How the School System is Failing Our Young Men and Key Questions to Discuss with Your Young Adult (DF#164)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
If you can cover your basic needs, guess what? You'll have the freedom to go back into your passion responsibly without starving, without not having a roof over your head, without stressing about money, which is the number one stressor. And people act like it's not important. Like it's not going to prevent their kids from being able to feel like they have the ability to take a risk, to learn something they don't know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:25]:
Aloha folks and welcome back to degree free. I wanted to start off this week talking about some of the things from the degree free way for those people that pre ordered really early, like may, April, June, July, and for most of the people, maybe until a few weeks ago, they had a little handwritten post it note in each one of them. And it was on page 23 of the parent copy of the first edition. And what we wanted them to do the post it note basically said post a photo of the job limit inventory, which is the exercise, the very first one that you do in the book, because we wanted to see how many jobs young adults know that go ahead and do this workbook, the degree free way. And I wanted to mention that on the podcast because we ran out of steam to handwrite these post it notes.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:23]:
Somewhere around copy 500. We were like, that's enough.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:27]:
It took longer to write the post it notes than it did to

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:32]:
pack the books.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:34]:
And so I'm asking you on air right now that if you bought a copy of the degree free way and you're doing the exercises, the job limit inventory, go through it. And when you're done with it, please just take a picture of it and tag us and use the hashtag degree free journey. That would be super helpful. There's no judgment or anything behind it. It's not like, oh, look how many jobs my child knows or look how few jobs my child knows. That's really not what we're doing here. We just want to get a gauge of the people that are going through the degree free way. How many jobs do they know prior to going through the book? Because what Hannah and I have identified, and we've talked about it many times before, is that your world of work is limited by the amount of jobs that, you know, if you have a very limited vocational creativity, which is a concept that I made up, which is if you don't know a job, how can you go and get that job? It's impossible when you think about it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:33]:
It's so simple. But if you don't know a job, how can you go and set your sights on attaining and getting that job?

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:43]:
It's something that when we say it, people go, oh, yeah, that totally makes sense. But it's almost a problem that they weren't aware that they had before, which is the problem itself is a lack of awareness. What is cool I will say is I have seen a couple of the hashtag degree free journeys, and you can tell that the parents who bought the degree freeway to do that with their young adults follow us. Actually, there's a great amount of vocational creativity on those exercises, which is actually really cool to see.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:10]:
I think that it is going to be skew. So when we first originally came up with vocational creativity in the 1st iteration of the launch program, we asked the young adults that went through the program how many jobs they knew, because we were just wondering, like, what is their job inventory and the job inventory for those that didn't buy the degree freeway. And for those that are just listening at home and no plans to buying it, although I think you should, if you have somebody in this age range, 16 to 20 year old age range, and they are thinking about what to do with their life, you can go to degreefree.coforward/book. But when we were first starting that launch program, we had an inkling that this was a major problem, which is they don't know what they don't know. And so we're okay, well, let's get a baseline of what they know before they come through the program. And we did get a baseline for them. And most of them, the vast majority, they couldn't come up with more than 8 jobs. 6 to 8 jobs was the max that they could come up with since then we've stopped doing it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:11]:
Just because in the launch program, it's not really relevant to the way that the service and the product has changed. And so we stopped asking young adults that come through our program to do that because it just highlights a problem, but where we are in the launch program and what we ended up helping them do, it doesn't matter because we help them with the vocation or creativity and we attack it from the angle of their needs and wants, which you, once again, you go through in the degree free way, because we no longer do that. We wanted to see what your young adults can come up with, what your children could come up with as far as ideas, as far as jobs go. I think it'll also give us a really good idea of the different jobs that pop up and the different jobs that all these young adults know when you post it, the more details you give us in the post, the better really. I mean, you don't have to. Anything or whatever, but like, if you can just give us a city at least state, that would be great. Give us age. That would be fantastic too.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:10]:
But worst comes to worst. If you could at least just post it and literally the caption can just be job limit inventory at degree free hashtag degree free journey. Now you don't have to come up with some big caption or any idea.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:22]:
Yeah. Because we're just watching to see what rolls in because we are curious.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:26]:
Exactly. And I think that once parents listen to this, they also agree. Once you hear it for the first time, the glass kind of shatters for you that, like, wait. You really can't get a job that you don't know. That makes sense. It's just so seemingly if we're doing this ourselves, if you are going through the degree free way and you're not gonna pay for people services like ours, then you're going to be like, well, it's pretty important to see where they are. And then and when you see the list of the jobs that they know, it was like, okay. Well, then this is their menu of job options to pick from.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:58]:
This is it. If we stopped right now and they said, gun to your head, you have to choose a career to go into. It's going to be one of the ones on the list because they don't know any other ones. And once they hear that the glass kind of shatters for them.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:09]:
And then also downstream from that, the ways that they know to get into those jobs are the only paths they can take. That's all they know exists, which is why the college problem.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:17]:
So what's funny is that now I have ordered a custom post it notes that have all of these things on it because we couldn't write them anymore. And I will put the post it notes into each book so that you get reminded of doing it. Please do it. And then for majority of the people out there, if you've ordered already, you've gotten your book. You're like, I didn't get this. Like, yeah, you didn't get it because

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:38]:
we gave up. Yeah. Because I literally said, I cannot write one more post it note. And he said, okay, we'll just stop.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:44]:
Quite literally what happened.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:46]:
So I can't do one more.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:47]:
I'm glad that you did that because I got into the weeds of like, just doing it. And I was like, we gotta do it. We gotta do it. And then you're like, that's

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:56]:
enough post it notes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:56]:
Yeah. Wait, We were already packing these books, which takes forever. Like, stop.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:00]:
They care more about getting the book than they do about the post it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:03]:
Yeah. And I was like, oh man, that's right. All right. You're right. But anyway, so I ordered it and it's on the way, but what's funny about that is that now we are only going to fulfill it, the books ourselves for a few more weeks,

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:17]:
depending on how long, because with as quickly as we sold out of the degree freeway last order, I think this order is probably going to go similarly. So I don't think we'll have those books for very long.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:26]:
The The next thing that I wanted to bring about the degree free way. So for all those people that did buy it and love it, people are creating videos on TikTok and telling us how it has impacted their child's life. And maybe we should play some of those on the podcast in a few weeks. Maybe if we can get those together, but honestly it is very humbling.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:47]:
I've cried. It's very amazing to see how the quality of conversations that families are having with their children as a result of this, as just a catalyst, as a guide. And it's very cool to be so integral in this process with families and be able to help them as they go through it and have these conversations that they need to have.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:06]:
Yeah, it is awesome to see really amazing. If you're having these quality of conversations and you love the degree free way, I would ask that you leave us a review. And you can do that atdfwreviews.degreefree.co. That's a long URL. I will put it in the show notes for everybody. Degreefree.coforward/podcast. But once again, that's DFW like degree freeway, DFW reviews.degreefree.co. When you get there, you're going to have the option of choosing between recorded testimony and a written testimony.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:45]:
Please. We love the videos guys. The videos are fantastic, please, please. I know it gets you out of your comfort zone a little bit, but seeing your face for us selfishly, and so cool. And it really helps to motivate us and put a face to the people that we are trying to help. And that means a lot to us. So if you could leave us a video testimonial or a video review, that would be fantastic. Once again, DFW reviews.degreefree.co.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:16]:
So probably one of my favorite things that's happened in the past few weeks, it's been a wild ride. And for those of you who've been watching or have been along for this little, adventure, you have seen that Ryan and I have been very much out of our depth in supply chain and packaging and packing. We very much underestimated the amount of work. I very much underestimated the amount of work it was going to be. Ryan did not. Ryan correctly estimated how much work it was gonna be. And I said, no, there is no way. Incorrect.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:44]:
Wrong. It was a lot of work. And what was cool about that was one of the reasons that Ryan agreed to push the launch date of the degree for way up and get everything done and have it ready to go was because I said, Hey, I think we're going to sell out of this. I think it's going to be crazy. And it was very interesting to see one how quickly it happened, because it was even faster than I thought it was going to happen. And that was pretty amazing, but it also just goes to show how much families need help with this decision and how much stress this is causing in American homes. And so it's really been cool to see that we put this up and honestly, it's kind of the miracle of the internet as well. And TikTok is just extremely viral.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:27]:
When people need something, it shows them that thing. It was pretty wild to see how we just put up. It was basically one video and one video we put up about the book and bang gone. All of them. It was pretty wild.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:39]:
Running out of inventory. It was completely my fault. Cause I was in charge of the entire operations of this. We didn't anticipate that it was going to be this well received. Because we're self publishing it, we don't have a publisher. And we've talked about this at length in the 2 part podcast episode about the books. And we'll put that in the show notes degreefree.co/book. We got more into these decisions in the second episode, but just for those that didn't listen to those, I definitely suggest going back.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:06]:
But for those that didn't, and aren't going to go back self publishing to do that, we had a bunch of decisions to make. One of those things was like, are we going to do print on demand or are we going to print them before we didn't do print on demand? We ended up printing them before because when you order it, we want it to get to your door quickly, as quickly as possible, at least to do that. We have to front a lot of money and it's a lot of money for us. And then, like I said, this is something that the publisher would help with because we don't have economies of scale because we're not doing larger runs of like 20,000 books, 10,000 books. And when I say books for us, I'm talking about 2 books, actually, when I think of orders.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:50]:
Which increases the complexity of it a lot. We just got a comment on TikTok. They were just saying, oh, this is really expensive. And I realized how few people understand the cost of printing, packaging, and shipping. Because one other comment we got was, are these coming from China? No, not yet. Kind of wish they were because then the books themselves would be a lot cheaper, but no, they're not. We're printing them in the US they've printed in multiple cities in the US and that's part of the reason why we have to charge because it's fairly expensive to print these books, pack label, hold house and ship them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:21]:
Yeah. At $50 we make almost zero money, which is insane when you think about it, but that's how little economies of scale we have.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:30]:
That's also how expensive it is to print things in the US.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:33]:
Like we talked about before it's it's shipping as well. It's the freight because books are expensive. These things are expensive. I mean, weight.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:40]:
Relative to books, they are very expensive.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:42]:
But I'm saying, like, weight.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:43]:
Mhmm. They're heavy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:43]:
Weight wise, they're very heavy. And for one order, it's not one book.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:48]:
It's 2 books. And so we have to pay the weight to ship 2 books.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:51]:
Yeah. And then we have to ship it multiple times to our fulfillment center, which right now is my office. And so we have to ship it to our fulfillment center, and then we have to ship it to you. By the time that this comes out, I think we will have a fulfillment center already because it's just way too much work. I'm literally doing it full time at night. I'm like packing books. And then in the morning I have to literally go to the post office and then post office guys are getting pissed at me. Zach.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:13]:
Yeah, Zach. He's literally pissed at me. And I'm like, dude, I was like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, I

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:18]:
have to ship these. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:19]:
I have to ship these. I said, man, how much long are you going to do this? I was

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:21]:
like, we don't know the implication to it. So funny. I looked at that comment, the one that said this is inaccessible pricing for people. And I was like, you know, it's inaccessible pricing, how much we're charging for these for you and I, Because downstream from that, and it's always this whole thing. This is just an aside. This is just a knit that I have to pick. What's crazy is that one, if we printed it outside the US, then they'd have a problem with us printing it outside of the US. And then when we print them in the US, if we tried to get them lower, they would say, oh, you're not paying the people, printing them a livable wage.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:50]:
It's this whole spiral. And I want to be like, Hey, you don't know how much things cost. We're not making a livable wage off of the amount of hours that we're spending. Cause I did a little bit of rough math on it. I'm not going to go into it here, but I was like, And that's part of it too, is we're doing it is because what's left over afterwards. We couldn't pay somebody to do it. So we're doing it ourselves. And that's what people don't understand about business in general and about the cost of doing things is they just have no concept of how much labor and physical products cost.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:18]:
And that's so such a failure of our education system to begin with is this is, but they can't even see that on the backend, the person's making almost nothing and the margins are razor thin on those

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:30]:
things. One of the reasons why I want to do a pre launch or pre orders and have pre order pricing at $49 by the time that this episode comes out, I believe we're going to be out of pre orders and it's going to be in the $70 range. But the reason why I wanted to give preorder pricing was 1, I wanted to be it, give it to you really at the most affordable price that we can. And ran really for those people that ordered in May June, you guys actually cut it where we actually lost money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:57]:
We did.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:57]:
We actually lost money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:58]:
We were okay with that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:59]:
It's totally fine. And that just shows like what a bad business person that I am. And I'm not like saying like, oh, look at me. I'm falling on my sword and we lost money. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like we did lose money. Like, and that once again, like that's my bad.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:13]:
Not like a lot,

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:13]:
by the way, people, every sale we made, we lost money. And so I had to raise it $10 So those people that bought it in may of 2024, if you're listening to this in the future, they paid $39 And that $39 we lost money. And I was like, okay, well, I can't do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:26]:
We have to raise it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:27]:
That's all we have to raise it. So we made it $49 And then if we lost money on $39 you can imagine how much money we're making on 49, which is not a lot, but that's okay. Because I wanted to give a pre order pricing for those people that believe in us early.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:40]:
And they bought before the thing existed. Yeah. You deserve that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:43]:
And for those people that believe in what we can do for them and the value that we can bring into their lives early. And it's like, this is the cheapest it's going to be. This is it. And then when we launch, we we have to make a little bit of money off of this.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:56]:
Yeah. Or we can't keep doing it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:57]:
Yes, exactly. And then especially now with it going to fulfillment centers, because if we kept it at the $49 price, we wouldn't have enough money to pay the fulfillment center. We would just be doing this all day, every day, just packing books. And we can't do that. That's not what we do now. The increase in price to 70, which is way if you're listening to this, it's it is right now that increase in price helps us pay other people so that we don't have to do it. And we make a little bit of money, make a couple of bucks.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:25]:
Literally. And that is not an exaggeration.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:28]:
Yeah. We're hoping that we can get to the point where

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:32]:
we can reduce the cost of the books.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:34]:
We are hoping. And the way that we do that is by ordering 30,000 units. I'm talking to 30,000 units, which is actually 60,000,

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:42]:
60,000 books

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:43]:
with 30,000 books of the parent copy, 30,000 of the young adult copy. And then I think that at that scale, we're at the right printer. I think that we could probably lower the books, lower the book price

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:54]:
again.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:54]:
Yeah. But as of right now with where we are as small little self published independent authors, we can't do it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:01]:
Thank you for that breakdown. It's one of those things, like I said, it shows the lack of education that is going on where people do not understand how business works. They literally don't understand how much it costs and they don't understand how business owners are compensated or rather not compensated. They don't understand risk that's taken on by people who do work, where they're not actively making enough to make it worth their time. They don't understand that a lot of business owners are working for what would be minimum wage, but they're actually getting taxed on that minimum wage. They don't understand that. And it's a real problem. And that's part of the reason I think, too, why there's a disconnect and why employers are choosing to not hire college graduates.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:38]:
They can't understand the cost of doing business. They can't understand profit. They can't understand risk. They can't understand loss. They don't understand any of those things. They just go, well, why don't you just make it cheaper? We would, if we could do that, but we can't because of the way that constraints of business work and it would really help for that to be taught in schools. So that one also, a lot of people are more equipped to be entrepreneurs. That's the biggest thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:01]:
The last thing that I'll say about the degree freeway is now as of this recording or not even the air date, you are no longer allowed to buy multiple young adult copies. And that literally just has to do with the logistics of the business.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:20]:
Yeah. We're trying to shore it up.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:21]:
They're now sold as sets 1 and 1. If you need to buy multiple young adult copies, which I definitely suggest you do, if you have multiple kids in this age range, then just buy multiple sets. I said this on the podcast many times, and I want people to believe it from now on. When I say now is the time, do it now.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:41]:
Please do it then.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:42]:
Do it or the doors will close. The doors will close, you know, cause I said it and I did say it. There is a very limited window for you to add young adult workbooks onto it because it added more complexity to the entire operation because then we had to figure out, okay, well, let's just say I've spent 500 young adult copies just to make the math easy. If I'm going to print 500 young adult copies, but people are going to have the option to add how however many they want at the end of it or up to 3 more. So 4 total, then I have to, how many parent copies do I have to order? Okay. So now if I order 500 young adult copies, then I have to order 300 parent copies possibly. Well, I mean, there's some data and stuff like that that I could use to make a forecast.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:30]:
But we're not supply chain forecasters.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:33]:
It's simpler. And then, because we are moving it out of our fulfillment center, AKA my office, and we are moving it to other people fulfilling it, then we are going to make it easy for them in the fulfillment center to get the orders. Right. So we're selling it as a set. When you order it from a fulfillment center, it'll be shrink wrapped. You know, like whenever you order something from Amazon and it's like a set of something, it's always cellophane wrapped. There's a sticker on it. This is a set.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:03]:
Do not separate.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:04]:
We're doing that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:05]:
That's exactly what we're going to have to do to make sure that the fulfillers don't F up the orders. The next time that I say we are only doing this for a very limited amount of time. And you hear me say that and you are interested in whatever it is that I'm saying, act on it right then.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:22]:
He means what he says.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:23]:
Yeah. Act on it right then. Because if you email me right now and be like, Hey, I'd like to add more young adults on, I'm going to tell you no.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:29]:
Yeah, we can't do it. We're trying to fix it. And I will say to, to everyone listening, thank you for sticking with us and listening and watching and supporting as we do this in public, very much in public, where we're talking about the fact that originally we're losing money on our free orders. It's one of those things that one is super cool in the age that we live in, that we're able to talk about the things that we're doing and be pretty transparent about what we're doing and how we're failing. And it's pretty amazing to be able to share that with people and just say, Hey, this is what we're doing. This is what worked. This is what didn't, this is why we're doing this. And it's really cool.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:04]:
Actually, I feel like it's pretty amazing. I wish this had been more available when I was younger and I feel like it would have been very inspiring to have access to these types of inside looks into the way people are building things and creating and innovating. And it's very cool. I'm pretty excited that we get to be part of that movement, part of that culture and be able to share, Hey, this is what we're building. This is what we're doing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:26]:
I don't think I told you, sorry, not to complete this off,

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:29]:
but I'm going to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:30]:
Yeah. But I don't know if I told you, but the last time that I went to the post office, Zach is his name. And if Zach, if you're listening, which I'm sure he's not listening, but if you are, I love you doc. And he and I have a discussion. I go and I fill up literally.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:48]:
Multiple of those blue carts that fit 7 boxes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:51]:
No, this time he didn't give me a cart. I asked for a cart and he was just like, nah, here's a bunch of boxes. I don't know why I should have asked him.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:58]:
Maybe it was taken.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:59]:
I don't think so. I think I should have asked him why he didn't give me a cart. It could have been that it was taken. I don't think it was my thought was that they didn't want to. The bending over into the cart because the units are so small. They didn't want to do that. I think those cards are mainly used for boxes, very massive boxes. You know what I mean? Like cumbersome boxes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:24]:
Like when you're reaching into them, you're only reaching into it a few times, but because these are literally book size, like I'm holding up the degree freeway right now, literally just 2 of these things. They're very small, and so they had to bend down repeatedly hundreds of times to get those little boxes out, and I think they had to scan it. And so that's why I think he gave me pale. If you're listening to this, you probably have seen them. The the the USPS white pails. They probably look all bus up to actually, because they're used a lot. And so he gave me like 30 of those and I had to just fill each one of those up. Anyway, after I filled all of them up and move them from here to there, 10 feet away.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:03]:
I rang the doorbell again. I was in the loading dock again, and he came out. He's like, okay. Awesome. Okay. Cool. Thanks. He looked at it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:08]:
He was like, wow. It's a lot of books. And I was like, yeah. And so he's like, how long are you gonna be doing this? And I'm so sorry.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:16]:
Only I knew.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:18]:
I don't know, man. A few weeks. I think. I'm sorry.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:23]:
Sorry, dude. Hopefully not too much longer. As we mentioned, we got some things in the works. We got some inquiries out to printers to try to figure this out and fulfillment centers too, but it's going good. We're figuring it out. All right. I have something I want to talk about. We're going to get more serious and this is something that I'm growing to be increasingly more passionate about.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:45]:
The more I do work in the launch program, the more we do this. And it's something that I'm just seeing. Ryan tells me a lot that one of the things that I'm good at is just starting to connect dots that maybe other people don't connect. And I'm starting to get a very clear picture increasingly more so of what is going on with the school system and how it is really, really just screwing the boys who are in it. And I've talked at length about how it's also negatively impacting the girls who are in it. But I see what's happening to the boys is it's almost like criminal actually at this point. And what I've noticed, and it's so interesting. We were talking to a former coworker of mine, former colleague of mine about his sons.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:26]:
And this is an individual who is very smart. He's a tech lead at an AI company. Extremely smart, very skilled, very experienced. And he was saying that this happened to, I described basically a situation I've seen occur over and over again. And then he looked me dead in the eyes and you were sitting right there when he did this. And he said, that's exactly what happens because it almost happened to his son. And the only reason it didn't was because he was able to intervene. But the situation I'm about to describe to you, I see happening over and over again.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:54]:
And it almost creates this cascade of events that seems to be affecting a lot of young men in the United States. What happens is early in their school careers, this people can get as upset about this as they want. Boys and girls are fundamentally different. If you talk to them and you ask them the exact same questions, they will give you different answers. Anybody who disagrees with that is just delusional. They will give you different answers on the whole. There are obviously exceptions, but on the whole, they will give you completely different answers to the same questions, boys versus girls. And they'll usually align.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:22]:
It's very interesting. And so boys, what I've discovered is if you go back in the stories of a lot of the young men who are in the launch program, and this does not matter if they were on an IEP or if they had a 5.0 GPA, but basically what happens is early in their

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:36]:
GPA is crazy. Yeah. By the way, that's the thing that

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:38]:
they do now, but what I'm trying to illustrate is like straight a student.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:41]:
I understand, but 5.0 is crazy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:43]:
It's so insane.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:44]:
I was in the high school days when 4.2

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:49]:
was a thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:49]:
4.5 was the best that you could get if you took like all honors classes or whatever. Back when I was going back to school, they didn't have all honors classes. Like you couldn't possibly take all 4.5 classes because there wasn't enough physical education. There's no honors PE. You know what I mean? And so the highest that you could possibly get was, like, a 4.1 or a 4.2 because it all averages out or something like that. But now seeing, working with these young adults and then being like, yeah. You know, my kid has a 5 point o or my kid has, like, a 4.6. And I was just, pow.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:21]:
How is that possible? Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:22]:
Doesn't it only go to 4? What's going on?

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:24]:
Yeah. It's definitely and I've noticed that nationally too. Where they go, oh, they've got a 5 point o GPA. And I'm like, that's crazy. How do you even get that? But it's because back in my day, back in my day, that wasn't, that was impossible. But now you can have whatever point 0 you want to have. But essentially the thing I want to say is that I've noticed this on the two extremes, which is the IEP side and the extremely academically check all the boxes, 5.0 GPA kids. Okay.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:51]:
And young men specifically. And so what I've noticed is that if they make a wrong move early in their school career, and when I say wrong move, I don't even mean behaviorally necessarily, but I mean, they don't sit down. They don't shut up. There is like 1 or 2 occasions where they do not fit into the narrow school box. Sit down, be quiet, do your work, do your math. Do you go to multiplication tables, sit still in art class, all of these things. If they do not do that, if they do not conform, then at some point a teacher or an admin comes down on them really hard. And what usually happens after that is because they are making it more difficult to teach the class logistically.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:25]:
There's 30 kids. You have one second grader, 1 first grader who won't sit down because you shouldn't have kids doing for 8 hours. What most adults can't do for an hour. This is what happens. They tell them they're stupid. They tell them they're dumb. They tell them there's something wrong with them. And then they make them feel like they're a failure when they're a child.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:42]:
It's criminal actually. Like sometimes the stories that I'm told by parents make me want to just cry because the way that it impacts the rest of their trajectory in their life is unbelievable. And it's such this crucial time where they're told by someone who's in authority over them, usually a teacher, and they say, you're dumb. There's something wrong with you. And then they keep hammering that into them. And then they downgrade them into a different class. They put them in a special whatever class and they're not able to take the time. So it is a two sided problem.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:11]:
And then it's boom. They put them on this track to IUP. You're dumb, you're dumb, you're dumb. And then they don't have the necessary or the ability to even find a way to help the child get to a place where their energy and their skills and their natural talents are able to be used because that doesn't exist in the school system. And those boys are screwed. They're screwed because they're going to spend the rest of their school career being told that there's something wrong with them. When in fact it's the school system that is fundamentally flawed. It is unable to assist them.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:42]:
And all it's going to do is push them down and push them down and push them down and tell them there's something wrong with you. Not there's something wrong with this entire flawed, broken, corrupt system that we have. And what's happening as a result of that is you'll hear these stories where I can pinpoint where it went wrong and it was years before. And where I see there could have been such a different life, such a different future for these kids. Had they had a different experience in school and we're righting that wrong now when they're 16 to 20 years old. But if that had been fixed earlier, their entire school trajectory would have been entirely different. Their whole academic K through 12 experience would have been totally different. And I see on the flip side for those 5.0 kids, I almost see the same thing, but it's not behavioral.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:28]:
It's not so much, you wouldn't sit down and shut up, but they're bored. And the school system is unable to point out ways that they would be well utilized. They're unable to give them opportunities that would help them. They're unable to point them towards people that are actually skilled enough in whatever area they're interested in in order to help them learn at the speed at which they could. And for the kids that are academically gifted, they're given more opportunities, but in the wrong vehicle, basically they push them and funnel them towards something where their energy is going to be wasted. And this is college. Like they push them and funnel them into all these academic things, as opposed to things that are very practical, things that are very actionable. And it's because what I'm beginning to see is just the entire school system from the bottom up is just broken.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:08]:
And that's not news to people, but I'm just slowly seeing through these stories that parents are telling me. And the more that they talk to me about what happened and when it started, and especially the moms, when the moms see that it sort of went off the rails and it's crazy how I just go, Woah, if this had been different at this juncture, what a different outcome you would have had so much earlier. And anyway, it's just something that's really interesting. And because of that, I was talking about this on a podcast I was recently on and one of the co hosts of the podcast is writing a book called Talk to Your Boys because she sees basically the same problem. And she asked me to write a blurb for for a book to help parents talk to their teenage boys about whether or not they even need to buy college degrees. So the questions that I wrote for this book blurb we use in the launch program, they kick off the whole process. And basically what I did to give them to this author was I rewrote them and made them a little more self contained and actionable for just this little blurb in the book. So it can actually be helpful and useful.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:09]:
And essentially what I did, and this was one of the most interesting things that happened was after I sent her this blurb, she said that this psychologist that they're working with to write the book said almost word for word, the exact same instructions that I gave at the beginning of mine, which was so interesting because practice, and this is such a good concept, but practice and actually doing work will lead you to the same conclusions. Oftentimes that a ton of study will. And that was really fascinating because when she sent me back the instructions the the instructions the psychologist had given to put in the book, I just went, oh, wow, this is literally

