“You’ve been fed a lie. The lie is that if you study hard, get good grades, get into a good college, and get a degree, then your success in life is guaranteed.”

We’ve all heard this lie, and it’s certainly a convincing one. After all, it used to be true. But many people didn’t notice it gradually becoming less true as the world changed, with tuition skyrocketing and job prospects dimming.

In The Education of Millionaires, Michael Ellsberg explores alternative paths followed by millionaire and billionaire college dropouts. His point isn’t that education is unimportant, but that it doesn’t have to come from a lecture hall. He makes a strong case that what it really takes to get ahead today is self education over formal education, practical intelligence over academic intelligence.

Although I’ve read several books on this theme, I found this one to be perhaps the best of them. In fact, the only thing I didn’t love about this book was the title (just because it’s a little bland). Everything else was great.

Specifically, I liked:

• The plethora of interviews and case studies of the rich and famous, including Russell Simmons (fashion), Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker (Facebook), Matt Mullenwag (WordPress), David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Phillip Ruffin (casinos), and John Paul DeJoria (hair care products)
• The interviews of the not-quite-yet rich and famous (such as he and his wife), whose situations may be easier for most of us to relate to
• The practical information about key success skills such as networking, marketing, sales, branding, and bootstrapping, and his style of “teaching you how to teach yourself how to fish”
• How he anticipates and overcomes objections that most authors ignore, like “well, that might work if you have endless amounts of money to burn, but what if…”

Are we in an education bubble that will burst in the coming years? It’s hard to be sure. In the meantime, consider this book mandatory reading for any student of success, dropout or not.

Forty years ago, Richard Bolles asked job seekers “What color is your parachute?” It turns out that he may not have been speaking metaphorically.

The Dewey Color System offers a free career test based entirely on color preferences – just spend a minute clicking on the colors you like most or least. They claim it is now the world’s most accurate career test.

Compared to the general public, CEOs are three times more likely to choose magenta, three times less likely to choose red, and three and a half times less likely to choose yellow.

What does this mean? According to the Color Career Counselor test, CEOs are more sensitive and private than average, less likely to be dominant or a perfectionist, and more likely to be emotionally unstable.

The makers of this test say it measures 16 personality factors, including independence, anxiety, self-control, extraversion, and tough-mindedness. They also say it may identify things such as overeating tendencies or emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

Its supporters say that this simple test is as valid as the much lengthier Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (not a career test, BTW) and Gallup StrengthsFinder, and much harder to influence. Some people have called it eerily accurate, others have likened it to horoscopes.

I gave it a try to see how accurate it was for me. (It asks for an email address at the end, but it’s optional, and you have to skip past one ad). The results were mixed at best.

For my best occupational category, it said:

You’re a CREATOR
Keywords: Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

Check, kind of.

For my second best occupational category, it said:

You’re a SOCIAL MANAGER
Keywords: Tactful, Cooperative, Generous, Understanding, Insightful, Friendly, and Cheerful

Um, no.

And as with any career test I’ve ever seen, the list of suggested occupations is so ridiculously broad as to be useless.

While I wasn’t wowed by my results, I think color preference probably does say something about you. But for now, a good old fashioned verbal test seems more likely to show your true colors.

Photo by tibchris

I’m not really into career books, so at first I wasn’t particularly interested in this book called The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great, even though it’s a bestseller. Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have read it if the author Rick Smith hadn’t sent me a copy.

But it’s good, really good. It’s really not about traditional career advice, but more about how ordinary people make a quantum leap from an average life to a great life. One example is the author himself, who went from being fired from a job he didn’t care about to starting World 50, an elite executive networking company.

Other case studies are a door-to-door fax machine saleswoman who started her own clothing line, a shrimp farmer who became a renowned genetics expert, a software designer who became a leading advocate for the homeless, and a guy named Bill Gates who started a company called Microsoft.

The book is about how to make your own leap by following three rules. The first rule is to find your primary color, which represents the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions.

It’s illustrated with a color chart, with red representing curiosity, green representing execution, and blue representing leadership. Where do these intersect for you?

You can find out your primary color for free at http://www.primarycolorassessment.com. It takes about 15 minutes, and an email address is required, but you can use a fake one if you want since they give you the results right there in the web page. My results are below.

It says:

YOUR PRIMARY COLOR IS:
CANDY APPLE RED – Wildly Curious

Congratulations! Your primary color is that specific area of the spectrum that best represents the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions. Be sure to check out the So What?! and Now What?! tabs for additional information and resources.

Curiosity is the cornerstone of this color area. You are energized by the new and novel…interested in trying new things and exploring innovative approaches and solutions. Leaders in this cluster are generally most comfortable and effective when leading through vision and ideas. You are decisive, yet are always looking for a better answer and need time to think and explore alternatives.

