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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 405: We Are Blindly Spending Our Lives | Hannah Maruyama, The Degree Free Way
01:05:24
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- [00:01]
Ginny Urich
Happy New Year and welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. I am Ginny Urich and I'm so glad you're here. Whether you've been with us for years or you're just diving in for the very first time, you have picked the perfect episode to start your year with clarity, intention and purpose. Today's guest is one of my all time favorites and a truly transformative voice. Hannah Maruyama is back and we're diving into an eye opening conversation that will challenge everything you thought you knew about education, careers and what it means to.
- [00:27]
Jenny Ehrlich
Live a fulfilling life.
- [00:28]
Ginny Urich
If you've ever felt like you're blindly spending your time or energy chasing what.
- [00:32]
Jenny Ehrlich
Society says you're supposed to do, this.
- [00:34]
Ginny Urich
Episode will empower you to chart a new course for yourself and for your kids. As you listen, if something resonates with you, share this episode with a friend or a family member. You never know, it might be the spark they need as they head into the New Year as well. And if you've been enjoying the podcast, we'd love for you to leave a five star review. Your support helps this movement grow and reach more families around the world. Speaking of movement, if you haven't yet, grab a copy of my book until the Streetlights Come On. It's filled with encouragement and practical ideas for reclaiming your family's time, fostering deeper connections, and setting your kids up for success in a rapidly changing world. Finally, don't forget to join the 1000 Hours Outside journey in 2025. Download your free tracker at 1000hoursoutside.com trackers or check out our top ranked app to make this year your family's most intentional year yet. Let's step outside, soak in the beauty of nature, and create memories that will last a lifetime. Now, without further ado, let's dive into this incredible episode with Hannah Maruyama. I know it will inspire you to rethink what success means for your kids and give them the tools to make it a reality.
- [01:39]
Jenny Ehrlich
The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist whether you're running, swimming or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Ehrlich. I am the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I am grinning from ear to ear because I am so, so excited that Hannah Maruyama is back with us today. Welcome.
- [02:23]
Hannah Maruyama
Thank you so much, Jenny. I was stoked when I got the email from you guys to come back on. I was so excited to talk to you again and really excited to go over what we're going to talk about today.
- [02:35]
Jenny Ehrlich
So here's the history in a very, very random conversation from this man named Andrew Pudua, who is like a. A writing. He writes curriculum, and he speaks at all these conferences. And his curriculum is called the Institute for Excellence in Writing. He said he knew about you. He'd heard about how you talked about that. Kids, for the most part, do not have any understanding of what types of jobs are out there, that most of them can only name eight jobs. And I thought, this is the most fascinating thing ever. And so I looked into it and then I was like, I love these people and will you please come on the show? And at the time, you were in the process of making these incredible, incredible workbooks. They're called the Degree Free Way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the Life They Want. So you wrote these with your husband. There's a parent version and a young adult version. And you were in the process of finishing those up. And so you had. You. I mean, we were going to the typesetter, and I think that maybe you were canceling on me.
- [03:31]
Hannah Maruyama
I was. Because we were in the middle of it. We had had this typesetter, had taken weeks, and it was only supposed to take four days. And we were so stressed out, but. But we finally got it done.
- [03:44]
Jenny Ehrlich
So Josh told me. He was like, I think they're canceling. And I was like, no. I was like, please. I was like, beg them. I'll take any amount of time because I really want to have this conversation. I think actually, Hannah, it is the most important conversation that we could be having as parents because it affects every decision that you make throughout the entirety of childhood. So then you graciously came on in that insane time when you're trying to get things out and trying to finish the workbook. And it was a little bit shorter. And I just was beyond impressed with you, with your knowledge, with the information. And people ask me a lot. We've got, I don't know, maybe 375 episodes that I've taped. Most of them are interviews. And they're good. They're all good. But I'm like, hannah is so influential because if you don't look from the end backwards. You're going to make all the wrong decisions along the way. And earlier this morning I talked to a mom who says that what everyone thinks is that the only marking of success is what college you get into. And all else falls by the wayside. So it's starting in preschool and we're parenting our kids in a way that's in my mind heading in the wrong direction because we have no clue about post high school. And the only resources that I have found that are wonderful and walk you through it and walk your kids through it are yours.
- [05:07]
Hannah Maruyama
Wow, what a glowing endorsement. And also what a kind view of me trying to cancel on you because we had to meet with a typesetter right afterwards. I remember that now. Oh my gosh. But this is such a huge thing. What you're talking about right now with parents are, you're absolutely right, optimizing for the wrong end goal. Because right now, the way that we treat K through 12 education is that the end goal is to go to college. The end goal is not to be educated. The end goal is not to get a career that is actually, actually good for the life that you want to live. And the biggest thing, after I talked to you last time, I was thinking about this and I really wanted to talk about this. But the biggest thing is that people have conflated college and education and career and technical trainings, or CTE is what they're calling it in the public schools now. And I think that we have to break these things out so that we can distinguish where the failures are and where you are actually putting your efforts and your educational budget. Because that's something that I want to really reframe in people's minds. Because the amount of money they're going to spend on this is staggering. And they're not spending it in a way that will make their child educated and they're not spending it in a way that will help their child have a good career either. And that's the biggest thing is if American families. It reminds me of health care, right? We spend so much and our results are poor. And the same thing is true of, I'll put in quotes, higher education, because I'm. I'm actually tired of calling it that. I don't want to call it that anymore. I don't think it deserves that label because it's failing at such a high rate. And all it's doing is turning our number one export as a country into student loan debt. And I don't see that as higher education. I see this as a system that we should no longer grace with that label. And it's something we really need to start to zoom out, especially as parents, and go, is this actually going to fit the needs of my child? If it does, fantastic. If it doesn't, even better. Now you can take all of this educational spend and you can put it towards things that really help your child do what they want to do. And that's the biggest thing. So for some people too, and I think we talked about this last time, but the definition of success, and I just saw Naval Ravikant talking about this with Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan podcast, and I think this is such an insightful take. But he said the biggest sign of intelligence is getting what you want in life. And that is interesting because that's basically how we define success as, well, at degree free, which is, do you get what you want out of life, whatever that is? You know, you want to have seven cats, you want to have five kids and a spouse, right? You want to have a homestead, you want to have a paid off apartment in a small little town that you like. You want to have a small business, you want to have a big business, you want to be a brain surgeon. For some people it is career focused, but for everybody else, we really need to think about what is success to us. And this is one of the questions that I ask young adults in the launch program, and that is picture yourself five to seven years from now. You know, I ask them where somewhere that you go out to eat with your family a lot. And then they'll tell me a restaurant. Because now they're picturing a place that they understand that they know well, that they can picture the booths and the ambiance and the conversations they've had with their family. And, you know, this could be anything from Chick Fil A to a local Mexican restaurant or whatever. And they say, oh, this such and such place. And I'll say, okay, so imagine you met your parents, you know, and your siblings for lunch at this place five to seven years from where you're at now. And I said, you guys have a great lunch. Catch up, you know, and then you pay for lunch because that makes them feel good. And then I say, all right, and you get it. You go out, you get in your car, and you close the door. And as you close the door, you just take a breath and you go, wow, I'm really happy with where my life is going. I'm really content with that. You don't have everything you want yet, but you are very happy with the direction your life is going. And I ask them what do they have at that point? Where are they that makes them feel that? Because that's the direction they need to go.
