Your Hidden Genius with Betsy Wills & Alex Ellison

Summary

---

Podcast Summary

College Bound Mentor: "Your Hidden Genius" with Betsy Wills & Alex Ellison

Date: January 15, 2026
Host(s): Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, Stefanie Forman
Guests: Betsy Wills (co-founder of YouScience), Alex Ellison (educational consultant and author)

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the science of innate talent discovery and utilizing personal aptitudes as a compass for educational and career decisions. Hosts Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie interview Betsy Wills and Alex Ellison, co-authors of Your Hidden Genius: The Science-Backed Strategy to Uncovering and Harnessing Your Innate Talents. The conversation focuses on how tools like YouScience empower students (and adults) to understand and harness their strengths, break down limiting self-perceptions, and become more intentional in academic, professional, and even family choices.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins & Purpose of YouScience

• Betsy’s Motivation: Betsy's experience with a costly aptitude test catalyzed her mission to democratize access to such assessments (04:04).
  • Quote: “It was a game changer for me. I started noodling over the fact that why doesn't everybody have this information?”
    – Betsy Wills [04:23]
• Alex’s Adoption: Alex sought scientifically valid, objective assessment tools for her students and found YouScience uniquely comprehensive and indispensable (05:08).

2. The 'Core Four' Aptitudes

• Definition: Spatial ability, inductive reasoning, sequential reasoning, and idea rate are the most crucial for deriving satisfaction and success (06:46).
  • Quote: “These are not new. They’ve been researched since the 1940s...”
    – Betsy Wills [06:46]
• Descriptions:
  • Spatial Ability: Visualizing objects in three dimensions.
  • Inductive Reasoning: Drawing conclusions from ambiguous information, often under time pressure.
  • Sequential Reasoning: Creating order and logic, either mentally or using tools.
  • Idea Rate (Idea Generation): Speed and volume at which one generates ideas, with both high ‘brainstormers’ and concentrated ‘focusers’ described as equally valuable—but contrasting.
• Team Applications: Emphasized benefits of diversity in aptitudes within teams and even relationships (09:45–11:28).

3. Book’s Impact in Counseling & Building Vocabulary

• Developed to help counselors and clients communicate about aptitudes with better language and relatable anecdotes (11:54).
  • Quote: “We really put a ton of time into just...making sure there was a big swath of the population so every reader could see themselves in at least one story.”
    – Alex Ellison [12:59]

4. Practical Examples & Patterns in Aptitudes

• Case: Trip Planning as an Example for Inductive Reasoning:
  Betsy's snap decisions vs. her husband's meticulous checking illuminate how differences in reasoning styles manifest daily (13:34–15:23).
• Case: Math Aptitudes & Gender Bias:
  Both guests shared stories about students, especially young women, not seeing their analytical or math strengths until an assessment revealed them.
  • Quote: “Women tend to express interest in traditional roles, but they actually have more aptitude for...computer science jobs than men.”
    – Betsy Wills [17:05]
  • Quote: “My favorite thing was to then give them YouScience...and just kind of see what their faces did and see the change...”
    – Alex Ellison [18:08]
• Emphasized applied math (stats, data analysis) is distinct from theoretical math—many “non-math people” may thrive in real-world analytic roles.

5. Interpreting Results & Navigating Career Choices

• Encouraged counselors and students to look for patterns, not gospel, in career matches. New jobs may not yet be represented in databases (22:48).
  • Quote: “Take those career suggestions as a pattern not necessarily as a specific because there are so many new jobs coming on board.”
    – Betsy Wills [22:48]
• Revisit assessments at transitions; context changes, aptitudes do not (25:18–27:31).
  • “You see something and interpret something different at different stages of your life.”
    – Alex Ellison [25:18]

6. Using Aptitude Data Across Ages & Roles

• Aptitude strengths are stable after puberty so assessments are useful from high school through adulthood (38:09).
• Useful for more than career planning: team-building, family empathy, crafting personal statements, re-entering or pivoting careers (29:05, 39:46).
  • “I wish parents would take it with their kids...it’s all about empathy, and it’s all about love.”
    – Betsy Wills [39:46]

7. Myth-Busting: One Path, One Purpose?

• Debunked the notion that there’s ever just one ‘perfect’ career (42:20).
  • “That you’re going to have one career... it’s strange how tightly we hang on to it.”
    – Betsy Wills [42:20]
  • “I give an introductory…intake…everyone says one [career], and I think it’s a fascinating example of that disconnect...”
    – Alex Ellison [42:43]
• Work satisfaction is multi-faceted: aptitudes can be fulfilled through hobbies or volunteering, not solely at work (44:29–46:10).

8. Practical Advice for Counselors, Students, and Families

• Use aptitude data for optionality, not to close doors prematurely, given college’s cost and life’s unpredictability (29:56).
• Encourage students (and adults) to shadow, talk to, or experience jobs before making decisions (48:31).
• Leverage stories, shared language, and collaborative reflection—like having others select adjectives describing you—for self-insight and application essays (41:51).
• Build expectation that career paths will evolve, and nurture aptitudes across multiple life domains.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Accessibility:
  “We really democratized it...I wanted something scientifically grounded to help students take a more objective look at themselves.”
  – Alex Ellison [05:08]

• On Female Students & Math:
  “Their math department...just were convinced that it was...you have to really be serious about math...but I never, never had a boy counseled out of calculus. Not once.”
  – Abby [19:35]

• On Applied vs Theoretical Math:
  “I think what we need to parse for people is the difference between applied math… and that's the exact economy we're entering now.”
  – Betsy Wills [16:33]

• On Combining Aptitudes with Experience:
  “You can’t just do YouScience and then make your whole life plan based on that… you go seek mentorship and then you go get experiences.”
  – Alex Ellison [31:15]

• On Career Myths:
  “Our expectations of our relationship with a career…we emphasize so much in the book that it’s about building a fulfilling life using your full complement of aptitudes—in and out of work.”
  – Betsy Wills [44:29]

