How to Guide Your Young Adult On Their Degree Free Path with Jenn Hoskins (DF#167)

Jenn Hoskins [00:00:00]:
Wherever you're believing that you can't, that was a lie somebody told you. So you see, you need a degree in order to do that. I was fortunate enough to watch people who needed degrees but didn't have them, got to where they need to get, and then got degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:19]:
Welcome back to the degree free podcast. I am honored and a little bit starstruck to have on Jen Hoskins. She's the mother of 9 children, Some of them degree free, and Jen herself is degree free and has been working as a sales engineer for years now, but that's not her only career that has been degree free. So I'm very excited to have her on share her own story and then how she's equipped her children to take different degree free paths even than the one that she has taken, and how she found the right fit for them and helped to equip them and support them along the way. Jen, so happy to have you on the podcast.

Jenn Hoskins [00:00:54]:
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. I love talking about this. I love talking about the path that has brought me to where I am in my career and even the future steps of where I can go. Anything I can do to help people understand that there's a world beyond just having a degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:07]:
I wanna take you all the way back to the beginning of your journey, and that would be when you graduated high school. So can you tell us how you started down your track? Because you didn't start in tech. So where did you start after you graduated high school?

Jenn Hoskins [00:01:21]:
I'm actually gonna take you a step back. I'm very, very fortunate to have a grandfather who worked his way up to the top of large corporation. He did not get his degree until he was almost 30. So he basically was degree free for a long time working his way through, how do I get there? How do I do this? And then got a degree at that point, we're talking 70 years ago, that was really still critically important, but it wasn't his sole priority. He did military, then he did work, and he just kind of worked his way up. And then my dad didn't get his degree until I was in high school, and he only got it because he wanted to keep the job he had and he thought if any other candidates come up for this role, I don't have a degree, they do. And ultimately, his company paid for it because he worked for the phone company. So the phone company paid for his degree so it really wasn't even an investment on his part.

Jenn Hoskins [00:02:12]:
So he was like, well, I might as well. It's paid for. So that's the culture I was raised in. Then I had an uncle who was highly degreed. He went to Tufts. He was a physicist. He had an MBA and he decided he hated the scientific community. And I say that loving the science community, but he just saw a lot of the things that we're kind of seeing now with understanding that the funding is not always right and the lobbyists sometimes have more influence on science.

Jenn Hoskins [00:02:38]:
And there's just some things that I you could see Huberman and other people are trying to undo within the scientific community because the science is so needed. But he was just bitter. He was like, I hate it. He left the scientific community completely. He called his MBA his mostly bought authority, and he started a whole other company doing graphics. Before we had cricket, he made the graphics like the signs for different airport terminals and that kind of stuff, and that was what he did for the rest of his life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:02]:
Hey there. I hope you're enjoying our conversation and getting a lot of value out of it. Here's a little behind the scenes. We don't pay our guests to join us. They come on purely to share their stories and experiences in the hopes that you can learn from their mistakes and take some lessons away so that you can change your life. The more our podcast reaches people just like you, the more brilliant degree free people we can have on as guests to come and share their stories. So if today's conversation resonated with you or you've listened to multiple episodes, please take a moment and share this episode with a friend. Just a simple click on that share button or a shout out on your stories will make a world of difference.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:39]:
More shares means more listeners, and more listeners means more amazing guests for you. If you could do that right now, you would play a huge role in keeping this chain of knowledge going. Thank you for being a huge part of degree free.

Jenn Hoskins [00:03:52]:
So I was raised in this world that was totally loop you on your head. This was my normal it's not just this route, but I went to high school that was very much a college prep. It was a private high school, need to go to school, blah blah blah, and I was not a great student. I'm definitely ADHD brain. I asked way too many questions. I wanna know all of the whys before I figure out the conclusion. So it was problematic for almost all of my teachers and I think they just passed me to keep me out of the classroom, but I wasn't excelling. But I sat so much with my uncle who taught me all about science and scientific methods and how to think, my grandfather who taught me all about business, my dad who taught me about management both at home and at work.

Jenn Hoskins [00:04:34]:
I was like, there's got to be more and my high school counselor sat with me and said maybe we can talk about community college and I was like applying to regular schools. I was delusional. My grades did not cut out any of the schools that I was applying to, but I was like alright well we'll go community college. So I did 1 semester learning about childhood development and psychology, and I loved both of them, excelled in them, and then the next semester, I fell apart. It was like all memorization. It was anatomy and physiology, and I was like, this is terrible. I hate this. And my grandfather said, do you need a certification or an education? Because an education is free based on your library card and your willingness to read books.

Jenn Hoskins [00:05:13]:
But if you wanna be certified in an education, then continue to pursue your degree. And I was like, I just wanna know things. I don't actually need to be certified because I don't wanna work in these fields. He's like, well then continue your education outside of a school, which is so not what you hear in the populace. It's this idea that education only happens in a classroom and this was 30 years ago. You didn't have the resources that you have now with edX even LinkedIn Learning you didn't have all these resources and so I just kept reading books getting information, and so I wanted to start an interior design company. And to do interior design at that time in Florida, you had to have a degree. And my grandfather was like, well, what if you opened up the company and then just hired the people with degrees? You only need it for certain things.

Jenn Hoskins [00:05:56]:
So if you can hire a contractor to do it or you can hire a designer to do that one thing or you can hire an architect. Engineers. Yeah. Engineers. If you just hire those people, then you own the company. Oh, he's like, well then you just need to know the business principles. So technically, you just need to learn business. And at that point, the 4 dummies books were very popular.

Jenn Hoskins [00:06:14]:
So I read business for dummies, opened up an LLC, and just started.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:19]:
How old were you when you did that?

Jenn Hoskins [00:06:21]:
23. I just had my son, just bought a house. I had a spare bedroom. I was like, well, I can run it out of my bedroom. Looked up the laws and what I could do, and I was big on not gonna get a loan. I'm not gonna finance anything. I'm just gonna see what I can build off of what I have, which is labor. Because labor is a cost.

