The Mindset Mentor - Is College Obsolete? And What I Think Is Better!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you want to receive motivational text messages from me directly to your cell phone, text me right now, 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 1-512-580-9305. I believe right now that it's only for people in the US and Canada, but go ahead and give it a shot. Today, we're going to be talking about college and if college is still necessary in life, if it's necessary for success, if it ever was necessary for success. We're going to talk about college and this will benefit you if you're young and you're thinking

Starting point is 00:00:52 about going to college. This will benefit you if you have children. This will benefit you if you have grandchildren. This will benefit you if you're thinking about going back to school or if you're thinking about having kids that might eventually want to go to college. So we're going to dive into it. I will say this before I say anything else. There is no correct path for anybody. Like for every person's path is different. For me, I went to college for three years and I hated it and I dropped out and it worked out for me to be that way. I'm not saying that my path is the path for you. I'm not saying it's the path for anybody else. It's just the path that I went on. So to say that somebody's path, everybody's path should be the same. It's kind of crazy because everybody needs something different. Uh, but I get so many messages. The

Starting point is 00:01:33 reason why I wanted to cover this, cause I've been getting messages for years from people asking, you know, Hey, I'm 18 years old. I'm about to graduate college. I'm about to graduate high school. I think I'm going to go to college. My parents want me to, I don't really want to go to college. What is your advice? I get messages of, hey, I'm 20 years old. I've been in college for two years. I don't know what I want to do. I hate it. And I feel like I'm just wasting my time and I'm wasting my money and I'm going more in debt. I get messages from people who are, hey, my son's about to graduate high school. And I'm not sure if he should go to college or not. What's your advice? I won't tell you what my advice is. I'll just tell you what I think just from seeing the world. And I'm going to tell you

Starting point is 00:02:08 what I would do with the knowledge that I now have as a 35-year-old business owner who's run his own business for the past 15 years now. I have employees. I've been an employee. Then when I was 19 years old, for the next four years, I had my own company and I was literally had my own company. I paid myself. Then I went back into the corporate world for five years. And now I'm back into where I am now, which is only in my own business and having a business. So I've played and I've worn multiple hats. I've also gone to college. I've dropped out of college. I've thought that I was stupid for dropping out of college. I resent to myself. I've thought about going back to college years ago. So I at least feel like I have at least some qualification to tell you what I think,

Starting point is 00:02:48 but I would tell you what I would do if I were 18, 17 years old, 16 years old, and I was about to be graduating. Or if I was, you know, 50 years old and I had somebody who was my grandkid who was about to graduate. And this all came because I was at a event not long ago, and there's a lady that came up and started talking to us, the people that were at the table. And she was in her mid-60s, and she's like, she's telling us about her grandkids. And she was there for a while. She was talking a lot. This woman was talking a lot. I'll tell you that. And she was talking about her two grandsons. One of them is so good in school, and they're twins. He's so good in school, and he does so well. But his brother, I'm so worried about his brother. And he has to go to college because what is he

Starting point is 00:03:30 going to do with his life if he doesn't go to college? She's on this whole thing. She's worried about her grandson who doesn't do well in school and doesn't want to go to college. And I said, hey, well, if it makes you feel better, I don't think that college is necessary for everybody. And I think that it's actually becoming less and less necessary. And in my personal opinion, I think it's going to be mostly obsolete in the next 15 to 20 years. And she's like, whoa, what are you talking about? I started talking to her about this and made her feel better about it. But really what I did was open her mind up to the fact that the world is not the same now as it was when she was younger. So for everyone that's out there, if you went to college or if you're older, realize that now in 2021, the world is not the same as it was five years ago, 10 years

Starting point is 00:04:08 ago, 17 years ago when I first got into college. It's not the same, completely different. We're not playing the same game anymore. So what was the rules of the old game are not going to work in this day and age that we're in. So if I was young and I was graduating, here's what I would do. And let me tell you why I would do, here's what I would do. And let me tell you why I would do this, knowing what I know now. The first thing that I would do is I would not go to college immediately after graduating. I would take a gap year. I didn't do this myself. I went immediately to Florida Atlantic University. When I was right after taking a summer off, I went straight to school. I would take a gap year though. And what I would do is I would save