• On Applying Results to Real Life:
  “I would require every high school junior to do...months of shadowing. Students and clients are craving a glimpse...I wish that was part of the curriculum.”
  – Alex Ellison [48:31]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Origins of YouScience & Backgrounds ............ [02:40–06:46]
• Core Four Aptitudes Explained .................... [06:46–09:45]
• Team/Relationship Applications .................. [09:45–11:28]
• Communicating Aptitude Results/Book Impact ..... [11:54–12:59]
• Real-life Examples: Betsy’s Trip, Math Biases ... [13:34–19:35]
• Interpreting Career Matches & Revisiting Results [22:48–27:31]
• How Aptitudes Change by Age/Audience ............ [25:18–27:31, 38:09–40:17]
• Practical Family Use & Empathy .................. [39:46–41:51]
• Career Path Myths, Fulfillment Beyond Work ...... [42:20–46:10]
• Shadowing & Real-world Exploration Advocacy ..... [48:31]

---

Takeaways & Recommendations

• Aptitude assessments like YouScience empower students and adults to see beyond self-imposed or cultural limitations, opening doors to new fields and roles.
• Focus is less on “the one true path” and more on using innate strengths across a lifetime—in different jobs, hobbies, volunteer work, or even family relations.
• Key advice: Use aptitude data as an ongoing reference, revisit regularly at transitions, and get families or teams involved for deeper empathy and understanding.
• Encouragement to counselors: Use these tools early (ninth grade+) to inform educational and extracurricular choices, while recognizing and discussing the fluidity of career paths in a rapidly changing world.

---

Transcript

[Betsy Wills]

I think it's very important to go in with some idea, but it's also important to go in with a sense of curiosity.

[Lisa]

Hey cbmers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. Were your co hosts Lisa, Abby and Stephanie. And on today's episode, we are super excited to chat with Betsy Wills and Alex Ellison, authors of the book you Hidden the Science Backed Strategy to uncovering and harnessing your innate Talents. And I have a book right here. There was actually a very long waiting list at the library to get this book so I had to, I had to put my time in. So Betsy, just to give you a little background about our Guest Betsy Wills is the co founder of YouScience, a national online based education and career platform headquartered in American Fork, Utah. She is a regular guest lecturer at Vanderbilt University and New York University Stern School of Business and has been Featured speaker for TEDx Women. Formerly she was a Director of Marketing and Branding at Diversified Trust and a wealth management firm. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice and the Music City Center Authority in Nashville, Tennessee. Betsy is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and holds a Master's of Education in Human Resource Development from Peabody College. Alex Ellison is an educational consultant with a private guidance counseling practice which has enabled her to work with schools, nonprofits and families across the country. She writes and lectures extensively on the subject of careers and college readiness and has been a feature speaker on south by Southwest and TedX. She is the author of Go youo Own Way 7 Student Centered Paths for the Best College Experience and the creator of Go youo Own Way Student Archetyped Quiz used in schools and by individuals to jumpstart their college search outs. Hold a degree in German and Business from Northwestern University and a Master's in Public Policy from the University of Nevada. So welcome.

[Alex Ellison]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Betsy Wills]

The podcast is over now. You know, I know, I know.

[Lisa]

We've got such. We've got it. It's like so much information, which is great, but I have to say that we have used YouScience, you know, with our clients for many years and I was really excited to read your book, as I said when I reached out to you, because I think that, you know, we always go over it with them, but just to understand the nuances of how really to interpret the data at a much, you know, more granular level. I found it really fascinating and really interesting. And so when I read it I thought, hey, I bet Betsy and Alex would make a great Guess on our pod. And of course you guys agreed, so we were super happy to do that. So why don't you just start us off?

[Alex Ellison]

Tell us a little bit of how.

[Lisa]

You guys met and what prompted you guys to write this book.

[Betsy Wills]

We met during the famous Covid days because both of us were thinking, what could we do here? And I had wanted to write a book about you science to add, like you said, more information about the nuances behind the results. I think there was a crying need for that. And so I found Alex because she had already written a book that included information about you science. And so she was the perfect candidate to discuss this with, plus the fact that she is 30 years younger than me. And so I really was so excited. I think that's right.

[Abby]

I think.

[Alex Ellison]

I know. Not that much younger than me.

[Betsy Wills]

20 years. I don't know a lot generation.

[Lisa]

Once I get past a certain point, it's enough.

[Abby]

Right?

[Alex Ellison]

But Betsy's biological age is like 22, so maybe.

[Betsy Wills]

But I mean, we really did want to, you know, bring two generations of voices because, as you know, your aptitudes don't change throughout your life. And so it was great because we wanted to speak to people of all ages about what their results meant. And so that's how we got together. Amazing.

[Abby]

So backing up even a little further, Betsy, how did you come up with the idea and the sort of execution of the youscience platform?

[Betsy Wills]

Well, it really all started because when I was 32, I had been home with my children, fortunate enough to stay home with my young children, and I was ready to go back to work. And so a good friend recommended I go to Johnson o' Connor and have my aptitudes assessed. And as most people do not know, it's very expensive to do that. It's about $1,000. It takes two days. I was very lucky to get to go. And it was a game changer for me. And that's when I started noodling over the fact that why doesn't everybody have this information? It wasn't a plot. It was simply the fact that technology didn't allow us to give objective assessments online at scale. And so once that opportunity came up, really around 2010, when computing power allowed us to do that, we saw the opportunity, myself and the other co founders to bring this very expensive assessment online and make it affordable for everybody.

[Abby]

That's pretty amazing. I love the idea of the accessibility, which is a problem all over again.

[Alex Ellison]

It really democratized it really democratized it. I mean, so when I started my practice in 2013. I searched like many consultants and advisors do, searched high and low for like a really valid tool that was comprehensive, that, that didn't look like a buzzfeed quiz, you know. And so, and I love all the assessments. Like I was a fan of Enneagram and Myers Briggs and all the things, but I wanted something that was, was really scientifically grounded to help students take a more objective look at themselves.

[Betsy Wills]

Right.

[Alex Ellison]

And so that's, that's when I started using Youscience right from the beginning. And so it became just so such an indispensable tool in my practice. Like it, it's the very first thing I have everybody do. I couldn't see it another any other way.

[Lisa]

Interesting. Yeah, we, we have kids do it as usually like their sophomore or junior year and it just gives them a really good insight into, you know, who they are and what their aptitudes are. And that's why we like it so much for the same reason. Alex, we just found we wanted something, we were using some of the other things as well, like your strengthsfinder and various versions of Myers Briggs, but we just found this was such a great tool that was science backed and also very clear. And we liked the way that you could go in and you know, find careers that match, et cetera. And that's why I thought the book was so helpful because it did help you understand those nuances. But let's just take a step back for people who aren't familiar with you science and let's talk about like the four. The core four, right? You have the core four. How did you come up with those four? And so let's just want to say what they are and then how you came up with them.

[Betsy Wills]

Okay, so the core four. And again, this is not an assessment you science even made up. This has been so researched since the 1940s really. But the core four are the four aptitudes that really give us the most information about where we're going to find the most satisfaction in our jobs and life. So those are spatial ability, which most people do not know where they fall on that continuum. Inductive reasoning, which is our ability to take a lot of ambiguous information and draw a conclusion under time pressure. Some people can do that really fast and some people, they need more time. Neither one is bad or good. The third one is sequential reasoning, which is effectively how we create order. Whether we do that in our head or we use tools to do that, some people just create logic and order in their head. And other people, they really do rely on calendars and organizational tools to do it more often. And then the last one is idea rate. And we love talking about this because Alex and I are so different on the score of idea rate. And I'll let you explain what that means. Alex.

[Alex Ellison]

Yeah, this was the one when I first took youscience, I was 25. I saw my result here and I was like, for idea generation. And I score as what's called a concentrated focuser. And I thought to myself that meant that I didn't have good ideas. And I was very offended. And I was like, what is what? I have great ideas. And then when I was talking to Betsy about this, you know, it was about, I think, 2018, 2019, when we first started talking about this, it became clear to me that I want to pull my hair out when I'm in meetings that are going on and on and on with just a lot of brainstorming and no action. Right. So it's. Implementation has been a driving force in my life. You know, I'm like, okay, I get an idea, I'm going to go with it. I pretty much bought the first wedding dress I tried on. You know, like, I don't like to sit and ruminate for very long with a lot of ideas. And so there's good and bad that comes with that. Right. Just like all of these, they have to be managed. Betsy is the opposite. She's what's called a brainstormer, and she's a bit like a blender, where the top has just flown off and, like, ideas are just going all over the place, which can be super exciting, but you also have to be able to then like, gather and collect the splattering of ideas. Right. And, and, and, and then execute and implement. So that push and pull between the two extremes actually is very frustrating sometimes, but does lead to a better product in the end. And in our case, it was a book, but it can be stressful. But it was such a great example of how sometimes actually most of the time you do want to work with your opposite with when it comes to these aptitudes, that push and pull leads to a better outcome and pushes you to grow and evolve too.

[Lisa]

Well, that was actually something I was thinking about when you break down those. The core into more. And we'll talk about a little later, but have you used this at all with companies for team building?

[Alex Ellison]

Because when I used, I used to.

[Lisa]

Be the director of recruitment for City Search, Ticketmaster Online City Search. And so they wanted an assessment. This was not available at the time when I was doing this. Until we brought in predictive index. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but it was a similar type of assessment. And we would look at that for various roles and then teams and how you would put people together. Have you found that corporate use?

[Betsy Wills]

We have. We have on our website, actually. There's lots of resources for corporate teams to use this or any. Or families to use it. Lots of. Lots of different applications.

[Alex Ellison]

I even had a boyfriend and girlfriend couple come up to me and ask me if I could help them talk through their aptitude.

[Lisa]

Become a marriage counselor.

[Alex Ellison]

Yeah. Full disclosure, I'm not a marriage counselor, but it was really insightful, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[Betsy Wills]

Attitudes affect everything. They really do. But I mean, back to sort of the core four again. Inductive reasoning, spatial visualization, sequential reasoning, and then idea generation. Those four really give us a lot of information about where we're going to be most satisfied and really successful in our lives. So that's why we really emphasize those. There are actually 52 different aptitudes you could measure. Most people don't realize that, thank goodness we don't measure all 52 in youscience because we'd be there forever. But the way youscience is built is we chose the 14 that really affect us most. Those core four being the foundational piece and then the others being the icing on the cake that give us additional.

[Stephanie]

Information that's so interesting to hear the origins of it. Alex, you made me think about something because I also bought the second dress. Well, not the first dress, but the second wedding dress I bought, but it was in the same setting. So now I'm. I'm going to go in a deep dive about what that means 100%. I would love if you could tell us how your book has informed the use of youscience.

[Alex Ellison]

Well, I think, you know, for definitely in the counseling community. And, you know, I, as a counselor, I would talk to a lot of colleagues who would say, I love you science. I feel like I understand it and I see its power, but I'm struggling in, like, communicating it through anecdotes and examples and other language with the students and clients I work with. And so that was one of our highest goals. Right. With this book, was so that it could be a tool to give you that language, that vocabulary, and like, these really rich anecdotes to use for. To help you understand your aptitudes, but also to help those you're working with or to help your team understand their results as well. And so we really put a ton of time into just even building a matrix of folks who we wanted to interview for this book to make sure there was a really, a really big swath of the population so that everyone could see themselves, every reader could see themselves in at least one of these stories. So that was really important to us.

[Betsy Wills]

Right.

