How to Build Your Career The Degree Free Way and What We Learned in 2024 (DF#180)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Decision when they turn 18. It's not just one decision, but it's a series of decisions they make every year, every day from year to year, just because you go to the 1st year doesn't mean that you need to still go the 2nd year, just because you go this semester doesn't mean that you need to go next semester, just because you came to class today. Doesn't mean that you need to go to class tomorrow, even though it's paid for and you can't get your money back. Do you kind of get your time back and all of those things? Aloha folks and welcome back to degree free today. We are going to be going over 20, 24 in review. We are going to be going over each one of our guests that we've had on in 2024, and we're going to go over the number one lesson that you can learn that you can take away from each of these guests. Let's jump into it. This year we had, it was a star studded cast and you stepped up to the plate and you for the first time started interviewing people by yourself.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:57]:
Because up until this point in 2023, 2024 now in 2023, I had been doing all of the interviews, but now you this year started interviewing people. Before I get to the number one lesson that we learned from our first guest of this year on episode 150, which is Kenny Digilio. How did you like interviewing people?

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:16]:
It's a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I always am interested in how people learn the skills they needed to get where they are. For my own curiosity, it was good because I was able to ask questions that I wanted to know the answers to. But at the same time, I did realize interviewing is definitely an art form and I would say I'm fairly unpracticed at it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:37]:
I'm not sure about art form, but it's definitely a skill that you need to practice and practice and practice. And you need to listen to yourself again, back through the episode and figure out, hey, what could I have asked differently there? What would I rather hear about or what would my audience rather hear about? It's very difficult. Your mind is constantly turning and turning and turning. You're just like a hamster on a wheel. While they're talking, you're trying to listen to them. But while you're listening to them, you're trying to think of your next question. And on an episode or on a show that's like ours where it's very much subject matter based. You really do have to think about the audience and what they want to know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:23]:
Some might argue that, well, every show is like that. Not really every show is like that because if it's like just your personality, if it's like the Joe Rogan experience or the Tim Ferris show or the whatever show insert the name of these people and it's your show, then a lot of the people listen because they want to hear you and your thoughts and what line of questioning interests you. It is a little bit different. I feel with that context, it's very difficult to keep all of that in check and keep all of that going while you're trying to have a genuine conversation with somebody.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:02]:
Yeah. And you easily lose track of where you are and what original questions you have for them because you tend to get wrapped up in the story that they're telling, but that's not always a bad thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:10]:
Now we're going to put the links to everything in our show notes, degreefree.coforward/podcast. So you can go back and listen to all of these episodes and have the direct link in there. But let's talk about episode 150, Kenny DeGelio, how to transition into the crypto industry. What was your number one takeaway from that episode?

