I recently appeared on the career services podcast of my dear alma mater, Hillsdale College.
Aptly named “Beyond the Bubble,” the podcast encourages Hillsdale students to think creatively about what their unique liberal arts training prepares them to do.
Listen to the episode here.
Some riffs on what attracted me to the podcast are below.
Content is kind to Hillsdale
Hillsdale College publishes a monthly speech digest with a circulation of over 5 million Americans. Its online courses have hundreds of thousands of enrollments.
In short, Hillsdale is a content marketing machine and there is no reason why its students can’t be either.
Finding your true fans
There’s a misconception that entrepreneurship must be done in volume. But, the internet has uniquely positioned entrepreneurs to target unique or so-called “long tail” markets.
This is a viable business strategy — so much so that tech publisher Kevin Kelly famously stated that it only takes 1,000 true fans to establish a serious business.
Hillsdale College is, by any measure, a unique college experience. It is one of the only colleges to take no government funding. It requires all students take a core of classes ranging from American Heritage to Introduction to Philosophy.
Hillsdale College students write…. a lot. Their education is unique, serious, and followed by millions across the country. 1,000 true fans, much?
My challenge for Hillsdale students on this podcast is to find their 1,000 true fans. They may think their Latin degree is useless; and, for many corporate jobs, it kind of is. (Well, employers think it is; we’ll lay this distinction aside for now.)
Where it’s very useful is as a source of content that people would be interested in. Imagine a blog or YouTube channel, “The Gen-Z Classicist.” Your host walks you through what it’s really like to study Latin in 2020 at a nationally respected classics department.
This is entrepreneurship
It sounds crazy to say that a Hillsdale College major is uniquely suited to entrepreneurship. But if we consider the “1,000 true fans” variant of entrepreneurship, it’s true. Entrepreneurship doesn’t necessarily mean going after the “next big thing” with loads of funding; simply packaging a unique combination of talents and offerings can provide a fulfilling, promising career.
Three Words: Start a Blog
I have been self-employed for going on two years now and each time I am asked how I got started my answer has been simple: “I started a blog.” If I could capture my “Beyond the Bubble” appearance in three words, it would be the same: “Start a blog.”
Of the many things I can attribute to my Hillsdale education, the drive to write (and the tenacity to improve at writing) stands at the front. I hope with my podcast I encourage Hillsdale students to see this as a directly marketable skill for entrepreneurship.
And you can do data too.
A good amount of the recording has to do with data analytics in particular, and getting into the field as a Hillsdale grad. As I mentioned in the episode, I was never a brilliant math student, but that didn’t preclude me from a career in analytics. In fact, “I can’t do analytics because I didn’t care for math in school” is one of the top myths of getting into the field.
Hillsdale grads can and should be interested in thinking computationally and diving into tech. At first, their liberal arts education may seem circuitous at best preparation versus a more technical training.
Over time, however, it’s the combination of a strong technical command plus the ability to teach, communicate and contextualize that will land the most lucrative opportunities. And that is what Hillsdale students are uniquely positioned to go after.
Enjoy the show
Please give the show a listen and check out the archives. I had a great time taping this podcast and was quite impressed by Ryan my interviewer and Sam the producer (who I had met earlier this year when I gave an R workshop; Hillsdale is a small campus.).
If you’re a Hillsdale student considering your careers options, you’re welcome to get in touch.
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