This Book Can Save You $100,000! and Choosing Work the Degree Free Way (DF#148)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
And people will say, can you tell us what jobs don't require degrees? And what I wanna say to people is almost all of them. It would take me a year to list all of the jobs that don't require college degrees. It would take me probably 10 minutes to list the jobs that do legally require a college degree in order for someone to obtain them. And the reason this is important is because if a job does not legally require a college degree, there is a way, there is a route, there are skills, there are ways for degree free people to get them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:36]:
Aloha, folks, and welcome back to degree free. I am super glad that you are here with us again today. I'm glad that we are getting more on a cadence with these schedulings and these recordings as of late. When I say as of late, I mean, these past 2 episodes.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:56]:
I guess they say it takes 21 days to form a pattern. So if we can do this for a third time, we all have a habit.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:01]:
Yes. Yes, exactly. I am very excited that we are in here today because I'm very excited about the topic.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:08]:
Yeah. We're really excited to talk to you folks about and share with you our process, what we've been doing. And that's why if you're on YouTube, if you're not on YouTube, go to YouTube and you can see how tired we look. We have been working night and day, day and night in order to write a book that is designed for parents and young adults, ages 16 to 20, to help them figure out what to do after high school. Help them figure out how to find career options that make sense for their life and make sense for their goals, which we are about to talk about.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. Or at least we are going to be talking about 2 of the things that are misconstrued and people don't get right pretty much from the get go. So that's what we are going to talk about today. Just a little bit of context on the book itself. Right now, we are pretty much done writing it, or we are very, very, very close to being done writing it and editing it and all that good stuff, the interior of the book, as they call it. And we now are onto the testing of the titles. We are trying to figure out what to name it, those types of things. Then after we name it, then we're gonna get a cover, and then we're gonna go to page designer, and then we're gonna do a bunch of things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:16]:
And, also, every time we think that we're finished with the book, and I think I've heard that this happens with books every time we think we're done with the book. One of us goes, wait, what about this? And the other one goes, oh, no. Yes. This. And then we have to write an entire new part of the book. We think we got it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:30]:
Not only that, but then you also have to kill your darlings, which is a difficult process as well. There's a million things that we wanna put on paper for you folks, and we can't get it all in there because sometimes it doesn't make sense, and sometimes it's like, this doesn't make sense here. Well, where does it make sense? Well, it doesn't really make sense anywhere. It's just kind of a thought. I want everybody to know about it and that type of thing. And I had spent how many days writing this section of this thing and just like, well, it doesn't make any sense. We have to get rid of it. Anyway, it's a whole thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:00]:
If you are in that predicament now, I think this is going to come out in the beginning of may or so. I know it's graduation season coming around the corner right now. If you have a child that's graduating or, you know, somebody who has a child is graduating, you can pick up a set of these books that are on pre order right now atdegreefree.coforward/otheroptions. Once again, we don't have a title or anything for this book yet. We don't even have a cover for it, but you can pre order it now. It's on sale right now for $40 or so $39 Eventually when we launch it, it'll be in the 60 plus dollar range, probably.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:40]:
We're also calling it a book, but it's really 2 books. It's a parent workbook and a student workbook, a young adult workbook. So it's designed to be used by a parent and their young adult child together. The workbooks don't work by themselves. They only work together. So when you do receive your book, you'll say, this is not a book. This is books. This is 2 books.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:01]:
So don't be surprised.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:02]:
Right. They're designed to be worked through together. One of the reasons why we are creating this book is that we're doing this degree free launch program. And while you and I are actually in it, doing it, having our sessions, we realize that the degree free launch program is really expensive or at least a really expensive for a lot of people while I think it's absolutely worth the money and, you know, it could potentially save you a $100,000 in five and a half years of your life, which I think is an unbelievable value proposition. I understand that you might not be in a position to pay us that amount of money, and we want to get this information out to as many people as possible. And so we are trying to create something that everyone

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:53]:
can get and work through. That was the main motivation because we were like, how do we get this to everybody? A book is the answer. And then first we thought it was some worksheets and then it was a book and then it was 2 books. And now we've decided that this is the most effective way to help people work through what we are working through.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:08]:
Yeah, exactly. And I will be honest with you right now. If you're listening to this, I apologize. I'll get to what I'm getting to in a second or get what we have planned. I didn't plan to talk about any of this actually, but or at least this part. This workbook, while it's only, like, $40 and eventually when we launch, it's, like, $60. And once again, that's for 2 workbooks. And those workbooks also could possibly save you $100,000 in five and a half years of your child's life, which is once again, an amazing value.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:37]:
While it does all of that, it is probably the most expensive set of books that you will ever buy in your entire life. What I mean by that is you're saying like, well, dollars 40, that's only $20 a book. Like that seems pretty reasonable actually, which I would agree with you at launch. It's going to be 60 plus dollars or maybe 70. Let's just call it a 100 for a set of books. Okay. Well, $50.50 Like, okay, well that's kind of expensive. And now we're kind of getting into a little bit of textbook territory.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:05]:
So yeah, I guess it is the most expensive books ever. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about with your time, the time and effort that you're going to have to put in to this workbook because you and I both know the time and effort that it takes

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:20]:
because that's what we do in the launch program.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:22]:
You and I know what it takes to go through this because this is what we do. It takes us hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:29]:
And compiling and vetting and just so individual, which is why parents are well equipped to do it. Actually they're well situated. And after they have these books, there'll be well equipped to do so. And that is what we're trying to do. Yeah. We're doing our best.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:42]:
The thing is, is it still takes us hours and hours and hours to do our job. And we're professionals. Like we literally, I don't know what I mean. Like, oh, look at you. I'm professionals.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:49]:
We do it all the time. For all unique situations.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:54]:
We do it all the time and it still takes us hours and hours and hours. So for you listening to this, picking up this book, it's probably going to take you

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:03]:
hours and hours and hours and hours

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:05]:
and hours times 5, because it's the first time that you're ever doing it. We're doing it every single week and it still takes us so many hours. Yeah. Expect for

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:14]:
this to take you a lot of time. The result is well worth it. It's well worth the investment of time that you are going to spend doing this with your young adult. Please, if you have any interest at all, if you're struggling with this at all, this is the solution to it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:27]:
Yeah. That's what I wanted to say at the very beginning. Like before we even start really marketing it, this is the first time where we're really, really talking about it on the podcast. But I want you listening to this, that thing, like, okay. Well, I'm gonna spend $40. I I know that I do this. So I would imagine other people do this or at least I hope other people do this. Like, okay, I'm going to spend $40 and then magically my problem is going to go away.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:49]:
And I do this all the time with, like, books and stuff like that. Like, how to get organized that I'll, like, buy now with one click. Sure. Sounds good. And then the book arrives, and then I'd never read it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:59]:
And then it sits in a disorganized pile

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:01]:
in the

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:02]:
corner of the room.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:03]:
Exactly. This book, when you finally do crack it open, when you get it and you crack it open, just expect like this is going to be the most expensive book that you've ever, ever purchased because it is going to take a lot of time. But at the same time, I am confident to say that it is possibly the most value that you will ever have out of a book.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:28]:
Yeah. Because there's not many other books that can save you that much time and that much money.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:32]:
Exactly. While it is the most expensive book in your time and effort, I think the value is well, well worth it for the actual amount of money that you will be spending.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:42]:
And that's why we look so tired.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:45]:
So degreefree.coforward/otheroptions. And then when we finally get a book title, it'd probably be the URL will change to the book title name. If you want to right now, until it launches officially, it's on pre order for $39 We're expecting that we're going to be done with all of the back of the house stuff that we have to do probably by mid may, hopefully late may at the latest. And then we are going to be shipping them out the first orders by mid June. And that hopefully doesn't fluctuate too much, but I'm telling people to give us plus or minus 2 weeks there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:25]:
Cause it's all dependent on when we put the order in and when we get the books, because we're gonna be shipping them out. So

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:29]:
At first. Yeah. So hopefully beginning of June because I know, like I said, graduation season. I want to get this out into your hands as soon as possible, but it could also be the beginning of July too. So don't quote me exact on a date, but it is coming out for positive. But what I wanted to talk about, we were rewriting this section of the book today, or at least editing it heavily. And I was like, you know what? We should like talk about this. It's been a while since we have talked about going back to the very beginning of what it is that we do here at Degreesview or at least, like, our mindset of how we are looking at work and life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:13]:
Or if you wanted to kind of talk about, like, what is the degree free mindset?

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:17]:
So the degree free mindset is a complete 180 from the status quo of how we as Americans, I believe in traditional schools are taught to pick our work, pick our careers, pick our life directions. And that is for most of us, most people I think are told that we need to pick our work first, like pick your job, you know, follow your passion, pick your job. And then later you realize, unfortunately, that job that you picked when they just said, oh, pick your passion, follow your heart, love what you do. And you won't work a day in your life for all these other trite overused phrases. Then you realize, oh, wait, this job that I picked, because it was my passion is going to keep me or hinder me or actively not help me get where I want to go in life or get what I want in life. And then people become very tired, very bitter, very stressed out because they're now trapped in work that they picked as their passion, because that's what they were told to do. And they never thought about where they're trying to get or what they were trying to do. And they're just continually frustrated that they can't get any traction towards what they want because they never thought about the schools to begin with.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:21]:
You were just talking about that. I didn't know where you were going with that actually. And, like, I have we have some things written down here, but you kinda went a little off script there, which is really good. And I felt like you were personally attacking me.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:36]:
I'm so sorry. Or you're welcome.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:39]:
You were personally attacking like my previous self and the decisions that I've made in my own life. The decisions that I have made because of this mindset, or at least because of the opposite of where we're about to get into. And so what is the degree for your mindset to me, which is what this is, what I thought you were gonna say, say, which is basically starting with your goals first, whatever your goals are in life. Starting with those first and then backtracking and figuring out how you can fulfill those goals with your work. That is a fundamental difference in what we do and what most of the conventional wisdom out there is, especially for those young adults that are coming up and they're like, well, you have to follow your passion. You never did work day in your life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:30]:
I hate that one. I really do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:31]:
One of the worst ones is, you know, like, just go get a degree regardless.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:36]:
A degree is always a good idea. That's the one I've heard. Yikes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:39]:
The thing that I've always heard is just go get your degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:42]:
Oh, yeah. Exactly like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:43]:
Literally. Exactly like that. Just go get your degree in what? For what? For why? Exactly. Like to what end? Yeah. Like literally to what end?

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:54]:
And they have no answer. It's just

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:56]:
because. Well, the answers eventually, like if they don't actually have answers for you, which most people don't have answers for you, the answer is going to be so that you can get a job later, but like what job that doesn't make any sense.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:09]:
And that's where we get into this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:11]:
Most people and you know, the conventional wisdom is to do a bunch of actions first, pick your work, do a bunch of actions that think you might get to that work. And then you hopefully that work that you've chosen is going to help fulfill your life goals. Hopefully. But our methodology and our method is our beliefs that no, we have to identify our goals first and then backtrack from there. So we start at the end, we start with identifying the target and then once we've identified the target, then we can aim for it. It's our firm belief that goals dictate actions because they do

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:53]:
or a lack of goals also dictates actions.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:55]:
I mean, everybody has a goal. Everybody has some sort of goal in mind. Your goal could just be lazy, then that's gonna dictate your actions.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:01]:
Would you say that not having goals is a goal?

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:03]:
Yeah, totally.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:04]:
I generally think there are people who haven't thought through having a goal. People have things they want, but they don't necessarily have a goal to get them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:10]:
I think the thing that I'm trying to impress is that like inaction is still action.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:14]:
Yes. I agree with you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:15]:
I wanted to talk a little bit about, and I had that episode that I did, I think it's episode 135 about, you know, being in the right vehicle. It doesn't matter how hard you work. Really what matters is whether or not your hard work is in the right place and whether or not your work in general is in the right place. This kind of tacks onto that in that, you know what I mean by your goals dictate your actions. One of the clearest things that I can think of goes back to my goal. When I started at 16 years old, when I was working, I was a dishwasher at a local fast food chain. I go over in that episode extensively. And I was like, I don't want to do this until I'm 65 years old.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:56]:
I want to retire by 40. And that was my goal. And since then I have been working towards that goal and I've been making decisions that are pretty congruent with that goal. Okay. Awesome. Cool. I'm 33 now, 32. And I am closing in on 40, you know, I'm 7 to 8 years away from being 40 years old.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:25]:
And am I anywhere near that goal? I mean, I'm much closer than I ever was, but I'm still pretty far away from where I thought I was going to be effectively. Now I have 7 years to make that goal happen. I have to take actions that would make me reach that goal in 7 years. Now let's go back. What if at 16 years old, I had defined my goals differently. And instead of retiring at 40, what if I had moved that up? What if I had to retire in 7 years from 16 years old?

