A few years ago I was working four jobs. The same ones everybody I knew had on their resume.
Front desk at a gym. Swim instructor. Kids’ program. Nanny.
I showed up early. I stayed late. I was good at all of them.
I was not lazy. Those jobs just led nowhere.
Nowhere to move up. No skill getting sharper. Nobody above me teaching me anything.
And everyone told me the same thing. Go to college, get the degree, then you can build a real career. So that is what I believed. That there was a line I could not cross until somebody handed me a piece of paper.
That is not true. And nobody tells you that.
Then I crashed my car and lost almost everything in one afternoon.
Then someone introduced me to a CEO who needed an assistant. One Zoom call. No degree.
That one job opened more doors than four years of work ever did.
I finally had someone above me worth learning from. I learned how a real business runs. How decisions get made at the top. How to become someone a leader depends on.
Those are real skills. They are mine. Nobody can take them back. And I never needed a degree to get them.
I took the fear of being average and made it my advantage.