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:30]:
The number one lesson I think people need to take away from that episode was something that Kenny definitely teaches and practices now because he's worked with so many people who are changing industries are trying to get into a new and emerging technical industry and it don't start from scratch. So for a lot of people who are not young adults, this is so once you're past 16 to let's say 16 to 20 years old, this doesn't apply to you. But once you're trying to seek work after that, and you're trying to look for jobs that you're going to get into, and you're trying to change industries, don't pretend like you have no pre existing skills. You do have things that you've already learned. So figure out how you can leverage those things and then how you can find jobs that require the skills you already have. And then what is actually the minimum effective dose to fill the gap between the skills you need and the ones you currently have, as opposed to what a lot of people do when they try to get into FinTech or crypto is they try to just learn all the technical stuff and try to, oh, I'm going to have to learn how to code, but people will come from sales backgrounds or management backgrounds or all these sometimes complex financial analyst backgrounds, and they just don't know that their skills directly translate, and they just need to learn how to explain them as opposed to wiping everything off their slate and pretending like they're starting from scratch.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:39]:
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 [00:05:10]:
It would truly mean the world to us. Thank you, and back to the show. I think it's also applicable to young adults as well. Even if these young adults, 16 to 20 years old, your first job, and you're like, well, I don't have any skills. You got to think back through how you did whatever tasks, whatever projects that you've had up until these points, make it relatable to your future employer. Okay. I'll just tell the whole story then. So I think it was sophomore year in chemistry.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:37]:
We learn everything that there was the year is split up into quarters. So I think for the first two quarters, we learned what we needed to learn for the base chemistry. And then in the last two quarters of the last semester was all this one project, which was how to figure out how to make soap viable and then how to market and then sell soap. In that if we had like an election of who was going to be the plant manager, who was basically the CEO of the company for the rest of the semester. And it was me. And then I had to appoint this person is in charge of the operation side, like of actually making it and everything. And this person is in charge of the selling of it. It's a competition between the other classes as well.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:23]:
So whatever I had chemistry 5th period, then you would have a competition between 4th, 3rd, and second period as well. And we're just seeing who can make so viable for 1, because that's the first task. But then if you're able to make a viable soap product and it doesn't burn people's hands because you've messed up and you put too much lie in it or something like that, then who could sell the most? If you're a part of a project like that, and you don't even have to be the boss of it, like how I was, you could be somebody within the project. You can say I did all of these things in school. I did all of these things for this project and those same tasks, those same skills now transfer over to this actual job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:06]:
It's definitely something that people should consider when they are young adults. The reason I say not to overemphasize that is because a lot of times you'll have parents will say, oh, well, the, you know, what about their existing skills? And I was like, well, you shouldn't let their pre existing skills at this age determine what they're going to do in the future because they're still really young. Unless they are an Olympian, they have some really outsized skill at something really specific. But for most people they're, oh, you know, what about their existing skills now? And they usually mean things that should not be dictating the type of work that they get going into the future.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:33]:
I agree with what you're saying, but my point wasn't about choosing the skills to learn or choosing that. I'm just saying like when you're selling yourself and when they're selling themselves to companies in an interview or in the job application process or in their portfolios, things like that, not to sell themselves short and say, oh, I have to start all the way from 0. And then you can instead be like, I have all of these skills to sell and to barter with. And that's a banger of a lesson for Kenny Giglio. There's a really good episode. I definitely suggest going back and listening to that episode 150. Then moving on to the next episode, Quinn McLaren. Quinn was episode 156, how pursuing a degree free path leads to success.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:15]:
The big takeaway from Quinn's episode was that your initial career matters a lot. It's kind of foreshadowing to a report that got released by the Burning Glass Institute later in 2024. But basically, who you work for and what you learn from them as your first or second entry level job can change your life. Quinn applied for a property manager job, and then the man who hired him just taught him a ton about business. Quinn then leveraged that and was extremely confident when he applied to a fortune 50 job at 21 years old. He got hired immediately and then now he's going on to get a college degree, the degree freeway. His company wants to promote him and then make him a CPA. So he needs a degree for that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:53]:
We'll technically a certain amount of credit hours to sit for the CPA exam to get his license and his company is paying for it because it's illegally required. And that is how you buy a college degree, the degree free way.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:03]:
Your initial career or your initial job does matter. There's actually been research on this before that your initial job really matters basically from an income perspective, from the amount of money that you actually make. It matters because if you make, basically, I forget exactly what it was. This was a long time ago. This is all off the top of my head. And I'm going to mess this up a little bit, but basically the lower money that you made at your first job, the less money you make overall throughout your entire life, or rather maybe not overall through your entire life necessarily, but probably because of what I'm about to say, which is the highest that you earn ends up being lower than those who take higher paying jobs at the beginning.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:47]:
So the new study is kind of an addendum to that because I think what happened is people looked at that and they wondered, I wonder if it was probably inspired by that exact study you're referencing, but they were probably going, is this true for all careers in all industries? Because it's not. There are 70 that have core skills associated with them, that even if they are low earning at the beginning, they translate into out earning college graduates consistently. And that's just because of the skill set that people end up getting. Among the top of them would be customer service reps, telemarketers, restaurant hostesses, things like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:17]:
But I wasn't talking about college. It was just, if you take lower pay at the beginning, statistically speaking, you'll make less money overall, or at least the highest income that you'll earn through a job will be lower than if you had taken more money. If you had gotten a job, secured a job that paid more money at the beginning. I mean, there's a whole bunch of factors. I think there's the obvious ones, which is, well, if you're getting a lower paying job, then you have less skills. It's just shorthand. Just using it as a general rule of thumb. You probably have less skills, then you acquire skills more slowly.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:51]:
And then that's how you creep up in your career from there. And then you would say those people that took higher paying jobs, they had more skills and then they learn and acquired more skills more quickly. And therefore they went up there. I think there is that for sure. But what I think is really the case there is it's very difficult for you as the person to go from making $30,000 a year and think that you deserve to make a 100 because proof says that your labor is not worth a $100,000 because you'd have a current job right now that pays you $30,000 a year. And you're completely fine with that. And how do I know you're completely fine with it? Because you have it. It's what I think It is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:34]:
I mean, amongst, like I said, all the obvious stuff and all the other things, but I think a big part of it is just internally the defeating narrative that you have in your own mind, that you are worth only this amount of money and therefore you are going to self select the jobs that only incrementally increase your pay instead of astronomically increase your pay. So instead of doing the $30,000 a year to $100,000 a year, you're going to be like $30,000 a year. You know, it would be freaking great and awesome is an extra $6 a year, which is a 20% increase in pay instead of $30,000 to a 100 or $30,000 to 70, which is astronomical. Really. That's what I think a big proportion of that is as well. That said, I don't want people to think like, well, then you don't go and get your first quote job. You don't go out and get your fast food job. You don't go out and get the retail job or whatever it is because you're like, well, my child is going to wait for that first, first career.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:37]:
Cause that's the one that really matters. I think if you're armed with this knowledge, you can go in and think if the first one really matters and what really matters about that is getting around the right people. But I want them to learn the responsibility of having to show up on time, having to answer to somebody and be an employee and all of those life skills that come with being an employee. Just know that they're going to go and wash dishes at this local restaurant, but we need to make a plan to extricate them from that as quickly as possible. Once they've learned the base skills of life of, Hey, when you can't make it to work, you have to call in sick. When you're going to show up late, you have to let people know those simple, simple stuff.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:18]:
Yeah, I agree with that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:19]:
Now moving on to the 3rd episode, Allen Helm, episode 157. This was right after Quinn's episode from lawn lawn care to director of account services at Bitcoin Magazine.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:29]:
The real takeaway from Alan's story is to be persistent no matter what happens, because everywhere he went from fertilizer sales, which is where he started to management, to insurance sales, to then Bitcoin Magazine. He just asked for more opportunities always. He asked for more work. He asked for more options within the companies he worked for that allowed him to learn more that made his specific stack of skills more valuable. And the big takeaway, and and this is something we say a lot, but there is no job security. There's only skill security. And he over time has just built up the stack of skills that make him really versatile wherever he goes. And so he's never going to be without work.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:03]:
Definitely persistence is key. The job security thing is huge. And even if you are an entrepreneur and even if you do make your quote, make your own money, there is still

