Building Your Own Apprenticeship and How to Make Employers Say Yes (DF#138)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Her answer was always the same thing. You can do anything or you can pretty much do anything that you want. We meant the best intentions by giving that answer. We meant that to be encouraging. We meant that to be like, hey, the world is your oyster. You can go and do this. You can make this happen because I do believe that you can do anything that you set your mind to. Aloha, folks.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:27]:
Welcome back to degree free. I am really excited to have you here this week as in every week. Before we get into today's episode, I did want to say we're getting a lot of questions in our contact forms. And, guys, it's really, really difficult to go through all of the contact forms and all of the emails and everything. If you guys have a question for the podcast and you want it answered, one of the best ways you could do that is go to ask.degreefree.coforward/question. There's actually a bunch of them that's already in there. And you're saying, thing yourself, Ryan, I heard that a month ago, and then I submitted my question and you still haven't answered it. For all of you that have already submitted your question.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:10]:
Thank you so much. We are trying to compile them and then we are going to formulate answers to them. And then we're going to answer all of them in probably another episode. We're gonna do, like, a mailbag episode where we'll answer all of them, but we're compiling them all first. If you guys have questions, please go to ask that degree free.co forward slash question and that's singular question and ask your question there. The reason why that's the best way to ask your question and then get an answer is because that scales for us. We can make content out of that, and we can put that out on the podcast. We can put that on TikTok, so on and so forth.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:45]:
And I'm just being honest with you. When it's just an email, you're basically asking for personalized advice, which is what you're asking for, and that's fine. When I get a 150 emails every single day, asking personalized advice, I can't answer them all. And then it's me answering one person at a time. Whereas if you ask me ask.degreefree.coforward/questioninawaythat I've set up so that you can go ahead and ask your question there, and then we can ask it and answer it altogether on the podcast. That makes a lot more sense. It's a win win situation for both of us. You get an answer to your question and we get to make content out of it and we can disseminate that to more people.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:21]:
Because I'm sure that if you have that question, other people have that same question too. Once again, if you have a question, please go to ask.degreefree.coforward/question and ask your question in there. Let's jump into today's episode. I wanted to do something completely different today. I wanted to talk about 2 things. These are really like sub points in major, bigger, larger points that Hannah and I have talked about for years on this podcast, but I wanted to hone in on really just 2 sub points of a larger thing that we talk about. So what am I talking about? Hannah and I have created the 5 degree free pathways, and we used to have a free course out there for everybody to take. We've taken it down because we are changing it up.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:09]:
And then we are going to get another course out there for you guys. So you guys can all get this information, but if you haven't heard about the 5 degree free pathways, I'll sum it up real quickly here, but then at the show notes, degree free.coforward/podcast, I'll put links where you can go and learn about the pathways from other podcast episodes. Hannah and I have held this degree free mindset. We've thought about the degree free way for like 8 years. Right? And probably like 9 years now. And we have always been asked, my child's not going to college. I'm not going to college. What can I do now? And her answer was always the same thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:47]:
It was always, well, you can do anything or you can pretty much do anything that you want. We meant the best intentions by giving that answer. We meant that to be encouraging. We meant that to be like, hey, the world is your oyster. You can go and do this. You can make this happen because I do believe that you can do anything that you set your mind to. Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:11]:
We spend a ton of time every week creating this content for you. So my only ask is you take a quick second to leave a review or thumbs up on whatever platform you're on. It's one of the best and easiest ways that you can support this podcast, and this simple action can help bring more people into the degree free community. At degree free, we wanna help as many people as we can thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. Degree. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review, it would truly mean the world to us. Thank you, and back to the show.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:42]:
What I realized, and it wasn't until we started degree free, like, actually, the formal podcast, the movement, the company, things like that, two and a half years ago that we really were like, oh, okay. That answer really has the opposite effect that when we wanted really what would happen is that we would see people's eyes roll back in their head and to be like, oh my god. I have no idea. You just told me so much and so little at the same time. I'm overwhelmed by the options. I don't know where to start. Hannah and I have spent years thinking of a comprehensive framework that you can use that anybody can use to think about the different degree free options that you have in front of you right now. That's what those 5 degree free pathways are.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:33]:
It is a comprehensive framework of all the degree free pathways that you can use in your life. Who is it useful for? It is useful for everyone that is looking for a job. And so if that is your high schooler, if you are a high schooler and you're looking for your first job, if you're the parent of a high schooler and you are trying to help them get their first job, if you are a career changer, you have 10 years in this career and you're thinking about changing careers to a completely different one. If you're fresh out of college and you're looking for your first job out of college, if you are making your last move right before retirement, the 5 degree free pathways can still help you at any point. If you're thinking about making a career change or getting a new job, you can come back to the 5 degree free pathways and it'll at least lay out your options for you. I wanted to not talk about the 5 degree free pathways, but I wanted to talk about 2 sub points in them. Real quick, I will outline what the 5 degree free pathways are. The 5 degree free pathway is the first pathway is going to be get a job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:37]:
The second is going to be find an apprenticeship or on the job training. 3rd is going to be earn a license or certification. 4 is build a business and 5 is learn a skill. That is all of the things that you can do to be degree free right now. Most pathways lead to pathway number 1, get a job. Right? Find an apprenticeship around the job training that leads to getting a job, earn a license certification. You do that till you're gonna get a job and then learn a skill. You do that until taking pathway number 1, get a job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:09]:
Unless you take that to pathway 4, any of those pathway 4, which is building a business. What are the sub points that I wanna talk about? In each one of these things, there are a bunch of things that you have to know in order to go down that pathway. There's a bunch of sub points. And then underneath those sub points, there's a bunch of other sub points. I'm not going to get into all of that today. Like I said, I'll put some resources in the show notes degree free.coforward/podcast. What I wanted to get to is a couple of the lesser known sub points that get glossed over when people first hear about the degree of free pathways. Those 2 are going to be sub point underneath degree free pathway number 2, find an apprenticeship or on the job training.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:56]:
The sub point is going to be something that we call build your own apprenticeship. And then the second one that I want to talk about is how you can use BYOA is what we call it internally is how you can use, build your own apprenticeship to then roll in to pathway. Number 4, build a business And you don't have to be of any age to do this. You could be 14 to do this. You could be 16, 17, you could be 30, you could be 40, 50. It doesn't matter. At any point, at any age, you can build your own apprenticeship and then you can roll that into building a business. And I'm going to talk about those sub points right now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:36]:
Typically in pathway number 2, find an apprenticeship or on the job training, the way that you're gonna go about finding the apprenticeship or on the job training is very similar to how you would if you were just going to get a job. You would just Google whatever it is that you're trying to get an apprenticeship for. And it doesn't necessarily have to be trades. A lot of people think, oh, apprenticeships are gonna be trades, plumber apprenticeships, HVAC apprenticeships, pipefitter apprenticeships, carpenter apprenticeships, things of that nature. That's where a lot of people's minds go and sure it is prevalent in those industries, but a lot of tech companies have apprenticeships and on the job training now as well. Google Accenture, IBM, there are a lot of companies that you can just Google the whatever the industry and then apprenticeship, and then they'll have openings that you can just go apply for. I'm not talking about that. I want to talk about building your own apprenticeship, which is a framework that we created something that I've used in my own life to get an apprenticeship and then get paid while I'm learning a skill.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:44]:
And that's what an apprenticeship and on the job training is. So let me go over the basics of building your own apprenticeship. The basics is you're going to identify a business and ask if they need help. And if they would be willing to train you while you learn the job, the builder own apprenticeship framework works best in a smaller teams or even one man operations. We're talking very small businesses or micro businesses where there's only 1 person or like 2, 3 people, and you would be the 3rd or the 4th person on the team. They don't have as many processes and structures. They're for onboarding people, making sure that it's a fair process, or they could just be so busy with actually fulfilling their business that they even haven't even thought of putting out a job listing for help. And that happens more than you think, because a lot of business owners get caught up in working in their business and not working on their business and trying to make their business grow.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:46]:
A lot of business owners, they start their business and then they got caught up in running their business and never really scaling their business. And so if they're all day focused on selling, providing the service, selling, providing the service, You might not have any capacity for, oh, well, where does this go next? When do I hire my next person? And so if you show up and you say, hey, I'm here, give me a shot. They might just be like, well, let's give it a try. So before I get into the really tactical things to do to build your own apprenticeship, I wanna talk about why you would do this in the first place. Now, if you remember back, the first way to find an apprenticeship or on the job training is exactly like finding a job. And what is the problem with finding a job? And most of you that are job seekers know it's that you don't ever hear anything back. Why? Because there's, like, 7,000 applicants to one job listing. There's a lot of competition for these job postings.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:44]:
Whereas if you build your own apprenticeship, there is no competition because you're just going in there and you're saying, Hey, do you need help? And they're like, I can help you in this fashion. There's no competition. You're it when you're building your own apprenticeship. And this could be for you, the job seeker or for you, the parent, that's helping your child do this. The main thing is to have a plan to present to the owner or shot caller. The plan should outline some ideas of what you could help with and what you want to learn from that business. Once again, here, we have to remember, like I've been saying it for years, we have to remember what's the goal. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for this person to understand how you're going to fit in their business and make it as easy as possible for them to say yes to you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:36]:
You want to connect the dots between where you are right now and where you want to be in their business and make a straight of a line as possible, make it as easy as possible for them to say yes to you. And so you want to make that plan centered around your strengths, that you can help in their business, where you can take on responsibilities and then whatever it is, the job that you're looking for, usually the owner is going to care about increasing revenue or increasing customer satisfaction, decreasing costs, something, whatever the job or whatever it is that you're trying to learn from this person, make a plan that sells the benefit of you working for them. This is going to go a long way with the business owner or the business manager, because like I said, they're stressed and they don't have time to think about anything else. You saying here's how I can help. Here are the things that I can take off of your plate. And then here are the things that I would like to learn. Boom. Perfect.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:39]:
They might not say yes to you, but at least they can understand your argument. At least they can understand how, if they brought you on how you would fit into their business. We're just think about the opposite. If you don't go there with a plan and here to say, hey, do you have any work I can do now? You've just given them a task. Now they have to think of things that they have to do. Well, Do you have the skills to do that? So now they have 2 tasks. 1, they have itemized the things that they have to do in their business. And then 2, they have to gauge what tasks and what skills you have to complete that task.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:16]:
Those are 2 massive tasks. And really, if they're busy, there's going to be like, I'm not gonna do this right now. No, I don't have any work for you. But instead, if you say, this is how I can help, I can help you with sales. I have experience in sales. I just don't know how to do the thing that you're doing. I don't know how to make websites for services businesses. I don't know how to run Google ads, but I do know the sales process.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:39]:
I have done that before. I don't know how to do Google Ads, but I do understand customer relationships. I do understand customer service, and so I can service the accounts that you have. You're really just trying to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes to you. Now, some of the people that I've helped with this, they get really discouraged when they go to 1 person or they send one cold email asking if they can have them as apprentices so that they can learn the job while getting paid. And then they don't hear anything back. Think of it the same as applying to jobs. You're going to have to ask a bunch of people more than likely.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:21]:
I mean, you might get lucky just like with jobs, you might get lucky and you send one cold email or you walk into one place and then you shake hands and you say, yeah, you're hired. Let's do it. But really, you probably have to send a hundred. It really just depends on what it is that you're trying to do. If it's remote skills that you are applying for, then it's fine to do it remotely. You can probably just send cold emails, cold DMS. It's fine. Unless.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:51]:
It is remote, but they have like a local office in your area, then just go down there and shake hands. Even if it is remote, go down there and say what's up. If it is a local services business, I mean, there's really nothing better than just walking in there, having a plan, shaking hands, bringing your resume and say, like, this is the plan. Do you have anything for me? And then it's a lot harder for people to say no in person. And if not, if you get them in front of you, and this is especially true, like for in person, you can do this on email, although found that people drop off and that they don't help as much because it's a one way communication. And when you're right in front of somebody it's a little bit different. You could ask them if they say, you know what, We're not hiring right now. I just don't have enough work.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:39]:
That's just not something that we're doing. You can ask them for referrals somewhere else. You can be like, oh, well, do you know somebody else in your industry that might be looking to hire that might be willing to train me and then do these things? And they might go through their mental rolodex right there and be like, you know what I do know, Jimmy down the street is looking for somebody. Why don't you go ahead and hit him up or even better? You could ask that person for an introduction. You can say, oh, well, do you mind calling Jimmy and and letting him know that I'm coming? And it'd be like, oh yeah, sure. Sounds good. That is how it would go. If everything went swimmingly, even if it's a lesser variation of that, you still have some sort of in some sort of referral.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:26]:
And it gets that person thinking like, who else do I know that could use this person's help? And you've already told the boss, the person making the decision, the person that told you, no, you already told them what you're good at and what you think that you can help with and what you need to learn and what you don't know since you already told that person, they can think, yeah, you know what? Jimmy has a spot open. Let me give him a call. So for me, this is exactly what I did when I was first learning how to be a handyman. I didn't know what I was doing, but I found somebody, a one person operation that had so much work on his plate that he was willing to bring on somebody that didn't know anything, just because I was there. Literally. I was just in the room and I had asked her, like, hey, do you need help? And he's like, do you know how to do this stuff? I was like, well, kind of. I grew up with tools, but I never really got, was formally taught how to do things. I mean, I've done things and then I have YouTube and he's just like, well, Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:30]:
I mean, I got so much work, like sure. Well, whatever. I don't have time to like put out an ad. The very next week, the next Tuesday, I was on a job site learning from this handyman. And I worked for that guy for like 2 years. I learned so much from him that I was able to go out and start bidding my own handyman jobs on the side as well. This stuff does work and yes, that was a trade. And while it's obvious it works for trades, but you just think trades their services, their services that require skills and knowledge to fulfill and do what other industries have skills and knowledge that are required to fulfill work to be done.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:15]:
I named a few already. Well, just a few things in the tech side or off the top of the head, software development. You don't need a degree for that. You just need to learn the skills necessary to do that. There's being a systems administrator or being a software administrator, like Salesforce, HubSpot, those types of things you can get certified and I'm sure you can learn how to use those platforms and then get the job. Or you could just get a job that teaches you how to use those things and become a system administrator that way. Digital marketing, SEO, social media management. Think about services businesses, just like how trades are services, business in the digital realm.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:56]:
If you think from that perspective, then you are gonna get a lot of ideas that way, and And then you just go after companies that do those things. Okay. Perfect. So that is BYOA or build your own apprenticeship, and that is a subpoint under degree free pathway number 2, find an apprenticeship or on the job training. Now adjacent to that or tangential to that, I wanted to talk about a sub point underneath degree free pathway number 4, build a business, which is buying a business. What can you do to build a business? There are 2 things that you could do to build a business. You can either start a business or you can buy a business. Either one of those things, starting a business that's pretty self explanatory.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:43]:
There is nothing. And then you build something and that is starting a business, buying a business. You do exactly what it sounds like, which is you buy a business that is already existing and already solving problems already generating revenue in the world today. Now, when I tell people about buying businesses, they immediately tune me out because they're thinking, well, I don't have the money to buy a business. I can barely pay for my bills, which that's fair. Sure. Well, there are other ways to buy businesses other than just paying cash one time. You can get creative and buy businesses for not a lot of cash upfront.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:25]:
If you get creative with the financing and the structure, we're not gonna talk about the financing and structure part of it. I mean, we're gonna get into that a little bit, but just know that, like, there are resources out there for you to do that, and seller financing is one of them. I wanted to talk about these two points together because of the coming onslaught or the coming wave that's happening in the next 12 to 15 years or even really shorter than that, all the baby boomers are retiring. It's estimated some are late 8,000,000 businesses or something like that are going to change hands or go under because the baby boomers are getting too old to run them. And what do baby boomers that have businesses that let's just say that they're not doing really well, that they're not like massive, massive corporations. What do they care about? They care about one word and it starts with an r and it's called retirement. Baby boomers that have these businesses, they want to retire. That is fantastic for you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:31]:
You can target one of these baby boomers, one of these smaller one person, 2 person services businesses. And then you could ask them to BYOA to build your own apprenticeship. If you want to, if they say yes, and then you can tell them like, I'm doing this with the intention that in a few years, I am going to buy the business from you. And the way that I'm gonna do that is I am going to guarantee you x amount of payments for the next whatever. And we'll figure that out when we get there. Because a lot of these baby boomers, they haven't planned for retirement or their businesses. Aren't big enough to support retirement. They just made ends meet every month.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:16]:
What they would really love is just a steady paycheck for the rest of their life, for the next 20 years. We're talking about price. We're talking about financing. When you boil it down, some of these services based businesses, especially these one person services based businesses, you can Hoover them up probably for pretty cheap relative to other types of businesses, because especially one person services based businesses. When you think about it, what is it really? One person services based businesses are basically jobs. The owners, they created a job for themselves and what you are saying by buying it is that, I'm going to buy your job from you. Oh, awesome. Great.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:00]:
A lot of these businesses might not have a lot of assets. For example, let's say that you're doing a one off website creation business and we're talking about agency that creates very small sites for restaurants, not even like sites that are interactive and where you can, like, order and things like that. I'm just talking about, like, 1 page sites that just post the menu, And then they just do that for like a bunch of restaurants all around town. They don't charge to maintain their servers or anything like that. They create it one time and that's it. When you're buying a business like that, they don't have a lot of assets behind it. You're really buying like their phone number. You're buying their leads.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:52]:
You're buying the age of their website. You're buying their SEO. Those are the assets that you're buying, depending on how successful they are. It could be very expensive. My guess is if they remain the one person services business that especially only gives one off services, the multiple or the price tag that you're gonna have to pay for this business is going to be pretty small. Because like I said, you are creating and you're buying a job for yourself. That's what you're doing. I'll finish the buying part with just that you can get creative with these deal structures.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:27]:
You need to get as creative as you want. You just need the business owner to understand what you're saying and then agree to it. And then you can just get lawyers to draft up contracts and things like that. But you can see how building your own apprenticeship in pathway number 2 and using all of the tactics there, targeting one of these smaller one person services business, offering them retirement, dangling the R word in front of them and saying, here, I want to do this. And for a lot of these baby boomers, a lot of their kids don't want the businesses. And my theory is that they have seen their parents all their life struggle. Because once again, there are still a one person services business. They've seen their parents struggle and they're like, I don't want to do that, but their parents struggle and they still maintained, you know, food on their table, hopefully, and things like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:25]:
And they're just like, well, it is a business. It is built. Sure. But I saw what you had to do, dad. I don't want to do that. I saw what you had to do, mom. I don't want to do that. And so there are a lot of baby boomer businesses where their kids have completely different careers, and they don't want anything to do with those businesses.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:43]:
If you just swoop in there and say, I would love to learn what you do. I have skills in this, this, and this. I can help with sales. I can help with customer service. I can help with decreasing costs. I just need to learn how to do the actual thing. I don't know how to build websites. I don't know how to plumb a house.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:08]:
I don't know any of that. I don't know how to build furniture, whatever the business is. I wanted to touch on all this this week because I was thinking about the degree free pathways. I'm working on a few things for you guys. And I was thinking about some of the lesser known points within the degree free pathways. And I was like, man, the build your own apprenticeship you heard. I've done it myself. I haven't done this buying a business portion of it yet.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:36]:
Although the plan when I joined that handyman, the plan was for me to not buy the business, but buy into the business. It just so happened that our lives went different ways. He's still doing the handyman work till this day, but I ended up being a firefighter and my career went that way. And then I ended up starting my own business. And then I started another business and another business. Our lives just went different ways, but actually when I did start the build your own apprenticeship, the intention was for me to partner and for me to learn everything about the business so that we can divide and conquer and we can both run teams. Like I said, this second part, the buying a business, it's incredibly powerful. There are a lot of baby boomers that just want to retire that have these businesses that All you have to do is promise them that you will maintain the cashflow.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:32]:
I mean, you're obviously in contract that you're going to give them cashflow for the rest of their life. However much that is. You're gonna put x amount down, and you're gonna give that amount to them right now and then x amount for the rest of their lives. A lot of people, especially if nobody else is banging down their door, they're gonna say yes to that because those businesses aren't large enough for private equity firms to get involved or for investors to get involved. They're very small. They're micro businesses. I mean, I don't mean to demean anybody or anything like that, but they're making a couple of $100,000 a year. So there's not enough meat on their bones for investors to like get in there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:10]:
It means the world to them, and it means the world to you. And so really you're the only buyer or there's only like 2 buyers, but if you work with them and you do the build your own apprenticeship and you learn and you make this deal with them, you're going to be the only person and you can do right by them and they can do right by you. And then it's a win win situation. Everybody wins. That was a little bit different of an episode. Let me know how you liked it. These are just thoughts. And I was just thinking about, let's think about the degree free pathways.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:35]:
I was thinking about, like I said, the lesser known little aspects and the little details in it. I wanted to get that out to you. Let me know, YouTube comments, Spotify. Let me know how it did. Let me know what you thought. And then really guys ask.degreefree.co/question. I know that you have questions and that is the best way to ask us questions because we get an amazing amount of inbound and you guys are amazing. And thank you so much.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:06]:
Please ask us questions. Just do it at ask.degreefree.co/question. Until next time guys.