[Lisa]

And actually, so let's talk about some of those examples that you break out. You know, you break out the core into then three segments, which I always find interesting because sometimes, and you're very careful to say, like, one is not better than the other. These are just the ways that you approach things. Because sometimes people think, oh, I got the, you know, I got the top one. So that means that it's better, but it's really clear that it's not a matter of better or worse. And I think that's a really good point that you always make. But you gave the example. One of them was a Betsy, I think it was you, Betsy. It was you and your husband planning a trip and how each of you approach it with different results. I guess your husband is more of the investigator and you're more of a diagnostic problem solver. Was that.

[Alex Ellison]

Yeah.

[Stephanie]

No.

[Betsy Wills]

Oh, it's terrible. But yeah. So again, it's counterintuitive for people to understand that aptitudes are not good or bad in and of themselves or the, you know, so we use that in the book. We talk about that one. Inductive reasoning there. I am a diagnostic problem solver, which means I love to make a decision under time pressure. And if there's not time pressure, boy, I might even create some, like a crisis just for the thrill. It's that person who's going to put off starting the paper to the night before because they, quote, unquote, do their best work. That's, you know, kind of.

[Lisa]

We love all of those. We have those kids, we have a lot of those diagnostic problem solvers.

[Betsy Wills]

And that comes in huge handy if you're going to be in an emergency room position or an emt. A lot of jobs really take advantage of that, but it's not so helpful if you're misusing it. And so that's, you know, we always talk about the challenges of wherever you fall, there's going to be advantages and challenges. So in the book, I'm someone who loves to make that decision, snap decision. And we were on a trip. My husband will labor a decision over and over. He'll check every fact. And at one point I was just tired of it because I said, you know, we're going on this Trip. We need to be more carefree. Let me plan the Paris part of this anniversary trip. And so I just went on the Internet and I found some hotels like, boom, I'm just picking it. And we got there and of course it was. It should have been, you know, condemned, actually, this, this one hotel. And he said that article you read, Betsy was like 20 years old. That was posted and I didn't check that. We've learned, you know, from each other quite a bit when I should make use of that aptitude and other times to let him have the ball.

[Abby]

I think we had a particular interest in amplifiers because we have a lot of clients. I mean, I hear this especially from young women. I hate to stereotype, but unfortunately, I think the whole system is sort of directs young women away from analytical STEM and all that.

[Betsy Wills]

But.

[Abby]

So it was particularly fascinating to read about this idea of numerical reasoning.

[Lisa]

And.

[Abby]

And we loved how you showed how people who don't always think of themselves as math people can actually score high on that aptitude. And there was one particular example, dj.

[Alex Ellison]

I think DJ Patel.

[Abby]

And he had thought of himself as terrible, being terrible at math. We hear that all the time. I'm bad at math. I can't do math.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah, I have.

[Abby]

I have to say, I had a client this a long time ago. She graduated about five years ago. She went to Berkeley as a Sanskrit and English major. Sanskrit, like the ancient yoga language, whatever, you know.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah.

[Abby]

Told me she hated math. She ended up being a data science and math major.

[Betsy Wills]

Right.

[Abby]

Unbelievable. I just couldn't. My mind was blown.

[Alex Ellison]

We see so many of those.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah. I think what we need to parse for people is the difference between applied math, which is like statistics, data analysis, you know, trend analysis, that's applied math, which is what we assess in the assessment. It's called, well, numerical reasoning. People are often surprised because they do so well at that and they think of themselves and usually they've had a poor math teacher or they're doing math that's, you know, theoretical math, more like algebra, calculus, which is wonderful too, if you can do that. But it doesn't preclude you from jobs that are using science and data. My gosh. And that's the exact economy we're entering now. So we find, you know, you science is over seven and a half million people that they've assessed. So we've got a lot of data and what we know, studies at universities have looked at the data and. Animized data. Is that the right word? And it's not individual data. Yeah. Yeah. And what they find that women tend to express interest in, you know, traditional roles on, on hu huge amounts, but they actually have more aptitude for a lot of these computer science jobs than men. I'd like to hear that. Yeah, you really need to change the conversation, which is one of the big goals of the book and you science is to encourage people to rethink by seeing their own data and their own results of what their possibilities are because women tend to leave a lot on the table honestly.

[Alex Ellison]

And, and they're, they're, they're self, self assessing themselves out of occupations that they're actually very well suited for. And I agree with you, Abby. I, I saw this so many times anecdotally in my practice, mostly with girls who would come in with this big stamp on their forehead that they put on there that said I suck at math. And, and I was just like this is. And my favorite thing was to then give them you science have it inevitably debunk their personal judgment and just kind of see what their faces did and see the change on their face and see the change then in what they chose to, what they, what they would then choose to go into, what classes they then felt confident to take, what majors they then felt confident to pursue. I mean it could really change the course of your life, you know. And DJ Patel, you know, he was the first data who we talk about him in the book. He was the first chief data scientist under Barack Obama. And it was so funny he was talking about in high school, he just was so not interested in math. Like and this is a guy who ended up getting a PhD in like mathematics, so and becoming the chief data scientist, you know. So it, it just is such a great example of how our self judgments can be so wrong and we can really, our own biases can really work against ourselves.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah.

[Abby]

Now I really wish that I'd thought about doing that with these young. I am for 100 for certain doing it the next time.

[Betsy Wills]

Please do.

[Abby]

But I've, I've had five young women over the last, you know, call it 10 years where I mean I hated doing this but they weren't going to make it to calculus by senior year, which is critical to go to highly selective schools. I've had to have them take pre calc over the summer, which is like the last thing you want to make a kid do. But you also don't want them to get left behind for no good reason. And their math department, you know, they just were convinced that it was, you know, you have to really be serious about math to. But I never, never had a boy counseled out of calculus. Not once.