Starting point is 00:04:44 money for the entire time I was in high school. Save up, save up, save up, save up, save up. Every time somebody wanted to give me a birthday gift or a Christmas gift or whatever it is, I'd say, just give me money. I want to put it in my bank account. And I would stack away money, a few thousand bucks if I could. So that therefore, if I needed to pay some bills, if you're not living with your parents, you can pay bills, whatever it is, here's what I would do in that gap year. First off, I would travel. I would travel some places. The beautiful thing about when I did graduate high school, when I graduated high school that summer, I saved up literally for two years working at PetSmart as a bird and fish specialist from 16 to 18 years old. True story.

Starting point is 00:05:25 I saved up almost every dollar that I possibly could. And when I graduated high school, me and three of my friends went on a surf trip. And we went on a surf trip to Costa Rica for three weeks, backpacked all through Costa Rica. One of the best experiences of my entire life. It changed my perception of the world and it made me fall in love with other cultures. It made me fall in love with nature. It made me fall in love with being able to travel. It changed my perception of the world. And it made me fall in love with other cultures. It made me fall in love with nature. It made me fall in love with being able to travel. It changed my life completely. I would recommend travel if somebody wants to go and travel. What I would also recommend is to do different things that you've never done before.

Starting point is 00:05:59 Part of the problem of being 18, I don't know if I want to call it a problem. Part of the issue of the reason why it's so hard to figure out what people want to do with their life is by 18, you don't have a whole lot of life experiences. So from 18 to 25, 26, 27, for a lot of people is just, should just be trying new things, just doing new things and finding what you fall in love with. That's really what it should be versus going to school and starting to just learn stuff, like just things. I don't, I don't think that's the best way to do it. So what I would think that people should do is they should just go do things. And what I would recommend is, because you don't know who you are, try to discover by going and doing things

Starting point is 00:06:36 that you might be interested in. What I would do is I would travel and I would start to go to conferences that semi-interested me, right? I would go to like, you know, you can go to so many different conferences nowadays. That's what's so beautiful. And you have the internet to literally Google. If you're into fitness, Google fitness conference, Texas, if you live in Texas. Fitness conferences coming up in 2021, 2022, whatever it is that you want. You can literally figure these things out.

Starting point is 00:07:03 2022, whatever it is that you want. You can literally figure these things out. I would go to every single conference that I could to meet people in the industry that I might be interested in and just see what their life is like. See what they think, see how they view the world, see how they enjoy what they do. I went to college when I was 19, 18 years old and into my 19th year to be a ocean engineer. I went to ocean engineering and I ended up finding out after spending $20,000 my first year that I hated engineering. What if I would have just had the opportunity to go and hang out with an ocean engineer for a week? I would have figured it out right away. Would have been much easier. Would I save myself a year and a whole lot of money? That's the beautiful thing about conferences. You can immerse yourself and be around people

Starting point is 00:07:48 who are doing the thing that you might be interested in. So there's so many different types of, literally every type of conference you could want to go to there is. If you want to learn how to make money online, there's tons of conferences on how to make money online. All you do is this, Google how to make money online conferences 2021 and just see if some pop up, right? There's marketing conferences, there's music conferences, there's fitness conferences, there's film conferences, there's fashion conferences, there's podcasting conferences, there's public speaking conferences. Whatever you might be a little bit into or your child or your grandchild might be a little bit into, push your child or your grandchild might be a little bit into,

Starting point is 00:08:26 push them to go to these conferences and meet people who are in that. A lot of times people say, oh yeah, well, the thing about college is you get to meet people for sure. But you also meet a bunch of other people who are broke like you, who aren't doing anything as far as like in an industry making money. What if you could go and meet someone who's 10 or 15 years older than you that's been in the industry for five or 10 years that's making money and just see what their life looks like and meet them and network. You get more value from meeting somebody who's 10 years down the road than somebody else who's just figuring it out at the same time as you. So once again, I'm not telling you this is what's right or wrong. This is what I would do

