutely must not carry with you if you plan to succeed in business.
Related: 5 Habits That Made Me a Millionaire by 25
1. Don't copy
In school, you're taught that copying is cheating. But in the business world, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. As the world's best-known personal-development coach Tony Robbins says, "If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results."
Of course, that doesn't mean taking other people's copyright-protected work. It means copying business formulas that others have had success with, and once you've mastered them, putting your own spin on them. It means most things have been done a million times before, and you can learn from the mistakes of others. It means that while it takes many failures before success is reached, those failures don't all need to be yours.
Find people who have been there before you and learn from them. This can be indirectly (by reading their books or learning about their businesses) or directly (via mentorship or training).
Related: 3 Ways to Make Passive Income With Other People's Property
2. Learn everything before implementing
In school, you're expected to learn everything about a subject before you go out into the real world and start making money doing it. In business, the opposite is true: You need to learn the ABC, then implement it, before you worry about the XYZ. Only once you've implemented something have you truly learned it.
Many people will procrastinate and make excuses for themselves by claiming they have to learn everything about a topic before they take any action. Businesses are complex, and you'll never be able to learn it all. You won't be able to understand it properly until you get started. Learn exactly what you need to know to begin, and then begin. Keep learning, reading, attending trainings and masterminds throughout your business life, and get better as you go.
3. Don't make mistakes
In school, you're penalized for making mistakes. In business, you sometimes learn more from your mistakes than your successes. As businessman and author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, said, "Successful people don't fear failure but understand that it's necessary to learn and grow from."
Whenever things have gone wrong for me in business, there has always been a lesson. Once I learned the lesson, I was more successful than I was before. Even today, I never stop learning and growing.
Don't let the fear hold you back. Take action and fix what doesn't work along the way. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and grow. See the opportunity, act on it and make your fortune.
Related: Cryptocurrency Millionaires Are Diversifying Into Property. You Should Be Too.