Fast paced go-go environments can be a negative place for you even though you may be energetic and driven. You are also quality driven and motivated by achieving excellence. If you are a STRONG RED, others may see you as idealistic and perfectionistic – certainly difficult to please – never settling for “just OK.”

I thought “wildly curious” was accurate, but a couple of things jumped out at me. First, 0% for execution? Do I really have that little follow through? The other thing is that these numbers add up to 94%. Did 6% of my soul leak out?

Then I thought that maybe they’re not supposed to add up to 100%, but each one can be 100% for a max total of 300%. And I saw that the inside of the book jacket shows a screenshot with 95% curiosity, 21% execution, and 86% leadership, for a total of 202%.

Now my scores look really low! Oh well, I’m focusing on the color rather than the numbers.

I agree with him that the MBTI isn’t useful for career planning, but then again it’s not meant to be, despite what everyone thinks.

To find your field, you’d want something that measures strengths and passions, like his primary color assessment. One thing I’d like to see is what other people with my primary color have done to make their leap.

I do think he has some good insights about how to live the life you’re supposed to have, and the common elements among ideas that really take off. If you’re looking to make a leap, you’ll love this book.

If you take the primary color assessment, please tell us your color. Any other candy apple reds out there?

It’s not that often that I buy books printed on that ancient material known as paper, but I made an exception for this new book on career planning by recovering lawyer/serial entrepreneur Jonathan Fields.

This is a guy who knows that the conventional way of career building just isn’t working anymore–he got his wake up call when job stress put him in the emergency room with a softball-sized abscess in his intestine. And the conventional way certainly isn’t working for people whose passion happens to be in something like art, music, cooking, or teaching.

What option is there, other than being a career renegade?

This book is called Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love. And what it’s all about can be summed up with a few lines from Jonathan’s own site:

“Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow” Is A Lie. More Often Than Not, You Need To Make The Money Follow. This Book Shows You How…

Doing what you love is pretty easy. I mean, just do it. You don’t need a book to tell you how to do that. But to actually make a living from it, that’s the hard part. And that’s exactly what Career Renegade is about.

The back cover caught my eye when it said that you can turn nearly any passion into a better payday, even video games. I was like, “Oh, come on Jonathan! Fine, I’ll read it, but you’d better be able to back up that claim!”

And yes, he did. But there’s a catch. Jonathan’s right, you can’t just “do what you love and the money will follow.” But, what most people don’t realize is that with creativity and hard work, you can figure out how to express your passion in a way that people will pay you for it. Like the guy who played video games.

Jonathan has run a lot of different businesses personally, as well as studied many other entrepreneurs. By doing this, he’s observed what successful businesses have in common, and learned the different ways of finding opportunities where most people wouldn’t see any. He has case studies of people who are making a living from things you wouldn’t think you can get paid for, and he explains how you can apply these lessons to your own passion.

A big part of what makes this possible is recent changes in the internet, such as blogging, social media, keyword research tools, self publication tools, PR sites, freelance sites, etc. This really does make things a lot easier, and he goes into a lot of detail about how this all works.

But while he includes a lot of detailed information, this is not a book purely focused on the internet. It takes a very broad perspective, starting with “I have a passion. Now what?” and helping you figure out ways to turn it into a career. It deals with issues like cultivating the right mindset, and getting your family on board. It presents a lot of practical information, plus tons of resources for learning a lot more.

Considering the glut of career books we see these days, I was pleasantly surprised by Career Renegade. I’d suggest following Seth Godin’s advice: “Go, read it, get started, hurry.” Be a Career Renegade.

You might know Jonathan Fields, the recovering attorney who now writes about work, life, entrepreneurship, and play on his blog Awake At The Wheel. He’s recently come out with a free ebook (no email required) called The Fire Fly Manifesto, in which he asks:

“Do you consciously choose to pursue a soul-sucking path defined by excess money, toys, burn-out and increased agitation, anxiety, depression, alienation and false security or will you take this window as an opportunity to rebuild your living around the quest for purpose, passion, health, friendship, love, time spent doing what you love with people you love, a body that doesn’t horrify you, a heart that’s not on the verge of failing and a career that fills your soul and provides enough to live very comfortably in the world?”

This ebook is a short, thought-provoking read. Near the end, he introduces his new blog Career Renegade, with its audio interviews with real career regenades.

This is all free. But for a little money, you can pre-order his book Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love (it’s out January 13th). If you pre-order his book, you get free admission to Flight School, his 16 hour online training program about accelerating your career evolution (it goes live January 1st, and you need to enter your book order confirmation number to sign up for Flight School). And if you’re one of the first 1,000 people to pre-order the book, and you sign up for Flight School by December 15th, you get access to his two upcoming live Q&A calls.

Yeah, all the offers are a little confusing, but you can start with his free ebook The Fire Fly Manifesto.