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:12]:
no job security.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:13]:
There's no security in that either. I mean, it could all go belly up eventually. Every business can, if you reach a certain size, then it's probably fine. But most businesses have a certain like, Hey, we can, this can fail at some point. And so even if you're an entrepreneur, it can still fail, but especially if you're an employee, there really is no job security because they can fire you at any time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:35]:
And it happens all the time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:36]:
Exactly. You have to be persistent and be undeniable, be able to not only build the skills necessary to succeed no matter where you go, but then also build the resilience to be persistent, to always get to that. Yes. Eventually, no matter what it takes. And I think Alan Helm has shown that he's willing and able to do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:54]:
Yeah, I would agree. It's a good episode to listen to, especially because he climbed so quickly and did it in such a short amount of time while also growing a family, which is a good story.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:02]:
That was Alan Helm, episode 157. Now the next episode was episode 159 with Joe Kowalski from degree free research scientist to an 8 figure exit. This was a great episode.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:13]:
Joe Kowalski is a brilliant person. He has a very interesting mind. The big takeaway from that episode was that he shares my opinion that all people, all humans are autodidacts. We all start with the ability to self teach and then that is gradually hammered out of us through formal schooling curriculum and then the current US academic system. He himself is a current autodidact. So he survived through that and is still has that in himself. And then he went from manufacturing floor to the R and D chemical lab through teaching himself organic chemistry through a textbook, which is just a really good story. And then not only that he basically, without knowing what process engineering was, began process engineering within this lab that he had gotten promoted to work in after he taught himself organic chemistry.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:03]:
And then after doing that, he branched out into programming because he was so heavily into the data and the science that he was doing at the lab. Then they promoted him to process engineering. And after that he got into software programming and then built a massively successful software. One of the first software as a service companies that existed and then sold it for 8 figures. His life is a portrait of a very highly educated individual who is degree free. And his story is a blueprint in the belief that anybody can do what they want to teach themselves what they want. And then they should always question systems and try to learn more on their own.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:37]:
Yeah, absolutely. It was a great episode. Joe was fantastic. And teaching yourself is, and learning that way is something that I think we have gotten away from for the most part. And I don't know how much of it's like maybe teaching yourself as opposed to maybe not being as curious to the go after learning and those learning opportunities. I'm not sure where that balance strikes. How much of it is not being curious enough to go and teach yourself and how much of it is lacking the ability to self teach.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:07]:
I I think most of it is people waiting for permission. We've taught everyone they have to ask for permission before they do anything. And that's where a lot of people get stuck as they're waiting for someone to give them permission to learn something or to try something or to do something.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:19]:
I completely agree with that. From that permission perspective, this is your permission. You can learn anything. Just start now and it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to have an iron Titan ironclad curriculum to your life and be like, Hey, I'm trying to learn how to do X, Y, and Z. I'm trying to learn how to code. You don't have to. Okay.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:38]:
What is the first language to learn? Okay. What are the best courses or what are the best modalities to learn? And then you get caught up in all of that. And then you never get started. Really, the best thing that you can do is just pick any language and then just start learning as you learn. And as you progress, you're going to figure out, oh, okay. Well, I shouldn't have learned this first or maybe there's a better way to do this. And then now I need to learn this next. And then you'll connect the dots as you go.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:00]:
But there are so many people that don't get started. This is your permission to get started. And for those job seekers listening to this and to those parents out there who are like, well, my child is really interested or has shown interest, not like has said interest, but they've shown interest by going and doing whatever it is like breaking down their computer monitor screen or something like that. And putting it back together again, they can go and learn all these things. The fact of the matter is it's never been easier to teach yourself lessons and to teach yourself skills than it is today. Like it's literally never in the history of the world. Has it been easier to teach yourself because everything is so accessible on the internet and you can go to YouTube university and you can just watch however many free courses, the, all these different organizations and people put online for whatever skill that you and they want to obtain and just go through it and learn these skills yourself. And then if those don't work, then you can go on to paid resources and it's never been more accessible to get those paid resources either.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:06]:
And so, yeah, Joe Kowalski episode 159. Once again, the links to all of these are gonna be in the show notes. Degreefree.coforward/podcast. The next guest was Jen Hoskins episode 167, how to guide your young adult on their degree free path.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:20]:
Jen Hoskins is such a cool lady. I've called her on TikTok for a long time, and she's just really interesting person all around. Very, very bright, very, very smart. And she saw her family educate themselves her entire life. And then the big takeaway from her episode was to be, as you were just saying, interestingly enough, intellectually curious and to try things and always to want to know more. So she learned sales skills and then using those skills, sales skills, she built an interior design business in one of the 4 states that actually do require a license for interior designers. And then to avoid the paper path, she hired for any degrees that were required. So she just hired interior designers to sign off on things, which is a lot of people who run it design business that have legal requirements actually do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:02]:
They hire engineers, they hire architects, they hire designers to just sign off on things. She took her sales skills after that, and then she went into tech sales engineering. And she taught herself all of the vocabulary. She taught herself all the way the deals were and the motivations people have for buying tech products. And then she really just sat at the feet of people who are ahead of her in the game. And she just learned everything that they taught her. So when they told her things, she just did what they said. And then her optimism about how to learn and just her attitude towards failure is so healthy and so admirable.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:34]:
And I believe that that's a huge reason why she has been so successful at everything that she's done. And also on top of doing all of that, also has 9 kids and that she's homeschooled. So while she works, she also homeschools 9 kids. And it's really cool because she was able to build the type of life that she wanted because she was able to turn her work into something that worked for her.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:53]:
I was gonna say that for me, from that takeaway was that last part was having the 9 kids that she homeschooled while still maintaining a career and doing all of that. That's amazing. That's what I got out of it as well, which is she is a living example of figuring out what you need and want in life, and then making decisions that are congruent with those goals that you've stated to then make it happen. And that is exactly what we go over in the degree free way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old to build the life they want. That's what we try to start, which is, Hey, we need to start with our goals first. Let's get our goals down and then we help you figure those out. But then on their journey, they need to continuously check-in and make decisions that are congruent with those goals. Like, Hey, look, you said that you wanted this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:40]:
Is that true? If so, then you need to choose it's a or B this fork in the road. And really there's not a decision here. A is congruent with your goals. You just don't want to do it. It's the more difficult path. And I'm sure that anybody listening to this can look back on your own life and be like, yeah, I mean, I know exactly what you're talking about. You've been faced with decisions like this before. Well, you said that you wanted it and you're looking at both paths and B seems like the easier path or whatever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:07]:
And a is the harder path, but it gets you to where you want to go. Or at least you think it's going to get you to where you want to go. And for her looking at her life, she's a testament to being clear about her goals and then making decisions and executing on how to get there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:22]:
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. It was a great conversation with her. She's very cool.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:25]:
And the next guest was the very next episode, Bentley Hensel, episode 168 from tech to political campaigns, a journey of self taught success.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:34]:
My biggest takeaway from Bentley was what he did after he got his first job, which was he was 21, 22, and he had just finished working on the campaign and the campaign was successful. So he was able to take time off from work and he chose to hike from Mexico to Canada by himself, which is crazy. And he said that this experience changed his life and who he is as a person. And he is sure that he was only free to do that because he did not have student loan debt dictating his choices. I thought that that was such a good illustration of how your life is bigger when you don't have debt dictating and deciding what you can and can't do. And to take a mini retirement at that age is wild, but it wasn't irresponsible of him to do that because he didn't have loans that were gonna come knocking on the door. And he built valuable skills and then he ended up self teaching into amazing career after that. That was outside of his entry level skills.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:30]:
And then he became a data engineer and his freedom from debt allowed him to do those things and be really strategic about what he'd learned and how he learned it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:38]:
Yeah. Traveling solo definitely broadens your horizons. I definitely think traveling solo during those pivotal times of your life is very formative. Those times of your life, I just mean when you're that young and you're really starting to gather and starting to shape the perception of the world that we live in and traveling alone is one of those ways to kind of put you out of your comfort zone and give you a fresh perspective on things. I wouldn't know about hiking from Mexico to Canada. I've never done that, but I had done travel by myself pretty extensively and it changed my life as well. I agree with the student debt part. He wouldn't have been able to do it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:17]:
Had he needed to have to make debt payments all the time or live off of family money. Basically, the bills have to get paid if you don't have any bills. What's crazy about it is that your child, they become 18. And if they just don't sign that debt paper and assuming that they're not in debt, we haven't made decisions to get them into debt or anything like that. They are doing better than over half of the Americans.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:41]:
Just by not doing something.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:43]:
Yeah. They have like more net worth than half of the Americans.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:47]:
That was something Quinn said actually. He mentioned because he's a financial analyst at a fortune 50 company. And he mentioned that he had done some looking about the debt in areas of the country where there are not a high level of people who go and buy degrees. He said the debt levels in those areas are significantly lower, sometimes 0. It's very noticeable when you actually start looking for those numbers. And he believes that's actually a much better thing. It's not actually better to have the degree and to have the higher debt. He thinks it's the opposite, but we know a lot of people do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:15]:
A lot of people go, oh no, it's okay. The debt's fine. It'll all wash out in the end. You know, they justify it. They say, oh no, it's okay. It'll pay off. And he's just like, I don't know if that's true. That's what most people think.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:23]:
And we can see that by their life choices. So you're right.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:26]:
Yeah. It is funny, but it's not funny at all. It's extremely sad when he said that it was interesting. Cause I started digging a little bit and I was like, oh, he's absolutely right. So that was an interesting, it was interesting. Maybe we'll have him on for a follow-up later. Cause that was a really good episode. It was very interesting.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:38]:
And the next guest was Bradley. This is episode 169 long term effects of student loan debt and how it it could impact your child's future. That's actually interesting. It wasn't in our notes to talk about student loan debt. Actually, it was interesting that that came up.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:51]:
It was interesting because I talked to Bentley and Bradley back to back. The foil of their two experiences together was so interesting because they were just directly in opposition to each other. So Bradley, his story moved me to tears a couple of times.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:07]:
If you can just give us a brief overview for those people that didn't listen to it. I mean, everybody should, once again, there'll be in the show notes. If you could just give us the 2 sentence or 1 minute.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:15]:
Bradley grew up in a lower middle class family from New Jersey. I think his dad is a postal carrier. And I think he said his mom worked as a teacher and they were just not financially literate. His words, not mine. And then he said that in high school he wanted to be pastry staff. His family is very Italian. He'd grown up cooking with her and baking with her. And he was told by his guidance counselor to go to this culinary Institute of America, which is very expensive and private.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:41]:
And they said, well, if you wanna do that, this is how you have to do it. You have to go to school first and you have to go get a degree before you go into this industry if you wanna get anywhere in this industry. This high school guidance counselor, who I believe fully ruined his life. And he did get in. He did sign the loans. And then he said they sat him down 3 days before graduation, I believe. And they told him the monthly payment that his loans were going to be. And he said that he just realized that before graduation, that his life was over and he was 22 at the time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:07]:
So he even graduated on time. He did not joke around during school. Like he finished on time, which most people do not. And anyway, he started talking about his story because he had to pay down a massive amount of debt. He had huge student loans. I can't remember the exact number, but it was somewhere between $140,000 to $170,000 from this private culinary Institute. The 2 big takeaways I have from that story was that college robbed him of his passion because he was buying a degree to pursue it. And the debt that he ended up with turned his love for pastry arts extremely bitter to him.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:39]:
And then it really lit a fire under him to make sure that that doesn't happen to anyone else. And I think actually that his transparency about his mistakes and about what happened leading up to him signing those loans allowed me to see how young he really was when he started taking on such massive amounts of debt, and how he was really failed by the guidance counselors at his high school and preyed upon by the college itself. And then the second thing was that he himself takes a lot of hate for the decisions that his 17 year old self made. I see people make more excuses for 17 year olds that do actual crime than people who hate on him for what he did when he was 17 by going to college because he was told to go to college by trusted adults in his life. And that him losing his passion for this thing that he loved, he cares very much about making sure that that does not happen to other young people because he was burned so badly by it. And I have a lot of admiration for someone who admits that they made a wrong decision and then fully owns up to how that happened and how other people can avoid it. There's a