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:43]:
word for word. So what

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:44]:
are those instructions? So the instructions are your child can't answer these questions wrong. Do not interrupt them and resist the urge to help when you are asking the questions, because they will just let your answer be their answer. And that was the biggest thing. And then as a secondary note, I've for boys, parents have often told me that they really find that questions are best asked in the car in passing instead of putting them on the spot and grilling them. And that seems fair because we, as adults, don't like to be grilled about our future or our goals either. Think about that. You don't want anyone to sit down and just grill you about the things that you're planning to do. That's not fun.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:19]:
And that kind of leads into one of the reasons why you and I don't do the launch program as groups, or we don't encourage teachers to do this with their class, those types of things. Although we've had the amount of inquiry that we've had from teachers and schools and things like that, they're like, oh, I want to do this with my class. So on and so forth. It's awesome. And I commend you. And I think eventually, maybe we'll get there. But the reason why we don't do it in a group is because of a lot of those reasons that you just stated there. I mean, their answers will literally change.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:54]:
Because they're teenagers. Exactly. And so it's a well, Bob said that he wants to make a $1,000,000 a year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:01]:
Me too.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:02]:
Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:04]:
Or I hate money. I don't want to earn any money at all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:06]:
Exactly. Bob's a fascist and it's like, I also want to make a lot of money, but I don't want to be like Bob. So I'm not going to say that. And then it goes completely off the rails and it's just like, okay.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:19]:
Get them by themselves.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:21]:
Yeah. And we haven't figured that part out. And this goes back to, we were talking to a couple that trying to do this in a group. A

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:28]:
few years ago,

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:29]:
they're trying to do this for a group and we didn't realize that's what that phone call was about. We thought it was for something completely different, which is why we were on the call. And then they basically just, They're trying to figure out what we were doing. Yeah. Right. They basically just, which is

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:41]:
fine, whatever,

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:42]:
which is totally fine. It's fine. They're they're helping people out, but is there a, they were like trying to figure out how do I do this for like 14 people at a time? And I was like,

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:49]:
you don't,

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:49]:
you don't,

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:49]:
you do it with 1 person at

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:50]:
a time. Yeah. Our thing, you don't need to do it with 1 person at a time. And that is the way that we see that we get the best answers and we get the best feedback from them. The feedback is their answers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:02]:
Yeah. And it's really key, especially I know sometimes parents want to do this. They want to do this in a group with their kids. I know that we have decent amount of homeschooling families that listen to, and they tend to do things as a group and their kids tend to be close in age, but I would highly recommend anybody that's falls into that category, even if it takes you more time to do it. Cause you gotta do it with 1 kid, 1 weekend and one kid the next weekend, or what have you, I would advise you to take the time to do so because even your kids and I grew up in a decent sized family, even your kids will influence each other's answers. And that's not actually a good thing. You kind of want to have them in a vacuum with just you and get them thinking about like, what do I want? Not what does my sibling want that I want to sound as good as them, or I want my parents approval because my parent approves of my siblings answer. And I want them to approve of my answer that much.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:44]:
And I want them to think highly of me because your kids do want you to be proud of them. And I think removing that sort of judgment falls in line with the, there's no wrong answers.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:53]:
I'm not saying it's easy either if you're doing this by yourself, if you bought the degree free way and you're going through these types of things, or if you're going to ask them these types of questions that Hannah's about to lay out here, the types of questions that we ask in the launch program, it's not easy to get them alone. If you have multiple children, we get it. It's not, but take the time, schedule the time to do so. And if that means that you have to schedule it 2 months out because they've got football and that's when the season ends or they have whatever, and that's when the whatever ends or that's when they have time. Like, okay, that's fine. Put it in the schedule right now and be like, okay, well in 2 months, this is what we're going to do. And okay, done. And then we're going to do this for X amount of weekends, however many days or whatever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:36]:
It