- [09:00]
Jenny Ehrlich
What are some things that the kids will say?
- [09:02]
Hannah Maruyama
Almost all of them say the same thing. Oh, they all say a stable job. Most of them say. I would say that 85% of them say a significant other. And then also a lot of them will say being close to their family.
- [09:16]
Jenny Ehrlich
Wow.
- [09:17]
Hannah Maruyama
Yep.
- [09:17]
Jenny Ehrlich
Wow, Hannah.
- [09:18]
Hannah Maruyama
So it's almost always the same thing.
- [09:19]
Jenny Ehrlich
That's really powerful.
- [09:20]
Hannah Maruyama
Yeah.
- [09:20]
Jenny Ehrlich
When you talk about the educational spend, which I think is such an important concept because we're talking about money, but. And you brought this up in the last one. We're talking about time. We're talking about time. So if you're talking about educational spend, well, you can think about that from preschool to 12th grade. That's a lot of spend. That's a lot of time. We're spending our life, we're spending our childhood. And where are we headed? Does it matter? Because our kids have not taken a test. And I believe that they are going to be wildly successful. Our oldest is 16 and our next is 14. Never taken one test. Our educational spend looks different throughout the entirety of childhood. And I firmly believe that our kids are going to be successful in life. A whole part due to your workbooks. These are the answer for me, Hannah. I am not kidding. This is the answer. I needed this degree. Freeway Workbook. It is the best money you'll ever spend in your life. How to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want. You want to buy it now when they're like 10 or 8 or 12. Because this is going to give you some perspective on how to prepare them. We're talking about educational spend. You said, okay, first of all, college, it costs X amount of dollars. But they only advertise it as four years. But also there's opportunity cost.
- [10:38]
Hannah Maruyama
If you think about this is so. This is so key. So absolutely. The NCES average. The NCES average is $104,000 for a bachelor's degree. That takes four years. But most college graduates don't graduate in four years. Most graduate in five and a half. At which point the cost increases to $156,000. Total lifetime estimate tuition, lost, wages and interest is estimated to be over half a million dollars. It is quite a lot of money. And even if you were to accept the million dollar earnings myth, which is the one where they say if you buy a college degree, any degree you'll make over a million dollars more in your lifetime, which is just patently not true. But let's even say that you do. Now you only have a half a million dollar premium over your peers. And I'm sorry, but you're not your earnings, you're earning half a million dollars more is not an impressive amount of money amortized over your entire life when you won't catch up to the net worth of someone who just started working a minimum wage job when they were 18. You cannot be compound interest. You cannot, especially with the debt. And that's what so many people are just not, it's just not clicking, it's just not. They're not understanding that you can't out earn even if your earnings are higher, but you're in the red, it doesn't matter. And so this is why they say earnings. Like it increases your earnings. It's like, that's great. But if you're still 65 and in debt, you're not secure, right? You're going to keep working until you're 80. And so that's not really, it's not really a good measurement of success. Which is why, like you said, the measurement of success matters so much.
- [12:01]
Jenny Ehrlich
So the whole thing is when you're thinking about educational spend, you have to think about educational spend. Nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about what are we giving up. Nobody talks about the childhoods that we're flushing down the toilet when we don't have to necessarily do that. And I just think that's why this is the most important conversation. Because if you are a parent and you are structuring childhood based off of this false premise that the only way to go is a college degree. And I love how you say buy a college degree. You don't even say earn, you say buy. And I feel like that is very thought provoking. Is very thought provoking. And you provide another way. And also you say, look, if you do want to be a neurosurgeon, yes, you're going to get the college degree. It's not like you discount that you have to, you have to, but that there are so many other paths that you can take and you help the, the, the kid and the parent. I have to say, like for the parent. So one of the things you talk about, you open up this workbook. I love the way that it's laid out. It's a workbook. So you're going to work through all these exercises together. You give a fun idea of like go, go. I would go away with my 16 year old for the weekend. Like if we had a little weekend and you say you can do Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, these are the. Put it in this way, what a fun thing you could do. So it's a workbook, but then you also have stories. And the story you start off with is about graduation panic. And kids feel graduation panic. I did, but so do parents. Parents feel graduation panic because you're, you don't know what to do. And so you talked about this would be your sister in law. She was panicking, staring down the barrel of a thirty thousand dollar per year college degree purchase. No wonder she was stressed. She was sitting there trying to decide how to spend money she didn't have. The only advice she'd been given by her teachers, school counselors and even family was to go to college. She had no idea what to do. But everyone told her, go to college, that's how you'll get a good job. And then you and your husband told her, you don't have to go to college. And she said, no one has ever told me that. What do we do about the panic?