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:00]:
And your actions would have been different.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:01]:
My actions would have been different instead of spending a decade of my life in food and beverage. There aren't many people that have retired and gone through the ranks through food and beverage and then opened a spot and then becoming an owner or whatever partner in some restaurant chain or something like that. Sure.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:21]:
And then their goals are to own their own restaurant.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:24]:
But for me, I spent 10 years of my life on the service side. I never went into management at all. That was never a decision maker at all. Maybe it was like a shift lead or something like that, but never anything else. Like I was always front of the house senior bartender, senior server, whatever junior, whatever. Yeah. Maybe my actions definitely would have been different. Had my goals been defined differently.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:49]:
Right. And I wanted to work remotely. So the skills that I chose to learn that I went unlearned were all skills that would allow me to get jobs that were remote. Because if that had not been my goal, then I would have picked different skills because I could have. 1 of the young adults in the launch program really wanted to work outside. And that was just stick. One of his real actual needs out of work, one of his goals out of work was for him to work outside because he just likes to be outside. He likes to move.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:19]:
He doesn't wanna work inside and fake lights. That's what he said. I said, all right, that's fair enough. Cause there's no wrong or right goals. There's only the ones that you want to achieve. For him, that really changed the type of work that he picked. And that's a really good example of your goal changing the type of work that you pick, and that is the correct order of operations for choosing your work.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:39]:
And instead of maybe going to college for whatever. And when he's like, I don't need that, that doesn't serve my goals. Or instead of going to do what I did and go to work in a restaurant, because like that doesn't serve my goals. I mean, sure. Maybe the money is good, but if you look at your goals, just looking at the money, you're like, well, that doesn't serve my goals. I have one goal of, like, working outside. I don't really care how much I get paid. Not at least not at this point in my life or at least for this one example, I just want to work outside.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:12]:
Well, I can guarantee you. One of the ways you are not going to work outside is if you take an indoor job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:20]:
Yes, that is correct. Those things do seem mutually exclusive to me because the outside is outside and the inside is inside. So another good example of this would be if someone comes into the program and they say, oh, I want to make $110,000 a year because I live in a cost living state. I want to be able to save and invest and pay my bills. And then they say, I'm going to go into social work because it's my passion. Well, now you're going to have a hard time with your goal because you're picking your work before you're picking your goal. Whereas if you say my goal is to make $110,000 a year, because I live in a living area. I need to pay my bills.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:53]:
I need to save. I need to invest. Now you pick work based on that goal, as opposed to let me have this goal where I know I would like to have this to be comfortable, but you're picking work. That's going to put you in literally in the wrong vehicle. As you've talked about at length.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:06]:
I'm sure there are social workers that that make $110,000 a year. It's just not common. It's just not common. You are, you're striving to be one of the edge cases in this field rather than going into a field where $110,000 a year jobs are abundant and plentiful. So it's just once again, like exactly what you said, just being in the right vehicle there. And Hey, if you want to be in social work, that's all you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:31]:
But then this works for that too. If your goal is to go in every day and clock in as a social worker, then you should pick social work. That makes sense because goal first is work in social work. Work after is social work. That is it. But you have to know what your goal is in order to get there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:47]:
Basically what you just did there with that $110,000 in the social, and we're just using social work. And, you know, I'll talk about for myself. Like, I wanted to make a $100,000 a year being a bartender is, like, not it, or at least not where I was bartending. I'm sure there's like, if you go to Vegas, I'm sure they're making a lot of money, but I wasn't working there. It's picking work based off of your passions or at least without any regard to your goals in life. I think a lot of that has to do with a lot of people being dissatisfied with where they are professionally and then ultimately bleeding down into their life because their professional career and the money that they make isn't enabling them to live the life that they want. And it, a lot of it has to do with, they didn't think about these types of things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:35]:
And how they'd be limited by the career they chose because they didn't think about what they wanted on the other end.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:39]:
Exactly. Because they're put their eggs into the wrong basket instead of being like, okay, which basket can serve my needs? Let's put my eggs there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:49]:
And I can see a lot of people listening to this probably thinking, oh, wow, it's all about money. It's also about schedule too. If something that's important to you, it's about everything. But like if your goal is to have kids and like be home with them for part of the day, and you pick a job where you're traveling away from the house that is fundamentally picking the wrong work first for your goals.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:07]:
It's not all about money. It is completely about your goals. Exactly what you were saying. And I'll give you an example. I was a firefighter. I've talked about that at length here. I've talked about the reason why I wanted to be a firefighter. I heard about the schedule.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:21]:
I heard about the schedule that they had. It was 10 days a month, granted 24 hour shifts. I was like, okay, I can work 10 days a month somewhere, make a full time salary doing this job. And that gives me 20 days a month to work on whatever I want. I can work on growing my business because I realized that that was the opportunity that I needed to be in to reach my goals of retiring at 40, or at least that's what I wanted to put my eggs into. That's the basket I wanted to put my eggs into. And so, okay. So that's what I'm going to go do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:50]:
And I was very satisfied in that job because it did allow me to do that. Granted, I've talked about it at length on this show. It ended up being so much more than all of that for me, really filled my soul and all that, but I was very satisfied that it did do that thing. It filled my needs, which is to basically cover my base while I was shooting for the moon in other areas of my life. Now, other guys that I was in the department with, their goal was to just be a fireman. Their goal was to just be a firefighter. That's all they wanted to do. They were also satisfied with their jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:28]:
Because they had their goals in order.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:30]:
Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:31]:
With different goals, for different

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:32]:
reasons, different goals, for different reasons, doing the exact same job. But we were both satisfied for like with our lives because they had their goals and their priorities straight. And I had my goals and my priorities straight. And I know because we get emails like this all the time. Oh, I picked the wrong career path. I did this. And now I have 100,000, $200,000 in student debt because I bought a degree that I didn't need, and now I need to get out of it. How do I change careers? Or like, I'm a nurse.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:00]:
This is an email that I just got the other day. Like I'm a nurse, I'm trying to get out of my career. Like how do I make a career transition? What we're trying to do with the degree free launch program, what we're trying to do with this book for, to help 16 to 20 year old young adults and their parents is to not have to send me those emails.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:16]:
Yes. That is the goal.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:18]:
That's the goal.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:18]:
Keep them out of our inbox, sending us horrible emails about their large student debt burdens. Yeah. Also as a note to people that send those emails to us also, if you send us an email that says something like that, this concept is for you too, because if you just pick another career out of a hat like that, you're going to end up in the exact same place 20 years from now. It's going to happen again to you because you did not put in any thought to where you're trying to get. And if you just go, give me a good career, I don't know what you need. You need to figure out what you need and you need to figure out what your goals are, and then you need to pick work from there. You can't just pick work out of a hat like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:50]:
Yes. I completely agree with you. Usually I will say most people, some people that, that, that changed really quick.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:03]:
A few people

