My Daughters Might Skip College to Start a Business

I have two young daughters. They’re a long way from choosing a college, but I’ve started wondering what I’m supposed to tell them when they do.

For most of my life, the advice has been the same. Go to school, get an internship, take the junior job, and learn from somebody who knows what they’re doing. Sure, you’ll make a few embarrassing mistakes on someone else’s payroll. That’s how you get good.

But now, I’m less confident that job will be waiting for them.

Gartner says that by 2030, AI will allow most high-performing marketing teams to eliminate the traditional bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. In its survey of 1,303 senior leaders, 18% of marketing leaders said they had already eliminated certain roles because of automation. Nearly a third had redesigned roles, and 16% had created new ones. Not exactly shocking.

A junior marketer used to cut the first version of a video, pull numbers for a deck, write ten bad headlines to find one decent one, and sit in meetings trying to figure out why the client hated the idea. Those tasks aren’t glamorous, but the reps are meaningful.

Now a company can automate a lot of the first pass and ask the person it hires to bring judgment instead. That sounds efficient until you remember that judgment is what the kid was there to learn.

Gartner sees this problem too. Its advice is for CMOs to give junior employees more meaningful responsibility and coaching. I hope they do, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Meanwhile, the Education Department has finalized a rule that puts college programs’ federal student loan eligibility at risk if their graduates repeatedly fail an earnings test. The government will compare graduates’ earnings with those of workers with a lower level of education. A program that fails in two out of three measured years can lose access to Direct Loans. The new framework takes effect in 2027.

Look, I understand wanting to know whether a degree pays off. But I wouldn’t want my kid to spend four years waiting to find out if a company will hire her and teach her the business. I’d want her to try selling something useful while she’s young enough to make cheap mistakes.

Recently, my eldest got tired of hearing her mom and me read the same bedtime stories over and over. I thought my delivery was holding up. She did not.

So we came up with Tuck, a service that sends parents a new bedtime story to read to their kid each night. The first version cost us about $100 to make. Then we spent $300 on ads to see whether parents who had never heard of us would pay for it.

The math didn’t end up working out. Which is annoying, because I liked the idea. But also useful, because now we know to change the offer and the way we sell it before spending more.

I think about doing little experiments like that with my daughters as they get older. Come up with something people might want. Make a version you can afford to lose money on. Put a price on it, show it to strangers, and find out what happens.

I’m not saying a kid with a side business has no use for a degree. If one of my daughters wants to become a nurse, we’re going to have a very different conversation about school. And if a company offers her a junior job with a boss who takes teaching seriously, I’d be glad for her to take it.

But I want them to know they can start selling useful work regardless.

I’m not expecting a teenager to launch the next billion-dollar company. Getting a small business to break even while they figure out what to sell is plenty. By 22, they might have a handful of customers, a better idea of what their time is worth, and stories about the deals they lost.

Our friend and colleague Adam Gaedke was in a cycling accident near his home in Kohler, Wisconsin, and suffered a critical spinal injury. He underwent major surgery and is now at one of the best facilities in the country for intense physical therapy and recovery.

Adam means a lot to me. He came to Freddy Media after a long career as the COO of the Van Horn Automotive Group. Adam built our dealer services team and will continue to lead it for years to come. He has become one of my closest friends.

Here are some products we find useful and would encourage you to implement in your company.