Jenn Hoskins [00:06:40]:
So instead of outsourcing to somebody else's labor, I just decided to do it myself when my son was napping or whatever, and I was able to build a company. We only made it to 2,008 because the recession was not good for interior design. Interior

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:51]:
design. It's

Jenn Hoskins [00:06:52]:
not the time that we should be doing any kind of interior design. So we closed but I learned so much because again I was in this culture in my family of what did you learn because either you fail and learn or you succeed. Both are positives. We're not risk adverse. We're not failure adverse. That you either risk, you fail and learn, or you succeed. Both are beneficial. And I learned so much.

Jenn Hoskins [00:07:17]:
I learned where I didn't pivot, what I didn't look at in the market. I looked where I was over invested because at that point it was telephone ads in the phone book. That's where I over invested. I didn't have the income and I wasn't able to pay and we had to downsize and we ended up closing. And I learned so much. I learned how to run a company, what management was and then I started to venture into other things. I never worried that I wasn't qualified to be there because if I'm starting it, I'm qualified.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:45]:
One, yes to all of that. I wanna go back because there are gonna be so many questions. So when you first started, how did you make your first dollar? And then after you did that, how did you hire? That's gonna be the biggest thing that people are gonna have questions about because they're not just for the parents with young adult seekers who feel like their kids need permission to do this, but also just the regular adult job seekers who listen to our podcast who would love to do this themselves but feel like they need permission from someone to do anything. And I've realized Ryan has told me before that some people just don't have that stop and wait for permission, but a lot of people do. For those who are stopping and waiting for permission, how did you make your first sale? How'd you make your first money with that? And then how did you hire afterwards?

Jenn Hoskins [00:08:24]:
So I was very fortunate. My husband was selling furniture at the time. I had the pipeline of leads that I was able to work, so it ended up correlating really well. It complemented what he was doing. So we were working with the same people, which could also increase his sales at the same time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:38]:
Did you call them?

Jenn Hoskins [00:08:39]:
He would basically warm lead them for me. He was like my BDR. He would develop the leads for me and be like, hey, call this person. And then it ended up being referral based then advertisement afterwards, but that was what kind of kicked me off. And the point was I looked around and said, I'd like to do this. So I'm a big believer in Providence that things are going to line up, they're gonna pop up. How do you get through them? And it's just a matter of knocking. What do I need to do in order to get through this program? Okay.

Jenn Hoskins [00:09:04]:
I can do those things before I can outsource into using a sewing house or anything like that. I know about import export enough that I can import fabrics and then I have warm leads coming in. If I was putting together a business plan, because I knew enough about a business plan because I read Business For Dummies, I knew enough about a business plan that I was like, this seems to have the right micros to be able to develop this. It's gonna be hard, but I think we can at least try. Again, the only risk that you have in trying something is not succeeding, but you still learned all the lessons. And that's just basically what I did. I was like, well, this looks like it can work. If a person out there is going, how do I take these skills that I have, which whether it's sales or I'm great talking to people or I'm terrible talking to people, but I'm good technically or whatever it is.

Jenn Hoskins [00:09:52]:
Look at those skills and then just look around your life. There's a book by Ken Coleman called The Proximity Principle, which is all about the network around you and the network that you build is where your opportunities are. And usually it's not the person you know, but the next person out from them. And that's such a key principle because there's someone within your network that can help you get to wherever that is. And then you can benefit them because they're looking to have a problem solved too. That is the key that we can do as people because we all have different gifts and skill sets, and we need all those gifts and skill sets. So often, the skills that we don't realize our skills are taken for granted by us because it's easy. That's easy for everybody to do.

Jenn Hoskins [00:10:33]:
It's easy for me to get on the phone and ask somebody a bunch of different discovery questions about their technology. But that's not easy for everybody. It's easy for me, which led me to my career in tech sales. I know how to be able to navigate that, but somebody else doesn't. And I need an engineer because I don't know how to speak into all the technical aspects. And so I'm able to run the sales side. He's able to run the engineering side because we both have skill sets that needed each other. My weaknesses were only leaving room for my engineer strengths, and my engineer strengths were only leaving room for my weaknesses.

Jenn Hoskins [00:11:05]:
We complement each other. There's such a focus on you need to make your weaknesses strengths. But the reality is, look at what your strengths are, say those are my strengths, and realize there's weaknesses out there that you need those strengths to speak into. And that's gonna be everybody's starting point.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:19]:
That's such a huge point that I wanna make sure everybody kinda thinks about too. And one of the most common things I hear all time. It's not so surprising to hear it from young adults from 16 to 20 year olds because they just don't know what they're good at necessarily. A lot of it is that they've been beaten down by the current school system, by colleges, and so they just go, I don't have any skills. And I hear that from people who are in real estate, who are selling 200 dollars,000 a year. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't have any skills? Do you know how many people can't sell anything, can't do what you're doing? Do you know how many people have issues doing the type of coordination and scheduling that you do? So many people. I do. It's just one of those things where people, I think, really need to think about that heart.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:55]:
That is such a key point that you just said. I wanna make sure people hear it. The things that are skills to you are probably things that you don't even realize are skills because they come easily to you. And you don't have to have a lot. You really only need to have one skill, and it could be anything. It doesn't even necessarily have to be like, oh, I'm really good at coding. It can just be, hey, I'm really good at talking to people. I'm really good at problem solving.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:15]:
I'm really good at listening and maybe people feel hurt. Those are all skills that can translate into careers that help you live the way that you want to live. So I wanna roll back to 2,008. You close the doors because of the banking crisis. When that happened, what did you do? And how many kids do you have at this point?

Jenn Hoskins [00:12:32]:
So I had my 3rd. She was a baby. I really that last full year because about a year before we saw the downturn nationally. It hit us because people started to see the beginning of the crisis, so they pulled back on expenses. We didn't have to wait until all the foreclosures happened to really see that. So I was buffering and buffering and buffering and I had shrunk at that point back down because I knew that I wasn't gonna be able to sustain the growth and started to go what lessons did I learn and then eventually one day said alright I'm good. I can't continue to keep this alive. It's obviously dead.

Jenn Hoskins [00:13:02]:
What did I learn and what can I convey elsewhere? At that point, I was like, well, I can start a consulting company. I can start helping people with marketing because I really liked the marketing side. I started to work maybe few years later. Well, I did content. I started to do YouTube and that kind of stuff. Trying to find my niche because I know I loved making content, which is why I made TikTok eventually. This is, like, my 4th or 5th try at making content, and this is the one that was successful. Again, which goes back to just because it failed the first time, just try again.

Jenn Hoskins [00:13:29]:
Just pivot and try again. Oh, well, that model didn't work. Let's pivot and try again. And then eventually, you're like, oh, I found the one that works. Let's keep doing that. So I started to build up my network. I was big in the homeschooling community. I knew a lot of homeschool bloggers.

Jenn Hoskins [00:13:43]:
I knew how they were making money. I knew what they were doing, what their business models were, why their content was working, and I just started to network. And at that point, I didn't really have to work. My husband was making enough that I was able to just kind of build slowly. What do I wanna build? What do I wanna do? I've had babies a lot of these years. I mean, I had 1 2,007, 2008, 2010, 2012. So like there's new people introduced consistently in this whole nother universe. What a wild way to say that.

Jenn Hoskins [00:14:12]:
You know I'm navigating that as a large family mom, but I'm also just building this network of people. And one of them ended up being I worked for her. She ran a nonprofit and I started working with her just kind of on the consulting side of social media and then that grew into more the consulting side of marketing and then she hired me at one point where I was working more on her marketing and product development and then that worked into being the executive director and then I totally burnt myself out 100%. I was like I surrender. I burned myself out. At that point, I had 8 children. Can't save the world. Originally, a lot of her content was being marketed towards the purity culture that was so detrimental, and she hated it.

Jenn Hoskins [00:14:52]:
And so she kinda like, that's not what I did, but there was this message. It permeated these cultures that she was like, this wasn't my message. So we were undoing that while trying to help internationally at the same time. I don't think my voice is helping here as much, and I love you, but I am burnt out. I can't help it anymore. I need to back off. Friend of mine was hiring into tech based on his team, and I was like, I don't know anything about tech. I don't know anything about sales.

Jenn Hoskins [00:15:18]:
I don't have a degree. This says I need a degree. This is a huge corporation, and you want me to sell into public sector. I don't know anything about that. He's like, you can learn all those things. The skill is, can you talk to people? I was like, sure. He's like, are you willing to come in a little bit early and meet with an engineer every morning until you know all of it? I was like, sure. So I got the job by God's grace because I didn't even do well in the interview.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:43]:
How did you not do well in the interview?

Jenn Hoskins [00:15:45]:
Okay. I panicked.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:46]:
Love that interview stories on this podcast.

Jenn Hoskins [00:15:48]:
It's so bad. I had to go in for another follow-up interview because it was so bad because 2 of people are like, she's terrible. I was like, yeah. They were right. But the 2 other people knew me, and they were like, I think she'll be fine. So I ended up going in with another interview. Again, my friend advocated for me. He's like, I'm telling you what you saw was not Jen.

Jenn Hoskins [00:16:06]:
And I was like, thank you for advocating because I forgot to progress my slides. I spoke way too fast. I just panicked because I didn't know the topic. I didn't know the material, and you had to do a presentation, which is so stupid. I don't do a lot of presentations in

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:21]:
my job. I do them. But, like, mostly asking questions.

Jenn Hoskins [00:16:25]:
And it was death by PowerPoint. You need 85 slides. You can talk about these things, and I'm like, this is terrible. I chuckle. I always do them when companies ask me, but it was just so bad. Ended up getting this job. I had a phenomenal engineer. He came in super early every morning, so I started coming in an hour early and he white boarded data centers for me.

Jenn Hoskins [00:16:42]:
He white boarded personas. He white boarded the progression of a sale from an engineering perspective. Because all of my training material was on sales because I I'm the account executive. How do we progress a deal technically? Things I had never thought about.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:55]:
How long did it take you to understand with that coming in one hour early? How long do you feel like it took you to get to proficiency and understanding what the process was, what the product was?

Jenn Hoskins [00:17:04]:
Probably 6 months. I missed quota the 1st year. I was at 98.5%. Oh, no. Yeah. And that's what I said. And I was hired 2 weeks into the year, so I always joke with the person who hired me. And I was like, it's your fault.

Jenn Hoskins [00:17:17]:
If you had just gotten my paperwork through 2 weeks earlier, I would have been fine. That missing quote of that time was, like, so brutal that I was like, we're never doing that again. But it was because of Ed, my engineer, who just poured into me. He really just genuinely had a heart for making sure I knew what I was doing, but he wasn't even my engineer. My engineer was somebody else. He just worked for the team. And he worked mainly on the fed side. I was on the state side, and he was like, I'm gonna help you.

Jenn Hoskins [00:17:43]:
I'm here. And he just taught me all of the ins and outs of the difference between containerization and virtual machines, but broke it down in a way that I was like, oh, that makes sense. And having those people look for them, and if they're willing to help, what a blessing. I already had an open door. But if you don't have that open door, who do you know that's willing to sit with you for an hour once a week, even just willing to answer emails? At this point, chat gpt does conversation. We can really start to build off what we have to mirror these kinds of experiences that some of us had. I had that experience providentially and I'm very thankful for it, but there's still ways to manufacture it if that door is not open and that's what we need to look for. We need to look for resources that are available to us at little to no cost.

Jenn Hoskins [00:18:28]:
It's phenomenal what's out there right now.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:30]:
My experience getting into tech was very similar, and I find that if you find devs, engineers, and you are just curious, they will bend over backwards to explain complex concepts because no one asks them. And so the slightest bit of enthusiasm and curiosity, especially when you're sincere in those things, will produce amazing results because they love to explain. They love to teach, and they'll teach anybody that will listen, but people just don't ask them. It's one of those things where I've seen that happen over and over in tech. And a comment I've gotten recently, it was a while back and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, was, oh, she always talks about jobs that would be good for women, specifically talking about different tech jobs and stuff like that. But the thing is that sort of mentality is keeping women from going into jobs where all they have to do is go into them, be curious, sincere, and enthusiastic, and people will bend over backwards to teach them, to explain things and open doors for you because you're enthusiastic, curious, and excited to be there. I don't know if you've seen that as well, but I'm sure that's probably been your experience too, which is that you just show curiosity, you just show that you wanna be there, and people will bend over backwards to help you.

Jenn Hoskins [00:19:36]:
100%. I mean, it is still predominantly, especially on the engineering side. On the sales side, we have pretty much a 5050 ratio at this point, at least in most companies. On the engineering side, it's still very male dominant. It means one of 2 things. 1, women aren't trying to get into these roles because either it doesn't work for their natural curiosity, which is totally fine, or they're intimidated. And if you're intimidated, I gotta tell you, I work with these guys and we sit around and they teach me so much and they don't care. They are willing to teach you any of these things.

Jenn Hoskins [00:20:08]:
And I'm so thankful for that, and I wish that there was just kind of that stigma. Now you're always gonna find the tech pros. They're always out there, but you're gonna find a lot of the tech chicks too. They're out there too. One of the worst corporate bullies I had was a woman, which is staggering. But I've also had phenomenal female mentors and phenomenal male mentors. Both are willing to pull in and pour into you the knowledge base that they have because they're genuinely to help. It's no longer as much of a gendered idea as it once was, but the point is is willing to risk.

Jenn Hoskins [00:20:41]:
Like I told my daughter, we can get you these certifications. This is kind of a good career path if you wanted to go this way because number 1, it's always growing. There's always new events of things that we're learning, so it's a great place to go just if you're a curious mind. And she would be a phenomenal leader of engineer because her mind works that way. And I'm like, you really need to look into this because the quicker you get in as an engineer, the quicker you can get to leadership, and that's where you shine. We've been just kinda talking about what are the paths, what are the roots. And she's like, well, I do wanna get a degree, and I'm like, alright. That's fine.

Jenn Hoskins [00:21:10]:
If you wanna get a degree, let's see if we can get you into a job that's willing to pay for it. Because there's so many jobs that are willing to pay for it, but you are gonna have to probably pay for some certifications out of pocket. Certifications are gonna get you further in most tech companies than a degree is. Sometimes the degree is what opens the door, but a lot of the times we know people at these companies. You just open up a LinkedIn and start connecting with your people, it will almost feed you all the connections to all the places that will help build your profile. It's very intuitive that way. So don't be intimidated to open up a LinkedIn and be like, oh, well, I've only been a stay at home mom for so many years. Open it up.

Jenn Hoskins [00:21:47]:
You've run a home. You've been the CFO, the CIO, the CEO, and you've managed a team of tiny humans. You're in corporate. You're stewarding your own humans. It's the same concepts overlay. You just start reading John Maxwell's books. You're like, oh, these leadership principles work both at home and in corporate. So bring those skills to corporate.

Jenn Hoskins [00:22:08]:
They're there. Well, there's not enough jobs. There's not enough open doors, but there is one. You don't need a lot of the doors.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:13]:
Just need one.

Jenn Hoskins [00:22:14]:
1. So just keep knocking. Eventually, it'll open. That's what happened to me. It's not dumb luck.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:19]:
We get pushed back all the time. They'll tell me, oh, you just had a connection. I had zero connection. I've never been in tech. I was working in the call center. I was making $28,000 a year. I'd never been near a computer as a job ever in my life. I worked in restaurants before that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:31]:
I was a nanny. That's what I had done. That was my career background up until I was 25 years old, and then that was where I got my first tech job. And, again, it's a degree required, obviously not, and people just, oh, you must have a connection. Nope. Didn't know anybody. I was very strategic, and then I just applied a lot. And that's because you only need one person to say yes to you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:51]:
And once you can get the first yes, the other yeses become easier. It's something that Tim Ferris says a lot, which is you have to increase the surface area for luck or, as you say, providence to stick to. If you are knocking on doors, eventually, one will open to you if you knock on enough of them.

Jenn Hoskins [00:23:07]:
Even from me getting into tech, I went from entry level sales to a senior level 2 in 6 years. Technically, it was 4 years because I got the senior level 2 by the time I was there. So I jumped from level 3 to level 7 in the scale of where I was that quickly. It does take a lot, but the a lot that it takes is grit. That's what you really need to boil down to is the grit and the willingness to believe in yourself when nobody else does. And honestly, to get there, that's inner child work, that is working on the foundations of you, that is wherever you're believing that you can't, that was a lie somebody told you. So you see you need a degree in order to do that. I was fortunate enough to watch people who needed degrees but didn't have them, got to where they need to get and then got degrees.

Jenn Hoskins [00:23:53]:
I understand. I'm very fortunate in that respect. And that is generational wealth to me. My family didn't give me anything financially. There wasn't a dollar handed to me. I think my mom did pay for my first two college classes and then that was it. Like, there wasn't a college fund or any of that kind of stuff. But I saw the principles that they had poured out in their own lives and just modeled that.

Jenn Hoskins [00:24:15]:
And that's what started to open doors. So I'm 45 and I still do work on myself. Where do I feel like I don't belong in this room? Why am I intimidated by talking to this person and not to that person? And again, that's a me problem. It's not a them problem. And if you just continue to work on yourself, why do I feel like I don't belong in this room? Be curious. That curiosity starts to undo a lot of damage because when you say why, you're looking for an answer. I tell my kids, if you say you can't, your brain will believe it. Or if you say I don't know yet or I don't know how yet, your brain will believe it.

Jenn Hoskins [00:24:47]:
But one is gonna say I can't. It's not looking for an answer. I don't know yet says I need to look for an answer. But the same response can be to that circumstance. So is it really that you can't go into that without a degree? Now you can for, of course, a doctor or a lawyer, but let's get the 20% that need degrees out of the way. Those other 80%. It's just that you haven't yet. And sometimes there are systems that are built, what I would consider destructive.

Jenn Hoskins [00:25:14]:
I mean, we talked a little bit on the education system and the education Yeah. Does 2 things. 1, they wanna do what they deal, so to speak. They want people to continue in education. So they require these high level degrees for these much lower paying jobs, but it perpetuates the system. It's like an education turnstile. So of course, you're gonna need a high education to go in there. But now you have all of these much smaller community schools popping up post COVID that is parents who need tutors and that kind of stuff.

Jenn Hoskins [00:25:42]:
And you only need a basic degree or even in some states a certification to get that done. Start there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:48]:
I'm watching our entire country and the landscape of work change in such an interesting way, and we're in Texas. I know you're in Florida. But I have noticed that states that are adopting better models for different businesses that tend to be highly regulated are doing a lot better. And you left a comment months ago that I've wanted to talk about, which you were talking about the ROI for doctors and lawyers, which is really bad in a lot of cases. And what people don't realize is a lot of times, those who pay so much for degrees are handcuffed essentially in indentured servitude where once they take on those loans because the loans are bankruptcy exempt and because the debt is so high and because the interest is so high, because they go so long without being able to pay them down, they basically will probably be 75 or they might pass away still in student debt even if they're surgeons, even if they're extremely skilled. Not too long ago, I spoke to a surgeon. She'd gone into the military, and still she was gonna die with student loan debt. And it was wild to me to see that and realize that she was stuck in her job because the only alternative for her, realistically speaking, she's 54 now, is to go out at 54 and retool into a high paying tech job or become a business owner.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:55]:
Those are her only options. She cannot do anything else because the only thing high paying enough to service her student loan debt is the current job she has. So if she hates it, too bad. If she gets sick, too bad. If she hurts her hands, too bad. And that's so terrifying to the point where people don't realize the doctors and specifically surgeons are almost blue collar workers because if they hurt their hands, they're done. It's so scary to realize that. But that's something that you had mentioned because people are just thinking, oh, my kid's gonna be a doctor, my kid's gonna be a lawyer, like, it's this golden ticket.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:24]:
And I'm like, that's not a golden ticket. That's really scary, especially if they don't finish or don't like it.

Jenn Hoskins [00:27:30]:
They're needed, but you need to know the sacrifice you're walking into. There are doctors are so needed, but the culture that we're raising doctors in, I don't want a doctor who's been on call for 2 days and has little sleep operating on me. And that's what we're raising people in, and the whole culture has to shift to gain back my trust as a consumer because I am a consumer of physicians. It's not just going in and being told. The whole culture behind that even is that doctors know best. They do know a lot, but often they're so overworked. They're stressed about money. They're stressed about their life, and they have no time.

Jenn Hoskins [00:28:08]:
This isn't beneficial for them. They're not being able to practice what they preach, and then it drains them for what? How do we fix it? Well, the first thing we need to do is go back to the foundation of how we're training them, and you can look at other countries. Other countries are doing this well. Like, I just read The Forest Fix. It was all about the Japanese understanding of how Mhmm. Forest is actually really healing. Some of the research that's been coming out of there. Phenomenal book, but my biggest takeaway was how are they raising up doctors in a different way than we are because they're getting such

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:37]:
Better outcomes.

Jenn Hoskins [00:28:39]:
And that really is where you have to step back and go this isn't a base level issue. We can keep poking at symptoms all day long, but the loan debt is a symptom of a foundational issue.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:51]:
Yes.

Jenn Hoskins [00:28:51]:
So when we say all of these things need degrees, there's a foundational issue. It doesn't actually need a degree. It perpetuates a system.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:58]:
From the top level, I talk about how big the industry is, the academic industrial complex. I talk about buying degrees because people have failed to realize one of the biggest exports in our country right now is student loan debt. We're just putting our kids into student loan debt. That's the economic engine, and we're running on steam. And it is horrific that we are putting our young people into this position, and it's creating all of these mismatched incentives in our society, and it is causing generational problems, health problems, mental health problems, security problems. And, actually, a huge thing too, you talk about how there's more women now that are physicians, but a huge reason why they can't become physicians is because the hours and the stress on them makes it really difficult for them to have children. The amount of time that we have tacked on because doctors didn't used to have to buy bachelor's degrees before they went to medical school. That's a huge thing.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:44]:
You tacked on 4 years that now makes it difficult for female physicians to have children, and so now they have to choose. And then also, we're saying the only way that they can work somewhere where they make enough to pay off their student loan debt is going into a hospital instead of like, I know Texas and Florida are kind of pioneering this, but basically going back to the future, which is they're going back to the village doctor model where you pay a monthly amount in cash to a doctor, and that makes these doctors earn much higher. And now they can pay off their student loan debt and their business owners. That's the other thing where people are just not realizing that the step to break out of this rat race is actually business ownership and entrepreneurship, but we've made it so that we've put these debt burdens on people so they can't risk entrepreneurship because they have to pay their student loan debt. We have wiped out, I think, several generations of entrepreneurs because we've done that.

