Blaze Your Own Trail - S2:E29- From Engineering to starting a University with Dr. Donald Hecht

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

About Dr. Hecht: My educational experience first began when I took a high school assessment test saying I’d be good at engineering, and I enjoyed the design part of this field. I earned my degree in Mechanical Engineering from New York University. Then wanted to acquire my MBA, but did not have a business background, so I went to Colombia University and received my master’s in industrial engineering. However, being a people person and having my Master of Science, I decided to go into teaching High School and Community College for over ten years. I wanted to go into full-time college teaching, but did not have the degree so, I went back to school to obtain my Doctor of Science in Industrial and Management engineering going from an instructor to professor. However, throughout that time, it was very difficult to earn the Sc.D. degree. I was still working as a full-time teacher, had a family to take care of, had a 40-mile commute, and was only able to take classes after hours because the school was not accommodating to my schedule as a part time student and professor. I finally finished my doctorate at the age of forty-three. While I worked as a dean for working-class students trying to earn their master’s degree in the evenings, I saw how tired my students were. They all had different learning habits, a hard time staying awake, and struggled to afford their classes. I tried to fight the system to accommodate for these students, yet I did not have much leeway to teach as I wanted to. All these experiences motivated me to found California Southern University because I understand the difficulties to earning a degree while juggling life’s challenges. I wanted to change the educational structure, where students’ backgrounds and college testing scores aren’t the main factor. At CalSouthern we define our students as learners, because they are the center of the process. I want the learner to be the focus so they can reach their goals, can afford their classes, and avoid being in debt to earn a practical education and degree that sets them up for their future. Your outcome is what’s important and CalSouthern wants to provide the learners with the best opportunities for success. After running the school on my own for a few years through pen and paper, the university began to evolve from phone and mail to 100% online accredited institution honoring learners intellectual and individualistic freedom. In this episode we discuss: Dr. Hecht's upbringing What sports he played Why he went into Engineering Getting his Doctorate Creating the university His first student And more! Connect with Dr. Hecht: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realdochecht/ Check out Cal Southern University: https://www.calsouthern.edu/ Connect with Jordan: Follow on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanjmendoza Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanjmendoza/ Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/blazeyourowntrailmastermind/ Need help with your Sales or Marketing Strategy? Book a call today! https://calendly.com/impulseconsulting/30-minute-discovery-call Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everyone, I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr. Donald Heck. He is the founder and president, Meritus of California Southern University. He's had a really long career, an amazing journey, and can't wait for you to tune into this episode. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza. And I've got a very special guest today. His name is Dr. Donald Hecht. And I'm going to him just a second to tell us who he is and what he does. Well, I'm the right now, I'm the semi-retired founder and president, Meritus, which means I'm been semi-retired, of California Southern University. Forty-two years ago, I started the university. It's been quite a journey,

and it continues. Awesome, awesome. So I would love to get some context for the audience. So where did you grow up? So where did you spend the adolescent years, you know, from being a kid up through high school? Okay. As you can tell from my accent, I'm from New York. Actually, Brooklyn, it's a part of New York, but we like to call it Brooklyn. I went to a technical high school with the engineering school in YU. Came out as an engineer, worked for six years as an engineer.

And then I found myself through various adventures, tried many things, failed that many things, finally found teaching. And I've been in education for the last 50 years. Okay. So in those adolescent years, you know, going, you know, elementary middle school to high school, were you into sports at all? Was sports something that you invested any time and energy in? Or were you more on the academic side?

I tried football in college and they knocked me on my bottom. So many times I gave it up and said, no, this is not for me. I'm going to take more academic life. So I became, I am a nerd. So I nerdyed rather than. Okay. Hey, well, it's important to have that self-awareness, right, that you don't want to keep ending up on your back, right?

So might as well go the other route. So what is it about, you know, engineering that, that fascinated you that made you want to go into that field initially. I've always taken things apart. You've heard that story. And most of the time, I never got them back together again so that they worked. But one of the things I learned was it was fun taking them apart and fun trying to reassemble them.

And somewhere along the line in high school, I took an exam and they said, be an engineer. I couldn't even spell it properly at that time. So I became an engineer. Okay. It stayed with me, although I've not practiced engineering for the last for 50 years, but the things that you learn and the thinking concepts, it stays with you. Okay. And so what was that next step, you know, right when you finished college, right?

You got your degree in hand. You finished up school. you know, what did you do next? Was it, let me find a job in the exact field and see how this goes. And then when did that shift from, you know what, I don't think I want to do this with the rest of my life. Let me actually try to figure out a different path to Blaze. Yeah, well, school, having gone to school until you're 20, 21 years old, that's all you know, really. work experiences yeah I flipped hamburgers and I delivered furniture and I did things like that so it makes a mixture money so I had my new diploma and I got a job that it was at Sperry Rand and I spent

six years in doing design mechanical design machinery equipment things like that actually it was fun at the beginning it was working on the missile projects the Jupiter Saturn missiles. So we were working on the guidance system. It's very interesting. But it has to be made, and that's mechanical engineering, how you put it pieces together. And the darn thing worked, not to my benefit, but it worked. After about six years of that, I said, no, no. This is too mechanical. I want a little more humanistic aspect of things. So I said, okay, let's go back to school and find out. What I can do to increase the human aspect of things rather than the mechanical aspect of things.

So my humanistic side sort of leaked out what I wasn't watching. And so I went back to school and got a master's degree in industrial engineering, which is people in the enterprise of working, how they work, how they work. Okay. So you get this graduate degree and what were the plans? Did you have a plan in mind or did you say, let me just get the human aspects and then I'll figure it out from there. What was kind of your next step? You got it.

I thought that with the master's degree, I move into something like management, engineering management. And there wasn't an opportunity for me to do it at sparing. So I said, I don't know what to do. and my wife at the time says, hey, sport, try teaching. You like talking to your kids. You like talking to people. You like explaining things. Try teaching.

So that's what happened. I went to a Brooklyn Tech high school. And I said, would you hire me? And they said, well, you've got a bachelor's of engineering. You've got a master's degree. Yeah. And will great give you a high education? come start because you've got that massive degree. Wow, okay, let's do it. So I took the risk

and I've never regretted it. Okay. So what was that first day like, right? Think, think back to first day as a teacher, right? You hadn't gone through the formal teaching to become one, but you had the other investment of time, right? Investment of education for, you know, the two degrees. So they gave you the opportunity. What was that first day like with your classroom? I will remember it forever. I came into the classroom and all these young, youthful high school students are looking at me as if I were God.

God came into the classroom and said, Hello, I'm your teacher and we're going to learn mechanical, design, or we're going to learn what it was mechanical design course. And they sat there and I started talking and we had a conversation. And at the end of the day, I said, wow, this is fun. I have a captive audience. It allowed me to talk for an hour, as I'm doing now. And I enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed the response. And that began a lifelong commitment to education, to education, not motivating, but responding to students' needs. That's how it started. Yeah, that's awesome.

And so how far along into that role did you, you know, where was it when you started thinking about, you know, I think there's a gap that I can fill right in the education system? or I think that maybe I could have a bigger part in educating a larger group of people. That's a very perceptive question. Thank you. As I was, I spent two years teaching it in high school. And then I said, you know, I can teach a junior college level. So I applied. Again, my credentials came in handy. And I was accepted as an instructor at a community college in Bayside, Queens, New York.

And there I spent 10 years and I saw the students coming to me all levels, all abilities, trying to understand the subject that I was involved with. My understanding was that people want to learn and that the school system gets in the way of the authority, believe it or not. Let me backtrack a little. While I was at the teaching, in Queensboro Community College, I went to school at night back to Columbia University to earning my doctorate. I try to get a doctorate in business. He said, you have too many courses to take over.

I wanted a doctorate in psychology, evil behavior. No, you'd have to sort over. I said, what can I do with what I have? They said become a doctor of engineering science, but focus on the human aspect of engineering, the people aspect rather than the mechanical. So then here I was in my 40s going back to school. I had a family and obligations. I had a 35-mile one-way trip from my house and Long Island and my work to get to Columbia University at night. I was not admitted as a matriculated student

because I was a nighttime. I was a part-time, and they didn't want to bother with me. So for the next 10 years, it took me that long to get my doctorate. What I saw was there's got to be a better way for the adult adult learning, such as myself, to go to school. And going to school as an irregular student did not do much for my psyche.

And there was not the help I needed. Their whole philosophy of traditional school is a full-time student. And you have to go to class and you have to do steps. So that stayed with me throughout my Queensboro Community College Professorship. And then as luck would have it,

I heard of an opening as a college dean in California at a university out here. And they wanted somebody with practical experience, an engineer, management experience, MBA type experience. And I said, wait, geez, I've got these credentials. Let me see if I can become a dean

and in that way influence the educational system. And that's a long way around to get to what you wanted to know. Just an opportunity. And I applied for it. I was accepted. Dean of Instruction.

All that instruction programs now are under my control. I lusted everything. and all the faculty had to report to me and I was going to help them become better teachers. And incidentally, the university was evening only. So it was for adult students who wanted master's degrees, business, business administration. So it was like made for me. So I said, okay, let's do it.

Took the shot, moved myself, family out, and became a dean. That's awesome. Yeah, what an awesome story. And, you know, thinking back to the two years at the high school level, right? Because, you know, you went to school to get the bachelors. You got the master's, but you didn't have the experience. So that two years, right? You had two years experience in the classroom, which afforded you the next opportunity and you invested eight years there while taking a night, right? So what I'm seeing through that is you became a practitioner, right? You, you, you, you, you also became somebody that was a practitioner of night school. And so you started to see the gaps that could potentially be filled to give people that wanted to do what you did a clear path, right? And to actually be part of something versus the outcast almost. You know, you're a part of the program, but you're really not because you're coming at night. Right.

And so it's really cool that you're able to, to see that. And then, like you said, I mean, what serendipity to have exactly what you wanted to do open up, right? There aren't that many opportunities that are in alignment that well, I don't think, in life. So it was fantastic. As a matter of fact, it was such an opportunity that I took a pay cut of several thousand of dollars to give up my tenure in New York. I was tenured associate professor had a good salary and I gave it up and convinced the family, the kids, wife. Let's go out there, give it a shot because this is too, too juicy to pass up. And it was quite an experience at the senior college level.

Absolutely. So how long were you a dean before you decided to start your own thing, decided to, you know, take this passion, right? Because that's what I'm really seeing is that this was a passion for you to be able to have the opportunity to mentor to all these people, right? So when, was there a pivotal moment, maybe something that happened where it just clicked and you said, man, I could even impact more people if I were to be able to run this whole thing?

Well, is where chaos turns into a, good thing for you. The president who hired me got sick and retired. New president came in and he decided to replace the deans with his own people. Traditional management idea you bring you your people, get rid of the old people so you have your loyal following. Well, I was unemployed and I tried to find a job as a dean. None available. I tried to get hired as a professor. I was rejected because you're a dean.

You will always want to be a dean again. And there's no openings for dean. So no, no, no, block, block, block. I said, pardon me, the hell with it. If nobody wants me, I'll hire myself. So I started my university in December. of 1978. It was a, it's supposed to be MBA,

because it's a very popular program, very easy to put together. For me, 12 courses, three credits each, 36 credits, we'd have a master's MBA. So all of a sudden I became a school owner. And, uh, yeah,

so I've never looked back. Yeah, no, that's awesome, right? I'm just going to hire myself. Right? No one's hiring. I'm hiring. I've got the time, right, to hire yourself. So that's awesome.

And so what was that first year like, right? The first year of your own school, you know. And what was the feeling like to get your very first enrolled student, right? Because I'm sure that had to be the validation, right? That this thing actually is going to be working, is happening. Well, fortunately, my wife was working and making the money while I was sitting at home. at my desk pretending to be a college owner and a college professor and I was the enrollment advisor I was the marketing department I was the delivery department and I cleaned

up I was the janitorial service also it was one-man operation for many many years but the thing that was most exciting was I placed a small ad in the LA time time, stay home and I'll have a correspondence with you. It was a correspondence school at the time. Remember, no internet, no dial-up even, no faxes to be. The copy was a huge copy machine and print a automatic out of the block. So everything was sort of primitive compared to today. But my first, one of my first students,

I got a call from somebody in Atlanta, happened to be a foreign student, an international student. And he was here in America trying to get a master's degree and not doing too well because he had to work. So I promise to stay home. You don't have to give up your work, but you can earn your degree through correspondence. So the next funny part was he said that he couldn't afford to pay because he worked for his dad. Okay, what is your dad? My dad is in the manufacturing and shipping of carpets. So I can't afford to pay. I said, well, what have you got to barter?

He says, well, I've got carpets. If you'd want a carpet, we can trade my carpet for your educational. services. I said, okay, you're in Atlanta? Yeah, I'd have to be in Atlanta for something next week, a week after. Let me, let's go over. So I popped over to Atlanta, to his condo, and he had a stack of carpets in his living room must have been two feet high. And he says, pick out a carpet, a rug. I guess it's a carpet. And we can make a deal saying, this one, no, it's too big, This was too small. This one, not off, no, not quality. Finally, we negotiated it. I got a five by seven carpet, beautiful carpet.

And he said, okay, I marked his enrollment agreement paid in full, wrapped up the carpet, threw it over my shoulder, came home with it. And for the next five, six years, he and I corresponded, and he earned his master's, and I've got my carpet sitting in my old. office as the our first successful thing one of our first successful students he did eventually graduate and i'm in complete of the coffee so that to me is another outstanding feature if you if you let things happen they they could be good no yeah i love that right i mean you you were able to um get creative about payment, right? And also that you're always going to remember that first student because of

the story, because, you know, you still have that that rug, right? And that creates a lot of memories. And, you know, so what was it like, you know, getting, getting that one person through? And I'm sure you had other folks enrolled during the time. But, you know, having somebody like that make it through starting all the way through graduating and getting their diploma. That must have been a really, really great feeling. It was. It was. My greatest time is at graduation. We're an online school, so we don't see our students.

Now we do with Zoom and Skype and a few other things. We're able to see them better, but before we didn't. And even though we see them now, there's no way to shake a hand or give a slap on the back going to embrace. So my fun time is at graduation and we get hundreds of people attending graduation now. The school is larger. It's 4,000 students, mostly graduates at the school. And so it's a pleasure to see them how appreciative they are. And where they come from every corner of the world, somebody comes to represent themselves and their neighbors and to say thank you, and that's the best part.

That you know you're doing some good, and you're helping somebody fulfill their lives and giving them an opportunity to be successful, however they wanted to find it. I love that. And so what would you say are some fundamental things that you've noticed, you know, decade after decade, right?

You started in 78. So each decade that passed 88 to the, 98, right, to 2008, was there anything significant that enabled you to scale, right, to get to that 4,000 students? And I'm assuming this is globally, right? You've got students from all around the world. Were there big things that happen each decade that helped elevate your business or the brand of the school? Change is constant. It's always with you. Every day is a different day you think you're ahead of something and then you find out that the environment has changed the biggest change was in the 80s when all of a sudden the small computer came in involved before then

they had the super minis and the desktops then became the cell phone then the smart phone i have to run continuously to try to understand what's going on the technology has moved so far away So now we have, our people are entirely at home. The whole school is at home. We have virtually an empty building because we're online so that our faculty are online, our staff are online, totally different. And that is the importantly.

What has happened is that the notion of learning and what to teach is change. changed. Before you had the talking professor like myself, and I'd sit up and stayed in the class with 50 minutes lecturing, telling them what I expected them to do, and they sat there. Occasionally, somebody raised their hand and asked the question. Today, you don't need the professor teaching and giving you information. Every bit of information you want is on that that smart book. This puppy here is the whole world. So with that, my job is not to teach, is not to tell them anymore. It's how to use all this information, how to apply it, how to make

it relevant to you. And that's the latest, the basis of the current education. And that's not That's what's happening mostly in the classroom. So we've got a long way to go to get the traditional classroom modernized, which means you don't need talking heads. You need interpretation, synthesis, analysis, application. Those are the higher order that schools have to learn to do. We do it online because there's no talking head. Yep, that's great. Yeah, so how do you, where do you think your business would be today, where the school would be today, if on day one that you opened, you had that same iPhone with the same capabilities in your hand?