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:36]:
couple of things. 1, I didn't realize it was at CIA or like culinary Institute of America. This was probably like 10 years ago or so, maybe more. I think they have like many campuses around the nation. So I went to one of the campuses in Northern California and I toured it. And I was like, dude, this place is insane. It's a beautiful campus and everything. I thought I was like, oh my God, it must be so expensive to go here.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:59]:
Apparently it is. And yeah, the taking responsibility, there's no really other way. It's his debt regardless of whether or not he takes responsibility or not. So, yes, I mean, I think it's great that he took responsibility for it and he takes responsibility for it and that he's trying to help other people not make those same decisions. We say it a lot on this podcast, but you say, and a lot of other people say like the decision when they turn 18, it's not just one decision, but it's a series of decisions they make every year, every day from year to year, just because you go to the 1st year doesn't mean that you need to still go the 2nd year, just because you go this semester doesn't mean that you need to go next semester, just because you came to class today. Doesn't mean that you need to go to class tomorrow, even though it's paid for and you can't get your money back. You can get your time back and all of those things, obviously responsibility for those decisions as well. But my goal is to get people to think about how it's a decision while you're going through it all the time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:55]:
Every single day you are voting, you're making that decision with your feet, with your money, with your time, with your energy to spend more resources. But it doesn't have to be more money because sometimes like, okay, well, semester's already paid for. So I want to get the value quote out of it. But like, is that really true? Do you really need to get quote value out of it? Or is your time better spent doing literally anything else in the world then going to these classes? Once you've decided that it's not for you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:24]:
That is a good point. People can always leave, but I do think it really speaks to the strength of the marketing and the system that set up that you go and the momentum carries you through to the end of the purchase. Cause that is the goal. And we underestimate the strength of that that current. I think sometimes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:37]:
Last but not least the last guest that we had on this year was James Stewart, episode 171, how networking can transform your job search. I did this episode with James and he is a friend of the pod. I'll say, I also say he's just a friend of ours as well at this point. And he came on because he wanted to share his experience of changing jobs. And for those that are wanting to get into marketing, don't know where to start. James Stewart, his very first episodes we'll put in the show notes with all the rest of it with his first episode and this episode, 171, we'll put in the show notes. That is a primer for anybody that's thinking about getting into the marketing side of the world.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:14]:
Such a good episode.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:15]:
Yes. It's a great episode. Totally 100 percent evergreen. I suggest going and listen to that. He's a very, very good teacher. He's very smart. He's very articulate and he breaks down exactly what you need to do to break into the marketing field. And I think if you get those skills that he talks about there, especially we have quote, 0 skills, then you can branch out into the different areas from there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:39]:
But getting a good foundation, his very first episode is definitely the best resource that we have for you there. And he wanted to come on because from that episode that we did to now, he ended up changing companies and he went through a period where it was very, very difficult for him to find work. And he went through 1200 job applications and what he found out after the 1200 job applications. This is after he landed the job at where he is now. He found that out of the 1200 applications that led to 6 interviews and out of those 6 interviews, which is wild.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:13]:
That's crazy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:14]:
He talks about it a lot. And I'll say, even though this doesn't look good for our show, I just want to say it out now. He does think that he hit the paper ceiling for this and because he is looking for jobs at our director level and director adjacent, those types of things, vice president, SVPs, those types of roles. So he did say that he thought that he hit the paper ceiling quote, but I mean, obviously he didn't because he got a job. It just required a lot of effort on his part. What was interesting was that 5 out of the 6 interviews that he got were from personal connections. And that's where he was just talking about how your network is so important out of all of these applications. Only one of them