- [14:08]
Hannah Maruyama
So they, the biggest thing is as a parent being okay with whatever their definition of success is. And this is so hard for people. It's so hard for people to just let go of. I need them to do something that will make my family members approve because I know that pressure is really hard. Our friends and you don't want them to look down on your child and as an extension look down on you. Your educational purchases that you make for your child reflect on you. Because all of our purchases reflect on who we are as people. They tell people other things about us and we make those purchases for very deep psychological reasons to heal very deep psychological wounds and needs of approval that we have from other people. And the biggest thing is that as parents you have to be okay with the fact that what they want to do may not line up exactly with what you think they should do to be successful. Because one, the world is completely different, two, the job market is completely different, three, technology is completely different. And four, them being successful is them getting what they want. It is not their life looking like the type of success that you want other people to see. And I know that's hard. I know that's hard. I can only imagine having a child that age and feeling that type of pressure because I've never felt it. But at the same time, the cost of doing so, if the loans were bankruptcy exempt, this would not be as big of a deal. But this is one way debt There is literally no way out of it. I just talked about on our podcast, we did an episode on the Higher Education act and how the government has progressively made it more difficult to get student loans put into bankruptcy on purpose. And the reason they've done that is because it's so profitable. And so if you can make sure KKR just bought a bundle of student loans from Discover and they paid, I believe it was $800 million over market value. Because they know that they can hunt these kids to the end of the earth because they have to pay. They'll garnish their wages, they'll take things from. There is literally no escape patch. There's no way out. And so the biggest thing that parents need to understand is this is such a permanent decision. And so what I want to do is de risk it for your audience. Your child, their brain will be fully formed at 25 years old. Prefrontal cortex, fully formed, adult. Not only will their brain be fully formed, something that I think parents need to understand is that the reason that there's so much pressure to put your kids into student loan debt and sign on the dotted line at 17, 18 years old is because it is tied to your income. And they want you. They want your money. Your child doesn't have any money. They're okay taking theirs, their future earnings, but they want your money. And so they're going to reach through to you, try to reach through to their grandparents, which are also being tapped out. That's one of the largest cohorts taking on student loans right now, and not for themselves, for grandchildren. Yeah, we're wiping out generational wealth because there's going to be no money left to send these people to get home health care for these people when they get sick. It's really bad. This is going to put our country in a really bad position. But to de risk it, your child does not have to go at 17 or 18 years old. They do not have to do that because at 25, their brain will be fully formed. And all of a sudden, the fafsa, when they fill it out, will not be tied to your income, it will be tied to their income, and the cost of college will shoot through the floor. Also, only 25% of college graduates actually end up working in their field of study at all. And I think that the reason that is, is because we send children into student loan debt to buy degrees based on a feeling or based on some high school personality trait or high school interest. At this age, when they don't know what they're doing. They've never shadowed, they never been around that type of work. And so what they're picking is not going to work for them long term because they're going to change so much in that amount of time. And I believe that the responsible thing to do would be to not allow anyone to buy college degrees unless they have cash to do so until they're 25. No one should be allowed to take out student loans until they're 25 years old. And it's only dependent on their income because if they're not earning high, the cost will be low or free. Right. We subsidize that. And so there is no reason why you as a parent should be feeling like you have to push your child into this purchase at 17 or 18. And the way to flip this is to realize that those people that are doing that, most of them, their child is not going to be successful, their child is going to fail. Because you have stacked the financial deck against them, because you have put them in a literally impossible situation where interest and the markets have aligned against them. And it is going to make it difficult for them to get work. It is going to make it extremely difficult for them to actually pay off their loan debt. I had a young man on my podcast, he's my age now. His name is Bradley. He's 30. And he told this story. I could just cry thinking about it. Now, he's from New Jersey and he has an Italian family. And his nana grew up making pastries, making cooking for her family. And so he loved that and he loved it. And that was how he felt love growing up. And he wanted to become a pastry chef. And so out of high school, public high school, his parents were not super financially literate like most of us aren't, to be perfectly honest, with the complex financial system we live in. And he said that at 17 years old. He took out these loans when he was 17, high school counselor told him, go to the Culinary Institute of America, CIA. It's a private culinary school, it will guarantee you a job. And then on the website still to this day, it says that you will immediately make more money. You will make a premium as a result of buying this degree, which is fraudulent. It's a fraudulent claim that they're making. And then he proceeds to go at 17. He actually does graduate in four years, which really just goes to show it wasn't that he slacked off. He was very studious. He finished in four years, even though the system is not designed for you to finish in four years. And then he said that a week before graduation, they called him into the bursar's office and they said, oh, by the way, your monthly payment is going to be, I believe he said, $900 for his student loans. That was going to kick in immediately after he graduated. Immediately.
- [19:52]
Jenny Ehrlich
You're imprisoned by that.
- [19:53]
Hannah Maruyama
He was in a cage. He was in a cage. He's still in it at 30.
- [19:57]
Jenny Ehrlich
He's still in it 13 years later after making that decision.
- [20:01]
Hannah Maruyama
He sat at graduation, he said, and he said I was graduating and I felt like my life was over. He said he thought about killing himself because it would have been easier than paying off the debt he was in. And it was just so heartbreaking because the worst thing that I asked him was, I asked him, well, you know, you. Because he became he got a job as a pastry chef, but he was only making 11 to 15 an hour. And he moved to New York City to try to get an entry level pastry chef job, which is what you do. That's how you work your way up in kitchens. I worked in kitchens a lot when I was younger. He did the things he was supposed to do.
- [20:31]
Ryan
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- [24:56]
Hannah Maruyama
He did exactly what you're supposed to do. But the thing is, no one told him he should have just moved to New York and gotten an entry level job because he could have, he could have made it happen if he had just gone to New York and gotten entry level work making 12 to $15 an hour. He couldn't do it on that amount of money. On making a $900 student loan payment that's increased every single time he paid. Because every single time he paid it, the interest made the payment increase every time he paid it off, more, more, more. These people are buried under an avalanche. And the saddest thing that that happened of that conversation was I asked him, I said, you know, Bradley, do you still love that? You know, because the reason you went into it was because of your grandmother. And he said, no, like I hate it now. It took all the joy out of it for me and it made me very bitter. And I hate it now. Like, I hate doing that. And that's so sad because he could have pursued his passion if he had not bought a college degree. He could have. And so not only is it robbing kids of their ability to pursue their passion if whatever their high school passion is, is real, it's also just boxing them in so you realize he has no options. He has no choices now he can't even do the thing he wants to do because he has to go do something in order to earn as much as he can to pay off his student loan debt. And in the podcast, he talks about some things that he felt like he was forced to do in order to pay his loans off. And it's not pretty. And he's not alone. And that's something that I feel like parents need to understand how serious it is. Because there is no way out of it. There's no way out of it. The only way is to pay it off. And if your child is going to buy a degree to get into something that is low paying, they are making it so that they will have less options later. And I am also, I'm tired of pretending that starting your life off in that amount of debt is not going to affect you buying a home and having children and getting married, because it does. And if people care about their children, having children and feeling like they have the space to propose, you know, to a spouse and have pets that they want, you know, and take trips and actually live a life that they're really happy with and content with, they have to consider this very, very carefully. Because you get one shot, One. And if you do it wrong, it will ruin the rest of your child's life. It is not dramatic to say that because of the way the debt is structured and a lot of people, that pushback I get on this is like, well, why aren't you worried about that? I am worried about that. I recently went to the bitcoin conference. While I was there, I talked to RFK Jr. And I asked him about some sort of federal precedent to make it so that the Higher Education act is reversed and student loans are eligible for bankruptcy again in order to help colleges actually be ethical again, because that would really help. And then I've also written a college lemon law, which is basically a law that makes the colleges co sign the loans and makes them have to hold and reserve money to refund students who do not reach their educational or career goals. Since colleges have decided that they can claim that they accomplish both of those things.
