Joe R. has made my day.......

Exactly. I hated it when they started that everyone gets a trophy crap for kids. They grow up with the exact attitudes that Joe had to point out were not valid. You get online to start a business and you need to know things about doing business. You don't get rich for being able to turn on a computer. It's STILL business - just a different sort of office and store. Period.

"Everybody gets a trophy" is PC self esteem crap that contributed to the current decline we are experiencing. Whatever happened to someone actually earning the trophy?

As a former brick and mortar business owner, I am always baffled by how easy people think it is to start an online business.

A business is a business is a business.

Jacqeline,
I too am a former brick and mortar owner (though I released my first IM product before I became a brick and mortar owner) and I agree 100% with you.

Hey, I'm famous. Woohoo!

That thread is a trip man, everyone who suggested "hey, this might not be for you" was shouted down by the "never give up!" crew. I think it's an inherent contradiction that IM newbies need to realize and reconcile: they want the vets and gurus to "be straight" with them, but anything outside of "you can do it and get rich" falls on deaf ears.

This is why I hate when someone asks if they should not go to college so they can pursue IM full time. Each individual is different, but those who will truly be successful are well outside the bell curve. For every one person who "believed and acheived," there are hundreds flipping burgers and digging ditches or being forced to settle in life because they chose not to educate themselves.

Conversely, college isn't for everyone, whether it be a simple lack of intelligence or a lack of desire for professions that require a college education. Nothing wrong with that. These are the folks we should stop trying to convince to go to college.

Right there with ya Dan. We keep trying to fit people in these boxes that they have no business being in.

Colleges are great breeding grounds for innovative think-tanks - but they also need to take a dip in the cold pool of reality every now and then to temper the skin

Personally, I think entrepreneurship is something that should also be discussed in high schools, nowadays possibly in social studies in a freethinking sense, a business sense, and a stark reality sense. That will help to separate the wheat from the chaff and also encourage those with spirit, but also temper temerity.

I also think charity and NGO's should be discussed as options of civics...encouraging ideas to help your world around you with products and services that share the wealth as well as create it - self sustainable wealth - perpetual wealth - legacy wealth...but then again...maybe I'm just talkin' outa my hat...we'd just be giving away our secrets

"So it goes."

I'd like to see high school do more about life after high school in general. Things like managing your finances, choosing insurance, stuff like that which will immediately be useful. You could argue that this falls on the parents, and ideally I'd agree. Problem though is that you can have parents that can't manage money, are never around, and don't want to teach you (I got dealt that trifecta). Make it a class during senior year or something, call it Common Sense 101.

When I was in high school they they taught girls home economics and child development so they could run a home efficiently. Guys got automotive and shop. They taught econ, gov, and civics for the real world. Of course, there was nothing stopping girls from taking shop or guys taking home ec, either. Sometimes they'd cross over. The point though is they prepared you for life - real life, not just a future of answering to someone else forever.

When you played a game, you either won or lost and nobody had any significant trauma from losing. It was part of life. If you didn't like it, you tried harder next time. Now they barely teach the basics. I guess our Bored of Education (sp purposful) just decided that intelligent people were too efficient to need them or to keep them in line. Now schools are cut to indoctrination.

What I am wondering though - if they taught us so well back then -- how the hell did we ever get to where we would allow it to get this way?

@ Sal - just a footnote to the 'Bored of Education' - this should 'livin' things up...

Westboro attendee seeks seat on Kansas education board - KansasCity.com

Note: Not trying to stir any religious coals...just thought it was interestingly ironic...