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:04]:
that reach out to us,

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:06]:
3 people,

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:07]:
they do have very clear needs. Once you're sending me an email like that, once you're sending us an email like that, you have a pretty clear direction. I just need to do anything else and that way is better. And so directionally, most of them

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:25]:
They're directionally right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:26]:
Yeah. Most of them know what's going on and they're willing to do something else. But if you're listening to this and you have a young adult at 16 to 20 years old, like that's the whole reason why we're doing this is so that we can get the direction right from the get go. And we can change the trajectory of people's lives.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:44]:
By keeping them out of debt and from wasting the freest years of their life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:48]:
We're going to skip around a little bit. And what I mean skip around. I mean, we're going to skip a little bit ahead in the process here. So once we've defined our goals, you have to define your goals because our goals dictate our actions. So what do you need from life? What do you need from your work? What do you want from your work? You have to prioritize those different things. Once you've done that, once you've found jobs that can fulfill those needs and wants and those goals for your young adult, Now you're met with, okay, does this job require a degree? And that's the second part of what I wanted to talk about here is I wanted to talk about basically the legal requirement breakdown.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:35]:
So the important thing to note here as we get into this is that we are at legal requirement breakdown because there's a very distinct difference between degree requirements and degree requests. And that is something that we are trying to help people understand here. Let me define both of these things so everybody understands. A degree requirement is something that is legally required. You are legally required to have a college degree in a certain thing or a college degree period in order to become whatever that job is. There is no other route. There is no other way. The only way to that job is through a college campus.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:12]:
That's it. That's the only path. A degree request is a job listing that says college degree required for a job that does not legally require you to have a job. That includes CEO jobs. That includes AI machine learning engineers. That includes literally everything. This does not legally require you to have a college degree in order to do it. And I'm saying this in that way, because this is something that constantly gets conflated and is a huge reason why there's so much chaos in the job market right now.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:43]:
Because when they're talking about removing degree requirements, the reason companies I think are struggling to sort through that and rewrite those job descriptions, which is one of the biggest problems that's going on right now with the down credentialing that's happening is they have degree requirements and they're going through the job listings and going, this is a degree requirement, but the fact is they could just large scale go through their jobs and go, is that a CPA? Is that a surgeon? Is that an FBI agent? No. Okay. Well, they're not required to have a college degree. That is a degree request. And the line that they could change could be degree requested if they so chose to. And that is very different. A request is something you can flat out ignore. And if you want the job, think you could do the job or think you can learn the job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:27]:
You should be ignoring it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:29]:
Yeah. And so I wanted to go over the legally requiring a degree. One of the things in our research and in our thoughts, and we've been doing this for years now, is there aren't really a lot of jobs that actually require degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:50]:
We get that comment all the time. We get that in email form. We get that on TikTok. We get it on YouTube. We get that everywhere. And people will say, can you tell us what jobs don't require degrees? And what I want to say to people is almost all of them. It would take me a year to list all of the jobs that don't require college degrees. It would take me probably 10 minutes to list the jobs that do legally require a college degree in order for someone to obtain them.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:17]:
And the reason this is important is because if a job does not legally require a college degree, there is a way, there is a route, there are skills, there are ways for degree free people to get them. And that is why we talk about this at length.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:31]:
I agree with everything you said there, but what I was going to get at was actually requiring a degree and not a license that requires the degree to obtain. And so let's break this down a little bit for everybody listening. There are a lot of licenses out there that require you to have a degree, to sit for that license exam. There aren't to my knowledge. There are not a lot of jobs that legally require an actual degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:07]:
Yes. I wouldn't say there's a lot for licensure either. There's some,

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:10]:
there are some, I'm just saying that majority of the jobs out there that require a degree, the things that you were just talking about, majority of them are licenses. You legally are required to obtain a degree, to then sit for the licensing exam. And then when you pass the licensing exam, then you are licensed and then you are legally allowed. But the first step in that process is to obtain the degree so that you can therefore sit for that exam. And then therefore when you pass that exam, you are then licensed and legally allowed to do that. And this

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:48]:
is one of our hot takes that we usually just say it's the exam. Why can't you just take the exam?

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:53]:
That's exactly right. Because

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:54]:
what does the degree have to do with anything? Oh, to make sure the information was distributed. That's what the exam does. The exam makes sure that the information was distributed. And also you don't know where the people got their degree from. How do you know how the information distributed. And also you don't know where the people got their degree from. How do you know how the information was distributed? You have no idea. You don't even know if they went to class.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:08]:
You have no freaking clue. All you know is that they pay to college. That's it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:12]:
That's exactly what the exam does. So I completely agree with that. I haven't found a single one of those licenses that require a degree to sit for that licensing exam for them to be like, yeah, you absolutely need the degree. I don't understand. And I'm at this point, I'm pretty ardent in my viewpoint. I'm pretty headstrong in this point of view that I don't think that I could be convinced otherwise, because then why do you have the license exam? Why do you have that? Why does that exist? Shouldn't you just have the degree that doesn't make any sense.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:50]:
Everybody should be able to take away exams.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:51]:
And I want you right now, listening to this. If you know of a job that legally requires a college degree,