Jenn Hoskins [00:30:30]:
It goes back to that you can't, and you can't lie to people for so long. And the sunk cost fallacy will cause people to drown. I've been reading doctor Casey Means, her book.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:43]:
Was she the one that was just on Tucker Carlson? Yes. I've been being sent clips of her because she's technically degree free, isn't she? Because she left

Jenn Hoskins [00:30:52]:
medical school. Very highly accredited and left because she said this is not the model that we need to go, and we need more of her to start on doing some of these things that we're seeing in the culture of you need all these things in order to be able to survive and thrive. And I'm gonna tell you my motto, but I'm gonna have to unpack it because it's gonna sound silly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:13]:
Go for it.

Jenn Hoskins [00:31:14]:
All of this is fake. This is all built by people at some point in time, and I mean that across the board. I don't mean it doesn't matter, but what I mean is the systems and the processes that have been built up over time to create our infrastructure was built 50 years ago to thrive, a 100 years ago to thrive. But all of these things have been built as it becomes a house of cards and we need to shred some things down to rebuild. But we need to realize what we're looking at that's giant was built by someone. And if someone could do it, why not you? And I think that if we start to get that perspective of this is all fake, why not you? And I know there's so many people who listen who have grown up like a mom who told them they couldn't do anything or a dad that didn't told me they couldn't do anything or left them. But I'm gonna say it for you when they should have. Why not you? You are qualified for something.

Jenn Hoskins [00:32:11]:
You are qualified to do those things. And if you desperately need to have a degree for the thing you want, there's models now that make the investment low enough that it's worth it. Western Governors University is phenomenal in the way that they model it out. It's one test for the most part for all of their courses. You can take as many courses as you want to per semester, which means if you go on edX or you go on some of the other apps that are out there, pre study for all of these courses, and then you go and take the courses, and then you can just go in and take the final. It'll tell you if you're ready to take the final. You take the final, and then you can pass the course. If you are able to play it well, you can get your degree for under $10 because it's only like $4 a semester.

Jenn Hoskins [00:32:53]:
Books are mainly online. Everything's online. They even have a nursing program. So there's ways that you can do this if it's truly needed.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:02]:
Necessary. Yep.

Jenn Hoskins [00:33:04]:
If for your ego, you just want it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:05]:
Or you want it. Yeah. But as long as you understand what the investment is, you just don't need a $100,000 degree.

Jenn Hoskins [00:33:08]:
$100,000 degree. Because once you have the paper, the door's open. If the only thing that a higher degree is going to get you is more open doors because of the network of the people that you went to school with. And understanding that, undoing these ideas, that's where I think we're gonna finally start to see people who are like, you know what? Let's tear down what somebody else created and create something better. And I think that when we start to see people like Western Governors or other universities start to follow these patterns of what's actually gonna benefit the people because 80% of the degrees on there aren't needed.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:46]:
We did the count. We counted. So I counted through the BLS. There's 867 jobs in there, and only 7.7% of them actually legally require a college degree to do. Pareto's estimate was very close to correct, which is less than 20%. It's very few jobs actually require them. And what's interesting too is that if you keep through to the way that hiring actually is, because the way people say they hire and the way they actually hire are very, very different. People don't realize this, but a lot of job wars have obscured away the way that they hire because companies don't hire people that look like their job descriptions.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:18]:
That's why we always say apply anyway, apply fearlessly. Well, they say that they list the job and said, yeah. And if you don't apply, you're perpetuating the problem. Just apply anyway. You don't know who they're gonna hire. You have no clue. If you don't apply, they will not hire you. That's a 100% guarantee.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:33]:
That is how that works.

Jenn Hoskins [00:34:34]:
That's ultimately what the idea is. Providence can come and find you all day long, but if you've not done the work to know that you're able and willing to open up that door, that you know that door is there for you and you are fully capable of grabbing the handle or just knocking and seeing if it opens. And then know that if it doesn't open, it wasn't for you. It's not a personal attack. It's just somebody else was better. I've been in the interviewing role. I remember it was between 2 candidates who were so qualified. I never looked at their resume on who had a degree.

Jenn Hoskins [00:35:09]:
I ended up having to well, it down to, like, 1 or 2 questions that was, 1, answered a little bit better. The degree did not matter. I still can't even tell you I worked with 1 of them. I can't tell you if he has a degree. I have no clue. It was more about what have you done since you've been there. And I think the statistic is 3 years of experience in an industry equals the degree in that industry. And I think that was Mike Rowe.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:30]:
Depending on what startup you worked at, it could be 6 months. I know.

Jenn Hoskins [00:35:34]:
How do you feel about not sleeping? It's that sort of culture. How do you feel about that? We're almost IPO. How do you feel about working Saturday?

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:42]:
I feel like, oh, I don't know about that.

Jenn Hoskins [00:35:45]:
Yeah. Exactly. But I think what's really important is when we just start to understand so many of these perpetuating stereotypes come from people who are older than us and older than me, so I'm probably the older than us on your podcast, who said you have to do this. But the reality of the landscape is we're not hiring for 20 years ago. We're not hiring for 50 years ago. Hiring for now. Hiring for now and what's roadmapped? Because if you're hiring in an organization, you're already thinking 3 years ahead. You have your next year mapped out because you know you can hire for it, but 2 years ahead of if that road map goes well.

Jenn Hoskins [00:36:23]:
So what are you hiring for 3 years ahead? That might be degree free. How do you get to that point? So we need to mute some of the bad advice that either comes from the system itself that benefits off of us purchasing degrees. They're earned in the idea of you are going and certifying your education. You're paying for the certification. You can go on Harvard and take all their classes. They're all available.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:47]:
They're not gonna give you a degree unless you pay the man.

Jenn Hoskins [00:36:50]:
That's how

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:50]:
it works.

