Why This Mom Hired a Life Coach... (Degree Free #199)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
All right, today we have a good one. This is from a call that you had for somebody. They applied to the launch program and they didn't end up signing up. It was so impactful that we had to make an entire episode about it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:14]:
Yeah. So for those that don't know, what we do is we have a one on one service that we help 18, 19, 20 year olds to figure out what career is going to work for them, what they need to learn, how they're going to learn it, and then what strategic entry level work they're going to get. And I had this mom apply for a program, it's called the launch program. And she applied for this program for her son. He's 19. He went to college, didn't work out, went to trade school, didn't work out. So now she's talking to us. And in this call she proceeded to tell me that her son is depressed because for obvious reasons, he doesn't really feel like he's going anywhere in life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:46]:
And that's because he's not really, he's not really sure what to do. He's kind of frozen in place. And she said the first thing that they did after he left trade school was they hired him a life coach, like a therapist to help with executive function. This is my hot take from working with young adults and specifically young men in this age range. Our team does this a lot. A lot of executive function issues at this age are just a complete lack of direction. They have no idea where they're trying to get and so they have no idea what to do. And they're very afraid of making mistakes because the way that they've been told to proceed is to go to college or do things that seem very permanent and very expensive.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:20]:
And so the fear of failure is very strong because the failure is very public and very painful for them and for their families. And so this life coach is helping him like feel better about the fact that he's not moving forward. But that's not. Young men who are 19 years old who aren't moving forward don't need to feel better about themselves. They need to do work. At this age, doing work is the thing that will work on them. That is the thing that must happen. And we're taking these young men at this age when they're all demoralized and they're depressed and they're anxious and we're like, you know what, Just sit still and think about like how you can be better or just be okay with the fact that you're not doing Anything.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:55]:
And that is what's causing them to be depressed and anxious and feel badly about themselves. It's, it's wild to me. It's wild to me that the first thought for a lot of families is, let's go get them a life coach or a counselor or a therapist instead of let's go get them a job because they need to do something useful. And when they don't feel useful, they feel bad. Most people are like that. And young men at this age especially feel that very keenly because they need to feel needed. They need to feel like they're learning. They need something to pour their time and energy into, and they need the ability to have some way for them to earn respect.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:28]:
Because even being an entry level lab tech, if you are good at your job or even just on time, you are respected for that. And that respect is what teaches them and forms their character. And we've taken that from young men and we've said, no, go sit on a college campus before you can even apply for a job. Oh, and by the way, if you don't go get a degree and you leave because it wasn't working for you, you just need a life coach or a therapist to like, feel better about yourself. Instead of, no, go get a job, because that is what you need to do. But then the parents don't want them going to like, work at a grocery store or work at a restaurant. To be fair, that's not what they should be doing. They should be applying for the same jobs that their peers will be applying for after they graduate college in debt.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:06]:
But parents don't even know that they can get those jobs and they don't know how to help them do it, so. So instead they just hire him a life coach to work on executive function. That one's gonna get me fried on the Internet. But that is what we see.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:15]:
I know that you feel strongly about this. What? I feel strongly about this too. But I know that you feel strongly about this because this is the second time that we're like talking about this, quote, unquote talking about this. This is the first time we're doing an episode on it. But you did an newsletter on this a few weeks back and I know that it's still bothering you today. Yeah, so we're still talking about it because this is a difficult one. And if you wanna get the newsletter, you can go to degreefree.com newsletter and you can sign up there. But yes, this is also near and dear to my heart because this was me, this was my Life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:50]:
Cause I mean, I didn't have a therapist to talk about it, but I remember having this conversation with myself when I was around this age. I think I was a little bit older, but maybe like I was 20. I was just like, man, I'm like really not happy with where I am in life. I'm really just like not happy with where I am and what I'm doing in my life. I remember thinking to myself, well, you kind of just gotta just accept where you are, you know, like you just fix what's up here and the way that you're relating to what is going on. And like, to be fair, that is.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:26]:
Well, that's what the stoics say, right?

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:27]:
Yeah. To be fair, that is a completely valid modality. Right. Is a completely valid vehicle to get us to where we're going. Completely. There is also, you could just be like, yo, I'm taking these actions and my life looks like this and I hate it. Let's go take completely different actions and let's change that so that I don't hate my life. And it was like sad hearing you come out.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:51]:
I remember when you we when you had this call coming out and telling me about this and I was like, yeah, that's. That sucks. At the end of the day, she booked a call for her son to sign up for the launch program so that we can work with him. She ended up telling you this story.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:07]:
Everything she told me, I know for a fact we can help.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:09]:
And then she got off the phone and she's just going to continue on doing what she's doing and he's going to continue on doing what he's doing. And magically he's just going to start feeling better about his life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:21]:
It's not a bad thing to be to make yourself okay with an uncomfortable of circumstances in order to progress in life. But the problem is that when stoics were talking about accept your circumstances, they were talking to men who were working from sunup to sundown. They were not talking to teenagers, you know, 18 to 20 year old men who were sitting at home doing literally nothing. That's not who they were talking to. They were talking to. You're a farmer, you get up at the crack of dawn and you do actual physical labor because you have to actually produce something in order to eat food. And then you work until you're bone tired and you actually sleep well at night because you did a hard day's work. This is not saying young men should go into the trades, blah, blah, blah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:00]:
This is just the idea that your son has to work with a therapist to feel okay about the fact that he's not doing anything in his life is not going to fix it. We are just so lost in the sauces of society. Like you told your son to go into a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt, spend four, six years on a college campus to get an entry level job that's not working. He realizes that's not a fit. So he comes home and he feels bad because we told him for 12 years that that was the only way for him to have a good future. You don't know how to help him because you've been told your whole life that the only way for you to, to get a good job and for him to get a good job is to go buy a degree. And now the cost has gone up, you know, three times, the cost has doubled. Cause it doubles every nine years.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:36]:
And then you're like, I don't really know what you can do. I really only know about the military and the trades. And your son doesn't want to go into the trades or he's not sure which one. And so instead of helping him to find entry level work that's going to help him progress in his career, you instead just hire him a life coach to just be okay with the fact that he's directionless and not going anywhere in his life as a teenager. And I feel really strongly about this because how do you think that's going to bode for the rest of their life? That's the thing. And we're doing this for completely no reason. This is not something that's required. We don't have to send young men into college to get good jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:07]:
We don't have to send young men to life coaches for executive functioning when they're doing things that they see no purpose in, that they see no future in. And they're understandably discouraged by that. What we have to do is find them the right place in society for them to do work, get paid, and find some way to earn respect. And that's ultimately what they need. And I say, who are you to say this? We work with these young adults, we've been working with them for years. And I talk to them and I hear what they say, and I hear how they talk about themselves and I hear what happens when they realize that actually this was all optional and you can just figure out what you need from your work, find the right entry level work and then get it. And then they're completely different people. And parents will tell us that like overnight they just change.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:51]:
And that's because they needed purpose, they needed somewhere to put their energy and somewhere to learn and somewhere to be needed. And that is what we're missing. And that's why we're just demolishing these young men. And then parents are going, oh well, let me just send them youth to a therapist so you feel better about the fact that you're not going anywhere when the problem is they're not going anywhere.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:08]:
Now if you're sitting here and you're thinking that makes sense, that kind of sounds like my son. But I have no idea where to start. That's exactly why we built the launch program. The launch program is a one on one coaching service where we reverse engineer the life that he actually wants, that your son actually wants, identify the real entry level roles that fit and then make an actionable plan for the next 12 months so that he can go and learn the skills so that he needs to get those roles and to change his life. If you would like to do that, go to degreefree.com launch to sign up to apply and have a call with us to see if your son is a good fit. Now what's also bad here? Or we get off the phone with this person and if they're just like, look, get a job, any job. That is also not great advice. I know because like this was me, right? Like this was me.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:57]:
I feel really strongly about this because this was me. I did get any job. I also worked full time through college as well and I graduated as well. But I did just go out and get any job. To be fair, that is better than just not working. But getting any job is still the wrong action. And we've talked about this before, I was in the wrong vehicle. Like literally like the actions that I was taking and what it was taking me towards was not the life that I wanted.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:31]:
And so I was still, even though I was employed full time and I was working my butt off and I was working really hard and I was learning how to be a quote unquote hard worker. I really, I really was, it was still taking me towards a life that I didn't want. And that is what's going to happen to the young men in our society if we just tell them, just go get a job, just go get a job, you'll figure it out. They're not going to figure it out. They might figure it out, but it will be in spite of that, they'll figure it out. When they stop, take a second, take a look at their Life and be like, yo, what are my goals? What can I do to figure out what my goals are? Okay, awesome. This is the kind. This is the amount of money that I want to make.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:12]:
This is where I want to live. This is the schedule that I want. This is the work environment I want. This is the people that I want to be around. This is the life. This is exactly how it looks. X amount of years, X amount of months away. Great.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:25]:
Now, how can I make that a reality? What can I do right now to work towards that? For me, at that time, what was difficult is I didn't have a really good idea of what that future looked like. I didn't have anybody guiding me through the process. I've told my story and this story many times on this podcast, and I wrote it into the book that we created, the Degree Free Way. It was always just to make a lot of money, and that's, like, a really bad goal. There's a ton of ways. There's an infinite amount of ways to make a lot of money also. What is a lot of money? Right?

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:56]:
Right. What does that mean?

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:57]:
What does that mean? And then for what I was making, okay, money, but I just didn't have a good idea, like, what good money is. What is a lot of money? I just knew that I didn't want to do what I was doing. I was a bartender. I worked in restaurants for, like, 10 years before I figured it out. It took me 10 years in that 10 years. I went to college. I got a job that, quote, unquote, required a college degree. I didn't.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:23]:
My coworker literally did not have a college degree. My supervisor, literally, my superior, did not have a college degree. My direct co worker that sat right over there did not have a college degree. Who. I was just talking about, my supervisor who sat right in front of me did not have a college degree. And then when you turn the corner, all of the coworkers is a stable, like a soulless, windowless place. All of those people also did not have college degrees. I was the only one in banking

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:50]:
and finance, by the way, for those of you who think that your sons need those finance degrees, they don't.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:55]:
Yeah, they don't.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:56]:
They don't need economics degrees. They don't need accounting degrees. Unless they're gonna be a cpa. Just. It's just not necessary.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:01]:
I had to do all of that within 10 years and then finally figure out that, like, yo, I didn't want to do any of that. That wasn't my. That wasn't My goal at all. I actually don't want that. I want my life to look like this. And then it was only after all of that that I could finally make steps towards the life that I actually wanted. But if I had had some guidance back then, not even guidance, but if I had just had the maturity to sit down and be like, yo, I'm being too vague with my life. I'm being too vague about what I want.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:36]:
I need to sit down. I need to make $100,000 this year. I need to make $200,000 this year. Whatever it is. I need to make $70,000 a year. Whatever it is. Doesn't matter. I want work to look like this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:48]:
I don't want to work in an office. I don't want to work around a lot of people. Whatever. I want to continually see new people every single day. And if I had just done that, I wouldn't have spent 10 years trying to figure it out. If I had extra help with somebody helping me plan it, who knows? The entire trajectory of my life would have been different. I can say that confidently.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:14]:
Yeah. And I'm sure people just. Well, yeah, I know, but they can just figure it out. They totally can. And they probably will at some point, maybe in the future. But wouldn't you want to shorten the distance between. Because time. If you believe time is linear.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:27]:
I do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:28]:
I do. Then wouldn't you want to shorten the distance between them building experience and something they actually are trying to get into for a clear reason, as opposed to just bumbling around and then hopefully eventually figuring out what's the right thing for them? One is by accident, and you're trusting in an accident, or you're intentional and strategic about where your child is investing their time. Because that matters a lot. And the reason you can tell it matters a lot is because 62% of people send their kids to college because they think that that's going to help. Right. We're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in four to six years in service of that goal, which is to shorten the distance between them getting into a career that's actually good for them. And what I'm telling you right now is it doesn't take more than 12 months to figure that out and start it like it just does not. It does not.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:13]:
Unless your child is going to become a physician, and that's the only job that meets their needs. Doesn't take more than 12 months. Any career, I don't care what it is. I do not care.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:20]:
It's so interesting Too. Youth is a lot of times when thinking about employment, youth is like a bad thing in that there's just not. They don't have as much experience, they don't know as much. When in reality youth is like their secret weapon.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:38]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:39]:
Right now, your son, your daughter, 19 years old, that is the strongest weapon they have.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:46]:
Everybody wants to hire them. And that's what people are not hearing it when we do this. There is nobody else, I don't think in the country that does what we do. We are working with 18, 19 and 20 year olds, helping them figure out what career meets their needs, what they actually need to do to get it, and then the actual roles that they're going to be applying to and then the skills they need to build over the next 12 months. Everybody wants to hire 18 to 20 year olds and they want to hire them for the jobs that college graduates are now trying to get. And that's what everybody's missing. They're all missing it and nobody wants to hear it either because that's really inconvenient to the college narrative. Right.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:22]:
But actually for entry level roles, that is who they're looking for. But the thing is those parents don't know that their kids can apply for and then get those strategic entry level roles and they don't know how to find them. That's the biggest barrier. The wrong moves, if your child is feeling really demoralized after leaving college, is a life coach or a therapist who's gonna make them feel better about themselves. The right move is figuring out what they're going to do and then why they're gonna do it and what is going to get them so that they have somewhere to channel work, so they have somewhere to channel energy. And so they know what they're gonna do so they don't feel stuck, so they don't feel lost, so they don't don't continue feeling worse about themselves. It's not, oh, let's just try a different school. Oh, let's just switch your major.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:00]:
Oh, let's just give it a year to just figure it out or do whatever. Because what you said is going to happen is what's going to happen, which is they'll just get some job, which is not a bad thing. Some job is better than no job 100%. Always. However, if there's no direction or plan, again, you're relying on an accident to help figure this out and get them into something that actually fits them. Like if you don't have a clear path for them already, which some People might, you know, but if you don't, which a lot of people don't, that's now the goal, figure out what they're doing and why they're doing it and what it's going to get them on the other end. So the right move now is shortening, shortening the distance between your child who just left college and the right career for them. And the way to do that is figuring out what they need from their work and finding the right strategic entry level work for them to apply to.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:42]:
Which is not complicated. It just takes a lot of work. It takes our team four weeks to do it, even though we're trained to do it. And it's very intense. It's a one on one process. So you're going to have to do this work with your child, do this research, do these, do this decision making process. But you can find the right fit for them and it is not going to take them more than 12 months to start that career. I don't care what it is, if there's not a legally required license for it, it is not going to take more than 12 months.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:04]:
That is how quickly this can work. So if you're sitting there thinking like, yeah, this makes sense, this is my child and they don't know what to do and they, they're very much frozen then that's exactly why we built the launch program. That's exactly what it does. That's why when this mom applied and she said, you know, he tried college, he tried trade school and then we got him a life coach to work on his executive function functioning and to help him, you know, helped him work through this depression. They need work. They don't need to work on themselves. They need work. They need to work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:32]:
And if you need a neutral third party and a actual human being, this is not a quiz, this is not software, this is an actual person. This meeting with your child one on one for weeks and doing the real research to find out what they need from their work, what careers are going to fit their needs the best, what they actually need to do to get those careers, which is almost never a college degree and almost never takes more than 12 months. And then helping them figure out how they're going to then get into that career over the next 12 months. That is exactly what we do in the launch program. You can apply to see if it's a good fit for them. Degreefree.com launch and we would love to help them not work on their executive functioning but actually get work so that they can move forward and not feel bad about themselves because they're not building anything or doing anything with their energy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:15]:
Yeah, I feel really strongly about this one. It's a bummer that, you know, we can't win them all. And it's a bummer that he was the perfect candidate. And, you know, I just. I think about him still weeks later. Hopefully, that's not your son.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:29]:
Yeah. Work, not words.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:31]:
Yeah. Until next time, guys. Allah.