This week's book: "The Wright Brothers" by David McCullough.
"The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power."
Wilbur Wright
We all know what the brothers from Ohio did. Here's what I’ve always wondered: how did two bicycle shop owners solve a problem the smartest, best-funded minds in the world had failed to figure out for centuries?
McCullough puts it plainly. Wilbur and Orville had, in his words, no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone but themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own.
What they had was curiosity, and the willingness to teach themselves.
So they did. They got reading lists from the Smithsonian. They studied the work of everyone who'd tried before them and found their errors. When the accepted data on wing design turned out to be wrong, they built their own wind tunnel. They built, tested, failed, adjusted, and tested again, for years. No professor, no permission, no map. Just a couple of self-taught brothers looking to solve a problem nobody else could.
That hits close to home.
I've never had much formal training in most of the things I ended up doing either. I suspect it is the same for you. I ran a commodity brokerage with no license (at first) and no management experience when I started. I started a painting company at 18 with 50 flyers and no idea what I was doing. I'm building this newsletter now with no background in writing. Almost everything worthwhile I've done, I had to teach myself as I went.
That's the lesson the Wright brothers show us, and it's the whole spirit behind what I'm trying to do here. You do not need any credentials to begin. You don't need permission, or funding, or a famous name. You need curiosity, the discipline to actually study the thing you want to do, and the stubbornness to keep going after it doesn't work the first hundred times.
Formal education is wonderful. But self-education, the kind you chase because you genuinely want to know, has built more remarkable lives than any diploma ever has. Abraham Lincoln comes to mind; no academy, no college, no university. Practically everything he learned was self-taught, including law.
As Wilbur put it, the best return always came from seeking more knowledge, not more power.
Something to try today
Think of something you've wanted to learn or do but talked yourself out of because you're "not trained" or "not qualified." Then take the Wright brothers' first step: go find a good source, a book, an article, a person who knows, and start teaching yourself. Not the whole thing. Just the first lesson. Nobody handed the Wrights a syllabus. Figure it out on your own. You can do it.
What's something you taught yourself, with no training, that you're a little proud of? I'd love to hear it.
I'll go first: honestly, this. I'm learning how to write and build a newsletter in real time, most days by doing it badly, then a little better the next day. My college degree is not in newsletter writing! I just have curiosity and a lot of reps. I’m getting there.
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More to come,
Mike
Practical wisdom for the life you're building