I frequently speak at college campuses and trade apprenticeships. Whether it be to future engineers or contractors, my technical talks typically end up covering non-technical content, specifically career development. Typically, I’ll talk about the need to have a “learning” or “growth” mindset and illustrate that by talking about the stock market:
“The stock market grows, on average, about 8% to 10% per year. That means, at a macro level, if a company doesn’t grow or improve by 10% every year, it will fall behind competitors and likely go out of business. It also means that if you, as an individual, don’t grow or improve at a 10% rate every year, you will also fall behind the market, possibly leaving yourself stagnant or jobless, especially in the event of a market downturn.”