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:01]:
specifically a degree, not a license,

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:02]:
not a license college degree. I want you to comment it on YouTube. I want you to comment on Spotify,

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:08]:
TikTok, wherever you're seeing this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:10]:
Right now. Let me know immediately what that job is. The jobs that we have are basically government jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:19]:
Yeah. And when we say government, the majority of the government jobs are actually military officers. So one of the only ones.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:26]:
Yes. Aside from warrant officers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:28]:
Right. Aside from warrant officers, that's a big distinction because there's a decent amount of warrant officers and they can be pilots also, just so people know

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:33]:
Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:34]:
In the military.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:35]:
So aside from warrant officers, officers in the military need a degree. Other than that, though, there are some government jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:44]:
FBI agents also.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:45]:
To me, it seems like those degree requirements have a lot of bureaucracy in the hiring process. Now what I imagine we're going to get, and I hope that we get this from you listening to this is I'm thinking that we are going to get a lot of people saying, well, my local union, I think it's all going to be like union stuff says that you can't be a X without a college degree. And it says by your union bylaws that you can't have this job without a degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:21]:
Something like that. Sure. Like teachers is going to be one of those, aside from the states, the 17 states that now paid teacher apprenticeships for paraprofessionals.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:28]:
Yeah. But the thing is, is like teachers, you need a license.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:32]:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then we run into the same thing and you folks see why we wanted to talk about this because this is such a important why can't you just take the exam? And also for reference for everybody listening, that's how teachers used to become teachers. They would take an examination. This is how it used to work in our country. They used to go to a central location and they would take a teacher examination, and then they would go back to their town and teach the local school with their teacher examination. They didn't have to go to college. They had to pass a series of tests to prove that they were educated enough to become teachers, which I don't know why we suddenly will.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:04]:
Yeah. You have to buy a bachelor's degree to do that. I'm like, why don't we just use the test?

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:07]:
I can see, I can hear the TikTok comments and the YouTube comments right now and telling us to basically kill ourselves and go die.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:17]:
Because we pay education.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:18]:
No, no, no, no, no. Not that it has nothing to do with teachers because they're gonna be like, well, your doctors aren't going to have a degree then.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:25]:
Guess what? I don't care if they can pass the MCAT. I do not care. I do not care.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:29]:
We've talked about this a lot and we think just doesn't matter. Once again, there is a test to get into med school. Then they need to pass all of their exams and all of their licensing. And all

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:43]:
their clinicals and residency.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:44]:
Yes. To get to become an MD, a practicing physician. And so like, that's what I care about.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:49]:
What I want is I want someone to make a case for, if you can pass the MCAT where you shouldn't be able to do that. Someone may get a case to me, explain to me why that is. Cause I don't see it. That's my opinion.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:58]:
The case is going to be that you're too young or you're not well rounded enough to be a care provider, to be a physician.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:06]:
Oh, that's an interesting take. I don't agree with it, but you know, whatever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:09]:
It's obviously not a merit based because

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:12]:
they'd have the same amount of hours.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:13]:
It's not something that can be quantified.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:15]:
Yeah. It's just this ethereal, whatever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:18]:
Exactly. It's just going to be like, well, they're not whatever. And some ethereal thing that just made up. And once again, the workbook sets, there's a bunch of different worksheets to work through all of these. Once you go through all of your needs and wants that are your life goals and everything like that, you go through a whole process to help you find jobs that fit those things. We glossed over all of that because we don't have time to get into all of that right now. And so if you want it degreefree.coforward/otheroptions, you can pre order the book. When we finally get down to the legal requirement breakdown, we actually have a worksheet that kind of just walks through a really simple flow for this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:57]:
And we started with, does this job legally require a license for you to do it? Once again, that is based off of that. There are very, very, very, very few jobs that actually require a college degree that doesn't require a license. Correct. After that college degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:20]:
Almost done.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:20]:
I mean, well, I mean, the government's a big place. They employ a lot of people and stuff

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:23]:
like that. For anyone listening, the government just rolled back degree requirements on a 100,000 cybersecurity jobs. Right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:29]:
But I mean, they're not like almost none. I mean, I'm just saying they're a big employer. It's not almost none. Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:34]:
When we say government, we also mean the military because the military is part of the government.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:37]:
It is absolutely part of the government. Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:38]:
I think just for clarification, for people listening,

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:40]:
I think there's going to be a lot of those smaller union. Like my union won't do that. It's going to be bureaucracy in the middle of that, but it's like not necessarily legal. It's not legally required to do that job

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:51]:
binding From the organization. But

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:53]:
binding from that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:55]:
From the bylaws of that small organization.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:57]:
A legal thing, like not legal. Right.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:59]:
And then saying that that was going to open the door to a bunch of people say, well, my company,

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:03]:
my company, right? Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:04]:
You don't know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:04]:
It's going to devolve. It's going to devolve into that. But anyway, I want to know legal requirements of degrees and not licenses legal requirements.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:13]:
You have to have a degree legally in order to have this job or company's going to get sued. Something like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:17]:
That's what

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:18]:
I want to know. Exactly. If your company would be legally liable because someone doing that job does not have a college degree. That was the criteria that we were talking about.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:24]:
Yes, exactly. And then after that, it's a really simple question. Like, does this job legally require a license for you to do it? Yes or no? Okay. Well, if it does legally require a license to do it, well, does the license legally require her degree?