Jenn Hoskins [00:36:51]:
So you can still get the education. Great courses is another way to go and get education, and those are all audible. But the certification isn't always needed. So just get the education.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:00]:
And that's such a key thing too, and you've probably seen this in the comments. You're just anti education. There's probably no greater endorsement of the problem that exists other than these people being unable to distinguish between education and college and believing those words are synonyms when they have never been synonyms. You've probably heard me say that a thousand times. If I had a dollar for every time I had to say that, I wouldn't have to work at all. That's the biggest thing is reclaiming education from the colleges. It does not belong to them. It does not belong to anyone.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:30]:
Nobody owns it. Nobody. It is accessible to all of us, especially now in the age of the Internet where for the price of a Google search, you can find cutting edge technology. You can find machine learning curriculums that are open source built by Redditors that then get plagiarized by large colleges to sell for a 100,000. I have actually seen that happen in real life. Like, this is a Reddit curriculum. I've seen this before on Reddit, and they just took it and they used it as their syllabus. Wild.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:59]:
You don't have to pay the man. You do not. You can just learn the information. As they say in Goodwill Hunting, $150 late fees.

Jenn Hoskins [00:38:06]:
It's pivotal. Understanding how to have a good library of your home, how to access a good library from your phone, that's your education. And for moms who are in the trenches, I have 9 children. I've been a mom for 23 years. So much of my education came from the middle of the night when I was up with a baby listening to a podcast or listening to an audiobook because audiobook is reading, you're just getting the information. Listening to an audiobook overnight, that's how I learned about sales, marketing habits. I mean, just start with Robert Greene's books, John Maxwell's books. All of these books are gonna teach you how to think and once you know how to think, then you can learn what to think.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:41]:
We've both gotta jump in a little bit, but I'm gonna ask you 3 more questions. The first one is what books would you recommend that adult job seekers who feel like they don't have permission should read? Give us your top 3.

Jenn Hoskins [00:38:53]:
Top 3. I would say the first one would be and it's gonna be a little counterintuitive because it's not gonna be anything about job seeking. I think it's John Worthington's The Homecoming, and it's all about finding yourself and who you truly are while getting rid of all the noise of the people that are around you. Because I think that until you know yourself and you know your real skills, not what was spoken over you, you're not gonna know what to do that you were created to do because you were created for a purpose. So that would be my first one. My second one would be Atomic Habits. Hands down. Get Atomic Habits immediately.

Jenn Hoskins [00:39:30]:
Buy it now. I read it once a year just to be able to refine my habits. It's truly a game changing book. The last one would be Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power. I think it's very important to understand how you're navigating different conversations, the pros and cons of different types of people, the landscape of what's out there when it comes to power because any business has a power structure. And I'll give you a bonus, would be principles by Ray Dalio because I think that gives you a behind the scenes on how to build a business, what a business looks like when it's functioning well, what a business looks like when it's not functioning well, and how to work with other people. So those are my 4.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:06]:
K. Well, I'm gonna be reading those just for my own edification. But then my next question is what books would you say that 18 to 20 year olds who are about to go out into the job market being degree free should read? Is it the same book? Are there any differences?

Jenn Hoskins [00:40:26]:
I think I said John's name wrong. John Bradshaw, not John. Bradshaw. Okay. John Bradshaw. Okay. Good. I don't

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:33]:
know

Jenn Hoskins [00:40:33]:
why I was thinking Worthington. That was somebody I used to work with. Job seekers going into the market?

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:37]:
So 18 to 20 year old degree free job seekers.

Jenn Hoskins [00:40:40]:
18 to 23 degree free. 4 Dummies books. 4 Dummies books are still marketable. Still? They really are.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:47]:
Okay.

Jenn Hoskins [00:40:47]:
They're so good at narrowing down niche ideas and they're pumped out rather quickly. And since the library is a resource of older ones, you can see what has grown in the landscape if you read one from, like, 5 years ago and then read an updated version for now. Say you read, like, why was Windows 95 around for so long? And then what does Windows look like right now? If you look at that, you can really get a compare and contrast landscape of what's going on. So look at your niche, look at what you're wanting to learn, and start to look at the different 4 dummies books in that respect of whatever the industry is because there is a niche. The second one is not a book, but it is get the paid version of ChatGPT and can start using it on a regular basis to understand and become proficient in AI and how AI will work for you in your daily life because that is going to be the next boom. This is the difference. We've just gone from flip phone to touch screen. It's that much of a change in the marketplace and there's some terrible LLMs out there which is a large language model.

Jenn Hoskins [00:41:53]:
There's terrible AI out there and then there's wonderful AI. You need to start understanding what the difference is for your own life and really start getting proficient in that. Not just using it, but proficient in it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:04]:
That's pretty good. I like that a lot actually. The 4 Dummies book surprises me. I've never heard that, but I think that people are gonna love that.

Jenn Hoskins [00:42:11]:
And they're so accessible. They're everywhere. Yeah. You go on to different technologies, a lot of them have, like, 4 dummies books available whatever their technology is.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:20]:
Okay. I'm gonna start recommending that. Oh.

Jenn Hoskins [00:42:22]:
No. Program.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:24]:
My third question before I lose it is how many of your kids are over the age of 18, if I may ask? 2. 2. Yeah. Okay. And then I know one of your children over that age is degree free. Is the other one degree free too?

Jenn Hoskins [00:42:37]:
Both are. Okay. Once worked his way through a company, read a bunch of business books, and made sure he's always had a seat at the table and keeps finding himself moving up. And at this point, it's like, I'm good with that. Knowing that at any point, he does want a degree at some point, he doesn't know what he wants it in, rather than invest in just something, he is Waiting. Waiting. And that's fine. There's no rush.