Starting point is 00:09:02 with all of the knowledge that I have now. So I would go to all of these conferences, marketing conferences, music, film, all of those conferences. And I would try to figure out if I enjoyed that. And then here's what I would do. Unless I wanna be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, which if you wanna be those things, you can go to doctor's conferences,

Starting point is 00:09:23 lawyer conferences, engineer conferences, and see what it's like before you actually enroll in any classes to see if maybe that's something that you actually truly want to do. Like if you want to become a police officer, if you want to become a firefighter, if you want to become an EMT, you can do a ride along and you can literally call up the station that's around your house and say, hey, can I do, can I schedule a ride along? And you can go ride with them for a day. What if you could do that for any profession? Well, this is kind of how you do it. You go out and you start to meet people.

Starting point is 00:09:52 These days, it can be hard to find time to sit down and learn. And it's not easy with the likes of social media. They can be so addictive and so time-consuming. So you might think to yourself that you don't have time to develop yourself. But there's an app that I highly recommend. It's called Blinkist. Blinkist is for anyone who cares about learning, but doesn't have a whole lot of time. And Blinkist takes the key ideas and insights from over 4,000 nonfiction

Starting point is 00:10:14 bestsellers in more than 27 categories and gathers them into 15 minute text and the audio explainers that help you understand the core ideas of the book. Over 15 million people are already using Blinkist to broaden their knowledge in 27 nonfiction categories, including self-improvement, personal growth, management, leadership, mindfulness, happiness, and more. And I love Blinkist because it's short to the point exactly like I am, and I definitely recommend it. And right now, Blinkist has a special offer for our audience. If you go to Blinkist.com slash mindset, you can start your seven day free trial and get 25% off of Blinkist premium membership. That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.com slash mindset to get 25% off in a seven day free trial. The beautiful thing about 2021 is almost everything can be learned online right now.

Starting point is 00:11:07 So I would start investing my time and investing my money into learning more about whatever it is that I want to get better at. If I want to be, you know, let's say that I want to learn how to make money online, right? I would go to the first online money-making conference that I could go to in my area. There's quite a few that I've been to and I've met people and they have expanded my mindset. Because when I first started getting into trying to make money online, I thought, man, I'd be excited just to be able to pay my bills and travel a little bit. And then I started meeting people that are making $200, $400, $1 million, $5 million, $10 million online. And I went, holy shit, this is possible for them,

Starting point is 00:11:46 which means it's also possible for me. So they blew up my mindset of what was possible for me. It was amazing. And I'm super grateful that I went to all of those conferences. But what's cool about it is now you can go to those conferences and you can start to meet people and actually see if it's possible for you to shadow them. Do a ride along, essentially. I think that if I were to find something, let's say, for instance, I go to a film conference and I love film. And FYI, I took film classes in college. I took film class in college and I learned. I'm not saying I didn't learn. I learned. But if I were to go to college to learn film,

Starting point is 00:12:25 I would learn a little bit about film. But if I were to go to a film conference in my area and meet somebody who is in my area who made incredible YouTube videos and their lighting is amazing and their production is amazing and their writing is amazing. And I went up to them and I said, hey, say his name's Tim. Hey, Tim, I love everything that you do. Is it possible for me to just shadow you and just see what you do? Or can I work for you for free? I would love to work for somebody for free that is 10, 15 years ahead of me in the industry I want to get better at. That's called being an apprentice, which is something that is not used enough anymore. Not even close. When you go to Florence and you learn about Michelangelo over there, they call him Michelangelo. When you learn about him,

Starting point is 00:13:13 you realize the reason why he became so good was not because he went to school for it, but because he became an apprentice of somebody who was really good before him. And he learned from him, built on his foundation, and became even better. That's what an apprentice does. So can you get some form of an apprenticeship with somebody who's already doing what you want? So you can either go to film school if you want, and I'm sure you're going to learn a lot, or you could go ahead and you could find someone in your area and you could ask to shadow them and you could pay them to shadow them. Hey, do you know how many people want free labor? They would

Starting point is 00:13:45 love for a motivated young person to come that they can teach and they can literally have them work for free in order to learn. That shows hustle. That shows that they want to grind. That shows they want to become better. They would love that. And usually they get a lot of fulfillment from teaching to somebody else and seeing somebody else grow and seeing somebody else get better. Usually what happens, they go, oh man, I wouldn't want you to work for free. I'll at least pay you a little bit. Holy crap. What if I could make a little bit of money in film instead of spending $20,000 a year

Starting point is 00:14:17 to go to a film school? That would be amazing, wouldn't it? And I'd probably learn a lot more and I'd also save money or at least be able to pay my bills versus going into debt. These are all options that are available to every single person nowadays. You just have to decide, here's a few things that I'm interested in. I want to go to a few conferences. I want to see if I can get better at it. I want to see if I can meet a few people. I want to see if I can get a mentor. And if you don't have anything that's in your area, you don't have a mentor in your area, you can always pay for courses, right? So there's people who teach film online.

Starting point is 00:14:49 You can go onto YouTube and you can see some of your favorite creators. Many of them, if we're just going on with this film, many of them have their own courses where they teach you how to do the editing, where they teach you how to do the shooting, where they teach you how to do the lighting. You can go onto Udemy, U-D-E-M-Y. They're not sponsoring this. They should for me giving them a shot like this. You can learn from them. You can learn from Skillshare. You can learn from so many different places to get better at something and not have to invest an entire year, have to move to a different area, have to pay room and board in order to find from somebody

Starting point is 00:15:24 who's been teaching the exact same thing for the past 15 years. I'm not saying that somebody working in film wouldn't be able to help you, but a lot has changed with production in the past couple of years. Wouldn't you rather learn from someone who's in it? Okay, let's flip it. Let's say that you want to be a successful business person, right? Think about this for instance. I was in school after I decided I didn't want to be an ocean engineer. I went to school for business. Why? I don't know. Just because it felt like that's what I was supposed to go to school for. I went to school for business and learned in school from teachers how to grow a business. And these are teachers that didn't have a business.

Starting point is 00:16:00 That's like me going up to somebody who's never played basketball and being like, hey, can you teach me how to play basketball? Like that's not going to help me very much. So imagine this is what I would do had I known this when I was younger, if I could go and find a successful business person in my area, that's in an industry that I think is kind of cool. And I would walk into their door, cold call them, go up to their door and I would say, walk right up to them. And I'd say, Hey, listen, do you know what? I I'm 18 years old. I'm thinking about going to college in, in being a business major, but I want to, and I love what you do. And I've seen what you've done in the community. And I see the way that you act. And I would, I would love to just work for

Starting point is 00:16:38 you for free as like an intern for a summer. Is that okay? Can I do that? Can I just learn from you and just be around you and be able to see what you do? Most people would say yes to that. If they don't say yes to that, there's three or four or five other business people in your area that would say yes to it. You just have to find that person. So would you rather learn from a teacher who doesn't have a business on how to grow a business, or would you rather learn from somebody who is currently running a successful business? It's obvious, learn from somebody who is currently running a successful business? It's obvious, right? The person who's running a successful business. So the beautiful thing about the decentralization of knowledge, which the internet is causing, is that we can

Starting point is 00:17:14 learn anything at any point in time. You don't have to go to college specifically to learn something anymore. Now, do you have to get degrees or degrees required in some industries? Absolutely. If that's the industry you want to get into, first, I would go to a couple of conferences and try to shadow people if you can before you start spending money and time into it. But then you can go to college if that's what you want to do, if that's what you feel is right, if that's what your children or your grandchildren feel is right. But the beautiful thing about it is that you can gain knowledge right now from someone who is crushing it versus someone who's never done it before,

