The Education of Millionaires

October 31, 2011
After a slow start, this book launches into a series of riveting interviews and life lessons featuring hugely successful business people, such as Russell Simmons and Sean Parker, who didn't finish college, and instead forged their own path. Ellsberg, who blogs about entrepreneurialism for Forbes.com, is zealous about following one's passion, and maintains that college courses are woefully insufficient for tackling real life. Instead, it's better to embrace risk within a framework of unstinting work and "street smarts." As he explains: "We've basically just trained ourselves to be cogs in a machineâ¦skills we've been training 16 years to develop have no impact in the workplace at all." He also argues that "no single skill you could possibly learn correlates more directly with your real-world success than learning sales." Ellsberg suggests valuing life-long learning and voracious reading.