- [27:48]
Jenny Ehrlich
Wow.
- [27:49]
Hannah Maruyama
Yeah.
- [27:49]
Jenny Ehrlich
The whole thing feels like a big old scam. And here's why. Because we take our kids and we put them in this system that allows them to have no direction. It facilitates. I don't know how to even say it. When you go to K12 education, you have no direction because you do what everybody else does. You don't have any time to pursue other things outside of sports, maybe a little bit of hobbies. And so then you get to that panic spot where you have no direction because you've not had any time to figure out what you love in life, what you love to do, what lights you up. And I know you even talk about this isn't even about what you love. Like, it's about what life you want you haven't even thought about it. And then they take these kids who have no life experience, who don't understand budgets and how the world works and how much it costs, and they're panicked and they're scared and we sell them this one option without saying, hey, there's all sorts of other things out there. So what you do in this workbook is you do a step by step when you're panicked and you don't know which direction to go. And you talked about the sister in law, she didn't know what direction to go and she had no idea how to find her direction. It's like this captive audience of panicked parents and panicked kids who then sell them this thing that they're going to be. It's going to be a heavy weight on them, possibly for the rest of their life. And you say, no, no, no, no. Here's the other way. It doesn't start with your passions. It doesn't start with some unclear thought about what you want to do. You want to pet a penguin, you want to. Whatever you always say, what do you want to do? You want to hold a sloth? I don't know. You have all of these different things. You're like, no, you have to start with the life that you want to live. And that may not involve going to college. You talk about, it's not our job to tell you not to go to college, but our job is to give you the option to choose the most efficient path to reach your goals. Okay, so then let's talk about it. What percentage of jobs actually require the college degree?
- [29:47]
Hannah Maruyama
7.7% of all US jobs require a college degree legally to get. I've also rounded up because there are jobs that I put in that category that I would say sometimes people don't. So a good example of that is librarians. Librarians are one that usually it will require a degree in library science, and sometimes if it is a public library, that will be a legal requirement. But there are also some libraries in rural communities, inner city communities, and also private libraries that do not require you to have a college degree in order to be a librarian. And so that's a good example of one that I just put all of them in that category just in case. So the 7.7% estimate is conservative. That means that I overestimated how many actually require degrees. This is really reflected. And you can see where this is really reflected because the numbers that are coming out of actual job sites are telling you that this is true on ZipRecruiter only 14.5% of all the jobs on there even mention a college degree. That means even say preferred on. Indeed, it's less than 20% and shrinking. And this has been going on since 2014. If people look up the Burning Glass Institute, they have been studying the trend of down credentialing in the US since 2014. Basically what happened was after the 2008 recession, what a bunch of companies did was they added on degree requirements to thin the amount of applicants that they were getting. And there's, there's a lot here, but they did that to thin the amount of applicants. But by 2014 that was already backfiring, it was already causing problems. And so they started dropping requirements then. It's been going steadily declining since then. So people think that this is a Covid thing. People think this is recent. It's not. It's been going on for a long time. And also quietly, companies were hiring people who were degree free the entire time if they fit the job. And that's why so many people, it's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. So many people will say, oh well, all these jobs say they require a degree and I don't have one, so I don't apply. I'm like, well that's why you don't have the job. If you let that stop you and you screen yourself out, you can't have that job if you don't apply for it. And so that's one of the biggest things is people just need to apply. They just ignore it. You should just flat out ignore it unless it's legally required. The criteria for legally required is someone would get sued if you got that job and did it without a degree. Like Leonardo DiCaprio and Catch Me if you can where he's the doctor and he's not a doctor. He does not have a medical license. That is an example of a legal degree requirement that requires you have to have a degree in order to get a license to practice medicine. Someone would get sued if you did that without a degree.
- [32:14]
Jenny Ehrlich
So one of the huge things here is that no one has any idea what the jobs are. They don't know. So this is where we started. This is where I heard about you. When Andrew Putawa said most kids can only name eight jobs. It's like teacher, police officer. And you even said, you know, you have these conversations with. And you sit there and wait. She talked through the few job options she knew. Teacher, psychologist, nurse, doctor. I'm not sure of any other ones. Like I'll wait. Can you, can you think of anything else, then it's like, okay, veterinarian, you know, I mean, marine biologists. That's it. And so then you're so limited. That's so scary if you think that's all there is out there. And actually, the ones probably that kids think about often maybe might require a degree legally, like a lawyer or I guess a teacher for the most part. So talk to us about that. How? What, why? How is it that K12 education is supposed to prepare kids for life? This is my life experience, Hannah. And you talk about your life experience. You got your degree and came out making less than you did when you were working in the restaurants. My life experiences, no one said anything about the jobs that were available. And I just became a teacher because that's all I knew that I could do.
- [33:30]
Hannah Maruyama
Yeah, it's Ryan, I think Ryan's experience because I'm degree free. So Ryan's experience was that. Yes, he went and got an economics degree.
- [33:37]
Jenny Ehrlich
Oh, that was Ryan's. Okay. Because you. Yeah, you wrote this book together, but you're right.
- [33:40]
Hannah Maruyama
And then he started. Yeah, he started making less. And so Ryan and I switch off different. We each tell stories because we've both had from different sides of the experience, you know, and also, people can't see Ryan, obviously. They can just see me. But my husband is native Hawaiian, Japanese. And so it was very interesting while my. My nephew was recently here and he is 16. And while he was here, we were talking to him about what he wants to do. And he. Interestingly enough, of course, even though we do what we do, and you can only get your family to listen to you so much. But he was. We were going to say, you know, what do you want in life? And then we start talking to him because he came in, oh, I want to be a personal trainer. And it's like, okay, well, we know why he wants to be a personal trainer. His dad is personal dad is a personal trainer. Right. Which is totally fine. But we said, you know, why do you want to do that? And he said, well, you know, it's. It's a good job. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna go get, you know, a kinesiology degree. And it's like, okay, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Why don't you see if you can get a couple clients first? Because that's actually what personal training is. It's sales, it's marketing, it's business ownership. It's not going to get a kinesiology degree or sports medicine degree, which also has really awful Roi a lot of the time. And he just went, well, that's what you have to do. And I said, no, no, you know, you don't have to do that. I said, let's, let's swipe this. What do you want? And my nephew is from Hawaii and Hawaii is extremely expensive. And so we asked him like, what do you want? And he said, well, I'd like to live near the family. You know, he wants to stay in Hawaii and he wants to live near the family. He wants to own a house. He wants to own a house in Hawaii. Okay, well you can't afford to spend what, uh, currently right now, I believe it's out of State is $198,000 for a four year degree. For him it would probably be close to a hundred thousand dollars. And you know, we just were pretty frank with him. We're like, hey, that, that money is not there for you to do that. So, you know, what's the plan? Because if you want to get married and he said he wants to have three kids and he said he wants to live and he wants to stay in Hawaii and own a house. And it wasn't even a big house. He doesn't want a crazy house, he just wants a normal house. Okay, well, you have to think about one, how you're going to keep yourself out of debt. Because the amount that he would need to pay for the house is quite literally exactly what he would have to pay for the degree for a down payment. If he does that, he will quite literally not be able to do the other things that he wants in life. It was one of those things where it's just so key to work backwards about what they want and then find what works right. Because personal training as a business definitely could work. He could definitely build that into a business. It's profitable for him. But he doesn't need a degree to do that. He does not. This is where we have a lot of kids that just think they have to buy degrees to do anything. They feel like they have to buy permission to start things, to try things, to do things. And homeschoolers are so well positioned better than anybody, better than anybody to make sure their kids do not feel that. Because you don't have to make them feel that way. You control how they feel. You control that pressure on them. You as a parent are a shield against that, against this pressure to make a bankruptcy exempt six figure purchase at 17 and 18 years old. You have to stand in the way and make sure that if your child's going to do that it is because that is the thing that they must do to achieve the goals that help them live the way they want. If they do, great, great. If they don't, you have to just stand there, just hold the line and just let them figure that out. And, and that's so key because. And again, this goes back into the educational spend. But for, for homeschool parents especially, you have an outsized ability to equip your child to be educated and also to have career training before they go into the job market. Homeschoolers demolish public school kids by every available metric. It is not hard for homeschool kids are already more educated than public school kids. They just are, okay? They're also more educated than a meeting college graduate because they only read seven books a year. And I think at that point three of those books are probably like fairy fantasy novels. And so it's not difficult for your child to be more educated than a college graduate. What is difficult is understanding that you don't need permission to help expose your child to different shadowing opportunities. You don't need permission to buy courses for your child that teach them hard technical skills. You don't have to buy permission from people to take your child to the small business chamber of commerce, commerce where you live, to toastmasters, to language learning opportunities and meetups that are literally sometimes free. I want to see people actually be educated. I'm tired of college, which is just debt for a paper that is not applicable for one education or two for career training. At this point. I want to see people reclaim that. I want to see people who, who can speak different languages. I want to see people who have thriving arts, arts hobbies like they have pottery, they have dance, they sing, they do things in their community. They, they go help out at a local 4H farm. They do things that matter, that actually teach you, that help your brain to thrive. They go to chess clubs. That's what education is. They go to the Institute for Excellence in Writing, right? They start to write books. Your kids don't need permission to write books. Your 16 year old wants to write a book, they can do that. You're homeschooling them. They can do whatever they want and they can build this foundation for one entrepreneurial schools going into an economy that is going to increasingly favor talented contract workers. And that is something too that you can do to set them up for one financial success, but to also just life success. Because if they have more control over how they earn money and they build those skills early, they will be so Far ahead of so many other kids. Because all you have to do right now, put your child head of 50% of the population of the US is not put them in student loan debt. That's all you have to do. Nothing. Don't co sign the loans, don't put them in debt. And they are already 50%. They're ahead of 50% of the country if you just do that. That's such a huge thing for parents because I know it feels very scary not to push them into a structure that's there. I know it does. I know it does.
- [39:26]
Jenny Ehrlich
But it should also feel scary to push them into all that debt. And for whatever reason, that's where we're going. Our daughter is 14 years old. And I just have to give props to you, Hannah. I mean, this has really opened up my world. I definitely have the conviction that childhood is not meant for all of this seat work and sitting, but I definitely felt nervous. I'm like, okay, we're getting close to the end here and along you. Thank you to Andrew Putawa and thank you for coming on our show. Even though you were trying to get these books out and now I have these workbooks and I was like, oh, the answer. This is another thing. Sometimes you make a choice and you don't know. You make the choice that you believe is so true without knowing the end. And the answers come along the way. And you, you and Ryan are an answer for me in this season of Life. Like, this is exactly what I needed at this exact time. Our daughter's 14 years old. She wants to be a personal trainer. She just finished up last week, National Academy of Sports Medicine. She took a class less than $1,000. She's taking her test to be certified. I called the instructor, I said, She's 14. They said, she can take it. She's old enough. It's no problem. Her very first test is going to be that. And even if she doesn't pass, even if she doesn't pass and she does it again when she's 18. You know, when she's like. And she's already done it. I was so cool. Hannah, I cannot tell you, she's walking around the house. She's got the class every Tuesday, Thursday on Zoom. She's walking around the house with her computer and she's hitting on mute and answering the questions. And I mean, it was all older people. She's the youngest they ever had. Yeah. She's coming up with different workout every single day. She's like, I want to try this workout. I'm making these different plans. Even if she had to do it again and this was just a learning opportunity for her as a ninth grader. It will be less than $2,000 total.
- [41:07]
Hannah Maruyama
Yeah. Yep, yep. Yes. Yes.
- [41:09]
Jenny Ehrlich
And that's all she needed.
- [41:10]
Hannah Maruyama
Educational spend. Yeah, educational spend.
- [41:13]
Jenny Ehrlich
And she's loved it. That's another thing. It's, it's not been like, I mean some people would hate it, but she knows every piece of the anatomy. I mean she can tell you the fibul. And I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And she's like the scapula. I don't, I don't know. She loves it. And she bought a website read. What does she call it? Headband Gym. Because she always wears a headband. It costs a penny, you know, to buy a website. Right. She, she's got her web. She's got a website.
- [41:39]
Hannah Maruyama
Yeah.
- [41:39]
Jenny Ehrlich
And I just thought what a different path. What a different path. So you talk about thinking creatively about future work. I want to talk through this workbook.
- [41:48]
Hannah Maruyama
Sure.
- [41:49]
Jenny Ehrlich
Okay. First of all, people are going to find it@degreefree.com. yes.
- [41:53]
Hannah Maruyama
Yes. Degreefree Co book. Yes.