[Betsy Wills]

That's interesting. Yeah, no, it's a shame really. I think we, if we can push that problem. I had a girl come into my office actually I worked in a financial firm as well and she had taken new science 10 years ago in high school and she bounced into the office. She's absolutely in finance now and said you're the reason this, this assessment was the reason 10 years ago I went into accounting which changed my life forever. So I hope people take their scores to heart. Now you may not have an interest, you know, that's real. You know, sometimes we have aptitudes for things but really we can't even develop an interest. So that's, you know, that's going to happen as well. But it's what we are not giving our chance ourselves the chance to explore that is so important about your results. Yeah.

[Abby]

Okay. Definite note to self. Now I have a solve for my problem.

[Lisa]

Well, I was going to say just following up on that and then I think Steph wants you to walk through how to actually do this. But my youngest daughter was. Took you science in high school but didn't really take it seriously. And then she had graduated from college and she was working like in her entry level job, you know, for a year or so and really was unhappy. And so I said why don't you take you science? And and she did it very seriously and she looked at it and then we get the results back and the results were not anything that we ever expected and and we kind of dismissed them. We're like, okay, this is the first time it doesn't make sense. So she got, she should be an engineer or she should be a doctor. My middle daughter's a doctor. She got that as you science. That made total sense, but not for my youngest daughter. And that she was also good for counseling and for coaching. Those were kind of the things that came up as her top things. And at the time she was a film and media studies major. Marketing. She was good in math. I mean she was wasn't bad at math. It wasn't. But it wasn't like engineering, math. Right. And so fast forward, she ends up getting another job. And I said, you know, why don't we lean into this, you know, maybe get a, get a certificate in data analytics because that seems to be a skill that you're going to need no matter what you end up doing. And then now she's been, she got a new job and then she's been at for about a year and a and what she's gravitated towards is data like strategy and operations. And so she's very good at looking at patterns and analyzing the things that are going to make her customers more successful and also kind of how the operations work within her team. So even though it's not engineering it's still that systems and that stuff. So now we're kind of going back and saying okay see there was some. There was not so far fetched. So anyway I just wanted to share.

[Betsy Wills]

That since y' all are all practitioners I do think it's important just from the inside baseball too to tell you that even your science is having trouble keeping up with all the jobs of the future because it's changing so quickly. So I would just urge anybody who is a counselor who's listening, you know, take those career suggestions as a pattern not necessarily as a specific because there are so many new jobs coming on board that the analysis really hasn't been done by the O Net database yet. And so that matching can't happen. It's still very useful and engineering is one of the top things that'll come up if you're spatial and you've got some of this numerical reasoning skills as suggestions. But really I'd say it's think about a technical role in a company. It could be in marketing and data analysis that is engineering numbers and marketing data after all in a way that.

[Lisa]

A fintech company and customer success managing.

[Betsy Wills]

That side of it zone for sure.

[Lisa]

She'S in the right zone. But it was when we first saw we were like okay, forget it. You know so now we're now it still looks good.

[Alex Ellison]

Yeah yeah. Looking for common denominators I agree is is what you want to do and it's sometimes also students will feel overwhelmed especially younger clients will feel overwhelmed sometimes when they see those career recommendations or they'll feel totally lost like they don't know what these jobs are. They've never seen them before. And to kind of help that overwhelm I think it is helpful to say we're just looking for patterns, common denominators hang tight. Yeah, things are changing.

[Stephanie]

It's so important too because like what everyone said just picking piggybacking off of you guys it's just we, we have. We're so rigid sometimes in the way we see ourselves and what we're good at and it's so hard for us to go outside that unless we see the patterns or we do something like you science or someone tells us you know, anyway. But I would love if you could walk us through how someone could use their aptitudes to align with the potential career or major. Like so many. I, you know, think it's okay if you don't know what you want to do or if you're 41 like me and well, I know what I want to do, but if you're my age and don't know what you want to do. But so many times students come to us, parents come to us, even when they're, they're freshmen in high school. Like I have, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, my aptitudes, et cetera. So yeah, I think it'd be really helpful if you could walk us through that.

[Alex Ellison]

Well, I'll just start by saying, you know, it depends on the age, you know, and it's kind of like, you know that book the Little Prince? It lands on you differently at different stages in your life. That's how I feel about aptitude results, is you see something and interpret something different every at different stages of your life. So I love, love, love revisiting youscience results with someone who I haven't seen in a few years. Maybe they took it when they were 17 and now they're thinking about their first job out of college and the results haven't changed, but their perception and their experience and their context has. And so I think for the younger students that people work with, going through youscience needs to feel relevant to them right now. We definitely have some kids who you guys know are like very future focused and very excited about the long term and they're excited to start talking about their future career in 10 years. But other students will find that very overwhelming. And so to try to show them, how do your aptitudes show up for you now? And I like to ask, like, where have you seen this yet? And if they say no, I've never seen my three dimensional visualization aptitude come into my daily life. Let's figure out ways for you to exercise that now through hobbies, through extracurricular activities, through that first part time summer job. Right, so. So making it more relevant today because otherwise I found that this will just go right over their heads if it's not made contextual right now. So that's one of the first things I like to do. But yeah. Betsy, did you want to add to that?

[Betsy Wills]

No, I think this is great. Keep going. That's perfect. I like what you're about to say about revisiting. I want to hear about that.

[Alex Ellison]

Yeah. So then when, when we revisit it, what's really funny is sometimes, and it's, it's kind of like a, you don't want to be a jerk and be like, told you so. But you know, it's happened many times where you science gives some suggestions. The student says whatever I already know I want to be fill in the blank. They go, try that thing. They come back to us. You know, as a 21 or 22 year old, I hated studying this or I got my first internship and I hate this industry. We go back to you science and they're like, oh yeah, that actually now makes so much sense because I've fallen on my face a little bit and I've learned and I again have this experience.

[Stephanie]

Experience.