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:36]:
takes you

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:37]:
to get through it. Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:38]:
Yeah. I would highly recommend doing that. So the first question we ask is what does your family life look like when you're 15 years older? And what we do is we benchmark this too. If you have a sibling or an aunt or uncle or a cousin, who's the same age as they would be 15 years in the future, use that. So it's just say, oh yeah, you're the same age as aunt Lily.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:57]:
It's just easier to picture somebody.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:00]:
Who they view as old.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:01]:
Exactly. And they're like, wow, that person's old, but not even that, but it just concrete that age in their mind. Whereas, I mean, even for myself, I think, well, when you are 90 years old and I was like, I have no idea. Like, oh, when you're your grandfather's age, oh, okay. Got it. Okay.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:22]:
And then another note that I wrote here was we asked about pets first. So say, what does your family look like when you're 15 years older? Do you guys have pets? And then just let them talk about what pets they want because you use pets as a stepping stone in reality, because you guys might have pets now, or you have friends that have pets and they want a cat, or they want a dog or a parrot or whatever crazy animal they want. And just kind of use that because then they start to picture, all right, I have this cat, where does this cat live with me when I'm 34, when I'm 32, etcetera. And it helps to kind of give them a little bit more of a mental image so they can see who's around them and where that is and all that kind of stuff. And be open ended with that question. I actually wouldn't advise saying, are you married? Do you have kids? That kind of a lot of pressure. If they say that, then they're picturing it, but don't pressure them for that. A lot of them you'll be surprised will be rather forthcoming with that information if you ask it in that way.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:16]:
And you can also use the phrase who's around you. But don't say, do you have kids? They don't know. Just say who's around you. And they'll say, oh, you know, I want to live near you guys. Or I want to live near grandma and grandpa. I want to live near my friend so and so or whatever. And then the next thing you ask is couching this as a statement. Just say, we all have to work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:35]:
If you could choose when to work, when would you work in a week? And just let them talk. She said, oh, I'd really like to get off at 3 pm or, oh, we have this friend who they only work 4 days a week. They work in manufacturing or healthcare or something. That would be great. So then I can do X hobby or whatever. And then there's a note here where I just said, this question is to gauge what type of work would let them have the type of lifetime that they want to have. That's going to end up being vastly more important than the type of work that they do for most of us, Because a lot of young adults these days are taught to pick work based on their teenage passions, which is a terrible, terrible, insane way to pick work. It's just insane.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:12]:
And instead picking on what are their habits look like? What do they want to have time to do? Time to learn? What type of living time do they want to have that's not work time? If your child is not extremely determined to be a surgeon, then they need to think more about what type of work will allow them to have the time or schedule that they prefer because that's going to dictate their happiness a lot more than anything else. And then the next question is if money was a game and say that, especially for teenage boys now, a lot of them game like a skin in a game, you can choose to put on your character. If money was a game, how much money in a year would you choose to get paid? And then just let them answer. Don't help them. Don't say anything. They say, oh, what's a good amount. Don't answer that question. Say, what do you think it is? And put it back on them, but don't be judgmental with the answer.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:59]:
I can't believe you think that's enough money to live on, blah, blah, blah. Don't say that. Don't say that they will shut down immediately. Just ask how much would

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:06]:
you get paid if you could choose.

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:07]:
And then just see what they say. If they say a million, don't tell them it's too much. Don't tell them it's too little avoid judgments on the actual answer because that's not useful. It's just trying to get a gauge of how much they think they want to make that is useful. And then the last question is, all right, let's say 10 years from now, after they answered the game question, what do you think is a good amount to make every year? So then say you'll be 30, you'll be 29 and then see what they say.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:33]:
You notice all of these questions come at it from a different perspective than you have ever thought of, or that, you know, the people in their life has ever thought of, or most people. I'm not saying, like, you I know what you know, but a lot of the questions that you and I get asked are always, oh, my child is interested in x. My child is interested in y. How do I help them develop those skills to then get those jobs? Or how do I help them get those jobs? And we've started off on the wrong foot. They're already we're already

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:08]:
Come back up the tracks.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:09]:
Yes. We are down the tracks. You need to come back to the station and we're gonna put you on a different train and we're gonna head down that way. The track might lead to that same one that you were on and it might lead literally as soon as we leave the station. It might switch tracks right back onto that one and that's fine. But the way that we're leaving the station is completely different. And what I mean by that is that you see here that there's no questions about interests. There's no questions about hobbies.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:37]:
There's what do you like to do? Do you like to work with your hands? And it has to do fundamentally with the way that you and I view work. And if you don't view work the same way that we view work, then this is not the podcast, which is the way that we view work is that we work so that we can enjoy the things outside of work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:55]:
That's the other thing I've started to realize is the second piece of this. People are like, well, what about their passion? If you can cover your basic needs, guess what? You'll have the freedom to go back into your passion responsibly without starving, without not having a roof over your head, without stressing about money, which is the number one stressor. And people act like it's not important. Like it's not going to prevent their kids from being able to feel like they have the ability to take a risk to learn something they don't know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:20]:
Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast. 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. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:51]:
It would truly mean the world to us. Thank you. And back to the show.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:54]:
Like, it's not gonna let them travel. Like, it's not gonna let them own homes or apartments that they want to own. And that's such a key to this. People think you don't go buy a college degree in your passion. Now you'll never do it. No, if you do that now, you will be handcuffed chained to whatever degree that was. And you will never be able to work in your passion because you'll be 24. Your passion will be completely different and you're going to have to service your student loan debt.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:19]:
Exactly. You're gonna have to service your student loan debt, and you are going to have to take jobs that are this amount of money that do this amount of whatever. Now, if you do it this way, like, okay, you can pursue your passions outside of work. I mean, you can still pursue your passions in work, but the first thing that you have to figure out is like, what does their life look like? Let's get a picture of what they want their life to look like. Okay. So if they want their life to look like they want to work outdoors and they're like, yeah, you know, I see myself living in the mountains, being outdoors like 10 hours a day and just really whatever, hiking, just being outside, doing something like that. Well, you probably don't want to be a developer. You probably don't want to be something that requires you to sit down at a desk inside indoors and have internet connection all the time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:12]:
You probably don't want to be a customer success manager. You probably don't want to be customer service rep. Those things require you to be in front of people or in front of a computer or in front of whatever now. Okay. If you can see that, like that's how they vision their life. Okay, perfect. Well, that is almost what they're interested in. And if you can help them figure out different jobs that help them live the way that they want to live and build a life they want to live, that is how they're going to be satisfied.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:43]:
And I think a lot of it for me has to do with people that are not using the degree free way. I'm not even saying like the book, the degree free way, but the methodology that we've come up with, which is coming up with your needs and wants first, and then going after different careers that fulfill those needs and wants that help you achieve those goals in your life. So you identify your goals and then you figure out work to help you fulfill those goals. And I believe that it is people that don't do that. That has led to such a high degree of dissatisfaction in their life and especially in their work and then in their work life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:19]:
I have two things to say that follow-up that, but one of them is we just got a comment the other day on TikTok. That was essentially, I'm going to paraphrase this, but just say, what about them choosing work based on their aptitude? How does this help with their aptitude? If they don't have the ability to learn to be a veterinarian, but they need to make more money than working at a pet store. And that's kind of what we were talking about. I was just like, oh my goodness. What a train wreck of a comment this is because one, they're already so far down the tracks that a kid has to work with animals. And then they're just going, well, the only way for them to earn enough is to be a vet. And I'm like, basically what the parent was saying is they're not smart enough to be a vet. And I'm like, okay, that teenage aptitude is a ridiculous, absurd, insane way to pick work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:56]:
It's definitely an insane way to buy degrees. That's crazy town. That's crazy. And to start from, they have to work with animals. The amount of people that that has put into massive amounts of dead is really startling, but like, well, they want to work with animals. So we're just going to go buy whatever degree is associated with animal work. Crazy town. 1, they need to come all the way back up the tracks and say, does your kid want to work with animals or do they just want to have a lot of pets? That's totally different.