- [41:56]
Jenny Ehrlich
Okay. Degreefree Co book. And every parent is going to go buy this right now because you have to buy it. If you have a two year old, go buy the book because this is it. This informs why you do everything that you do. You have to consider the end in mind. So everyone, everyone listening, go buy the workbook. You buy one for you. And there was a deal when I got it. If you got several kids, everyone gets the workbook. It's actually super fun. We were like doing some of them over dinner, Hannah. Where it was like, think of a product. What are all the jobs that would go into this roll of paper towel?
- [42:29]
Hannah Maruyama
Yes.
- [42:29]
Jenny Ehrlich
And everybody, I mean even that it was fun. Right? Okay, so there's six sections of the workbook. Job limit inventory, understanding the limits of your job awareness. You only can think of eight things. That's where most of us are at. How do you have vocational creativity? How do you discover jobs that you didn't know existed? You go through needs versus wants, what you want from your future work. You even have a whole thing about budget, Hannah. I mean this is incredible. This is what no one is getting. You go through all of the budget things like, you know, you have to think about how every, how much everything is going to cost. I have so many notes I can't even find it. It was so good. We are just blindly spending our time. You talk about we're blindly spending our high school trying to gain all these college credits. Oh you. You talked about this. Was this you or Ryan? AP classes?
- [43:18]
Hannah Maruyama
I think that was Ryan because he did it. I took AP classes too in high school, but with no. With no goal. It was just because no goal, graduated.
- [43:26]
Jenny Ehrlich
A semester early, went to college. Why? Why would you want to graduate a semester early? What a bummer you missed out on all that last semester. Don't do that.
- [43:37]
Ryan
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- [45:07]
Hannah Maruyama
It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions.
- [45:12]
Jenny Ehrlich
A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than.
- [45:14]
Hannah Maruyama
We did last year. And my resolution, unlike Big Wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 per month.
- [45:29]
Jenny Ehrlich
New customers on first three month plan.
- [45:30]
Hannah Maruyama
Only taxes and fees. Extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.
- [45:36]
Alyssa Blask Campbell
When it comes to raising kids, there's so much to consider. Things like, what do we feed them? When do we feed them them? How do they sleep? What does it look like to raise kind kids? How does their nervous system work? How do I keep myself calm? What are my triggers? There's so much that comes into play, and we are distilling all of that information for you at Voices of your Village podcast, where we bring experts in the field of early childhood and education and psychology and across the board so that you don't have to comb the Internet for information. You get to show up, up and hang out and have shame free judgment, free conversations and insights into what it looks like to raise kind, empathetic, emotionally intelligent humans. I'm Alyssa Blask Campbell. I have a master's degree in early childhood education. I'm a mom of two and I am walking this journey right alongside you doing this work. Come hang out with me at Voices of your village and we can dive into real conversations, conversations with actionable tips.
- [46:36]
Jenny Ehrlich
Like, what an awful. I mean, but we're pushed into this. Okay, so you also have in here. I know, I'm talking too much.
- [46:42]
Hannah Maruyama
No, no, not at all.
- [46:43]
Jenny Ehrlich
I'm fired up. I just want to let people know that you have the whole budget in here and you go through every single thing of what it might cost. You have to think that through. But then you also do the degree freeway. How to filter the job opportunities to see what opportunities will match. And then you come up with, with, this is so clever. Your degree free three. Yeah, that's very clever. Good word, Indiana. And that's three jobs you can start pursuing today. How to figure that out. And then at the very end, you go down the legal requirement. Do I need to buy a degree to get that job? What a workbook. This is incredible.
- [47:19]
Hannah Maruyama
What I want to talk about now that you gave people the overview of it, which was so good, is now that you have the degree free 3. This is not an easy process. The reason people don't do this is because it takes hours and hours and hours of research on top of the book itself. And we know that because that's what we do in the launch program. And it takes us a week to go through that process for every individual that comes through the program. But for parents, let me tell you how to reverse engineer this now, because that was one of the things, one of the pieces of feedback we got that. I would not call it negative, but where people are like, I thought this was a list of jobs. A list of jobs that do not require college degrees would be 3,333 pages long with no glossary, with no context, with no nothing, just here's the job and this is what the job is. It would be out of date every two weeks because those things change constantly. Not only that, but if people can't use the Internet to look up the jobs, they're not going to read through a 3330 page book just for context. That that book would be between, I think that book would be 80, 80 pounds to be huge. It would be this big. No one wants that. So people been saying, oh, I want a list of jobs. I'm like, I promise you, you do not want a list of jobs that would not be useful to you. What you want is to go through this process because you don't want to over complicate. Because having too many options is also just as bad as having too few options. It's the same. And so what you want is you want to change the way your child thinks about this. Take the top three that fit their needs, that they're also interested in. Because now you have, now you do have passion and you do have, and you do have their needs met. And then you go and you look up those job listings and you see in the job descriptions what they're asking for. You ignore experience and degree requirements always. And what you do is you look through and you see what words do I not know? What software do I not know? What hardware tools do I not know what licenses are they asking for here, what certifications are they asking for here? And then you decide with your child which one is the most high impact for them to pursue. Jenny, exactly the way you did it. Literally, exactly like that. Because that's how it's supposed to work. Because you go, all right, what fits your needs? And then from there, okay, what is the minimum effective dose here to get into this industry and to get into this field? Because they can always go further up and further in. Right? They can always go deeper into whatever industry that is like for your daughter, I am sure that if she continues on the trajectory she's at, she's going to have to go into, she's going to have to learn digital marketing, she's going to have to learn, she's going to have to learn social media marketing.
- [49:52]
Jenny Ehrlich
And we already know that.
- [49:54]
Hannah Maruyama
Yeah, paid ads, SEO. Yeah. So she can niche down, she can Go into fitness for women who are postpartum. She can go into fitness for, like, former D1 athletes. She can go into fitness, you know, she can go into personal training for, you know, busy homeschool moms. Like, she can niche down and then stack the skills that she needs to become extremely good and extremely knowledgeable. And she can follow her curiosity wherever it goes. And this is how people end up in their passion, working in their passion the way that I am now, because I didn't have to worry about debt and there was a roof over my head and clothes over my back and food on my table so that I had the freedom to feel like I could pursue my interests and the value problems that I wanted to fix in the world. And that is exactly what will happen if your daughter just continues to do what she's doing now. That's how it's supposed to be. This is how you end in your passion and you change the world that way.