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:55]:
panned out

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:55]:
one interview from cold emails or from a cold application. The 5 of the rest of them were from

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:01]:
I'm looking for something.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:02]:
Exactly. And that's what got his foot in the door. Just basically the power of networking and one always expanding your network, all your children, always expanding their network, but then never to leave a bad taste in somebody's mouth. You never know when, or if it'll ever come back on a professional level, you'll never know when that's going to happen. Like the whole, when

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:22]:
it's going to come back around,

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:23]:
the whole burn the bridges thing. Right. And I've met very successful people that say that it's BS or like not BS, but if you'd want to burn the bridge, burn the bridge, which is totally your, you know what I mean?

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:34]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:34]:
Right. Exactly. But I lean on the more conservative side of that, which is the conventional, I'll say, quote, conventional wisdom, which is don't burn the bridge if you don't have to. If you're on the way out and there's no reason, like there's going to be, I've had so many times where I've sat in an exit interview and I just wanted to like give them everything. Yeah. Just be like, you let me, okay. How long does this exit interview and just unload it all to what end?

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:04]:
Nothing. Cause you might have to work with them again.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:06]:
Exactly. Or you might have to hit them up for a referral or something like that. To be completely fair to this person that I'm thinking about now to their point is I never had to make those calls. They have never had to rely on those connections.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:19]:
Better to not do things that you'll have to apologize for better to just not do them because your life is just much easier.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:25]:
But anyway, after he realized that networking was what got him the biggest results, that's where he spent all of his time. He stopped the cold applications and he just was like, just reach out to my network. And that's how he ended up getting into the role that he's in now, which he's actually the CMO of Claim Climbers. And in the new year, we're going to have the CEO of Claim Climbers, Sam on the episode as well. That's a great episode. I definitely suggest going back to listen to both of James Stewart's episodes. And those were the guests for the year and that's what we've learned from them. I want to do something a little bit fun at the end here, and just kind of talk about our year in review degree free.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:06]:
We started this year at episode 130 and this episode right now should be about episode 180. So maybe we miss an episode or 2 maybe or so. I don't think we did, but

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:16]:
we must have.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:17]:
Yeah. Or it's just a short week year, but we must have. So anyway, 51 episodes or so, or 50 episodes. So, but I wanted to talk about what my favorite episode was this year, and then we can talk about your favorite episode. And then here's how the rest of this is gonna go. You and I are gonna talk about our favorite episodes of the degree free podcast. And then we're going to go over the biggest thing that happened for us personally. And then the biggest thing that happened for degree free.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:42]:
How does that sound?