Starting point is 00:17:45 or someone who hasn't done it in 20 years. It's the difference between going to school twice a week to learn Spanish versus moving to Spain. Which one are you going to pick up Spanish quicker? You're going to pick up Spanish quicker in Spain. You're going to become more fluent, faster, and you're going to become better at the language simply from being there. It's the exact same thing. It's just, it's in film. It's in fashion. It's in, you know, making money online. It's in marketing. It's whatever industry you want to grow in. If it's not required for somebody to get a degree, I think 90 to 95% of the time for them to go to college is not going to benefit them as much as taking the route that I'm talking about. The reason why is because I went to college for years, three years, and I learned more outside of college than I did in college. And there's just no comparison because

Starting point is 00:18:37 mentors collapse time for you. If you go to somebody who's been running a successful business for 20 years, they collapse those 20 years into a year, two years of learning from them and working for them. It's the difference between, like I said, going to school to learn Spanish versus going to Spain and picking up the language. You immerse yourself into it. If you want to learn how to run Facebook ads, because you've heard that Facebook ads are fun and you like numbers, and you've heard that you can make a lot of money doing it, go to a Facebook ads conference, go to the next conference that's on internet marketing and try to find someone who does it and say, hey, can I work for you for free? Now I realize you still have to pay bills. If you're 25 years old and you dropped out of college

Starting point is 00:19:18 and now you're thinking about going back to it, well, now you could go, all right, you still got to pay my bills. Okay. But could you work for this person on the weekends? Could you work part-time and pay your bills and grind it out for a few years to be able to take knowledge from this person and give them very cheap labor or give them free labor simply to gain knowledge? I don't know about you. College costs money. I'd rather work for free and not have that money be taken from me or maybe make a little bit of money so that therefore I can gain knowledge for free or at least make a little bit of money. This is an investment, not an expense to pay someone to work for them if it comes down to that. That's how I see it. If you find something

Starting point is 00:19:55 that you want and you go into a course for it, it's an investment. It's not an expense. If you say, hey, I'll pay you a hundred bucks a week for me to be able to work for you and just be able to follow you around, that's an investment. It's not an expense. If you got to go knock on doors, go knock on some doors. These people have the knowledge that you want. Why don't you just ask them if you can get it from them? People love, once they've hit a certain level of success, making money doesn't make them excited anymore. Helping other people succeed is actually what makes them more excited. So that would be my recommendation for you. If you're out there and you either are thinking about going to college, you're thinking about going back to college, you're thinking about

Starting point is 00:20:31 going to get your master's, you have children that are eventually going to be going to college, you have grandchildren that are going to eventually be going to college. In my personal opinion of seeing how the world is working, I don't think that college is necessary anymore. And majority of companies are not hiring people, not requiring people to go to college in order to be hired. The biggest companies in the world, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, those companies don't require you to have a degree anymore. So what's the point? Why don't you learn your knowledge in another way and get better at it? It's way less time, it's less money, and it's less debt, but it ends up being more knowledge and it's a collapsing of time so that you can expedite your success

Starting point is 00:21:11 much, much faster. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr. We are in the top 70 in the entire world this week because you guys are sharing it so much. So I greatly, greatly appreciate it. And every single Monday, I send out an email just telling you about my mindset going into the week to try to help you prep on what you should work on with your mindset, what I'm working on with my mindset, what my focus is for the week. If you want to get this short email from me every single Monday morning, just go to mondayemail.com right now. Once again, that is mondayemail.com right now. Once again, that is mondayemail.com right now. Enter in your email address and we'll send you an email, give you some information on

Starting point is 00:21:50 what I am focusing on every single Monday and what my intention is going into the week. So if you want to be able to steal the knowledge from my brain, exactly what I taught you in this episode, that is the way to do it. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it once again. And I'm going to you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it once again. And I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission makes someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Is College Obsolete? And What I Think Is Better!

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