- [50:50]
Jenny Ehrlich
And, Hannah, it's so cool because when you say that. And there was something that changed my life a long time ago. It's John Holt wrote this book called Learning all the Time, and he was talking about how kids should see more of the adult world. That's it. That was the blanket statement. And that changed my life. I wasn't showing my kids any of the adult world. I was just telling them what to. And so I changed the. Really, the only reason I sit here is because of that paragraph of that book. Because I started to be more serious then about 1000 hours outside. Not only because I'm passionate about that, but also as an avenue to allow our kids to see adult work. It's been about eight years since I read that book. And now I have all of these skill sets I could pass down to them. How to do podcasts, how to publish a book, how to do social media marketing, how to niche down, how to build relationships. Like, the path has included me and my own growth. All of those skill sets are now. They're already in our family. They're already here. And so what a thing. What a thing that. That counts. That counts. And also, you know, I just. Like you said, I've read 120 books this year. What I think is what I'm at. I started a Goodreads account. Yes. And I'm so excited. I'm at 120. I'm like, here's the thing that counts as learning, that counts as growth. Like that actually matters. And it doesn't have to be from some university.
- [52:14]
Hannah Maruyama
I'm sitting here Right now. It's funny because when you, you know, when you first start building something online, you stop reading. I used to read voraciously and recently I have not been because I've been doing so much work. But I just picked up, we got my Aristotle right here. And I was like, I need to go back through this because I, I need to go back and I need to actually just open my mind up again and learn more about logic. I need to learn more about history. And I was like, guess what? Open a book. Open a book.
- [52:38]
Jenny Ehrlich
Yeah.
- [52:39]
Hannah Maruyama
And that's the beauty of reducing back down education to what it actually is. And this is why I'm so passionate about calling college education and not doing that. Because what it does is it puts up a wall that doesn't need to exist. You create a walled garden around education, which is something that is accessible to everyone, everywhere in the entire world. Everyone has the ability and the access to better themselves as long as they can read. And that's something that I feel so strongly about. And that's why just blanketing people with the term educated when they've bought paper from a college, I don't, I'm not about it, I won't do it. Because there are people who are far more educated than your most educated PhD, right? And then your most papered PhD, and that's because they read and they're intellectually curious and they question and they think and everyone has the ability to do that. And that's why I think that we, once we stop locking these things up from our society and telling them they can't do that, they can't do these things, they're not allowed to, they're not these things that they don't buy or our society gets much better, it improves drastically. And that in combination with the fact that when people feel empowered to educate themselves, they will not only that, but what I see when kids start, and I think homeschooled kids are going to build the future because they have the ability to work on things that matter earlier. And while everybody's going to have their opinions about Bill Gates. But if you look at a lot of really high up tech CEOs, a lot of them, the ones that have built the companies that are currently worth the most, the most, many of them have extremely similar stories. Married to parent homes with the support to be intellectually curious when they were 13 and 14 years old, you see that with a lot of really successful actors, with a lot of really successful performers, with a lot of really successful business owners, is that they were allowed to explore and try and do things earlier than everybody else. And no one told them to buy permission to do it it. And when that happened and when that set a precedent in their life for them to just teach themselves the things they needed to know and then execute. And that going into the future, especially with AI and for your audience that listened to me before knows that I. I have a background in AI. That was where I was before I started running degree free was AI and machine learning for Fortune 50 SaaS companies. That's what I was doing. So people that are afraid of AI. I know a lot of parents are afraid of AI. Don't be afraid of AI. The future is extremely bright for people that know how to cultivate extremely valuable human skills like your daughter will have, and for people who know how to work on the things that are on the types of machines and AI that are going to run the future. Those are the two things your children can become. Amazing artists, amazing salespeople, amazing personal trainers. There is the potential for them to do that. They have to start now so they can be better than other people, because ones that are mediocre or not very good are not going to be able to get to that level. But your children, if they start them early and you allow them the space and you equip them with the correct tools to teach themselves, it is amazing what they will do. Amazing. They will blow past all of us. They are going to be so far ahead of where we were because of the age that they're growing up in. There is so much hope, there is so much beauty in the future. And that's something that I think really lacks right now. And the way that we shovel kids into college is we do it with fear. We do it with fear. And not because they want to do it, but we do it because we make them feel like they must, not because it's actually something they want to do. And you as parents, can keep it from happening. I want to make a Smokey the Bear T shirt that says only you can prevent unforgivable student debt. But that's kind of how I feel.
- [56:18]
Jenny Ehrlich
Wow. Wow. Jerry Kaplan is a professor at Stanford. He wrote a book called Generative Artificial Intelligence. What Every. What Buddy Needs to Know. And he said the future of work. Work involves more humanity, not less. People are sick of being on their screens. So if you can have good social skills, if you can have good hobbies, if you can. He. He talked about, like, can you grow prized orchids and, you know, can you knit cat sweaters? And you know, like, this is it. People want hands on, they want their hands on stuff. And I just thought that was so hope filled as well. And those are things that you can do starting really young. I loved this. Every product we use, okay, so you say understanding the huge network behind every items, everyday items and experiences is key. One of the biggest problems is not knowing what jobs are out there. So every product we use and every single service we enjoy comes from a web of skilled people, from a cup of coffee to a movie night. Every experience is a puzzle of professions. Oh, I just love the way you worded that. But nobody talks about that. Nobody. You know, we were with a guy recently. We did a 1000 hours outside trip to Moab, Utah. One of the guys on the trip, one of the dads, he works for like sat. He works for like the testing. I was like, I never in my life thought about that as a job. You know, like, nobody talks about what they do. That's outside of the eight things that everybody can think about. Why don't adults talk about what they're doing?
