Successful High School Grads

There are lots of people who have decided to go to work after high school and didn’t go to college, but they became successful business owners, managers, professionals and investors.

My favorite example of this is about a guy I knew when I was in high school. We were all heading to college and he went to work for a junk yard, pulling fenders. But he was smart and it occurred to him that his body shop customers could save time if they could call one phone number to place their order. His employer had 2 junk yards in separate locations. He got 2 telex machines and one phone number and his employers let him prove his theory.  It worked. I ran into him 10 years later.  He was in a hotel near the St. Louis Airport hosting his annual appreciation dinner for his 300 customers and their wives. He flew his airplane from his home in Farmington Mo.

My brother dropped out of college after his first year. He got married and took a job as an Apprentice Electrician for McDonnell Aircraft.  They sent him to night school for 2 years and he graduated as a licensed Electrician. He was smart and quickly became one of their best Electricians. He worked a lot of overtime and always invested in stocks and bonds. He lived simply and kept his expenses low. His wife worked for Bell Telephone. He called me to announce that he was retiring after his 30 years of service, at age 59 to become an “investor”. His portfolio had reached $3 million and he declared himself a “financial maggot”. At age 67 his portfolio was $7 million.

One of my nephews moved to Colorado after his high school graduation to go snow-boarding and support himself working in restaurants. He became a snow-boarding champion and landed on the cover of their magazine. He and his buddy started building skate-board complexes. Later in Florida they expanded to general contracting. They now build schools.

Another nephew, his brother was an electronics genius from age 4.  He would get components from Radio Shack and build circuit boards. He was completely self-taught. He wired his house for everything you can imagine. He was also a musician and built his own sound systems. After high school, he set up sound systems for concerts. He is now the IT Director for a public school system.

In the 1970s, I ran across the APT Test. It measured abilities in reading, math and physics, It included occupational interest and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). It compared your score with successful college graduates.  I gave it to the Schwan Foods workforce and discovered that there were a lot of high school grads who scored better than successful college grads. These were smart kids who grew up in Kansas, did their chores and got good grades in high school, but didn’t go to college. I continued to promote from within.

There are lots of high school grads who own companies doing landscaping, construction, trucking, retail and restaurants.

There a lots of Associate Degree grads who own companies doing electrical, plumbing, electronics repair, IT service, HVAC service, concrete, paving, construction, machining, metal fabrication, etc.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader