The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 280: Danny Iny - Why You Shouldn't Go To College

Episode Date: October 21, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #280: Danny Iny - Why You Shouldn't Go To College "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed."  Show Notes: Commonalities of sustaining excellence: An attitude of curiosity - interested. "I wonder why that happens?" Sense of things being "figureoutable." They will get it done. Fortitude. Danny and I discuss a partnership -- Working together on building a course Being "catalytically curious" Why start Mirasee? Built after previous failure. "On an emotional level, a startup falling apart is like a really rough breakup." "Mirasee was the rebound business."  It has a value driven ethos.  "At the end of an interaction with you, people should like you more regardless of what happens." "Mira" = To see, wonder Why build online courses? The convenience and practicality. It's "Just In Time" Learning Should graduating high schoolers go to college? "Probably not. There is an expectation that smart kids should go to college. That it's the ticket to the good life.  This used to be true, but it's not anymore. The facts don't back that up." "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed." "Those non-specific degrees are functionally worthless." "It's not about where we are, it's about where will we be?" What should a smart high school graduate do instead? Find people you respect and trust in the working world.  Offer to work for them for free.  Shadow them. Learn from them.  Figure out if you want to do that full time. This requires people to take initiative and ownership Why I started the podcast? -- "To create my own leadership PhD." "Pace of education is changing." "At the pace of change currently the curriculum being taught will be completely different in 5-10 years." You must have: Literacy Fluency You need a deep understanding of your topic How to know which online courses to take? Think: What am I trying to accomplish? Does the course offer this? What do I need to learn? To know? Does the teacher have a track record of success? A course must have a support mechanism... The teacher must stand behind promises made The "pilot" program Survey audience - data analysis Map out curriculum Adapt on the fly - take insight to create something great Peer to peer feedback system in place We learn more from giving feedback to others Accountability measures Read Leveraged Learning Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea Use the "Get To Know You Document" "It's not about where we are.  It's about where we will be." Social Media: Follow Danny on Twitter: @DannyIny Read: Leveraged Learning Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

Fundamentally, I think there are two kinds of people in the world. They're the people who hit an obstacle on their journey and they say, this is the universe telling me not to go there. And there are people who hit an obstacle and say, this is the universe inviting me to find a creative way to get there. And people who are successful in the long haul, they have that curiosity and they have that just conviction that things are solvable. This episode is brought to by Leveraged Learning. Leveraged Learning is a great new book by bestselling author Danny Inney. It's no secret that universities and colleges are struggling to keep pace. It's sad but true these institutions are leaving many of our individual and collective needs for learning and growth sorely unmet.

This crisis is an opportunity for the experts and professionals who possess the knowledge and skills that are so sorely needed by so many. The solution is to package their expertise into leverage learning programs that creates transformation for the lifelong learners who need them and profit for the expert. who create them. Danny Eni, a successful educator entrepreneur, has been leading the charge on this growing movement. In Leveraged Learning, he lays out the guidebook for navigating and thriving in this new world, both as a lifelong learner and as an expert with something to teach. Go to Amazon.com and buy Leverage Learning, the age of opportunity for lifelong learners and experts with something to teach and buy it today. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I, I am Ryan Hawk.

Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text Learners to 44222-2 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 44222-2. Now on tonight's featured leaders with the great Danny Eini, the founder and CEO of Miracy. Also best-selling author of multiple books. And he's the creator of the acclaimed audience business masterclass and course builders. Laboratory training programs, which have together graduated over 5,000 value-driven online entrepreneurs.

You'll hear Danny and I discuss at the beginning of this conversation that we are partnering together to build an incredible online course. I'm really excited about you. You're here more soon. A few of the other topics we got in two. The two layers of learning you must stack together to achieve mastery. And then should high school graduates go to college? His answer may surprise you. as a learner how to tell which online course you should take.

This one is so useful. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Danny Eini. All right, Danny Eini. Thank you so much for joining me. I gave special pronunciation with your last name because I think so many people messed that up on the internet. Did I get that right? You got it right and I'm thrilled to be here.

Thank you for having me. Okay, cool. It's good to have you, Danny. And one thing that's a little different about this one that I think it's important to cover because one of your core values and one of mine is being very transparent. So some of you listening have probably heard the ads that have been running over the course of a couple episodes. The ads are actually for Danny's new book, Leverage Learning.

And the reason that this is happening, and Danny, I wanted to get this out as we get going is because one, I believe in the book. I like the book. I'm endorsing the book. Additionally, and I've never had an ad read for a book before, so this is the first time. Additionally, I have been wanting to create and roll out an online course for about 18 months. I had been in contact with some people from Danny's team, Lizzie Namely, for the past couple of years. She writes fantastically, fantastic, thoughtful emails.

So I then went on a deep dive looking all over, really the, world, the internet for who would be the best company to partner with to create an online course? And then I thought about doing it myself. And really what it came down to was that your company, Danny Mersey, was what I feel at least the best company in the world to partner with to create an online course. And so what we've done is Danny, I have essentially sold him some ad time in exchange for them to help me build a course. And you could maybe explain. expand upon what that means, Danny. But I wanted to get that out there as quick as soon as possible because it's not about

just getting money for me. It's about partnering with the best of the best to create a useful, helpful online course for my listeners. And I want to do it with you, with you guys. And so it was great when your company reached out to say for a potential partnership and I'm happy what we've agreed to, man. Likewise, I'm thrilled. We really appreciate and value.

working with the best and the brightest because that's the best place for education to come from. So I know we're going to create something amazing together and completely unrelated to that. I'm also very excited to just be on the show and have a conversation and hopefully create something of value to the listeners. Awesome, man. Well, let's get it gone. And by the way, I would have had you on regardless of any partnership or anything we've done. Again, I was talking to, I've been talking to Lizzie about this for about a year, year and a half because I'm fascinated by your story and what you. produce in addition to your story. So let's jump right in. So as you probably know, I'm fascinated

by leaders who sustain excellence over an extended period of time, not just one hit wonders, but but those who are able to maintain and continue. And I'm curious from your perspective, you've worked with the best and the brightest. You are one. Your company is one. What have you found to be the commonalities among those who sustain excellence? I love that question. And there's two very important things. Actually, it's funny, you asked me the question, you know, like 20 minutes ago when we were chatting before the recording. So I was like kind of stewing on it. And I was like, okay, I know the answer.

Then I was like, oh, I actually do talk about this in my book. How convenient. But the two key things are, one, an attitude of curiosity. People that I've met that have been successful over the long haul tend to just be very curious. They're interested. They're like, oh, I wonder why that happens. I wonder what would happen if we did this. They have this just enthusiastic creativity and curiosity in terms of what is possible.

And the other which is related to that is that they have a sense of things being figure outable, that things will work themselves out, this internal fortitude that not if, but when they hit a road bump or, you know, drive into a brick wall or whatever it is, it's like, well, this is surmountable. Fundamentally, I think there are two kinds of people in the world. They're the people who hit an obstacle on their journey and they say, this is the universe telling me not to go there. And there are people who hit an obstacle and say, this is the universe inviting me to find a creative way to get there. And people who are successful in the long haul, they have that curiosity and they have that just conviction that things are solvable. It's interesting, Danny. I love that phrase.

I've even written it on my website. Are you massively curious? And I also spoke recently with Chip Conley, who on the base. basically created a hospitality brand. He was a CEO for 24 years. He sold it, made enough money not to do anything, and then got hired by Airbnb to essentially run a number of parts of their business. And the nickname that they gave Chip from being in meetings with him was that he was

catalyptically curious. And what that means is, one, he's obviously always extremely curious and asking questions. But the catalytic part and what's so important for leaders to be is the fact that they are, it's contagious. And so when the leader is constantly asking thoughtful questions, that creates that type of culture within an organization.

And it's why it's so critical for leaders to be genuinely curious because then it will, it will bleed out into the rest of the organization. And that's the type of culture we want to build. Absolutely. And something that I think is important as an undertone to that is that there's a difference between that deep, real, genuine curiosity. and kind of curiosity as a facade for trying to get attention, right? Like, there's a difference between, hey, why do you do that as opposed to, you know,

have you considered, you know, basically a suggestion in the form of a question, which the latter is usually just a strategic way of putting an idea out there and tends to come from a place of insecurity, whereas real questions, real curiosity, it's like it comes from a place where there's nothing to prove. Absolutely. So, Danny, your company is called Miracy. and if you look up the origin or what that means, essentially it's to see your vision actualized with a teacher. I'm curious, where did, I know what the word means, but why does your company exist?

And what's your whole thought process behind starting it and then getting to the point where you are today? Oh, absolutely. It's an interesting story because we tend to arrive at where we are on the road we took to get somewhere very different often. So the really quick backstory is that my last attempt prior to my current business at building a startup was about a decade ago. I was building a company that built software. I teaches kids how to read, which is something that I did and still do feel very passionately about. And I was a young and inexperienced CEO in what in hindsight is one of the most complicated industries on the face of the earth. And we raised some money.

We got some good initial traction. The experts loved it. The kids loved it. but the parents and the teachers didn't get it. We ran out of money. The markets crashed. It all happened at the same time. And I walked away from that.

It just all kind of imploded with about a quarter of a million dollars in personal debt. Because we'd raised all this money. It was mostly friends and family. I didn't want to go to them and say, sorry, guys, your investment is gone. So I took a lot of those losses on myself. And that's where I was, about a decade ago. A little more than a decade ago now. And I'm sure there are some listeners on this podcast who have,

have had the experience of building a startup and then it falls apart. And, you know, there are the financial consequences. There's, there's all the challenge and all the reason why that's difficult. But on an emotional level, it's also really, really tough because we put our heart and soul into this business that we're building. And so a startup falling apart is a lot like going through a really rough breakup when you'd put everything into the relationship and just all falls apart. And right after a rough breakup, you're not ready to start dating again right away. I mean, you need to lick your wounds a little bit. And so there I was. My business had fallen apart, and I wasn't ready to like, you know, what's my next big, huge business that I'm going to start,

but I had bills to pay and I had to, you know, do something to make money. So I kind of looked at, well, what can I do on the side? What's a business that I could start without, you know, investing all of my time and energy, without hiring a lot of people, without having to raise outside capital, all that kind of stuff? So I said, well, what if I built a website, had a blog, created some courses, just teaching some of the stuff I had learned about marketing, about business, etc. And in a lot of ways, the business I started, which at the time had a different name, we rebranded it to Miracy in 2015. But it was essentially the rebound business. But, you know, it was the right business at the right time.

It really hit a chord with the people that we have come to serve and found great privilege in serving around that transparency that you mentioned earlier, around a value-driven ethos to doing business. The core idea being that, you know, at the end of an interaction with you, whether people do business with you or not, they should like you more than at the beginning of the interaction. Otherwise, you're doing something wrong. You're turning and burning relationships. So it really struck. It really did well.

And that business that was supposed to be a little side thing, you know, today we're 35 people. We serve an audience of over 100,000 online entrepreneurs and educators. We have thousands of people who are very successful in our course. and so on and so forth. And the name at the time was, you know how it is when you're starting a business, you're sitting in a cafe, you're trying to think up names, you do a search and see what's available, and of course nothing is. And I'm not great at naming things.

So the name originally was something that just didn't really reflect not even so well where we were at the time, but definitely not what we had evolved into. And it was time for a new name to reflect who we actually are, this education company that we've become. And we did that same process again. the assistance of a real expert in naming and found a lot of names that we could not get, and then found a name that we thought we could get and spend a bunch of money buying domains and all that. And then our lawyers advised us that if we went with this name, there would be a

good chance that we would be sued by IBM. And so we're like, okay, back to the drawing board. And so what we liked about NIRC is that first of all, it's a coined name. In other words, that means we made it up so nobody can sue us for using it. But MIRA in Latinette languages means to see or to wonder. And of course, see in English is to see. So it kind of has this connotation of wondering at what could be seen or wondering at possibility, which is really the core role of a teacher. A teacher is someone who sees the best in what you can be, even if you don't necessarily see it yourself yet.

Wow. I love the name. So let's get into some of what you believe in. And first of all, actually, there may be people. who have never even considered taking an online course or never even seen one. And I think there are in fact maybe a number of those types. What are the advantages of this style of learning, whatever the topic may be? But why is there such an advantage in taking an online course?

It comes down to availability and convenience, really. There are a lot of, I'm not, I've never been one to say, oh, you know, classroom learning. or in-person learning is invaluable. It's just often not practical. It's not practical because of the cost overhead. It's not practical because of the scheduling and logistics. You know, you have to work it around the timeline of the teacher of the school, et cetera. It may just not be practical around, you know, when you need the information.

Online education allows for the possibility of just in case, sorry, not just in case. It's the shift away from just in case. It's just in time learning. And this is really one of the four big transitions that we're seeing in the world of online and any education. Historically, it's been a lot of just-in-case education. You know, four years at the start of your career, things you, quote-unquote, might need, but often don't. And by the time you do, you may not even remember it. And we're shifting much more towards probably more education over a lifetime, but in small increments learning exactly what you need, when you needed, to apply to the things you need to apply it to.

and that kind of access, that kind of convenience often just isn't practical in an in-person classroom on somebody else's schedule. So the biggest advantage by far of online education is that you can get it when you need it, how you need it to use in the way that you need to use it. All right. Let's dive into some of the other specific topics. What if somebody came to you, Danny, and said, my daughter is 18 years old and she's looking at to go to college.

She's very smart. In the States here, she's a 3.9 GPA, good test scores. And she's not exactly sure what she wants to be when she grows up, but we can tell she's very smart. Would you recommend somebody like that go to college? The answer is probably not. I would need to know a little more about you, your daughter, your situation. But here's the thing.

The expectation, there's a societal expectation globally, but especially in the U.S., that college is the ticket to the good life, the good career, the trajectory that we all want for ourselves and for our kids. And a few decades ago, which is a key time window because that's when the parents of the current generation's 18-year-olds went to school and made this decision. A few decades ago, this was true, right? Going to college would. pretty much guarantee a good trajectory in life, a good career, better earnings over a lifetime, all those things. That just isn't true anymore. That's just not what the data shows. If you look at recent graduates today, the majority of them are unemployed or underemployed. If you look at those who do have a good job, more than three-quarters are not working in the fields that they studied. So college degrees today just don't get you into the kind of career track that we're hoping or imagining that it will.

There's also this idea of college grads have higher lifetime earnings, which is true as an average, but averages can be very misleading. Imagine you've got 10 people, 10 guys at a bar, and they each make roughly the American average income of $60,000 a year. And Bill Gates walks into the bar. So now you take the total income of the people of the bar, divided by 11 people. The average income is like over a billion dollars a year, some crazy number. But none of those 10 guys actually got any richer. And it's kind of the same thing when you look at higher education and the earning gains over a lifetime. As an average, yes, they're higher.

But let's take out Ivy League schools and top schools, which bring to the table a lot of things that are not just specific to the degree. Like there's the network, there's the pedigree, all those things. Let's take out some specific vocation granting degrees like medicine or engineering or accounting. And what we end up finding is that most of those average earning gains disappear. So coming back to your daughter in this hypothetical scenario, if she wants to study a specific thing, then if that's a way to get into a vocation that she's interested in, of course, it makes sense, assuming that's the career path and trajectory that she wants for her life. If she has the opportunity to go to a top school, right, out of the many thousands of schools in the U.S., there are about 200 that are, you can call them selective, meaning they accept less than 50% of the people who apply. So she has the opportunity to go to one of those schools where they get a lot more than just the degree, the certificate at the end, and you can afford it,

meaning she's not going to have to take out tens of thousands of dollars of student loans. There could be a very good argument to doing it. But barring those circumstances, the ROI math just doesn't make sense. And there's a lot of things that you can get in life with that same amount of time and money that are just dramatically better. This is one point because I read about this and I had a feeling what you're going to say, Danny. But I'm not sure I agree because I'll go to a real situation. So I was a hiring manager and I worked with other hiring managers and we worked in sales. And we were hiring many people year after year.

So we were doing tons of interviews. And there are some who worked in that arena. And I was one of them at the early stage of being a manager. There are some who won't even let somebody without a college degree in the door. Won't even, they just, their resume is thrown in the garbage. And so in this case, regardless of where it's from, or anything else. If the college degree isn't there,

they just toss the resume. And I think there are still a number of people, I mean, I know a number of these. There are still a number of people who feel the way. I don't, but I had to be won over

because I hired a friend of a friend because a friend that I respect who said, trust me, you must hire him. And then that guy actually said, you must hire the next person, his friend, who she came in. And both of them were incredible salespeople

and neither of them went to college. And so then I opened my eyes thought that's wrong, but there are so many others who have not done that yet. So for those types of organizations, and they exist all over the place that say, if you don't have a college degree, that's just the price of entry. That's the price of getting the opportunity to get in the room to interview. And this is just a sales job, which is a profession that I think a lot of people go to earlier in their career if they don't really know what they want to do yet because there's so many salespeople

needed. What do you think about that? So I love that you brought it up. And it's a really important point. I disagree on a number of levels, but like, let's dig into it because this is a really important conversation. So there's the famous quote, I think it's Kevin Kelly. The future is here.

It's just not evenly distributed. Right. And it's definitely true if you look at the attitudes that people have towards degrees. Wait, wait. Can you, maybe you're already going to get to it, so I should have interrupted. The future is here. Say that again? The future is here.

It's just not evenly distributed. Okay, what's that mean? You know, the technology of an electric car exists. You don't see it in everybody's car, but it exists, right? When the future arrives, it takes different amounts of time for it to filter into every different part of society. Gotcha. Okay.

So the degree is generally worthless. And I want to emphasize, I'm talking especially about generic non-vocation granting degree. So essentially the degree that you graduate with and, you know, jobs might say requires an undergraduate a degree without specifying which. It doesn't actually qualify you to do anything. Those degrees are functionally worthless. That is the reality today. Not everyone has caught on to that yet.

A lot of students are. College enrollment has declined dramatically over the last little while. Over the last five years declined 7%, which is enormous. That's almost 2 million less students enrolled in colleges in the U.S. And that trajectory is continuing. So here are the things that you need to think about as, you know, your, your hypothetical daughters, thinking about going to college. First of all, it's not about where are we now. It's about where are we going to be in four years and probably longer. Only about 17% of people

enrolled in four-year programs in the U.S. actually graduate in four years. It takes seven years to get to a small majority of people graduating. So four to seven years from now, what will the attitudes be? It's not about what is the attitude today. We're already seeing some leading companies out in industry saying, you know what, this degree credential just isn't important. Google has famously announced they're not looking at these criteria anymore. Same with some big consulting firms. Pricewaterhouse Cooper, KPMG, and others. They're not looking at degrees because data shows it's not predictive of career success

or ability to perform in a job and because people don't take away from that experience to things that actually make you valuable to an organization or society. So it's already moving in that direction. You also want to think about, you know, okay, so five, six, seven years from now, whenever I graduate, will there still be people who think a degree is an important foundation to have? Yes. But there will also be a lot of people who don't. And then the other important question is, do I want to spend four, five, six, seven years and all this money and opportunity cost

to appeal to the specific people who still think this is important, which are going to be an increasingly shrinking group? And the other question is, if I really want to get my foot into the door into that kind of organization, right? I want to work for Ryan Hawk before he woke up to the idea that college degrees are not that important. I want that to happen in five to seven years. If that is like the explicit goal, is there a shorter, easier way to get there? And that's the thing that I think a lot of people overlook the most is this idea that I'm not saying that you're better off without a college degree than with one. I'm saying that a college degree doesn't justify the time and money and opportunity cost it takes to get there. So let's say just four years. Let's say, you know, $30,100 is the average amount of debt that undergraduate students graduate from college in the U.S. with.

But if I were to take a fraction of that, let's say one year and $10,000. And my whole goal was I want to find a way to really impress Ryan Hawk. and I'm going to dedicate just one year of my life and $10,000. Can I find a way to get a better in and be more impressive to and recognized by you than what a four-year degree will do for me? And there the answer is yes. Does that make sense? Does that track for you? Yeah.

What would you do? So if that same 18-year-old 3.9 high test score, daughter who does not want to be a doctor or something very specific like that, or maybe she doesn't know yet, what would you advise her to do? Instead of college. So this is, there's two answers to this. There's the answer for this girl specifically.

And then there's the societal answer, which today, frankly, is harder. But for this girl specifically, I'd say, first, you've got to figure out what it is that you want to do. And college is not a great place to do that. You can do it there, but it's expensive, it's time consuming,

it's inefficient. So I would look for, who are people in your networks, in your circles, you know, friends of a friend, you know, colleagues of your parents, or any person you can access. And if you don't have those networks, you know, knocking on doors, it's not that hard. Who are people that you trust and respect that you could job shadow, that you could do a free internship with, right? If you're going to spend four years and spend money, why not spend a fraction of that time and just not earn money, but at least not be paying for the experience, right? What if someone had knocked on your door had really impressed you because they've done it? your homework. They knew about you. They've listened to the podcast and they say, I am looking to

get my feet wet in this world. I totally look up to you and respect you. I would like to work for you for free for the next six to 12 months. At the end of that, if you find value in what I'm doing, we can talk about you paying me. If not, I can move on to something else. All I'm looking for is the experience. I think that's something that would be, would you not find that compelling? I would. Do you think that's realistic for an 18-year-old? It's not realistic for Ryan Hawk the 18 year old. And part of why I went to college, actually 98% of the reason I went to college was to play football. I got a college scholarship to play sports, which is separate. We're not, I understand why somebody who wants to play in the NFL needs go to college because

that's like the minor leagues. But we're not talking about sports. But for me at 18, 19, I don't think I was mature enough or I know I wasn't mature enough. Maybe 18, 19 year olds are now. I've actually spoken with a number of them. They do seem far more advanced than I was at that age. But do you feel like that's realistic for an 18-year-old to think that with that much maturity? That's a great question. And it's a tough question. It kind of brings us to why the societal question is much harder. Because if I'm coaching any individual person, I can say, here's what I think is best for you.

And I think what I proposed is a much better, more efficient way of spending the time. In fact, I have a guy who, for those who follow me on Instagram and see some of the videos, that's exactly who I have doing those for me. He is a young kid who offered to do it for free just for the sake of learning. And we have conversations every once in a while. And that's exactly what he does. And that's all he does for me. So he's got plenty of time to do other things and work for others as well.

But that's one of the things he does because he feels like it could potentially help him. And it is. It's a huge value add to me. And I feel in debt to him in a way because he helps so much. And it works. It's just effective. But societally, it's challenging because this is a fringe response that requires people take a huge amount of ownership and initiative. Now, that is necessary because there's nothing about a current four-year degree experience that will give them that initiative or maturity.

So basically, the kid at 18 is not less likely than the kid at 22 upon graduation, except the kid at 22 does not have any better job prospects, has a pile of debt and they have the same. problem. So we're essentially kicking the can down the road. But there is the challenge that this is a very fringe kind of solution. It's kind of like, you know, if you look at the four-hour work week, there are a lot of things that are great for people as individuals to do. It's not a societal prescription for how like the mainstream student graduating high school is going to, is going to pursue their life. And that's kind of the challenge right now, which is if you look at adult education, there's kind of three pieces to it. There is foundational adult education, which is, you know, all the basic skills that you need to be successful in life. This is what

liberal arts pretends that they do. You know, we train you for nothing, but educate you for everything, except they really don't, and the data shows that they don't. Then there's last mile education, which is about bridging the gap from whatever you've had to a career. So that could be something as elaborate and involved as, you know, an MBA if you want to go work in consulting or law school if you want to be a lawyer, or it can be as specific as a coding bootcamp that gets you a job as a programmer. And then there's lifelong education, and this is online courses and all that,

are in that bucket of lifelong continuing education. But the big challenge societally is that the foundational education infrastructure that we have is mostly college, and it's super broken. It does not work. It does not get people to where they need to go. But there isn't a good alternative. So for the next few years,

until good alternatives start to emerge, the solution, answer for individuals is to kind of take initiative and white knuckle it and figure their way through. But there isn't a, if I don't go to college, you know, what is, you know, alternative school.com that I'm going to go to instead and over the course of a year, learn to take initiative and learn to all those things. It's interesting. It made me think about why I started this podcast. So, Danny, I went to college, graduated, and then I went and got my MBA and finished that. And I did it at nights, weekends, that type of thing. Wow, I had a full-time job. It was very hard. I had to get two.

and help and some of those who helped me are probably listening right now. And I eventually finished. And so I thought, and then about a year and a half, two years later, I thought, I want to, I want to continue my education. I want to keep it going. And I started looking, even starting applying and looking into some leadership PhD program, so to speak. And I found that there wasn't really one that existed that I liked. And that's when I thought of, what have I created my own leadership PhD and not only learn for myself, but then could potentially help others at the same time. And I love listening to podcasts. I've interviewed hundreds of people over the years in my sales leadership role. What have I started creating my own leadership PhD by going directly to the sources?

The people I respected the most, I've read their books, I've watched them lead companies from one billion to four billion. Maybe they fought in wars as a Navy seal or they're a world class athlete or coach. I'm going to speak directly to them. them follow my own intellectual curiosity and then share it with the world and maybe I could help people along the way. And that's really why the podcast started was because I wanted to create my own PhD program and it's and it's just blown up into so much more and really created this, this incredible opportunity for me. And so I think that's, that's some of the initiative that was helpful. But for me, I think I needed to mature and grow into that. And maybe that's just a,

a personal thing for me that it took time to get to that space. But I think that's what we're talking about is finding a way to create your own, your own version of that PhD program, whatever it may be. And for me, I feel like I've learned more in the past three and a half, four years doing this than anything I've ever done in my life. For my diverse group of people that are different thinkers that do different things, figuring out how they've been able to sustain excellence is beautiful. And then the coolest part for me is getting to bring along. Others can listen as I get to do it. And so I think that's really, I feel like what you're talking. about when it comes to having some ownership and taking initiative of your own learning and

growth? I think that's completely accurate. I think there's some really interesting stuff in there, both in terms of why the podcast has been so valuable for you and also why I think it's been so well received. One of the things that, again, is happening kind of in the backdrop against all this change in education is that the pace of change, the pace of everything is accelerating dramatically. And there are really important implications to that for education. For example, you know, we used to be, you create a curriculum, you're teaching a course, and you can just teach that course. You know, as a college professor, you can teach that course every year for your entire career, and that's fine. But so many fields are updating so quickly.

There's a great quote by, it's the dean of one of the major universities. I think it's Harvard, basically saying that at the pace of change current, all of the information you learn in college, all of the curriculum of a college, is essentially completely updating and turning over every five or ten years. So everything you learn in college five or ten years later is useless. And this is a problem with the college curriculum, but it's also a problem with the people who are doing the teaching because they mean super well and they're trying super hard, but you cannot stay current on a field that is moving so quickly if you're not actually a practitioner.

So there's this dichotomy that people pretend exists where, you know, do you want to learn from someone who's a good teacher or do you want to learn from someone who's a good practitioner? You know, you want both. You always want both. You need the skill of what you're doing and you need the skill of teaching. Those are both real things. But because of the pace of change, it's really shifting away from wanting great teachers who are also good practitioners. The only way to get current information is from good practitioners who can also teach. And of course, you're shortcutting the process a little bit by drawing out those lessons on the podcast. I think that's why it's been so valuable. Going back to what you mentioned about the problem of initiative and maturity, it's a real problem, and it's a hard one to solve without a systemic solution that just doesn't exist today. But fundamentally, not addressing it doesn't take away the need to solve it, right?

The kid that doesn't have that initiative, four years later, he won't automatically have it. If that were the case, then the majority of college graduates wouldn't be unemployed or underemployed. So it needs to be solved. And given that it's a problem they've got to take on anyway, I just think it's much better to take it on when you've got four to seven more years of a runway and tens of thousands of dollars less in debt. Agree. All right. A few more notes that I've taken based on your book. You talk about the two layers of learning you must stack together to achieve mastery.

What are those two layers of learning you must stack together? Yeah. So those two layers are literacy and fluency. This is an area where a lot of education tends to fall down in that it is built for one when what we need is the other. And this is actually a problem with a lot of online courses because a lot of people building online courses, they're not education specialists. They're non-instructional designers. They're experts in their fields. So they're just trying to teach what they know.

And there's a huge value to that. But the challenge is, so just to define our terms, right? The base layer is literacy. Literacy is about going from, I don't know what you're talking about to now I do know what you're talking about. So I'll give you a real life example. I listened to a few episodes of your podcast just in the last couple of days, kind of getting up to speed with you and your style. And it's amazing. And I'm excited to listen to a whole whole.

whole lot more. And, you know, you have a strong background in professional sports. There, you also happen to be interviewing professional athletes in the conversations I had. So there was a ton of sports terminology that I heard that I did not know what that is, right? I've never played football. I've never watched a game. And so I'm like, I have no idea what all that is. I lack a literacy in football. Now, you're a smart guy. I'm a smart guy. We could sit down. You could explain to me the rules of the game, the roles in the various positions, I don't think it would take very long for me to have a basic literacy in, okay, now I understand how football works, right, and what it is. But there's a world of difference between now I understand a little bit about what football is and how it works,

enough to, for example, watch a game and understand what's happening on TV versus being able to do it, to play it well myself. That's a world of difference, and that's going from literacy to fluency or to intelligently commentate or coach or any of those things to do something meaningful with that knowledge. And a lot of education is really geared around, let me explain it to you. So, you know, I understand it. You've received an explanation now you understand it. And you get a lot of people who have this surface level understanding, but they can't

really do much with what they've learned. Because whereas explanation can lead to literacy, fluency really requires more explanation, but also practice a feedback loop as to what worked and what didn't, the opportunity to self-correct. And it's really important when you're designing any kind of educational experience to be clear with yourself on what is the level of competence that I'm shooting for, right? That at the end of this, this is what's going to be necessary. It made me think of an article I just read and I shared in my My Mindful Monday email. There are the two types of knowledge. Shane Parrish wrote about this. You probably read some of Shane's work, I'm guessing,

but the Max Planck slash chauffeur test. Essentially Max, a really smart guy. He won a Nobel Prize. He won around Germany giving the exact same standard lecture on quantum mechanics. And his chauffeur was with him the entire time. And his chauffeur said, would you mind if I went out and actually gave your lecture? I've memorized it. And Max Planck said, sure, why not?

And so the chauffeur got up and gave this long lecture on quantum mechanics and did a pretty good job. But afterwards, he got a question from somebody in the crowd, and he didn't know the answer, obviously, because he'd only memorize what Max Planck was saying. And so he was funny about his response. He said, well, I'm surprised that in an advanced city like Munich, I'd get such an elementary question. I'm going to ask my chauffeur to reply since they had switched rolls Max and the chauffeur. And so really the point is, anybody can memorize, anybody can know at surface level. But it's a different type of knowledge to know deep level to be able to master the Q&A portion of the keynote, so to speak, because we all, a lot of us people who do keynotes have Q&As towards the end. And I think that's where you can really, really tell the difference between that surface level knowledge first, the deep understanding of what you're talking about.

I love that. I also really, you know, what came to mind for me is that, hmm, that chauffeur was actually pretty smart on his feet to answer in that way. Yes, very. And I think there's something really important there because there are technical skills in any field and people come into the field not knowing them because all knowledge is originally, you don't know it and then you learn it and so you know it.

But that resourcefulness of thinking on your feet, like if you could choose between someone who knows the basics of whatever field they're trying to get into but doesn't have that quickness, that resourcefulness, that creativity versus someone who's hungry and smart and is that quick on their feet, but they don't know the technical skills yet. I don't know about you. I would hire the second person any day of the week.

They can learn the technical skills. Absolutely. And I think that also comes from attitude. I mean, as a parent, you know, we talk with our daughters out. My wife, Miranda and I talk other daughters alike, that there are some things you can control and some things that you can't. And some of the things that you can control are your attitude and your effort. And so whatever it is that you're going to do.

do for that day, you have a choice over your approach from an attitude perspective as well as how hard you're going to try and how resilient you're going to be when you fail, when you fall down. And that's what we should focus on. That's what we should really think about is our attitude and our effort. As a parent, I feel like that's our job to really talk about that and then model that same behavior because same with this podcast. I can control the attitude I bring to it, the curiosity I bring to it, how hard I work in my preparation, right, to be able to know a story like that just off the cuff.

I think those types of things, just like you did, you spent the time to listen to some episodes, which, you know, some people are fans and some people aren't that come on the show. And I appreciate that. And I think that those are the things, the people who are achievers, the ones who you want to hire the people you want on your team are the ones who are going to approach it in that manner. There's a fascinating corollary to this. So there's an organization called Express Employment. So they do a survey every year of, you know, here are 20 different things that you could look for in a candidate to hire. And they ask hiring managers rank them, basically, which are most important, which are least important.

And indicative of just how useless a college education is, for the last four years running education ranked dead last out of 20 on this survey. Wow. So hiring managers don't even care about it today. But at the top, it's all the things that we think of as soft skills. So work ethic, right? The ability to exactly like we said, be resourceful, show up on time, all that kind of stuff. So it really reemphasize, again, for the hypothetical 18-year-old daughter in our scenario, most employers already understand, like, yes, there may be the HR checkbox of, oh, yeah, requires a degree. But you can work around that, and that is going away more and more quickly.

The stuff that people actually care about is all the soft stuff that you hear about on podcasts like this. this one podcast that are very entrepreneurial, but there's always this expectation that it's like, oh, this is only if you want some weird alternative career path. But it's not. This is what every hiring manager in the world is actually looking for. Well, and we should rename it. And I'm not the one to originate this phrase, but I've read it probably from Tom Peters or somebody else. Instead of calling them soft skills, I think we should call them essential skills because they are if you care about your organization being great or excellent. seems that's a phrase I like to use.

So instead of using soft, because soft just has a, it's not an accurate representation of what those skills are. Essential to me as a better representation of what those skills are when it, when you think about attitude and work ethic and resilience and being willing to show up day after day, right? Like all of those in curiosity, those are essential skills for long term sustained excellence. and I don't think view them as being soft.

So I think that's one thing that should be hopefully changes as we're going. Okay. You've written about the fact that there are mental habits to achieve ongoing sustain success. And this may be corollary to what you said at the very beginning at this conversation, but this is something from leverage learning your book, which again, I'm a fan of. I'm glad that you decided to document. your beliefs in this book and put it out there for all of us to read. I know how hard it is to write a book right in the middle of doing this.

So I'm curious from the mental habits to achieve ongoing sustain success. So something that we talked about at the beginning, and you asked me about like what are the, what are the habits or traits of people who are successful on an ongoing basis? And a model that I talk about in the book is that there are three components to, to education. Education, by the way, how we define education is important. Education is not about books, and it's not about ideas or tests or anything like that. Education is a shortcut for getting from where you are to where you want to be.

If it gets you from where you are to where you want to be in life with less cost or less time or less risk, then it's doing its job. If it's not doing any of those things, and what's the point? So in order to do that effectively, there is the knowledge and skill component, which is what most education today is focused on. And that made sense for most of human history when knowledge was scarce, but today knowledge is super abundant. Anything you want to know, it's a Google search away, generally speaking. Then the second level is insight. And that's about being able to draw new insights and conclusions from existing information. It's about being able to bring something new to the table. And so that's where curiosity that we talked about comes into the picture. That's where

critical thinking comes into the picture. And then the third leg of the stool, is this umbrella of what I call fortitude. And so that'll include a lot of what you hear about in the positive psychology literature. So growth mindset and grit and resilience and optimism and mindfulness and nonattachment and all those kinds of things. And those mental habits are absolutely key to seeing problems as things that are solvable and then taking the effort to go ahead and solve them. And that's where education tends to fall down. It doesn't focus very much on, and this is true in college, this is true on online courses, is true in most places.

But it doesn't tend to focus on getting people to a level of ability to function where they can extract that insight. And it doesn't work to instill in them these strengths of fortitude that allow them to be successful. So we live in a really interesting time in the research of this, where on the one hand, there's a ton that we don't yet know. there's a ton that we're still figuring out about the human brain and about how our behaviors wire us for success or don't. But on the other hand, there's also a ton of literature where there's kind of this glut of data that we've already gathered, science that we already had, but that is not commonly applied.

And so if we look at the literature around, especially everything that's under the umbrella of positive psychology, right? So you look at the work of Martin Seligman or Angela Duckworth, Caroline Adams, Miller, a handful of other people in that category. There's a lot that we know about how do we shift our mindset, Carol Dweck, of course, how do we shift our mindset to be more successful and capable of undertaking things and arriving at that success? And I think that's a core part of it.

It's good tactical for a second. When there are a lot of online courses out there for people to take, how can you tell which online courses are worth taking? Well, there's two questions there, right? The first is like which, you know, there's the whole kind of catalog of the universe, what should I take? And then it's much less about the courses

and much more about you as a student, your objectives. Gotcha. Right? And that's important, but people get lost in, you know, oh,

and this starts with school, frankly, right, I'm starting my undergraduate degree. There's a catalog of courses. I've got to choose a bunch. I might as well choose one of them. Let's assume that,

not taking any of these courses isn't even considered as a possible path, but of course it is. So it's important to get really clear on, well, what am I trying to accomplish? Where do I want to get with my business, with my life, with whatever it is I'm trying to solve? And what good reason do I have to believe that whatever knowledge a particular course is purporting to teach is the knowledge or skill or insight or perspective that I need in order to be successful? So the first step is just like, before you look at which course should I take, it's like, well, what do I need to learn? What do I need to know? And then once you know what you're looking for, then you're evaluating, you know, if I've decided that, you know, for my business, I have knowledge, I have expertise, I want to monetize it, I want to build an online course on that topic. Once I've determined that that is what I want to do because it makes sense to me, not because some marketer told me, then it's a matter of, okay, what are the different courses out there that can teach me how to do this and which is the best.

And in that context, you want to look for courses that have a track record of producing success, not just the buddies of the course creator, but lots of people, a large volume, and ideally people who are like you in their profile. You want to look for a track record of success over time, meaning it's not just they did a launch, they brought in 2,000 students by virtue of a law of large numbers, a few dozen of them more successful, and that's it. But this has been going on for years, lots of people have been successful, et cetera. and something really important to look at is skin in the game and support. So there's a big difference between information and transformation. That's another of the big shifts that we're seeing in the education landscape. Information is great. It's super valuable for creating a literacy that we talked about earlier.

It's great for broadening our horizons. It is not great for developing fluency. It's not great for giving us competencies that we didn't have. I can know things that I didn't. know before by listening to your podcast. I'm not going to be able to do things I couldn't do before by listening to your podcast. And that's not a failing of the podcast. That's just the nature of the medium of a podcast. And so a course has to be designed differently. There has to be support built into it to allow for that feedback loop. So I would really look at what is the track

record of success of the course and what is put on the table by the course creator in terms of support in terms of coaching, in terms of infrastructure, and even what results are guaranteed. I believe very strongly in standing behind the promises that you make. The overall success and completion rates in the course industry are, like, in any under-industry, it would be just criminal. The idea that, you know, a single-digit percentages complete the course, that's like, you know, you sell toasters and nine out of ten of them don't work. Like, that's not okay.

That's why we guarantee success to our students, people who are experts who sign up for our courses to learn how to build and sell their own courses, we guarantee that they will successfully launch and sell their course. If they don't, we give them double their money back. Really? Yep. I didn't know that part of it since I'm one of your, we're working together. Well, I mean, your situation's unique because we're actually building it for you. Yeah. So you're, you know, you've got things totally covered. But for people who don't want to spend the volumes of, of cost and investment that you're making to work with us, who are experts in their field who want to monetize it, they've got to put into the time. They've got to do the work.

They've got to work with our coaches. But if they do everything they're supposed to do and our course doesn't work, you know, how could I include conscious keep their money? Absolutely. No, I like that. And speaking of that, and I think people are interested in this because I mentioned the beginning of the episode that we're partnering together to do this. And I'm very excited about it. And when we had our pre-call about talking just about the course, the building of it, your process for piloting the piloting methodology has worked over and over and overview for thousands of people. Could you describe, so let's actually make it more practical because people are listening to this show for a reason.

Let's describe how it will work when we work together, what the pilot looks like, what that even means, why you decide to do it that way as opposed to just say, let's just build a course. So let's get into some of the practicality of that. And then what people can expect later on once we get this going, because it will take some time. Yeah, absolutely. So there's two phases to this. The first phase is just getting clear on, well, what exactly is the course that we're going to create? You're a super smart, accomplished, successful person. There are any number of things that you could teach. We have to validate, well, which is the thing to teach that the people who are following you, the market you have access to actually most want to learn from you. So that's a surveying and data analysis process. But once we have that clarity on, well, what do people want to learn? You know, you have your expertise, you know how to do this stuff. And so you have a pretty good idea on what it will take to teach it.

So you map out a curriculum working with our instructional designers and all that kind of stuff. You map out a curriculum. And we can be pretty confident that, you know, more or less, three quarters of your assumptions will be right. We can also be pretty confident that, you know, maybe a quarter of your assumptions will be wrong, just by virtue of you don't get everything right first time out to bat without real feedback from the real world. The challenge is that you don't know which quarter is going to be wrong. And so you want to give yourself the flexibility to adapt on the fly, to learn from that experience, to still deliver a great experience for the first students enrolled in your course, and then take that insight to create something truly great. And this is new in the course building world to some extent, but it's not new in the world.

This is like how Silicon Valley was built. Okay. So survey data analysis. What does that mean? Essentially it means asking a bunch of questions in a survey to everyone who cares to fill it out and tell us what they would like to learn from you. And then we have some proprietary methodologies for analyzing that data and getting the right insights as to what would be most valuable. And so that's what the piloting methodology is. Well, the piloting is part figuring

out what people want, but then building it in a way that allows you to adjust on the fly in real time and take that feedback of what worked and what didn't before turning it into like a final polished course, videos in a membership site, codified support, all that kind of stuff. Got you. And then one of the aspects of your methodology, too, is this peer-based feedback. I have got to experience this a great deal because I facilitate, host, run a leadership circle, we call it essentially a paid mastermind group. And the peer-to-peer feedback is incredible. I've learned more from the people in the group than they've learned from me. I'm certain of that.

And the willingness for people to give and to help and to provide what they've mastered is so powerful. It has a multiplying effect on the group. And so I'm a big believer in this peer-to-peer methodology. I'm curious to get more of your thoughts about this. Well, it serves a few functions, right? So just to explain some of the things that we do, and there are a lot of different ways to structure this in different courses. You really want to choose the tool that will fit for the need in the specific situation.

But we've done a lot of experimentation over the years of how can we set up students to support each other, to review each other's work, to give each other feedback. And that's really, really important and powerful because it does a few things. First of all, we learn a lot more from giving feedback to others on their work than we do by doing our own work. And that's because of that phenomenon where you can't see the frame when you're inside the picture. You have a little more distance and so you can codify the learning a lot better. It's valuable for a course creator because there are scalability opportunities. But it's also valuable in terms of being an accountability measure.

I'm being counted on to review other people's work, so I'm going to continue to do my work. and we've seen a dramatic increase in people making their way all the way to the end of a course when there is a structure like that in place. That makes a lot of sense. Danny, I mean, there are so much here I could get on. Again, I'm very appreciative of your team for sending me an early copy of Leverage Learning, how the disruption of education helps lifelong learners and experts with something to teach. And I'm proud and excited for our part.

partnership and grateful that your team wanted to do this. And so that's why when people do hear the ad reads, they're more of an endorsement read than an ad read. And I believe in it. If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to do it. Just like if you listen to the Callaway Golf or Mizzen in Maine, those reads,

I chose to partner with those companies because I like Calloway's golf clubs and I wear Miz and Maine shirts. So it's not, they're typically not just somebody who is giving us cash. It's somebody who I'm proud to represent just like I am with you, Danny, and with you as a leader, as well as the people in your company. And I'm a fan of Lizzie specifically because we've, we've corresponded for years now. And it's really neat that this has come together. Awesome. Well, I'm flattered and thrilled and grateful. I also want to shout out to Lizzie.

She's a huge fan of the podcast. She's also an amazing and valuable member of my executive team. and, you know, she first brought you to my attention. I'm super grateful for that. So, yeah, all good things all around. I'm really excited. And I hope this has been valuable as a conversation just for everyone listening. Definitely. I'm certain it has.

As for me, I've got pages of notes here. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Well, I'm all about the new book. I'm super excited about it. And, you know, I don't make my money selling books. So I just really want this to get into as many hands as possible. So anyone who's interested in learning more, by all means, go to Amazon, get it, you know, hardcover, paperback, Kindle, get in whatever format you like. But if you just want to take a look and start kind of getting a sense of, is this what I want or not, go to leverage learning book.com.

The entire book, it's not like just an intro chapter or something like that. The entire book is going to be there online for free. The plan is for that to be the case in perpetuity. I just want people to read it. And presumably, if you like it, you'll get a copy and it'll be more convenient. And that's all good. Wow. Thank you. That's a cool way to go about it, man. And obviously, we're going to continue our dialogue as we both progress to work together on this. I'm very excited to put it together. This is something that I've never done before. It's different. But just this conversation alone, I'm so appreciative of you sharing, man. It's been great. Thank you so much. Wow, what an interesting talk. Danny is a really intelligent guy. I learned a lot.

and I can appreciate when we can have quality back and forth, even if we don't fully agree on every topic. I am extremely excited to partner with Danny and his company at Marcy to build a world-class online course. It's going to take a little bit of time, but we are pumped to do this together. Thank you for being a part of this. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love it if you would write a review, subscribe and rate the show in iTunes, Apple Podcasts. That's right, a thoughtful review, subscribe and rate the show, hopefully five stars in iTunes Apple Podcasts.

Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, which is to continue to have these curiosity conversations. It's so much fun. I love it. See you next week. This episode is brought to you by Leveraged Learning. Leveraged Learning is a great new book by best-selling author Danny Eni. It's no secret that universities and colleges are struggling to keep pace. It's sad but true. These institutions are leaving many of our individual and collective needs for learning and growth sorely unmet. This crisis is an opportunity for the experts and professionals who possess the knowledge and skills that are so sorely needed by so many. The solution is to package their expertise into leverage learning programs that creates transformation

for the lifelong learners who need them and profit for the experts who create them. Danny Eni, a successful educator entrepreneur, has been leading the charge on this growing movement. In Leveraged Learning, he lays out the guidebook for navigating and thriving in this new world, both as a lifelong learner and as an expert with something to teach. Go to Amazon.com and buy Leverage Learning,

the age of opportunity for lifelong learners and experts with something to teach and buy it today.