Stick with school at all costs!
You have a chance to make money by partnering/outsourcing work, whereas just dropping IM altogether guarantees no additional money made, so I would consider that. You can always do IM later in life, but it is much more difficult to get through college later. I'd say your priorities should be as follows:
1. School
2. Outsourcing (if you have the time to monitor/train your workers)
3. JV
4. School + IM yourself (but it sounds like this isn't really a good option based on your OP)
Believe me when I say that school can really pay off. I did 7 years of college, have a bachelors, masters and doctorate and it has paid off big time, and now I do both IM (part time) and my "day" job (which I hope to ditch in a few years to do IM full-time).
Don't despair. Take the difficult road now and you'll reap the benefits later. Stick with school no matter what!
Let me get somethin straight here...
You did 7 years of school and spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on it during that entire time period, used that degree to get your "day job", and now you hope to ditch that very day job that you got the degree for to do IM full-time?
You're saying how important the degree and college was but yet you want to completely ditch everything that you got because of it.
It doesn't make much sense to me and sounds like a big contradiction.
If you have the opportunity to pursue IM full-time and make enough with it where you can support yourself and your family and never have to work a regular job again, then what's the point in spending all that time and money going to college if you're never going to use it?
And I hate the argument of "well having a degree is more secure because you can fall back on it". Who's to say that you will even be able to find a job with your degree anyway? And if you do find a job, how do you know you won't be fired any day due to downsizing or whatever else?
Not trying to attack you or anything here, but I just disagree with your argument seeing as you yourself want to do IM full-time which doesn't require any sort of degree or college education, and then on the other hand you tell the OP to stick with college at all costs.
A friend of the family has the same degree that I'm going for, and he makes 300K/yr at 35 years old. That's something nice to fall back on as plan B I believe.
Just because your friend of the family makes 300k with his degree doesn't mean you will necessarily make anything close to that. How do you know you will even be able to find a job in that specific field anyway?
Nothing is guaranteed just because you have some piece of paper that says you completed X amount of credits and got a degree.
I'm sure there are hundreds or thousands of others also trying to get jobs in that same field as you.
A college degree can teach proper English. I have my college degree and let
me tell you it's one of the best things you can do in your life. I make "a
fortune" being a boss of people that patrol local streets at night and
protecting families. It's about doing what you love and what means most in
your life. I love internet-marketing, but I think it's kind of unstable. One day
you could be banking a lot, and the next day you could make $0. As with
work, I can go in work 10-hours and have no worries. (Plus City Benefits ^_^)
I think the younger black hatters have it in their heads that Black Hat is a
way to avoid college. It isn't. If you really want to master Black hat, get a
degree to fall back on in case something doesn't go through. Just my two cents.
PS: worth does not equal work.
And trust me I'm a total leader with a college degree. (I lead 15 different people.)
Thanks.
I would suggest focusing on college.
And what happens when you walk into work one day and they decide to let you go because they can't afford to pay you anymore? How is that "stable" or "secure". One day you're making money, and the next day you're making $0 just like that. Doesn't sound any different to me.
Then what happens if you can't find another job in your field or even in any field? If you're your own boss, you won't have that problem because you're not relying on someone else to pay you.
Maybe it will never happen to you, but lots of others thought the same thing and apparently they are out of jobs right now too. I don't know where you're from, but here in the States the unemployment rate is around 10% I believe. I think it's safe to say that a majority of these people have degrees too so what does that tell you?
Let me also ask you this...does your line of work have anything remotely to do with your degree? Being the boss of people that patrol local streets at night doesn't sound like something you need to go to school for 4 years for. Maybe you could have gotten that job anyway without going to school.
I'm just trying to play the other side of the coin here since almost everyone that has responded to this thread is trying to push college and getting a degree onto the OP even though he sounds like he's doing OK with his IM ventures.
Sure college is good for some people, but it's definitely not a requirement to be successful nor do you need it to fall back on if you know what you're doing.
A lot of millionaires/billionaires never went to college and if they did, their businesses have nothing to do with the degrees they got. Just proves that self-education is WAY more valuable than anything you could learn in a University unless you want to specialize in something like a doctor, lawyer, etc.
My advice to the OP: Do what you feel comfortable with. If you're almost done with school, then you might as well finish it just because you already spent that much time there. I definitely wouldn't give up on IM though. Try to outsource more of it for now or just spend a little less time on it if you're having trouble focusing on both.