You leave me dumbfounded, but I don't know how they answer that. It would be, I think we're content with the 4,000 students. Maybe 5,000 would be nice, but it gets to be a big organization, and it gets to be organization. problems rather than us being available for the learner. We call them learners, not students. People want to learn things. We help them learn. We advise them on what they're learning is correct. We give them feedback. This is what's missing in the traditional so-called online program where you have your professor talking into a computer or into a tape machine and then broadcasting it out. It's one way. With us, it's not one way. We have each student, each learner gets one faculty person.

So it's one-on-one, which is unheard of. And school owners say to me or school principals, presidents say to me, How do you do that one more than one? Well, it's easy. We know how. Like we're having a conversation right now. This is the way we do our learning. One faculty, one learner.

If we want to reverse this, you are a faculty teaching me right now about how to do a podcast. There we go. Absolutely. There's mutual learning here, which makes this a 150% Yeah, no, and I really believe in that. So I have the opportunity to teach a six-month leadership program every year for the organization that I work for.

And it's predicated on the MBTI-type assessment. That's the foundation. Everybody takes the Myers-Briggs assessment. And then each session, we dive into MBTI and how it relates to things like emotional intelligence and strengths-based leadership and coaching and feedback and how to manage a high-performing team. But when we actually started adding our coaching calls through Zoom, we started seeing that the retention went up a lot, right? Because we can have these contextual conversations.

I can ask a coachie and open-ended question and wait for them to, you know, elicit that response, but I can also see their facial expressions and their body language, right? how they're actually responding versus before they were all phone calls. And it's very hard to have that same level of communication. You are a 21st century entrepreneur educator. Pleasure me to you. More questions. Absolutely.

All right. So the school started to take off, right? The framework that you put in place was, working. How long did it take you to get to, you know, sustainable numbers? And I put that in air quotes because, you know, I don't need to necessarily see a number. But when was there a point when you just, everything was working like clockwork? So like you knew that you were going to get students. You knew people were going to be graduating. And you really had the business kind of running, running at full speed. That's a tough question. Because you sort of slide into these things.

It just gets better and easier. And with the technology now, we can reach more people easier than I could with the correspondence. The correspondence snail, mail back and forth, I'm up telephone. As you say, not seeing the person. Now it makes it more expedient, more, more, no right word for it, easier to communicate. It gives us more of a freedom. So that's why we currently have 4,000 suits. Incidentally, we don't take federal financial aid.

So our costs to operate are much lower. And we don't have a big facility or a big campus with losing football teams or a big overhead to take care of. Therefore our tuition can be very low. And that's an advantage. So right now, if we add, let's say another 100 students, we need one more faculty. So we add a faculty, all adjunct. We're not interested terribly in research or publications.

We understand ourselves. Our best foot is to be a teaching, it's a learning institution, rather than a research and publication. So as long as we define ourselves like that, having 5,000 students, I think it's the next step. We'll just see how it goes. But again, we don't take federal financial aid. We'll pay. And the cost is such that they can pay nominally and go to school. It doesn't, it helps them that they don't have to give up their job. They don't have to give up families. They don't, they can study at two in the morning we don't care we're a 24 hours seven day a week institution because whenever you communicate with us two in the morning would have been just as easy for us to get together as any time so it's it's

quite an interesting phenomenon never thought it would be this when i took teaching back and i became a high school teacher or a college teacher never never would occur that it would have occurred to me that online would be so personal. It's a personal thing now, as you pointed out. Absolutely. And students can't hide. In the classroom, you could hide. Yeah, a lot easier to hide in a big group of people.

Absolutely. And so when you started the school, how many subjects did you offer? And then how many do you have today? You know, of course, you know, minimal amount of students to now, So how is the library of content change as far as what people can earn a degree in? When we started, it wasn't the library. You had to go to your local library, as you point out. And I started with the MBA.

Just a flat MBA. Here are the 12 courses I have. Take them or leave. Hopefully there'll be an MBA for you. Now we have, we still have the MBA, but we have a dozen. options on the MBA, organizational behavior, health, technology, et cetera, et cetera. There are aspects of it. We also have now a bachelor's in business, master's, and a doctorate in a business.

A doctor is open. We're trying to make the doctor to be interdisciplinary so that you can bring your skills and your basic knowledge. For instance, if you were to try to pursue or want to pursue a doctorate, having a master's or whatever it is in business, we try, we ask you what your focus is. Your focus is communication or blogging or podcasting. Then we try to structure that doctorate around your interests. Why?

It keeps you interested, gets us interested, and you're going to complete. Our retention rate is 88, 90%. People come, they enjoy what they're doing. because it's their MBA, it's their doctorate. We also now have psychology, bachelor's, masters, and doctorate. We have education, management, the nursing, nursing, nursing nursing, nursing. Anything that you can deliver online, we're looking forward.

I'd say we had, I don't know, eight, nine hundred courses. That's great. Yeah, and it's great that you're, you know, it's not just a, this is what the course is. Like, no, you're actually building it to match up and align with people's, you know, values, right? Match it and align with their interests, their passions so that they don't burn out. They don't get bored of it, right? Because I think, I think a lot of times you'll find that with online school is that they, like, they are stuck with doing X, Y, and Z. and there isn't that flexibility.

So I'm sure that's what a lot of the students are enjoying. Also, the flexibility is there, the interest is there, but also you help define what you want to learn within a course. Supposed we had a course on organizational behavior. Your approach and your interest might be different from mine, but if I give you a circumscribed rigid, course outline, that's good for guidance, but we have to allow you as an individual. Also, the way you learn, you might be a visual learner, an aesthetic learner, a humanistic

learner, whatever characteristic there is. We just can't throw a pencil of paper at you say, answer this. It doesn't work. What's your style of learning is important? So we try to do that with this one-on-one. We can do it. So how many people do you currently have on staff? So do you have you have around four or five hundred on staff or no you have less than that? 80 staff and over a hundred faculty and the faculty are all adjunct, primarily adjunct. They can handle one student if they want or they can handle 10 students if they want. It's up to them. And the term, the course is eight weeks.

So if we wanted to put in a course of modern podcasting, and I asked Jordan, Professor Jordan Mendoza to teach that course, and you say yes, but you only want one student because you can only devote a four hour a week to this. person, that's fine with us. You might then come back and say, you know, I'm having a good time at that and I like the money. So how about I get two? How about five?

How about seven? Okay, Jordan, you're in business. So this is, it's up to the partnership we developed with you, what you would like to do. I love that because that's, that's the framework that you took with the first student with the rug. Now you're actually giving the same. opportunity to people that have a passion for teaching a subject and you're giving them that same flexibility. So I loved how the model really hasn't changed. It's just evolved, right? But you're not giving the opportunity just to the learners, but for people that also want to earn income

in things that they're passionate about. So I love that you've, you know, use that same framework for both. Right. And you have experience in this field. You're an expert. in this field from my respect. So if you came to us and you were a manager of a department store, that's a totally different style of management, different requirements. If you were manager of a food store, it's different. Each is different, has its own uniqueness. Well, heck, you can certainly weave that into your discussion with the students. Yeah, let me tell you how a, a, a, a, uh, restaurant works. Here's the pitfalls. Here are the strengths. Here's what. Wow, this is alive, man. This is, this is current. Also, we try not to use textbooks. Because textbooks tend to be obsolete, but the time they're printed. And then you have to have an addendum. So we try to use current information. Get it out of the, go use your magic box here. No, I love that. You know, I think experience, huge value, right? Kate, your own.

personal case studies. I mean, that's, that's life. Like somebody that's actually been a practitioner and has done it and has been dragged through the mud, right, is definitely a lot more valuable than reading it, like you said, in a text that's already outdated. The most important thing, if I were to ask you to be an instructor in podcasting, tell me the things that are wrong. So I don't have to repeat them. Tell me what's right. See me, watch me do it. Coach me. You're a coach. Coach me, mentor me. And in that way, I learn. You may learn some things from me, but basically I as a student would learn that from you. And this is this one-on-one dynamic is central to our success. Absolutely. Yeah. And I love that because, you know, as a

instructor or facilitator, I've been doing training and development for the last eight years, but 25 years of sales and marketing. And the one thing that I've always learned about, teaching is every time you teach you're learning twice right because yet for one you have to have the wherewithal to facilitate it but then you're also learning with the student like if you're learning together because they may have a perspective that you've never even thought about before correct you know and that keeps our faculty interested we have faculty going back 10 20 years who teach one or two courses a term and they're as happy as if they can be, and we're happy with them.

