Let’s start here: I’ve worked in brand strategy, advertising, and education for 25 years, and no one—not once—has asked what I majored in. Not a soul.
This is not because I have some secret credential. It’s because no one cares.
Unless you're planning to design bridges or prescribe antibiotics, your major is not your destiny. You don’t need to study business to be in business. And you don’t need to engineer your entire future by the time you're nineteen.
What you need is a brain that works, a bias toward action, and a few practical skills.
Let’s dismantle the myth of the “safe” degree
There’s an old script that still gets handed down like family china:
Study business or engineering.
Avoid art history.
Do something practical.
This script is wrong.
The economy is now built on ideas. Not just pipelines and balance sheets, but content, user experience, brand voice, and interface design. We don’t live in a world where you get one degree, one job, one gold watch. That ship has not only sailed—it’s at the bottom of the ocean being turned into coral.
Here’s what actually matters:
1. Nobody hires a diploma. They hire a person who can do things.
Outside of a few professional designations, your major is mostly background noise. Employers want to know:
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Can you think clearly?
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Can you communicate with humans?
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Can you solve problems that weren’t in the textbook?
If you can, you’re hired. If not, no degree will save you.
2. Skills beat credentials. Always have.
You don’t need an MBA to understand how business works. You need:
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Financial literacy. Can you read a P&L? Budget? Invest? If not, start with The Psychology of Money.
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Persuasion. You are always selling—yourself, your ideas, your value. Learn how.
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Writing and speaking. The people who can explain complex things simply will always have a job.
3. Creativity and adaptability are your best insurance policies.
AI is replacing anything repetitive. You don’t need to fear it—but you do need to be the kind of person who can pivot. Build something. See around corners. That’s where your value will lie.
And the good news? The so-called “soft” skills you pick up from a liberal arts degree are very much back in style. (Empathy. Synthesis. Original thought. All hot right now.)
4. Some of the most iconic business minds didn’t go to business school.
Jobs studied calligraphy. Schultz majored in communications. Branson dropped out entirely. What they had wasn’t a syllabus. It was initiative. Curiosity. The audacity to try.
5. Everything you need to learn is already online.
Courses. Books. Podcasts. Free certifications. You can learn sales from Alex Hormozi. You can learn marketing from HubSpot. You can learn coding, strategy, writing, finance—all from your laptop. And unlike your university, they won’t charge you $10K for parking.
6. Your network > your transcript.
Want to get ahead? Talk to people doing work you admire. Ask questions. Be useful. Stay in touch.
Most opportunities won’t come from a job board. They’ll come from someone who thought of you when a door cracked open. So be worth thinking of.
7. Ideas are cheap. Execution isn’t.
Every business started as someone’s rough sketch or shower thought. It became something because they built it. Not because they had a major that made it easy.
So if you’re feeling stuck in theory land? Make something. Build a website. Start a substack. Offer to run a friend’s Instagram. Launch a side hustle. Try. Adjust. Repeat.
You do not need to major in business to do well in business. You need courage. Curiosity. And a willingness to do the unsexy work, consistently, in the direction of something you care about.
If you’ve already got a degree that people love to mock? English, philosophy, art, theatre, anthropology? Don’t apologize for it. Use it. Learn what you need to learn. And go make something valuable.
Because the people who figure out how to create value in the world—on their own terms—always win in the end.