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:43]:
Sounds good.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:44]:
So my favorite episode was episode 135, and that was why hard work doesn't matter and how to choose the right vehicle for your success. It was me introducing something like, this is kind of my favorite episode was the one where I was by myself talking.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:01]:
No, but we got a lot of response to this episode though. A lot of people's favorite episode, actually.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:06]:
If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I know we have a lot of new listeners and stuff, so I'll put that in the show notes for everybody. Episode 135. It was a good one. If I do say so myself. And you do and I do, but it was me really introducing one of the most important concepts I've learned in my entire life. And basically I'll sum it up right now, which is hard work. Doesn't matter. Hard work alone does not matter.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:30]:
Working hard on the right things is the only thing that matters. What I mean by that is if you're working hard on the wrong thing. So for my life, I wanted to reach large financial goals at a young age. I worked really hard in restaurants for a decade. I hardly ever called in sick. I was always there. I always picked up extra shifts. I missed birthdays.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:53]:
I missed Christmases. I missed new year's. I missed a lot of stuff. I worked really hard, but I was working hard on the wrong things. It wasn't those working hard in the restaurant industry in general. Maybe if I had moved up, but I wasn't working hard to move up, you know, but maybe if I didn't, wasn't just a bartender started as a dishwasher. Sure. I mean, from a dishwasher doing all of the back of the house positions to then doing all of the front of the house positions.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:20]:
That's cool. But once again, it wasn't gonna get me to my goals. And it took me 15 years of my life to figure it out. And in that episode, 135, I felt like I was able to hopefully give you the listener, 15 years of knowledge in an hour.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:37]:
I think you did. It's a good episode. I think everybody should listen to it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:39]:
And now for my goals from a financial perspective. So just to the end, I still work hard, but I'm just working hard on the right things. I'm just working hard on something in a vehicle or whatever, you know, I don't know how else to say it, but like in something that's going to take me to where I want to go. Or like, if you want to visualize it a little bit, kind of like in a Flintstones car or something, the hard work is Fred Flintstone. You're just yabahdaba doing it, fricking your feet on the pavement. But some of them you're on a tricycle and this one is actual car that'll actually take you to where you want to go. So you still have to Fred Flintstone the car. You still have to work really, really hard, but at least this one has the ability to get you to where you want to go.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:20]:
Whereas the one that I was in before didn't have that ability. And that's a lesson that had I learned when I was 16, when I first started working, I probably could have saved 15 years of hard work, very, very hard work, but just hard work on the wrong things. So what was your favorite episode?

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:36]:
I think that my favorite episode was episode 163, which was exposing the dark side of higher education and why student loans could be the worst decision for your child. I think a lot of people probably found this episode really boring, but I spent hours reading into all this minutiae and data. And though I'm far from a data analyst or economist, as you know, I've always been able to connect dots that don't seem to be connected. And it was basically all a breakdown of the Higher Education Act and all of the downstream corruption and issues that it created that led to the current academic system that we see. So I liked that one because it was a lot of my theories.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:10]:
You came prepared in that one. You came with,

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:12]:
and charts and pictures.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:13]:
Exactly. That was a good episode. I agree with you there. Now quickly, the biggest things that happened for us personally, for me, this is a little bit of a cop out, I guess. I couldn't pick 1. This was, I had to have 2 things. 1, I was finally a published author this year, which was huge. You and I have collaborated and co wrote everything we've done so far.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:35]:
We have a couple of books that are actually published and then we've done like many, many guides and things like that, that are like textbooks, 250 pages that we never publish. We just sold privately. And that had my name on it, but like, this is the first time that I'm actually published. The other 2 projects that we did publish, those were under your name, although I helped write them. And that was just a strategic move that we did. For this one, I was actually the published author, one of the published authors on it. That was a huge deal for me personally. And now 2nd meeting Drake in San Francisco earlier this year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:08]:
I mean, one, to be honest with you, that doesn't even feel like this

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:12]:
year. Yeah. What

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:14]:
I'm thinking about it right now, like as I think about it, it doesn't even feel like this year at all, which is crazy. Wild time flies. So meeting Drake and for those that don't know Drake Porter, he has been on the podcast twice now. I'll put the links to his episodes there. If you ever need like a pick me up or you need like a boost of just can't do or, go get them, you know, like yeah. Attitude. You can listen to his first episode. For me personally, I remember after the interview, I just felt like I could run through a brick wall.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:43]:
That's how we describe this episode too.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:44]:
Let's do it. Let's do everything.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:46]:
All of it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:47]:
Yeah. And so it was really cool to meet up with him in real life and I'll throw a picture up actually for those watching the YouTube. This is Drake and me at the META headquarters. And it was awesome to meet him finally, because he's actually along with being on the podcast twice, we text every once in a while too. And he's actually helped us on a couple of personal projects. It was great to finally meet him in person. It was wild to think we just met on the internet.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:12]:
That entire relationship started as a TikTok DM.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:15]:
And we've solidified like an actual relationship, which is really, really cool. And so those are my 2 biggest events of 2024.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:23]:
I'd say mine would be the launch of the degree freeway also. It's not a cop out. It's just because it consumed our life for months months months months months. And it was a crazy project that you shouldered, I would say 90% of the burden of. And you learned a ton in order to make that and pull that off, which was pretty amazing to watch you actually figure all of those things out because of the amount of complexity and logistics and supply chain and all of these different things that you've had to learn. But it was definitely publishing the degree freeway. Another side note, we did cross half a 1000000 followers on TikTok. So that's pretty wild.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:55]:
And I think we have something like 60,000,000 impressions on our content too, which is kind of crazy. My mind kinda goes black when you think about how much our content has been able to reach people, which is really, really cool.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:05]:
Well, I think it's especially with our content being so niche.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:10]:
Yeah. It's like very specific. And so it's amazing. It's gotten to so many people. You can't really comprehend that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:14]:
And we're not rage baiting or

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:16]:
Despite what some people think.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:18]:
Yeah. And we're just sitting and talking to you. Those are the 2 biggest things to happen personally. And then last but not least the biggest thing for degree free this year. And once again, it's going to go back to the degree free way because this was by far the biggest thing we did this year. It might even be say like, this is the biggest thing that we've done possibly ever.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:41]:
Like as a project?

