05 Sep No Degree and the Weird Feeling of Entrapment, Imposter Syndrome, etc

I don’t have a college degree, and I have zero intentions of getting one.  As mentioned in my debt story I had some student loans. Sadly, those were a healthy dollar amount in exchange for probably not only less than but significantly less than the normal amount of college credits a sophomore would have.  Come to think of it, I might not even have received sophomore completion status as I basically stopped trying at a certain point when I decided to chase my career trajectory instead of academics. Chances I ever figure out how many college credits I have? Zero percent chance.

While I tread lightly on my thoughts on what others should do for college, I have zero regrets about my decision to drop out of college 90% of the time.  The 10% of the time I do care is when I think about just going to do something else or different with my current job and career, that lack of “piece of paper” that should be meaningless, has always been a sticking point for me.  I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome from the day I landed the job at my current company, and it continues in varying capacities to this day.

Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which one doubts one’s accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud.”

How is that definition for a dose of reality regarding my confidence levels? I’ll break down where specifically and how my impostor syndrome manifests itself in my thought patterns in regard to career, development and prospective change. First, lacking the degree is a pretty straight forward situation and I think anyone reading can at least grasp the concept of that fear being reasonable in some capacity as it is a limiting factor.  For example, I have this (potentially irrational) fear that hiring managers for larger companies than I currently work for have a check box where they auto-filter out and won’t even review a resume that comes from an inbounding candidate without a degree.  On the flip side, as I’m sure many readers are already thinking at this point, who cares, experience is far more valuable than a piece of paper.  While I agree with that sentiment and I’ve had countless highly successful professionals tell me my twelve years of professional business to business model experience is exponentially more valuable than any degree.  Some have gone as far to say it exceeds an MBA aside from a more specific targeted study in the field and reading of financial statements. Still I find myself coming from a place of inadequacy or a further need to prove the significance and importance of my role, industry, and success levels within not only my company but industry as a whole.

This brings me to the industry I cut my teeth on, building maintenance is the sexier way to say it because some people might think repairs, minor construction, or something of a skilled trade level.  The more in tune, those that actually dwell for a moment hear cleaning, toilets, and vacuuming.  The disrespectful folks think, how hard can it be?It’s just cleaning, or anyone can clean.  The wise recognize its leadership at a high level, and your results are 100% reliant on the results of individual people in a highly unsupervised industry, with those doing the work earning very little money and are motivated to work as fast as possible to essentially inflate their hourly wage.  I’ve carefully conveyed to a customer here or there that has crazy high expectations, that people make mistakes and everyone that uses the building gets an opinion about the quality or lack of quality of work.  Every single person.  Certainly, there are other careers where everyone has an opinion about your work, but in the janitorial world everyone has an opinion about your work, and they form an opinion about your performance daily in many cases as trash, vacuuming, and restroom stocking/cleaning is often performed daily.

When laid out as I have above, my success begins to make much more sense, but how do you convey that in a cover letter or resume? The truth is, I’ve never tried so I have no idea.  I have been in my VP role for a couple of years, Director level role for four years prior, and a Territory Manager/Account Executive Role for five years prior to that and here I reside, an imposter in my own mind.  I dislike what I do enough to stay motivated to grow my asset column, decrease my liability column and forge ahead toward FI.  However, I like it enough and am highly compensated thus I don’t really try all that hard to exit. While I have the imposter syndrome from a resume standpoint, I’ve validated my track record in other manners where I’m able to be more transparent and set myself up for a bigger future.

What this all boils down to is that while I could make an effort to write a perfect resume, tweak cover letters and apply for a bunch of different high-level jobs, I simply don’t want to for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s not easy to replace my income level, there are few jobs that are posted at any given time that might flirt with my income level or a compensation structure that I believe I’m worth.  To add insult to injury, most jobs don’t post a compensation range so while I may assume a Director or VP level job posted may pay a certain amount, you don’t often find out compensation very early on in the interview process.  Second, while I’m okay working for someone else for a period of time, I know it’s not forever and my dear wife keeps saying whenever the subject comes up, “I know you want to be your own boss and I really don’t see how you can work for anyone else long term.”  Are you starting to see the imposter syndrome fading away?

I’ve validated my skill set in some capacity in a few other unique ways, without having to submit resumes and get job interviews through professional coaches and seeking business opportunities.  Career coaches are awesome, and I should pay them more frequently and consistently than I do.  I currently use them on an as-needed basis since I primarily use their services to get my head space right while being in some kind of significant disagreement with my current boss.  My hope long term would be that my company would provide a career coach for myself and the two other VPs but in that relationship, there are limitations to what I can say and thus I’ll still have to hire my guy on the side anyway out of my own pocket which is okay and an investment worth every penny.  When I became serious about potentially leaving my job and recognizing the job market for my income level was going to be a major uphill battle, I sought out business ownership instead.

First, I sat down with a business broker that came highly recommended by someone I deeply trust, and we talked for about two hours.  We deep dove into my goals, track record, skill sets, history, financials etc.  While I realize it’s his job to sell me a business, the conversation was very validating of who I was and what I was doing and watching him look into businesses that would fit my skill set in all shapes and sizes, it really helped open my eyes to what I’ve accomplished and that a degree really shouldn’t mean as much as it once did.  As we continued our pursuit to potentially purchase a business, we stumbled across a new franchise concept, in a great industry that has been around for decades.  Knowing I didn’t have the net worth requirements needed, I went for it anyway and asked for a meeting.  I pursued this opportunity heavily and believed we’ll move forward at some point in the next twelve to eighteen months, however Covid19 has slowed that down.  I initially brought in a partner to help solve the financial requirements problem but went through essentially an interview process with the area developer and eventually was granted approval for a license to operate one or more franchises under the brand but decided it wasn’t the right fit or time and we moved on.

This post title talks about not having a degree, and I’ve spoken very little about the degree or lack thereof, but everything shared here is the reason that there even is a post about not having a degree.  Without all of this other detail, this would be a super short post and could likely stand on its own in a hundred forty characters on Twitter.

While I know that college was not the right fit for me, I am very careful about my words with others and their path or potential path.  Even in our household with my soon to be four year old son, we have earmarked on our first rental property as his college fund yet I tell people all the time I hope he becomes a plumber or electrician and that home becomes his business startup fund once he’s gone out and gained experience.

I don’t have a degree, I’m never going to get one, and I’m (becoming) okay with that.