So maybe you just graduated? Good for you! I did a little over a month ago after 8 years of going to school on and off.

Maybe you graduated a while ago and you’re underemployed. Maybe you just got whatever you could get because you were tired of filling out applications?

Or you’ve graduated and after hundreds of applications you’re still unemployed?

Or maybe you’ve given up the job hunt altogether and are thinking about going back to school for your Master’s Degree because you don’t know what else to do?

Regardless of your exact situation, you probably thought that a degree would be your golden ticket to getting a well-paying job? I know I did. You took the risk that all those student loans would be worth it once you get your first job right after you graduate.

Except it isn’t.

You spend hours scouring LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, and whatever other job places that you can find. You have it down to a science! You apply to any and every position.

You get rejection email after rejection email and you’re starting to get discouraged. Depressed even. You start to wonder why you wasted so much time pursuing a degree that you can’t do anything with. You start to feel worthless and you spend all day feeling sorry for yourself.

I did. I was close to dropping $20,000 and wasting another 2 years of my life to go back to school to get an MBA because I felt like I’d at least be doing something with my time. I thought that it would look good on a resume. But that’s exactly what I thought about having a Bachelor’s degree. That’s probably what you thought too, huh?

You start thinking that a job, any job would be better than nothing. You’re close to trading your time just for money. Regardless of how miserable that job may make you.

You start to think “I’ll just suck it up for a bit because there’s just no other way.” That you “should do something with this degree because you so worked hard for it and sacrificed so much.” You start to feel guilty that you have a degree while there’s many others who don’t have such a thing. Except you’re now willing to work a job that you didn’t need a degree for in the first place so you’re not better off than they are.

But there’s another way. A better way. It probably won’t be easier. But it’ll be much more fulfilling. It’s a long-term solution to a short-term problem.

You’ll be able to change games. No, not change the way the game is played that you’re trying to get into. That’s called the rat race and we don’t want to participate if we don’t have to. You’ll be able to create the game that you want to play. You’ll be able to create the rules. Make rules that you want to live by; not ones that others have put in place for you.

You get to control the way you spend your time. If you control your time, you control your life. How freakin’ cool is that?!

So what exactly am I talking about?

I’m talking about starting a business. Your business. Your business can be whatever you want it to be. To quote Jay Z, “I’m not a business man. I’m the business, man.”

I’ve applied to a couple positions where they’re looking for someone with entrepreneurial spirit which can sound enticing but it’s not. It’s just a fancy way to say that we want you to bust your ass and work hard. We want you to think that you’re your own boss but we want you to play by our rules. Oh, and we want you to have to pay us a certain percentage because we’re giving you this incredible opportunity!

Fuck that!

You probably think you don’t know the first thing about business. It’s okay because you do. You’ve made it this far in life. You’ve gotten a damn degree which not a lot of people can say.

No one knows a damn thing when they first try do something new. But you know what’s cool? You get better. You can get good.

You can truly control your “destiny.”

Oh, you don’t have a job? That’s perfect! You don’t need one to start a business. You just need time. Fortunately, that’s exactly what you have when you don’t have a job. You probably have so much time that you waste a lot of it by playing a shit ton of video games or checking Facebook every 5 minutes.

That’s about to change.

You’re about to become the CEO. The CFO. Head of Marketing. Everything.

You answer to no one but yourself. You get out what you put in. Sure, you have to give the people what they want! (Your customers) But you have fun doing it. You feel alive. You are passionate and you spend your time doing something that you enjoy.

Not a lot of people can say that. I know from experience. I worked a corporate gig for almost 3 years and all my co-workers were miserable. Most of my customers too.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Stop relying on someone else to make things happen for you. Stop being at the mercy of a recruiter for an interview. Stop putting all your hope and energy into getting a “job.”

You have time. You have a chip on your shoulder that things didn’t turn out how you’d hope they would.

Sometimes the best thing that could happen is not getting what you wanted. Find the silver lining. It is what it is. Get pissed off. Get pissed that you did what you were told and went to college. Get pissed at yourself that you’re letting someone else dictate your life.

Realize that you have an incredible opportunity that not everyone gets. You have time. You have time to realize exactly what you want out of life and you can create your life how you want to to get there. You have little responsibilities.

You’re intelligent. Stop thinking you need a shit ton money to start a business. I’ll prove to you that you don’t.

To quote The Wolf of Wall Street, “the only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.”

So all I can ask now is, “what better place than here? What better time than now?”

(Think Rage Against the Machine’s Guerrilla Radio)

Let’s do this.

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