That's great. And so what are some tips that you would give, right? You know, there's going to be people that listen to this in the audience that might be thinking about going back to school, right? And they're going to listen back to this and hear about the flexibility. It's going to be something that, I mean, that's inspiring, right? This framework in the way that you do things. So what are some tips that you would give them if they're looking to, whether it's, you know, know, your school or any school, what would be maybe the top three things to research before making

that commitment? What they want to do with themselves when they quote grow up, because we continually grow. We change. We take in information. The environment changes and we have to adapt. So the question is, what do you want to do? If you're in a job that you don't like, what aspect of it do you like? or what aspect have you not tried yet if you want to be as i notice your podcast is about entrepreneurship entrepreneurship to me is taking chances and not giving up you know don't give up failure is not something failure to give you a chance to learn i think there's a saying that Edison somebody asked him You've tried 10,000 times to make a filament for a light bulb and nothing has worked. Why don't you give up?

Give up. He said, no, no, no. There's a one that will work out there. What I've learned is 10,000 ways that don't work. So giving up is the worst part. And again, I got a few things. Do what you like doing. Do what you like doing.

Emerge yourself in what you're doing, 150%. Look for opportunities. I guess there's a whole plethora of ways that entrepreneurship works with people. Again, try something new. Don't be afraid to try. If you look at my history, if you look back at it, I've got a few things that didn't work. For instance, engineering.

after five, six years, I decided I'm not an engineer. I don't want to be an engineer anymore. I want to be a teacher. Okay, I tried sales. I was a lousy mutual front salesman. I could not sell mutual funds. I gave that up. I tried consulting.

I couldn't sell myself as a consultant, so nobody would hire me. And that turned out to be a failure. What turned out to be a failure. be okay with teaching. So I didn't know that. I didn't know that. But the teaching at the high school, the junior college, and then the university opportunity to be a dean, I guess entrepreneurship all along the way. Yeah, absolutely. Now, well, listen, it's been awesome hearing about your journey and your story. And I want to make sure that we can make sure the listeners have a way to

to find you and find your school because there's again there's going to be people that listen that that hear the framework and the styling and the intimacy really that comes with with the one-on-one with the instructors and they're going to be interested in that so where's the best place that they can they can find the school and then also I'm going to make sure that I put all this down in the show notes as well. Okay. The web page is www. California Southern University.com or short form calsouthern.com. No. Pardon me. What a dummy. Not edu. I'm reading your information. Oh, it's okay. No big deal. Yeah, go ahead.

Perfect. We'll make sure that we get that down in there into the show notes. And what is maybe one of your biggest lessons you've learned along this journey that you can share with the audience? So whether that's a business lesson, a life lesson, a personal development lesson, what's one big lesson that you can share that might give people encouragement to not give up, as you were just saying? you have a tremendous amount of potential within you. You don't realize how much you have in you.

You don't realize how much you've learned or what you're, the power you have to control you go. Look for opportunities that please you. Look for things that excite you. Look for opportunities. That's basically it. look for an opportunity where I can do something I like to do. Running a school, teaching, podcasting, do it.

Do it with all the bigger you have. You'll be interested. You can be rewarded. You'll be happy. You'd be successful. And then you can come on to some show and talk about entrepreneurs. I love it. I love it.

Well, hey, listen, it's been great having you on the show. Definitely a tremendous value for the listeners. And I'm sure we'll definitely be staying in touch. And I really appreciate you taking the time. Jordan, it's been my pleasure. Take care. Take care. Hey, everyone.

I hope you enjoyed that episode with Dr. Donald Heck. Man, what a journey he has been on. But what a highly valuable thing he created California Southern University, serving thousands of students every year, affordably and remotely. Make sure you check out the link to the school in the show notes. And also make sure you connect with Dr. Heck, check out his blog and connect with him on social. Thank you so much for your support. This is actually episode 49 altogether between the two seasons.

And so the next one will be the 50th episode and the end of season two. If you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe and make sure you tell other folks about us. Also, if you're enjoying the show and you haven't rated and reviewed yet, make sure to give us that five-star rating and write a review. We'd really appreciate it. It'll help us move up in the rankings and be able to impact more people's lives around the world. Thanks again for listening and stay tuned for episode 50, which will be released very soon.