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:19]:
That's one of the things too. And that's kind of goes into my other story, which is there's a young lady who just came into the LAUNCH program. She's about a year and a half into college and she took a bunch of prereqs. She had clocked a bunch of classes, including very good. She's good at school. It's not that she's bad at school, but she's getting good grades and everything, but she just went, I get into these classes and I just don't see this panning out as far as the type of income that I'd like to make with the amount of debt I'm going to carry, even though I like animals. And I just said, one other way that you can enjoy being with animals is you can volunteer or you can have your own pets. And she just kind of laughed.

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:52]:
She went, yeah, that's true. And that to her actually was totally fine. The volunteering at an animal shelter or rescue is a great way to be able to work with animals. And if you're not worried about servicing the massive student loan debt that comes with veterinary work. Wow. How much freer are you? And so she and her dad did a smart thing and they rolled it all the way back and they said, all right, we're going to start from 0 and start from scratch and see what type of work lets her live the way she wants, as opposed to I'm going to work with animals. And I'm going to try to earn as much as I can in that by buying a degree that lets me do it. That's totally the wrong mindset, which they realized.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:25]:
And I'm so glad that they realized it now because it's going to change the ability and the freedom that she has to do so many other things. And I'm so excited for that process with her because it's just going to change her whole perspective on what she's able to do now. And yeah, that's in the same vein. And I basically just have one more note to kind of put a bow on all of that. The final note that I put into that blurb for that book, which is called Talk to Your Boys. It's a note where I just say only 7.7% of all US jobs require college degrees. We counted that's how many. And requirements are legal requirements, not requests.

Hannah Maruyama [00:47:00]:
Those are totally separate. How do you know if something is a request or a requirement? Look up and see if there's a legal license associated with that thing that requires a degree to get. You are going to find that it is very rare and very hard to actually run into those things. When you look at a sales manager for a Sherwin Williams and it says bachelor's degree required, no request immediately ignore apply anyway. That's the criteria we're looking at here.

Ryan Maruyama [00:47:23]:
The caveat that we'll use here is that there are very, very few jobs that do legally require degrees. Those are getting fewer and fewer by the day, but there are, and it all has to do with government work. It's all government work, military, whatever agencies, whatever acronyms, whatever letter agencies, it's all government work that require degrees and they do not require licenses, which is why you and I look at licenses first. Let's just say, for example, if for some reason your child says that, okay, I want to work for the government, whether that's the military or some other thing, then still do your research, but know that you may run into legal degree requirements when you go into the government sector. When you go into the public sector, you're going to run into it. When you come into the private sector, there are very, very few. We couldn't think of any that legally require a degree and a degree alone. All of the things in the private sector are gated by licenses that require degrees.

Ryan Maruyama [00:48:30]:
A good example is a doctor is not the degree that makes you a doctor and people that think that you're wrong. It is the license that you take afterwards. Once you've gotten conferred the degree that makes you a doctor, like a CPA, it is not the accounting degree that made you a CPA to sit for the license. You need this many hours in CPA work, this many hours in accounting work. That is what makes you a CPA. That is what makes you a doctor.

Hannah Maruyama [00:49:01]:
What's the last thing I'll say too, is someone just stitched one of our videos on TikTok and, she was a doctor and she actually made the point, which you and I have actually talked about this at length. The fact that when people come over from other countries who are doctors, who are physicians and surgeons, we make them go back to medical school in the US when they should just be able to take the examination to get their license, because it's actually the license that's the gate. And you and I come back to this over and over and over again. But if it's the test that gives you the license, there is a zero reason why somebody shouldn't just be able to take the test and get the license.

Ryan Maruyama [00:49:31]:
Well, you and I are more radical than that. I'll speak for you. I believe. And I think that anybody should just be able to sit for the license, but this lady said the physicians that are coming in from other countries should be able to take the test because they were already physicians. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that anybody, as long as you meet whatever age requirement or whatever, like okay. So

Hannah Maruyama [00:49:48]:
Or experience.

Ryan Maruyama [00:49:49]:
Sure. Requirement. Let's let's say that the age requirement is 18 because you have to be an adult for whatever. I mean, doctor for this, but anything. And you're like for the bar, anything. And it's like, okay, I'm 18 now. Well then I can go take this exam. And if I pass it, then I am that a lawyer is a good example too.

Ryan Maruyama [00:50:04]:
Right? How many people get a law degree and don't pass the bar? There's a bunch of people. So is that person a lawyer? No, no,

Hannah Maruyama [00:50:10]:
they're not. They're not. Yeah. They're not. This is probably one of our more radical viewpoints, but it's so funny. Cause I already hear the comments just saying, oh my gosh, you wouldn't let somebody. Yes, I freaking would. Yes, I would.

Hannah Maruyama [00:50:22]:
If somebody could pass the actual exam to get their medical license. Yes, I would let them operate on me because they knew enough to pass a license, which is the bar that all the medical students have to pass. That's the only way that we're verifying that they know those things. I'm going to tell this story, but you just went into the doctor for a checkup and one of the 3rd year med students was barely able to take your blood pressure.

Ryan Maruyama [00:50:44]:
So I go into the doctor and the doctor asks me when we're about to get an exam or whatever, actually in passing into the exam room. Right. You know, how you go to the doctor, you get there, you sign in, you gotta wait in that crappy waiting room and then, oh my God, here we go. And then the nurse or the CNA or whatever helps take your weight and all that stuff on the way to taking like my weight and then into the exam room, the doctor passes by and she's like, Hey Ryan, do you mind if we have some med school observers? And I'm like, nah, I don't care, whatever dude. And so she's like, cool. And so they come in mind you, I'm thinking that they're doctors, right? Like I'm thinking that these 2 guys are doctors that are in med school. But I don't know. And so I'm just assuming, And then the doctor is, like, explaining all of these things, what's going on and whatever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:51:36]:
And she's like, hey. Can I get some blood pressure on Ryan? And one, this guy, the one that who's like I guess they were taking turns with taking blood pressure, but he forgot his stethoscope for 1. And I was just like, dog.

Hannah Maruyama [00:51:48]:
He's nervous.