[Alex Ellison]

I've seen a bit of the world, I've seen what the application of this looks like outside of the classroom. So there's, it just all becomes so much more relevant and now we can have a more meaningful conversation, I think, and I think Betsy agrees. Talking to people in like their 20s about this is so much fun because they have a little, they have enough experience to where they have context. But they're still so open minded and excited and enthusiastic about the future. But having said that, I mean, I've talked to, you know, just the other day I was talking to someone who's 38 who's wanting to make a career change. He's kind of like already at the top of his field and wanting to do something different. And that's a really fun conversation as well. But it looks very different. Right? It's like, how can we make small pivots and subtle shifts? For some people it's how can I just volunteer and spend my free time using my aptitudes in a more meaningful way? I've talked to retired people who are like, how can I just use my aptitudes now in my avocations? So I think it depends on the audience how you're explaining aptitudes. But my favorite way to talk about aptitudes is with teams who work together, like you were mentioning earlier. Right. So how can you as a board or as a team understand and appreciate each other's aptitudes and balance each other out? Like Betsy and I balanced each other out when we were writing this book. That's I think, a really fun opportunity.

[Lisa]

Happy and Steph, you have to take the, I don't know, have you guys taken you science? I took it when we first started. Have you guys done it?

[Alex Ellison]

Oh, you guys.

[Abby]

I first started.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, I Would love to take it again.

[Abby]

I took it.

[Betsy Wills]

All right.

[Lisa]

You'll have to take it again. Yeah. It's funny that you say that because I used it with friends who have wanted to either reenter the workforce or make a transition. And I was like, oh, well, like I had one friend who was an attorney and then she stayed home with her kids and she was looking to go back and do something and it came up that she should go into social work or you know, something like that. And now she's a social worker and she's like super happy about it.

[Abby]

Wow.

[Lisa]

I had another young woman who was, she's like, oh, I. I think I want to be a doctor. And like she majored. She has a bfa. And I was like, well, why? Why do you want to be a doctor? I said, well, let's do you science first before we figure this whole thing out. And then it turns out that no, she shouldn't be a doctor. Like that was very, very low on her athletes.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah.

[Lisa]

And she was actually in the right field. She just needed to make a little bit of a tweak. So.

[Alex Ellison]

Yes.

[Lisa]

Good. To reinforce that.

[Betsy Wills]

It's that confidence. Well, you know, and please, you know, I want your listeners to know on your hidden genius.com under resources there are so many ways to use your aptitudes in using AI to help you write your LinkedIn profile, to, you know, use it with your book club, to use it lots of different ways. So please explain, explore that. The only thing I do want to go back to though is I think the elephant in the room for counselors with particularly young people is college is really expensive. And so I do feel like the use case for youscience in high school is to try to give people optionality and open their eyes as fast as possible so that they don't close doors with an expensive education, you know, or take a miss, you know, go down a path that. And miss the opportunity to open other doors. So I would say that when you see for instance, again, we keep talking about engineering but any kind of pattern show up like that, you know, I always urge people to, you know, really explore, talk to people in those fields as fast as they can so that they aren't a senior in college and wishing that they'd, you know, kept a door open. So that's the one, you know.

[Alex Ellison]

Well, like you said, Betsy, talking to people, that's a really important point. I mean you can't, you can't just do you science and then make your whole life plan based on that. It's good. It's much too abstract. Right. So to then but to use that to kind of hone in a little bit and get rid of such a tyranny of options and tyranny of choices so that you have something to focus on and then you go seek mentorship and then you go get experiences. Right. You can't, it can't be void of experience.

[Betsy Wills]

Right.

[Stephanie]

So how important is it to go into college confident in your career or major?

[Betsy Wills]

I mean, I think it's very important to go in with some idea, but it's also important to go in with a sense of curiosity along with that because as you know, when you get your youscience results, it's never like you're just going to be this. That's it. It's an array of things to explore. So that's sometimes again even a challenge for people to do because it could vary. Like my husband's score was architect, fine art photographer, department store logistics manager or something like that. I know, but they're actually all the same pattern and so. And those are three very different jobs. And he had many other suggestions as well, but we laugh about that. He actually could be happy in any one of those three things.

[Lisa]

What does he do? What is he doing?

[Betsy Wills]

He actually is an architect and does high end restoration, renovation. Cool. I always talk about one of his aptitudes is he has one of the amplifiers, perfect pitch pitch discrimination, which most people think of as a musical aptitude, but it's actually your ability to discern really fine differences in things. So this doesn't taste right. That's crooked. Why is the house so messy when there's just one glass beside the sink? And let me tell you again, it's very hard to live with okay people with perfect pitch. But the man can make a punch list like nobody else. And so in his job it really comes in handy to have that pitch discrimination which is an aptitude and it informs so many things. So again, with 52 different aptitudes we can know about, they're all going to come into play in some way sort.

[Abby]

Of flipping it around to almost like the negative. I come across a lot of kids, especially with pre med and business, who, who want to do that for various reasons. Business I think is obvious because they don't really know and their parents are in business and I don't know, I think I've gotten pretty good at spotting kids that at least in their undergraduate experience it's not going to make sense. I mean, I have adult friends who didn't do pre med and then went back post and did it. But, you know, you just don't want to set them up for failure with organic chemistry and, you know, investments 101. So I don't know, do you have experience turning someone away from something? How do you, how do you do that gracefully?

[Alex Ellison]

Well, I was just talking to a physician who was, who was like, you know, some of the best doctors I know did not major in, like, your obvious pure science majors. And I've always agreed with that. But it was neat to hear it from another physician. And he, you know, I think this is just a reminder that major is not always just this linear connection to your future career. Right. And I think what Betsy was saying earlier about having a sense of what the career clusters could be a good fit for you, that's, I think, really a relief to students. But that doesn't exactly predict your major. It does for things like architecture and engineering, but for a lot of careers out there, the major is not actually all that important. And so I think that there's a couple conversations that happen. You know, what could you see yourself getting up and going to class to study for four years? And also what are the. Some of the careers you could see yourself being happy in longer term? So I think that those things aren't always totally connected and life is circuitous. Right?

[Abby]

Yeah.