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:42]:
For degree free. Yeah. Like as a project and not necessarily in like a monetary standpoint, but just the complexity of it. It was very difficult and it stretched us in ways that we didn't know that we had to, or we needed to stretch. And we didn't know those muscles existed really. And we didn't even know those problems existed. I would say the degree freeway was the biggest thing that happened this year, for sure. I mean, we had to learn how to be a book publisher and for months we fulfilled it from our house.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:12]:
Yeah, we did. We packed those books for months.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:14]:
For months. I mean, it wasn't until very recently, very recently

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:17]:
that we were not fulfilling those books.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:19]:
Here. I'll just put up a picture right now. Look at this picture of our dining room. Like this is our dining room. This is actually a very small amount of books that are in there. At the max, it was like double of this size. It was to the ceiling and it was out. It was like that for months.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:35]:
We don't fulfill it anymore.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:36]:
So they're just stranded boxes of books in our house?

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:38]:
Yes. I know. We

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:39]:
just sit on them. We have dinner.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:41]:
Exactly. You and I talk a lot about just, Hey, just go out and do it. Just, you know what I mean? Like you don't have to have permission. We don't just preach it. We just do it. I'm not qualified to be a book publisher. I had no idea what it took to be a book publisher at all. I had no idea how to fulfill books.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:59]:
Like we did 2 books before, but they were much, much simpler. And because you can find those books now, if you wanted to, I'm not going to promote them here because it's not what we talk about here, but if you wanted to find them, you could. And if you're interested in those subjects, go feel free to buy them. But when you buy them, you're going to go and buy them on Amazon right now. And when you buy them, we never touched it at all because it's print on demand. When you order it, it's only one book. So it's very simple. Kindle, Amazon, they just throw it together.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:25]:
They actually make a physical copy for you and then they ship it to your house because we didn't want you to wait that long. And we wanted you to get the copies much quicker. And also because of the complexity of this, because it's 2 books, we thought about doing the print on demand way, but we didn't want when you're going over this with your young adult, with your child, it's very difficult to have them work on it and have you read something while they're literally working on it. I mean, it's impossible while their pen is to the paper. It's impossible for you to read on and like, okay, what do I talk about next? That's why we do like, okay, well, even though it's going to increase the cost of the books and even though it's going to be harder to fulfill and add an enormous amount of complexity of which we didn't realize at

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:07]:
the time. By that choice to do that though. Otherwise it wouldn't have been as usable.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:11]:
Yes, I agree. And we've had a lot of feedback from people, negative feedback.

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:15]:
Yeah. I just want to buy one book. And it's like, what doesn't work like that?

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:17]:
Well, not only that, but you're saying like, this could have been one book. Oh, this could have been one book because the parent book is exactly the same as young adult, except for a couple of pages missing, which is exactly true. That's completely factual. Except for, I mean, in the parent book, the words are different because you, the parent are reading it and the young adult version, the young adult is reading it. It's kind of exactly the same, except we wrote 2 different books.

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:39]:
And we know that because we sat there for months and wrote 2 different books.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:42]:
It is kind of the same, but I stand by the decision to make it 2 separate books because it is the right thing. The parent, you need to be able to read it and know what's coming down the line while they're still working on it. I mean, that's the way that it is. I fully stand behind it. I regret a lot of things in it. And maybe we'll do a regret episode later.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:04]:
Like how we just do things differently.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:06]:
We're very grateful that the overwhelmingly majority has been positive feedback.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:10]:
And I know we've gotten back personal stories of people who said this changed what my child was doing and it directly impacted people's choices and made them more informed and helped them parents not feel like they were out in the middle of the wilderness, trying to help their kids make this decision and help the kids narrow down and be really focused about what they were trying to do. I'm very proud of it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:28]:
Yeah. Personally for us, it was maybe not from a company perspective, but I mean, the company is just us, our values. I mean, company is just a bunch of people and this company is our company. And so it's just our values, but for us, it also was very nice because the launch program is very helpful. We do amazing things for the families in our launch program. And I stand behind the product that we put out there. If you need help with finding a path and getting a custom career curriculum, a custom career roadmap that is actionable in 2025, you go to degreefree.co/launch and you can apply for the launch program there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:47:02]:
For your 16, 20 year old?

Ryan Maruyama [00:47:03]:
Yes. I completely stand behind what we do there. That said, it's expensive and it's expensive because it's very time consuming and it's very difficult. Not everybody can afford it. So making the degree free way more affordable price point was huge.

Hannah Maruyama [00:47:17]:
I'm really happy about it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:47:18]:
And some people are still going to be like, well, it's not affordable.

Hannah Maruyama [00:47:20]:
I can't please everybody.

Ryan Maruyama [00:47:21]:
Yeah. I can't please everybody. And it is what it is. I stand behind it. I'm very grateful for everybody going through the workbook and actually listening to us and helping guide their family and their young adult through this process and to to their next stage in life. Yeah, that was 2024 in a nutshell. Thank you everybody. Merry Christmas.

Ryan Maruyama [00:47:39]:
Happy new year until next year guys.