- [57:44]
Hannah Maruyama
They don't know. They don't know. This is one of the core reasons that Ryan and I struggled with. We got. Because we've sold. I believe there are 10,000 families now in the US in every single state in the country that have used the degree freeway, which is so that's amazing. Also, we got tons of inbound inquiries to teach it in public schools. And I was really, really hesitant about that. And I'm hesitant about that because right now a lot of what we deal with is the fallout of the public school system being completely unable to guide kids through this, which is so unfortunate. But the reason is because. And I have, I only have four close friends in the world, and one of them is a speech language pathologist in a public school. And while it's so dear to me, she has no vocational creativity. None. Zero. And were I just give her something like this, it still really limits her with what she would think that other people can do because of the way that she has been taught and what is possible for kids. I've had kids come into the launch program who were on IEPs, which is the public school system is, you know, like a performance, basically a performance plan for something's wrong with you. You have a learning disability. And a lot of times they don't have a learning disability. School is just not a good system for them and it's failed them because it's not good at individual tailoring of education because it's not designed to do that. It's designed to sell student loans. Loans. And so when they can't sell student loans to these kids, they leave them by the wayside. But they come into the launch program and I've had several that went on to learn software development skills. They're going to be fine software developers. There's no reason. But had we given this to a school, they would have told them no, like, you can only go into this. Like you can only go into the trades, because that's their default. And what on the flip side, then they're telling these high academic achievers, the 5.0 GPA kids, which is a real thing now, they're saying, oh, well, you need to go into, you need to go become a doctor or whatever, like whatever paper profession they should go into, as opposed to telling them actually what you want. You could go into a trade because this is a good fit for the type of life you want to live and the skills you want to learn would help you to build a business that would be really successful. And so both kids are being underserved in different ways. And that's the biggest thing that I see coming in. And so that's why we've, we've really struggled with the decision to give it to the schools. Because if I think that if this is given to teachers who you don't have the correct mindset. Mindset is really key here. And if you don't have the correct mindset going in, you're going to limit that. I'm afraid that teachers are going to limit certain kids and they're going to use our method to limit certain kids, which I am not about, because that's the whole point, is to not do that. But it's, it's such an interesting thing to see, though, how everyone who comes in gets a different result. Right? And it's completely based on their needs, it's completely based on what they want. And that's why it's so important for parents to go through the book with their kids, because that's why we designed it to work for parents. That's why there's two. One is for you to sit there and do it alongside them so they don't feel like you're lurking over their shoulder. You know that teenagers hate that. And it makes them feel like you're doing something together as opposed to standing over them and making sure they, they fill out something or grilling them, which they hate. And then it's basically just designed to help you also shift your mindset at the same time, which clearly is, is the biggest thing. Because if you as a parent feel that this is possible and you start looking at things in a more dynamic way, all of a sudden the way that you thought the puzzle looked just shatters. And, and there's just all of these different things that you can go, we live in 2024 in the United States of America. There is almost nothing that is off limits to you as a parent to pull into your child's orbit. Especially when you put a hundred thousand dollars spend behind it for a quarter of that. What you can do, investing that money into your child is just unbelievable. Anything from tech to trades. And the last is that I've recently seen. This is a double edged sword, this. But recently people have talked about, oh, America's next millionaires are plumber and H Vac. And one I saw somebody referring to those, those jobs as non traditional jobs, which is patently insane because, because they're the most traditional jobs that you could ever have. But Jenny, do you see how that's college marketing. They have labeled the trades non traditional. College is traditional. Even though most people have never bought degrees, never in, in the history of the United States, most of the employed workforce has never bought college degrees. But now it's non traditional to send your child to apprentice in a trade. How is that non traditional? That is the oldest form career training. It's the oldest form.
- [62:18]
Jenny Ehrlich
They're doing the same with the food too. The farmers that just farm, they're like, they're. That's abnormal. I mean this is.
- [62:24]
Hannah Maruyama
I just saw marketing post about that. That's exactly it. I saw that exact post that you, that you're talking about from. What was his name? Was his name Josh or the guy that you had Joel Salad? Joel.
- [62:35]
Jenny Ehrlich
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [62:36]
Hannah Maruyama
Great.
- [62:36]
Jenny Ehrlich
Yeah, yeah. It's all, it's all a twist. It's a big old twist. We are blindly spending our lives, I would say and I. We probably have thousands of books in our home that the most important book, certainly the most important workbook, the most important book is this because we should not and cannot blindly spend childhood for some stupid reason. And if we're blindly spending childhood and then setting our kids up, up for these awful consequences that they are going to carry. And I have friends too. I'm going to be a dentist. Then they come out, they got $200,000 of debt, but they just want to be a mom and they cannot because they have a $2,200 a month payment and they have to work. They have to work. We are imprisoning our kids with these decisions. And, Hannah, your podcast, it's like, as a parent, you make these choices that feel so scary at the time. You're like, you got your shaky knees and you're like, I think. I think that my kids are going to be fine if they play. I think. I believe it. I've read all these things. But when you get to the end and you're like, I still feel a little shaky. And then along comes your answer. Along it comes, and yours is the answer, Hannah. I think there is nothing more important than this. Every single family listening to this podcast, every single family that comes across what you're doing, every single family should just know about it. You have to know how to help your child, child launch in a way that's going to give them a fulfilling life. And in doing so, I think it gives you more freedom in how you structure their childhood. People ask me, which one am I supposed to listen to? And I'm like, the most important that you have to listen to is this one, because it. It defines every decision that you're gonna make.
- [64:17]
Hannah Maruyama
It really leads into what. Into what you're doing. Because the way that you. You're. You. The thing that you and Josh have developed. We're trying to do that. That I'm literally trying to do a thousand dollars outside of. We. We spent a lot of time outside, but not near a thousand. And I was like, okay, we need to do that. Because I realize upstream from that freedom and that ability to play and explore is what we're doing here, which is like, you don't have to do all these things and check all these boxes and stress yourself out and stress your kids out.
- [64:42]
Jenny Ehrlich
Yeah. And blindly spend their lives. I feel like we are a match made in heaven. I want you to know that you are an answer to what so many of these, especially homeschool families, are looking for because they do feel shaky as soon as they hit high school. About. Um. So this is like your target market is the homeschool mom of an eighth grader, you know, who is like, okay. And it gives them the resolve and the confidence that it's going to be okay. So huge kudos. Thank you for what you've done.
- [65:09]
Hannah Maruyama
Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate you being so enthusiastic and being willing to have me back on. I. I really appreciate you sharing your platform. You know, huge. Huge thanks to you and to Josh and everything. And. Yeah. It's just. It's awesome. And I'm so glad that it's helping you like that. When you talk about your tutor. That's exactly what we did. And it's so cool to see people just, just break all these things that they would have just had to, you know, and their life would have been completely different. And it, you're right. It keeps people from being moms. It keeps people from being stay at home moms that they want to. It keeps them from being homeschool moms, which has generational impact. It's huge. It's huge. It's so important.
- [65:48]
Jenny Ehrlich
It's huge. The book is the degree free way. How to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want. You can also do the launch program with Hannah and Ryan. Over 10,000 across the country have done. What an amazing investment into your child's future, into your grandchildren's future. This is generational. You don't know where it's going to go, but is really going to have so much good. You wrote degrees are optional, skills are required. Degrees should always be a last resort, not a first option. They are the most expensive, most time consuming and most risky. Every other option should be considered first. I adore you, Hannah. You have really changed our life. Thank you for being here.
- [66:29]
Hannah Maruyama
Thank you so much, Jenny.