[Betsy Wills]

Well, I do have a little statistic. I think somebody from Wake Forest who is very high up in their administration was telling me one time that 50% of the freshman class at one point was coming in pre med, and then maybe 10% graduated pre med. So lots of twists and turns, misfires, that kind of thing. And so in the sense of, can we avoid that as much as possible? Wasted time, wasted money. It is important. But I do want to point out too that you can do anything with practice. You know, if you're determined to be a doctor or determined to, you know, pass a course, you can do it. And your aptitudes are not going to stop you if you want to put the effort in. But the question is, what are you leaving on the table that you're not playing to the aptitudes? And do you really want your life to be an uphill battle when you can be so successful over here using your. Your full complement of aptitudes? That's really it. But we would never want to be a dream killer based on, you know, you don't have the exact pattern. I know, but it's worth the conversation to just say, well, what are the other things.

[Lisa]

They come into it differently. And especially with medicine, it's a pretty wide field of what you can, what you can do.

[Betsy Wills]

Absolutely.

[Lisa]

Yeah.

[Abby]

Yeah. I think, though, in what we do, particularly if someone has gone through their high school experience and they don't look like they're a good candidate for a spec specific program, they're limiting their options. You know, I only want to go, you know, get into business school. Well, then, you know, it's going to be more selective. You're not positioned. Well, you know, it's, it's hard to, you know, okay, let's try economics with a business mind, you know, it's a little bit hard to, to negotiate just the practical side of that, you know.

[Betsy Wills]

Right.

[Alex Ellison]

To Betsy's point. I mean, what a shame to leave all these other things on the table because you're unnecessarily fixated on one path that somebody at some point in your life told you is, is the epitome of success, you know, and that's such a bummer because now you're wasting time really not developing and nurturing those, those innate aptitudes that could just lead you to a life of thriving and joy. I mean, I think that a lot of young people. Well, let's be honest, I think most Americans equate harder to better. Like, if it's harder for me, if it's a real struggle, that must mean it has more merit. And I think we're trying to kind of upend that myth a little bit.

[Abby]

Yeah, I like that. So we've covered age a little bit, but just in, in your minds, what's the earliest you might want to have? We, we work with kids from ninth grade through senior year and then we catch up with them in college. You know, at what ideally, ideally at what ages would you have students do this and revisit it?

[Betsy Wills]

Well, the tool is designed. You know, our aptitudes start emerging as early as 2 years old. Certain aptitudes, like short term memory, for example, which is called associative memory. In the assessment, you can see spatial ability coming out pretty early. The child who's building, you know, the new east wing of the White House in Legos, pretty obvious. And then the child who you don't even know what they're doing, but, you know, you start seeing clues. But really there's quite a few very important aptitudes like inductive reasoning, sequential reasoning that are not really apparent till we've kind of started or gone through puberty. So I'd say, you know, it's. You can learn a lot if you give it to a seventh grader, even, and YouScience does offer that. But in ninth grade, you can learn even more. But, you know, 17 would be certainly early enough to give it. But sometimes I think the way our education system works, you're going to need it about 14, so that your high school path is informed by that in some cases. But the great news about aptitudes is they do not change after puberty. And so you can take it at 17, 37, 77, and you will score with the same pattern. And that's really another reason we wrote the book, is because so many people are in some kind of career pivot or crisis or shift that there's never a bad time to know what your aptitudes are.

[Abby]

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

[Betsy Wills]

I wish parents would take it with their kids. I wish you could do that, because I think that maybe we should offer.

[Lisa]

That and then we can.

[Betsy Wills]

Honestly, I feel like that convers would make it so much easier because you can see how they're different. It's all about empathy, and it's all about love. And, you know, when you see how you took the same exact assessment and how different you're going to score, the conversation becomes so rich and so powerful.

[Lisa]

Well, now we need to add family counseling to our.

[Stephanie]

I mean, we already do it.

[Lisa]

Yeah, but that actually might be an interesting thing, especially if there are some similarities or things like that.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah, and I think parents would love it.

[Alex Ellison]

I mean, the shared language is really helpful. I mean, one of the things that I like to do in my counseling practice is at the end of the assessment, there's a discussion guide that gives you language. Right. And terms to describe yourself. And in generating ideas for personal statements or really any sort of, you know, even like things like cover letters, you know, for jobs, anything, you can look at those terms that describe, describe you pick a few, and then think of a corresponding anecdote from your life that highlights that trait. Right, because we're trying to get people to not just use a bunch of adjectives in their writing. So what is the anecdote? What is the. The historical example that illustrates or highlights that trait? And then what's really fun, Betsy had this idea. Give it to a loved one, a parent, a friend, a sibling, and have them, without seeing your favorite terms, have them circle their favorite terms to describe you and then ask them why. Why did you choose data driven thinker as a term that describes me? And inevitably, they're going to have an anecdote or a story that you probably Forgot about that you didn't think was of any consequence. And it's a wonderful sharing opportunity, you know, so that's a great partner activity that we talk about.

[Lisa]

A good idea that might be a good thing to give parents before they. Before they do the brainstorming to have. Yeah.

[Betsy Wills]

Because when you're applying to college, inevitably you're asked to write a personal statement. This just gets you that much further into what you should say about yourself or talk about yourself. Absolutely. Yeah.

[Lisa]

Yeah. And we have brought it out at times where we'll look at it and say, you know, in a similar way. Not exactly that way, but similar. Yeah. Which I think is really good. So what do you think are some myths or truths about identifying careers and majors that are best for a person in quotes? Best?

[Betsy Wills]

Well, number one, that there's. That you're going to have one career.

[Alex Ellison]

Yeah.

[Betsy Wills]

You know, I mean, I think people have dispelled that myth, but it's strange how tightly we hang on to it and how much emphasis we put on that early on that the world teaches us later. You know, we're going to have many different types of careers that it's going to take advantage of our aptitudes in different ways.