Jenn Hoskins [00:42:58]:
There's no final stamp on when you need a degree. The other one was sponsored through his degree. He went military and then achieved all the certifications he needs to have a professional career, and he has had to pay none of it out of pocket. So he walks around with a lot of pieces of paper that people sponsored for him because that is still very much how Oh,

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:16]:
it works. That's the way we do it. Well, it's so funny because we just had a young man on our podcast about a month ago. His name was Quinn McLaren, and Quinn is a 22 year old financial analyst at a Fortune 100 company. And he is going to have his CPA sponsored in the same way because he's done a good job. And they said, alright. We'll buy your degree, and then we'll give you a raise, and then we'll employ you as a CPA. And that is how to derisk the entire situation, and that's still degree free because you are working your way up to the point where someone else is going to buy it for you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:48]:
And you do the work, and then someone else will front you the money for it if it is necessary for you to have it to get past that actual wall. When you run into a legal wall

Jenn Hoskins [00:43:58]:
The way that my dad the first place that his degree benefited him was when he ran for state rep in Massachusetts. It was the first time they ever threw in his line of I don't even remember what college he graduated from, but it was, like, in there. And I was like, that's the first time I ever brought it up. He's like, I think that was the first time it was ever brought up and it was just because it was in politics that is something that's looked for. So but he never paid for it. It was a 1000 years ago and it was in business and it was It was a 1000 years ago. I know. And so it was just kind of funny that I was like, the first time it comes up is when you're running for what is pretty much a low paid volunteer position.

Jenn Hoskins [00:44:33]:
Like

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:35]:
That's so funny. It doesn't speak to our current state of politics. I don't know what does, but that is perfect. So my question was, what advice do you have for parents whose kids are deciding that they're gonna be degree free, that they're gonna choose different things? How can parents best support and equip them going out as they try things, as they fail, as they try to figure out where their place in the world? Even though it's traditionally, most people have never bought college degrees in the US, most of them employed US workforce as degree free, so it's actually not traditional education. It's actually college itself is an alternative. So for people whose kids are following the historical route for career and education, what advice do you have for parents who are kinda nervous about that, and how can they help their kids?

Jenn Hoskins [00:45:21]:
One of the greatest advice I ever got was she was actually about the Bible. We were studying the Bible and so don't think of the reference but think of a principle. She gave me 6 different verses on something she was challenging me on theologically and said here go study this again. You're either going to be better studied or you're going to be corrected and you have nothing to lose either way. And I think that we can take that principle to what we're believing about our children and what they're doing, if they're doing the right thing and realize we might just need to relearn what we already think is true and go maybe it's actually not true because we were fed you need a degree. But does the market actually dictate that? I have a friend who's dealing with this right now. Her son is a mechanic through and through. He can rebuild anything.

Jenn Hoskins [00:46:01]:
This kid is 15 and I would trust him with my Suburban. You can rebuild my engine. I'm just like, well, I don't know what to do. He doesn't wanna do his math. He doesn't wanna do this because he's homeschooled. He doesn't wanna do this. And I'm like, he's absolutely not only an engineer, but he's a mechanic. He's a designer.

Jenn Hoskins [00:46:17]:
He has concept understanding. So what you need to do is cultivate his math towards what he's trying to build. And just in that, like, we've had to unlearn the idea that this kid is probably not going to be a PhD physicist. He's gonna be a mechanic, and he's great at it. He's already got all the resources. So she just needed to unlearn the idea of this is what he needs to do in order to get to where he needs to get to. A lot of parents are in that same boat. The other principle is our children, we're stewarding them.

Jenn Hoskins [00:46:46]:
We don't own them. We are stewards of our children. We have the privilege of being able to walk through the 1st 18 years of life with them as their caretaker. It slowly eases off over those last 6 years and then they take over payments on themselves so to speak. But you're still there as a coach. You're still there to be able to help them. You're there to help them derisk situations. You're there to help them recover from situations.

Jenn Hoskins [00:47:10]:
They're there when they fail. You're there when they achieve. And you then go into a point of being able to speak into this person's life because no longer are you stewarding a child, you're walking alongside an adult that you had the privilege of walking through for their entire life. We need to realize that isn't a very sacred place, That is a respected place. And they're gonna do things that are different than us because they're different people. They were created for different things. I mean, so often you see lawyers go through generations of families or doctors go through generations of family. It's all about family honor.

Jenn Hoskins [00:47:43]:
But what if that person's not meant to do that? What if that person is meant to do something dramatically different? How do we support them in that? Well, that's personal work. And that's work we need to do in ourselves to unlearn some of the things and go, alright. Well, now I need to see that I'm stewarding you to your adulthood. And I'm not stewarding you to fit into our family or fit into this culture or fit into this mold. And again, that's a personal work thing. So the best thing you can do is create your own resiliency, create your own support for failure, create your own grit, and model what it looks like to just keep trying. When we are done parenting, our lives aren't over. We're still doing a whole bunch of things.

Jenn Hoskins [00:48:21]:
We're still creating new things. We're still going and doing new things. Model that for your kids and they're gonna follow more as caught than taught. So the best support you can have is from the get go showing them that this is the path can be ever changing, but you need to follow your path, not mine.

Hannah Maruyama [00:48:36]:
I'm gonna be thinking about this conversation all week long. This was a huge hit. I am positive. I know for a fact we're gonna get emails requesting that you come back on. I hope that you will consider doing so because I feel like there was so much more I wanna ask you too and so many things that I would just love to get your perspective on and get your view on things. But, Jen, I have so enjoyed this conversation. It was everything that I hoped it would be and more, and this is so great and so valuable for our audience. Thank you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:49:10]:
Is there anything else, parting thoughts or encouragement you'd like to share with our audience before we jump off?

Jenn Hoskins [00:49:15]:
The biggest thing that I would say is everything that has been learned can be unlearned, or we strengthen our weaknesses enough so they don't hold us back from our actual purpose. So that's the principle to live by.

Hannah Maruyama [00:49:27]:
So, everybody, Jen Hoskins, senior account executive and homeschool mom of 9. Thank you so much for being with us today on the degree free podcast, and I imagine I hope you will come back on soon.

Jenn Hoskins [00:49:39]:
Of course, I will. I'm always around. Thank you, Hannah, for having me.