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:37]:
Yes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:38]:
Yes or no. Right. Like that's it. That's the end of the logic tree. And then we help you figure out what to do after when if hopefully those questions are no, and then it's no. But I mean, like, if the answer to both of those questions are yes, It's like, yes, it does require a license. Yes. It does require a degree.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:54]:
Well, okay.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:54]:
Then you know what you have to do. And you're sure.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:56]:
Yeah. Now your work is cut out for you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:58]:
You're not just aimlessly buying college degrees for no reason.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:00]:
Exactly. And in our mind, that should be the scenario. That should be the situation. Once you go through this flow, once you figure out what your child wants and what they need from their work, their goals, basically another word for their goals. And once you've identified jobs that can

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:18]:
meet those things,

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:19]:
those goals, meet those requirements, and then you go through this light, this legal requirement breakdown, and you answered yes to both of these questions. That is the scenario. That is the situation in where you then go buy a college degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:34]:
Yes. Because there is, as we discussed at the beginning of this podcast, no other route. The only pathway, the only door you can walk through is on a college campus. That's it. That's all you can do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:45]:
Exactly. And then you can obviously do it the cheapest way possible or the best way possible, whatever. There's a million other, right? Sprawling different options after that. But at least, you know, That that's what you're going to do

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:58]:
because you must Exactly. To get what you were trying to get.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:01]:
But if you answered no to either of those questions, does it legally require license to do? No. Okay. Well then perfect.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:07]:
Okay.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:09]:
Then yes, it does. Does it legally require a degree? No, it doesn't. Okay. Well, there's another way to do it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:13]:
Yes. And it's very likely that other people have done it and that's how, you know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:17]:
Yeah. And the thing is, is like, you might come to the realization after you realize, does it legally require a license for you to do it? Yes. Does it legally require a degree? No, but it might be that getting a degree might be faster, cheaper, quicker to do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:33]:
If that is a thing it's usually faster would be the thing. And then we just talked about this, but when you're getting education, you are paying with money or you're paying with time. So if you end up needing a degree in order to get a specific license, then it may be faster for you to go through a college. That said, it may be so expensive that you cannot afford to do so. And so you must pay with time and work your way up.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:53]:
Paying with money or paying with time is a pretty universal thing, regardless. Like, I mean, if you just think about it,

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:59]:
It's kind of like this book, actually, if you're going to pay in time, it's going to take you a 100 hours to get through this book.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:03]:
Really just thinking that it is very, very similar to this book or the degree free launch program. Yeah. Right. So like, whatever we decide to call this book, you know, you can get this book to be

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:13]:
The nameless book.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:14]:
Yeah. The nameless book, degreefree.c04/ other options. This pretty much is going to give you the toolkit to DIY this thing.

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:22]:
Yes. Which is what we were trying to do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:24]:
And you're not going to pay with money. I mean, okay. Yeah. Whatever you're going to pay us for it. Dollars 39 right now. Okay. Let's call it $100 A $100 is like pretty much maximum that we're going to sell this thing for a $100 but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the value that it brings. But you're going to pay with your time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:42]:
This is going

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:42]:
to take a very long time to work through.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:45]:
At a $100 is the most expensive book you've ever bought.

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:47]:
Yeah. It's not even going to be a $100. Dollars It's still the most expensive book you ever bought.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:52]:
It's still the most expensive book that you've ever bought.

Hannah Maruyama [00:39:55]:
But again, I can't stress this enough.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:56]:
I wanted to tie a knot real quick on that. So you're paying with your time. If you buy this book, if you want to pay with your money, well, then you join the degree free launch program.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:04]:
The same thing with this, with this choice that you have in front of them too.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:07]:
Exactly. So the college, you know, going to call the drought, exactly what you said. I thank you for correcting me on that because yeah, you go to college because it might be faster, but it will probably won't be cheaper.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:16]:
It's very unlikely that it will be right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:18]:
Yeah. Very unlikely that it will be cheaper. I mean, it could be,