[Alex Ellison]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, wouldn't. When I did my TedX talk, I was really obsessed with this idea of job hopping. And I'm still very obsessed with why there's such a disconnect between what young people think in terms of how many jobs they're going to have and how many jobs they'll actually have. And the data kind of proves that. So I give, much like you probably do, I give an introductory, like, intake to my clients and ask them, how many careers would you like to have in your life? And. And everyone says one, right? Everyone says one. And I think it's just a fascinating example of, of that disconnect. The other funny disconnect is most young people I talk to say they don't want to be chained to a computer or a desk. If you look at so many jobs today. Right. We, we are. We're at desks and computers. I mean, counseling is now a remote career. It can be and never used to be. Right. So this is changing very quickly. And one of those, one of the great resources is on the O Net website that's run and managed by the, by the Department of Labor. That's, by the way, where all the data for the youscience careers comes from. You can actually go to that website and search for career context and see how much time do I Have to talk to people in this job, how much time do I have to sit, how much time do I have to walk, how much time do I have to be on the phone? All these things. And that's really eye opening for a career starter, a young, you know, a young career starter. Because I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about what a lawyer actually does all day, what a doctor does all day, and so even what someone. I mean, I don't believe there is like one perfect career for anybody. But even those people who do think that are often very misinformed about what that career actually entails.

[Abby]

Yeah.

[Betsy Wills]

Another myth, I think is that any one job is going to satisfy you and you know, our expectations of our relationship with the career. And that's why we emphasize so much in the book and online applications. And what does it mean to really have a fulfilling life? And it means that you are using these, all of your full complement of aptitudes in some way. So that is going to probably mean not putting off taking the pottery class till you retire, go on and take it on Saturdays or, you know, build that full life. That is where you're going to feel the happiest. That is why you will not put every job you have on the witness stand as the problem which we tend to do. You know, what is our expectation going to be from our work? And in some cases it's going to be a happy day a lot of the times. And in other cases it's going to be, I do this because I love this other thing that I do for fun and I want to be able to afford to do that. That's how I'm going to have a fulfilling life. So, you know, understanding the difference between work and career and applications and volunteering and why all those components are going to, you know, really build that life you want.

[Lisa]

Yeah, I think that's such a good point to think about it that it. The aptitudes don't have to necessarily. It's great if they could be within your career, but maybe your aptitudes are not things that necessarily can earn the living or the lifestyle that you want. But that doesn't mean you can't find it in other parts of your life.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah. You don't want to be in a mismatch, that's for sure. But that's true. Yes. Some careers are just not going to take care, take advantage of all of them. That's the thing.

[Abby]

Yeah.

[Lisa]

Any final words? I was funny, Alex, when you were saying that you don't necessarily know what People do.

[Alex Ellison]

My.

[Lisa]

My middle daughter always says that to mom. You have no idea what I do. She's a doctor. She's like, you have no idea what I do all day, do you? I was like, I guess I don't. I don't know. I can imagine.

[Alex Ellison]

Can I shadow you for a day? Yeah, exactly.

[Abby]

I would.

[Betsy Wills]

A doctor is a great example, though. They get. Many are drawn to it, to care for patients or be drawn to it, and they spend a lot of their time writing reports or. I don't know what she would say today. You know, in the book, we talk about my friend who was a graphic designer, and when she entered graphic design, she loved it so much because it was cutting out pieces of paper, laying them out on boards. And then computers changed all that, and it became digital, and she missed that part of it. And so instead of quitting, she actually took up quilting and started winning awards for her quilts and doing all this kind of thing and kept her job and was very good at doing it on the computer, but she had missed that piece of it. So she was really glad she didn't just abandon ship. She found another way to use the aptitude.

[Abby]

Yeah, I think that's incredible advice for people our age.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah.

[Abby]

You know, the kids don't have as much time, but at our age, you know, if you want fulfillment. I have a good friend who was really into theater in college and in law school and really wanted to do it. He gave it a shot. He couldn't. He became a lawyer. He's kind of this, like, typical grinding lawyer, but on the side, he's on the board of a local theater and he helps produce plays.

[Betsy Wills]

And it's just.

[Abby]

I mean, he just lights up when he's there, and he can get through his day because that enables him to do what he loves to do. And it's not a mismatch.

[Betsy Wills]

He's a great lawyer, but sure, he's both.

[Abby]

Yeah, yeah.

[Betsy Wills]

He's.

[Abby]

And he. His identity is both. Like, he will tell you about both. If you say, what do you do? He doesn't just say, I'm a lawyer.

[Betsy Wills]

At so and so.

[Abby]

He says both.

[Alex Ellison]

Yes.

[Betsy Wills]

I want to address one thing you said, though. You began to say, maybe the kids don't have time. Listen, they don't have time to waste. And they do waste it. I mean, we all waste time. That's my belief. And so, you know, I don't really ever want to hear someone say, I don't have time to talk to people about what their career could be. If they want to do it, they will. And I think they just need the motivation and challenge to do it.

[Alex Ellison]

I do wish school would accommodate. I mean, if I ruled the world, like, I would, I would require every single. When I ruled the world, maybe as I should, I would require every high school junior to do like a sneak peek week or a few months of shadowing. Like, just see, that's what, that's what my students and clients are craving. They want to. They want a glimpse. They want to look behind the curtain. They want to see what the doctor does all day, what the lawyer does all day. And I do wish that was part of, like, the curriculum. I wish that was more formal like it is in Europe. But, you know, maybe one day.

[Betsy Wills]

Yeah.

[Lisa]

All right. Well, this was great. We really appreciate you guys being on on the show and thank you, cdomers, for tuning in. Thank you, Betsy and Alex. We're going to also put you gave this wonderful handout about different ways that people can find their aptitudes in other places. If it's, you know, hopefully in their work, but also outside. To catch more episodes of College Bell Mentor, make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. To learn more, visit collegeboundmentor.com until next time. You got this, Sam.