After graduating part-time from Berkeley’s MBA program in 2006, I wanted to start Financial Samurai. But even after taking courses in business, marketing, and finance, everything I needed to start a business, I didn’t.
My excuse was that my firm, Credit Suisse, had paid for 80% of my MBA education, and I felt an obligation to pay it back with focus and honesty. In addition, I wanted more information before I gave up. Most of my other MBA classmates did the same and returned to corporate life.
Going back to companies is a safe option. Bad pay, health and retirement benefits, a false sense of financial security, it’s comfort. It’s comforting, I mean. But luxury has a price, and that price is spiritual growth and financial opportunity costs that can be huge.
This year marks 20 years since I received my MBA, and one thing has never been clearer: you don’t need it. You can do remarkable, profitable, and meaningful things whether you have information, knowledge, or pedigree. And if you live in a free world with unlimited power, not taking a leap of faith can be the most dangerous decision of all.
The Inspirational Audacity to Just Do Things
In 2008, I was stopped by a best-selling book about wealth, written by a 26-year-old who was not rich. He probably didn’t have the right experience and was selling career development courses. People loved it. They paid him a small fee. It was a very difficult thing.
Meanwhile, I had waited until I had at least 10 years of post-finance experience, until I was 33 and confident enough to be “taken seriously,” before launching Financial Samurai. Waiting three years after graduating from business school was a terrible mistake. I’ve lost years of compounding learning, compounding trust, and compounding influence.
I should have just launched it and seen it on the way. The more you do, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you gain.
Today, the same 26-year-old author is determined to become a relationship guru, offering family advice even though she has no children of her own. It doesn’t matter. He is out there doing things. Taking action. Making a fortune, and not caring what anyone thinks.
You don’t need permission – History proves it
The most encouraging thing about the examples below is not that these people succeeded. It’s a small way they start.
Sarah Blakely he was a door-to-door fax machine salesman when he had the idea for Spanx. She invested her entire life’s worth of $5,000 to launch a company, with no fashion background, no investors, and no sales experience. He called himself a producer and taught himself copyright law because he couldn’t afford a lawyer. In 2012, she was one of the youngest self-made female entrepreneurs in the world.
Jan Koumthe founder of WhatsApp, came to America as a teenager from a small village in Ukraine. She lived on food stamps while her mother worked as a nanny, and she taught herself to type from library books. He didn’t finish college. He went on to sell WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion.
Colonel Harland Sanders he didn’t open his first KFC franchise until he was 60 years old. The only cooking experience she had was cooking for her siblings as a child, and a series of odd jobs. He drove across the country sleeping in his car, delivering his recipe to restaurant owners. He was rejected more than 1,000 times.
Richard Branson 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 was entering.
None of these people waited until they were ready. None of them had the “right” background. They just started, and turned accordingly.
Make a Killing in Money Management, Even Poor Performance
In my previous post on how a FIRE investor can’t be too wrong, I said that you can make $500,000 to $2 million a year as a Wall Street strategist and not have to be right most of the time. But even as a money manager, you can still make money and lose people’s money.
All you need is one attractive year, one big bet that pays off, and you can raise money from investors forever, no matter how you do after that. Michael Burry from The Big Short is a classic example. He made short subprime loans before the 2008 crisis. Since then, his performance has been subpar. But his brand is set. His aura is strong.
In a recent example, the fund manager below posted a refreshingly candid tweet admitting that his fund was down 25.5% in the first quarter of 2026, and returned -3.4% in March alone, net of fees. This compares with the S&P 500 down 4.3% in 2026. Despite underperforming by 21.2%, the fund was able to charge fees because that’s what its customers signed up for.
cContinuously making the market is difficult, but most of us always hope that we can do it.
You can just do things and build wealth. The gatekeepers are not as powerful as you think.
EQ and Communication Skills
Here’s something data analysts often say: perhaps the biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people isn’t where they started. It is their emotional intelligence, their ability to connect, communicate, listen, and move people.
IQ gets you into the room. EQ keeps you who you are.
Consider the entrepreneurs above. Sara Blakely didn’t just have a good product. He personally showed it to Neiman Marcus shoppers in a fitting bathroom. Jan Koum built WhatsApp around a simple understanding about what people really needed. Colonel Sanders was not selling chicken. He was selling a story, a handshake, and a dream..
Here’s what improving your EQ actually looks like in practice:
Listen more than you talk. Many people are waiting for their turn to speak. The rare person who genuinely listens, asks follow-up questions and remembers what you said last week, becomes unforgettable. Clients, investors, and partners are attracted to people who make them feel heard.
Learn to speak clearly and emphatically. Whether you’re writing a newsletter, launching a product, or posting on social media, the ability to express ideas in clear, honest, and relatable language is a powerful strength. You don’t need an MFA. You need to practice. Write every day. Speak in front of people. Embarrassed a few times. Get better.
Build real relationships, not network. There is a difference between collecting LinkedIn connections and actually getting to know people. The first is empty. The last one is how opportunities arise out of there. Show people where they don’t need you, and they’ll show up to you if you do.
Market yourself unapologetically. This makes a lot of ignorant and smart people get stabbed. But if you did something good and no one knows about it, it probably didn’t happen. You don’t have to show up, but you have to show up.
Develop empathy as a business skill. The best products, services, and pieces of content all start with a deep understanding of how the other person feels. What problems do you feel in your life that you have not solved properly?
EQ doesn’t come from a diploma. You can’t buy it in high school. But you can build it, starting today, and it will take you further than anything else.
What Should You Throw Away?
I quit 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 I volunteer regularly. And something worries me there.
I see shy children who seem afraid to say hello to a stranger or start a conversation. And I wonder if the school is quietly training them to stay inside the box. Get good grades. Get into the best university you can find. Then go sell your time to a company whose product you don’t even like.
I’m not sure I want this for my children.
I don’t make a fixed salary. I quit 13 years on Wall Street before I had enough, and that money formed the foundation I have now. If you love your job, or need it, stay. Build your security.
But if you’ve had enough of being part of the red army, if you’ve been lying awake wondering what would have happened if you’d tried, something has to change. Because failure fades away. Compounds of regret.
He looked past the gatekeepers
People will still see where you studied any subject on your business card. That’s human nature and it probably won’t disappear completely. But the power of the gatekeepers quickly dissipated.
With technology and AI, there is no independence of information. You can start something real, from scratch, with almost nothing. You don’t need an advanced degree, a VC check, or a famous surname. You don’t need permission.
So please, dear son, dear daughter, dear student, start before you are ready. The best entrepreneurs in history did just that. Not because they were careless, but because they understood that the cost of inaction, the slow erosion of potential, is much higher than the cost of failure.
If you wait for permission, I promise the result will not be as profound as if you jump in and try.
Stacks of $100 bills won’t even get you. But if you start walking, you might just stumble upon it.
Related posts:
Why I Will Always Regret Selling My Online Business For Millions
Average Net Worth for an Above Average Person
Readers, why don’t many people take a leap of faith and just do things without experience or assurances? What is stopping you from starting a business that solves a problem you and others have? And how important is marketing and creating the illusion of knowing rather than actually being skilled?
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