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:20]:
I have not seen an instance of it yet. I've not seen an instance. I've definitely seen faster. I have not seen cheaper.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:25]:
Thank you for correcting me on that. I can't wait to be corrected on that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:29]:
Yes. And I'm sure we, I'm sure we will be. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:32]:
I can't, I can't wait to be corrected on that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:33]:
But yeah, folks, we just, just as a side note, I think we're probably almost done here, but I really am so excited to get this, this book to people. Y'all Ryan and I have been working so hard on this. It's really cool going through it and just picturing the people who are gonna sit down at their kitchen table and do this and change the entire course of their young adults life with this being equipped with this information. Like, I almost want to cry. I'm so proud of this. I'm so proud of this. And we just poured our time and our heart and souls into this, making this for you folks. So super, super excited about it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:10]:
It doesn't really matter how much time and heart and soul that we poured into it though. Like it really doesn't matter at all.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:16]:
All that matters is what they do with it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:17]:
All that matters is that we think that this is going to help a lot of people. Maybe we could have worked 2 seconds on this, As long as it helps a lot of people. It doesn't matter.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:25]:
You're right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:25]:
It doesn't matter how much hard work we put into this thing. It's just, I think that this is going to be super useful.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:30]:
Yeah, I know it is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:31]:
I think this is going to be super useful and I'm very proud or how's that the right word, but yeah, sure. Whatever. No, no, no. For a lack of a better word, like I'll just say proud. I'm very happy that we are getting something affordable just in general. To everybody. At the launch price, whatever full price this is, let's call it a $100

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:53]:
Sure. Cause it won't be more than that ever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:41:55]:
At $100 everyone can scrape together a $100

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:58]:
To avoid the average student debt. Yeah. I think so. For the

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:02]:
value that this brings, everybody can scrape together a100 Absolutely. And the thing is, is like one of the questions that I've been asked is like, well, why don't you guys just give it this way for free?

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:13]:
Because we have to print it and ship it, pack it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:16]:
That's a technical reason. It's also true. Sure. I mean, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're printing it, we're packing it. We're doing all this thing. I mean, we don't run a nonprofit, we're a business, but really the thing is if you don't buy this, you're not going to do it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:31]:
We have tried, and this is such a bummer. It's the way everybody is. It's the way we are too. When people are given things for free, they do not value them. And that is the great sadness of the human condition, but it is true. We have tried. People don't care about things they get for free because they don't have skin in the game.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:50]:
We've been doing this entrepreneur thing for 7, 8 years now.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:54]:
And we want people to use this. If they don't use it, it's not going to help.

Ryan Maruyama [00:42:57]:
We have given away a lot of time and effort, material, products, services, you name it. It's not just necessarily in this business, but in other businesses that we've done as well. And sure enough, whenever we give something away, it is never as effective as the people who pay for it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:19]:
Yep. That's why we believe in business

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:21]:
because literally how many times have you or I helped people in our own personal lives? Like people that are close to us, people that literally don't listen to this podcast, not just families, friends that don't listen to this podcast that have our personal phone numbers. How many people have we helped do what we do right now? Like the career thing, like I've talked about this before on this podcast, whereas like, I'm kind of the careers guy. Like people come to me for questions and they don't execute on those things. I'm giving them the same advice that somebody else paid 1,000 of dollars for. And I literally tell that to their face. I'm saying, look, there are people that pay 1,000 of dollars for this service that I'm giving to you for free. Please, please, please do what I'm saying. Please know how fortunate you are.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:16]:
And then I do it and then they don't do anything. And it's because they don't value it because it's free.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:23]:
Such a bummer. Because there've been people over the years, a friend of mine who I love very dearly, who will ask for help. And then I will bend over backwards. I'll do exactly what I do for everybody else. I give them that thing. And then a year later, they're asking me the same question. They didn't even bother to go look at what I already gave them. It just makes me so sad.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:40]:
I wish people would

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:42]:
start comparison. There are people that we've helped in prior things that we've done, but then in the degree free launch program, there are people that you give them the custom career roadmap at the end and they are off and running.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:54]:
Yeah. They're like, oh, we're doing it tomorrow.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:56]:
Yeah. Check, check, check. A couple of weeks later, boom, done. Yep. You're kind of just like, wow, that's crazy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:02]:
I just got off the phone with someone in our launch program just now and is doing exactly what you just said.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:07]:
Because they've invested the money they are in. They are fully bought in literally with their money and with their time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:14]:
And they get amazing results from that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:15]:
That is that I am really, really looking forward to this coming out. I really look forward to hearing your thoughts on what jobs legally require college degrees. Once again, I want to know the name, the exact job title. And if it's in a specific state, the exact state, if it's in a specific county, the specific county, give me all of the information in this YouTube comment or in this Spotify comment, Give me everything that I need to track this job down, to fact check,

Hannah Maruyama [00:45:49]:
verify

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:49]:
what it is that you're saying that this is legally required, that if the government or whatever, somebody found out that somebody else, a degree free person is working in that job, there would be a lawsuit. Yeah, it would be absolute trouble because they are legally bound for that. That's pretty much it. I think. What do you think about this episode?

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:05]:
I feel it was pretty solid.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:07]:
Yeah. I think this episode pretty good.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:08]:
And then we'll see. We're just gonna roll the dice to see if I show up next week.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:11]:
I felt pretty good. I hope people like this. We'll see what people say about it. Yeah. Until next week, guys. Aloha.