Ryan Maruyama [00:51:49]:
I'm like dog. I gotta get my stethoscope. And so I get it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:51:54]:
They're nervous. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:51:55]:
He goes out of the room and he goes to grab his stethoscope and then they both now have the BP cuff and they are putting it on my arm. And they are trying to figure out like on all BP cuffs, there is a line basically that just indicates where it should be on your elbow.

Hannah Maruyama [00:52:16]:
Brian was an EMT. That's why he knows that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:52:17]:
I've taken many, many I've taken thousands. I've taken thousands and thousands of blood pressures in my life. I'm like, okay. It doesn't matter. It does, I guess, but like, not really, it's fine. But they were like both 2, 4 hands are on my arm and they're trying to figure out how to shimmy this thing over into the correct position. And then they're telling me both of them at the same time. They're like, Hey, relax your arm.

Ryan Maruyama [00:52:43]:
Don't make a fist. Do this, make a fist. Okay. Just give me your arm, relax it like this. And I'm like, oh my God guys. Anyway, the doctor had to tell them what pressure to pump it to in order to then back it down. So just quickly for all those that have taken blood pressures before, I apologize, But basically, you have to pump up the cuff enough so that you can back it down and then you can see where the blood pressure is. Normally, if you've done a lot of them, you know, it's like, just do it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:18]:
Just bang it out to, like, 200. Just bang it out to like 200. You're fine. I mean, if it's a smaller lady, like 180, you know, it's fine. And like, maybe it hurts him for a second, but you're losing it up. Yeah. You're going to loosen it in a second. It'll hurt for like one second.

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:32]:
And people would be like, that's way too high. It's not that high. But the fact that she had to explain that, okay, well maybe like me for like him, he's a little bit bigger. He's like 180. And I was like, dog, this is crazy. And so the guy puts his stethoscope to my arm and he's trying to listen for the blood pressure and he pumps it up and he backs it down and he's like, oh, I can't hear anything. Backed it up. He pumped it up, backs it down.

Ryan Maruyama [00:53:57]:
I can't hear anything. This is literally 4 minutes, 4 minutes of 4 hands on one arm of my body, and I'm just like, what is going on? 2 med students here, but only one will listen with a stethoscope. And long story short, he takes a stethoscope out of his ears. He's just like, yeah. I don't know. I can't hear anything. And so the doctor's like, okay, well let's give him a second because you just did it 3 times on him. And she ended up doing it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:54:27]:
Neither one of them did it. They literally could not get a blood pressure. And so I like, I'll let the moment pass a little bit and I was thinking, okay, well, these guys aren't doctors. There's no way And then they're not in med school. And there are probably like EMTs, like doing clinicals or doing pre med or, yeah, or CNA school or something like that. Something that you have to do some sort of clinical that's not a doctor and let the moment pass. And I say, okay, so you guys are like in med school, like to be doctors. And I didn't mean it to be awkward, but you could feel the tension in the room, like skyrocket because they were both like, yeah, I'm a 3rd year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:55:01]:
He's a 4th year. And he's like, yeah, you know, we don't get a lot of hands on. We don't get any hands on really until our 3rd year. And I was like, oh, okay. That's crazy because the main guy who'd, who forgot his stethoscope, who was doing it was a 4th year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:55:16]:
So about to be let loose on the world.

Ryan Maruyama [00:55:18]:
And he's like, we don't get any hands on experience until my 3rd year. I was like, okay, well, it's your 4th year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:55:25]:
I'm not going to math and I'm not a doctor, but it's your 4th year

Ryan Maruyama [00:55:29]:
and you still can't take a blood pressure.

Hannah Maruyama [00:55:31]:
And we're laughing to all this to say that the reason we're talking about this is because you cannot convince me. I cannot be convinced because we've talked to oncologists about this, who have been in their career very long time. We've talked to newer specialized surgeons and they all have said and actually we've had a plastic surgeon too, who even messaged us and said that we're spot on about this, but they fully believe that this can be trained and it should be apprenticed because then you imagine having a med student who instead does not touch a human being until they are 7 years into their school career. And that's conservative, right? Because five and a half years for undergrad. So really it's been 8 years before they put their hands on a patient. And imagine if instead of that, they were apprentice, they were trained on the job and they were with patient doing actual patient care for years, instead of being in college, racking up student loan debt, that it's criminal that they have because of the amount of service they're going to have to provide in their careers. Right. And the high level of costs of the training that they need.

Hannah Maruyama [00:56:30]:
And if we could negate that and just say, no, this is something that you can test into, but you have to put years of training into. And instead our physicians were extremely highly trained on the job, as opposed to extremely indebted and not trained until they get into residency where they're paid an extremely low amount. That's just criminal. The entire system is screwed. And until that gets figured out, that's a whole thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:56:53]:
I thought it was hilarious personally, as somebody who learned how to take a blood pressure in 15 minutes, literally in like 15 minutes and then just did it a lot. It was just hilarious, but okay. I get it. Doctors, when's the last time that a doctor took your blood pressure? They they don't ever take blood pressures.

Hannah Maruyama [00:57:09]:
Yeah. But they should know how.

Ryan Maruyama [00:57:10]:
They should know how.

Hannah Maruyama [00:57:11]:
Because you shouldn't be on an airplane and go, is there a doctor here? Actually, I'm sorry. Is there a CNA in here?

Ryan Maruyama [00:57:16]:
It was hilarious, but then, so just to round it off for people, like how did he not get the blood pressure for those that know the stethoscope, it was on the peds side is on the pediatric side. All he had to do was flip it over and it would be on the regular side.

Hannah Maruyama [00:57:31]:
You can't convince me that just studying and taking the test would not produce an equal result to that. I cannot be convinced.

Ryan Maruyama [00:57:39]:
But anyway, that was the episode. I'm pretty sure. I think it was pretty good. I know we kind of rambled about the degree free way at the beginning there. Although you stuck with us for that. And if you did everybody that bought the book, please do 2 things. Job limit inventory. Please take a picture and post and tag us at degree free.

Ryan Maruyama [00:57:56]:
And then give us the hashtag, hashtag degree free journey as well, please. I would really want to see what your young adult can come up with and not like your young adult, but like the aggregate, everyone that does this, please. They'll be super, super helpful. And then even more helpful if you wanted to help more, please leave a review at DFW, that's degree freeway, like DFW or Dallas Fort Worth for those people in Texas, DFW reviews dot degree free dot co. And those will be in the show notes as usual. Degreefree dotco forward slash podcast. And I think that's pretty much it for this week, guys. Until next week.

Ryan Maruyama [00:58:31]:
Aloha.