2024-05-30_Highest_Paying_Summer_Job_for_Teens
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00:01:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:01:02.000 | Today on the podcast, I would like to give some advice to teenagers
00:01:06.000 | and parents of teenagers related to a summer job.
00:01:12.000 | And in today's podcast, I am going to tell you
00:01:15.000 | what I believe is the highest-paying summer job
00:01:19.000 | that is available for teens.
00:01:22.000 | This summer job will make you far more than minimum wage.
00:01:27.000 | It could pretty easily make you 10x minimum wage.
00:01:32.000 | It possibly could make you as much as a few hundred dollars per hour.
00:01:37.000 | And I am not exaggerating.
00:01:40.000 | That job, very simply, is to apply for scholarships,
00:01:47.000 | especially college scholarships.
00:01:51.000 | Some months back, a friend of mine who has many teenagers
00:01:55.000 | wrote to me and said, "Joshua, how can I teach my teens to make money?
00:02:01.000 | What's the best way for my teens to make money?"
00:02:04.000 | And I've been thinking about this for quite a long time.
00:02:07.000 | And obviously, there are many things that a teenager can do to make money.
00:02:11.000 | And in fact, I'm very grateful that there are more things today
00:02:14.000 | that a teenager can do to make money
00:02:17.000 | more than ever before in human history.
00:02:20.000 | Now, this particular friend of mine lives in Europe,
00:02:24.000 | and there's not a place where, in the town where she lives,
00:02:28.000 | it's unlikely that her children will be able to get
00:02:31.000 | kind of the standard American-style summer job.
00:02:34.000 | But that doesn't mean that there aren't employment opportunities.
00:02:37.000 | There's always opportunities for a job.
00:02:40.000 | But I think, don't we want a little bit more?
00:02:43.000 | Wouldn't we like to make a little bit more money?
00:02:45.000 | And so you go to things like self-employment or business.
00:02:48.000 | Well, one of the nice things about the Internet Revolution
00:02:51.000 | is that if a teenager is able to develop the skills
00:02:54.000 | that the market values, then that teenager can access
00:02:58.000 | a global job market.
00:03:00.000 | And because of being able to be hidden behind a computer screen,
00:03:03.000 | oftentimes the teenager can surpass the standard built-in age discrimination
00:03:07.000 | that teens face in the workplace and earn good money.
00:03:11.000 | However, as I've thought about that--
00:03:13.000 | and by the way, I'll talk more about that in the future--
00:03:16.000 | as I've thought about that, I've always been struck by this balance.
00:03:21.000 | And the balance is simply how many teens
00:03:24.000 | are actually going to be able to do that stuff.
00:03:28.000 | We celebrate enormously successful teen entrepreneurs, rightly,
00:03:33.000 | because it's very unusual.
00:03:36.000 | And while all of us think that, of course,
00:03:38.000 | our children are absolutely number one,
00:03:41.000 | we have to acknowledge the fact that, many times,
00:03:44.000 | teens don't have these skills, and it's difficult to develop them.
00:03:47.000 | That's not to say that we shouldn't be giving them good coaching
00:03:50.000 | to help and develop those skills,
00:03:53.000 | but all of the alternative radical ideas related to making money as a teenager
00:03:58.000 | require some pretty ambitious teens and pretty ambitious parents.
00:04:03.000 | Now, it's my aspiration to raise such ambitious teens,
00:04:07.000 | and I hope that you also have that ambition.
00:04:10.000 | But as I've thought about it, I think there is a simpler path.
00:04:14.000 | And the path doesn't sound very radical when I talk about it,
00:04:18.000 | because guess what it is?
00:04:20.000 | Do well in school, go to college, get advanced degrees if possible,
00:04:26.000 | and get great jobs that start great careers.
00:04:30.000 | It doesn't sound all that unique,
00:04:33.000 | because, after all, that's the standard advice.
00:04:36.000 | But just because it's the standard advice doesn't mean that it's wrong.
00:04:40.000 | In fact, in this case, I think it is good advice.
00:04:44.000 | I've pondered this for years.
00:04:45.000 | I've pondered how much do we encourage entrepreneurial endeavors,
00:04:49.000 | how much do we do that as compared to academics.
00:04:53.000 | And I'm pretty well persuaded that academics should be the primary job
00:04:59.000 | for most of our young people.
00:05:03.000 | Students who are skilled with academics should focus intensively on those academics,
00:05:11.000 | and they should focus as intensively as possible on mastering that system.
00:05:18.000 | Teens should focus on getting straight A's.
00:05:21.000 | Teens should develop study skills so that they can do well in class
00:05:25.000 | and get top grades without actually working all that hard.
00:05:29.000 | They should put hours and hours and hours into preparation for important exams,
00:05:34.000 | such as PSAT and SAT and ACT and AP exams and CLEP exams and A-levels
00:05:42.000 | and the Abitur and all of the various baccalaureate, the baccirato,
00:05:52.000 | all the European things as well, if you're a European listener.
00:05:56.000 | You should do all of them.
00:05:57.000 | And those are really, really important.
00:06:00.000 | Those are really, really important for you to focus your time and your attention on.
00:06:04.000 | That system is not broken.
00:06:06.000 | That system is working very, very well today.
00:06:10.000 | Students who are capable of high academics and who are motivated for high academics
00:06:15.000 | should be focusing on that system.
00:06:18.000 | And I do not think that from a purely financial perspective,
00:06:22.000 | I do not think that there is any after-school job that is going to be superior
00:06:29.000 | in high school to doing well in academics.
00:06:33.000 | Now, I'm going to focus today's podcast on the topic of scholarships,
00:06:38.000 | but I'd like to talk for a few hours about all the things that you can add to that,
00:06:42.000 | all the things you can do in high school, all of the internships you can take,
00:06:45.000 | all of the unpaid work, all of the volunteering,
00:06:48.000 | and how even that stuff really pays off.
00:06:50.000 | My point here is just to say that that system works really, really well.
00:06:55.000 | And I fear that in the current strong swing against college,
00:07:04.000 | I fear that we've swung very far the other way.
00:07:07.000 | And I fear that we're going to spend more time telling students,
00:07:11.000 | "You've got to focus on building a business,"
00:07:13.000 | instead of helping them to succeed within the academic environment and context.
00:07:18.000 | Here's how I see it pretty simply.
00:07:21.000 | If you are capable of getting good grades or if you're capable of doing well on exams,
00:07:29.000 | either by dint of your natural intellectual ability or your absolute work ethic,
00:07:36.000 | that should be your primary focus.
00:07:40.000 | That should be your major area of focus.
00:07:43.000 | Do entrepreneurship if you're interested, but don't think that that's a magic path to wealth.
00:07:50.000 | It may work out well, and you can always do entrepreneurship,
00:07:53.000 | and you can do entrepreneurship alongside your academics.
00:07:56.000 | It's valuable, but don't neglect focus on academics.
00:08:02.000 | Why don't people see the value of focusing on academics?
00:08:07.000 | One big reason, which is what I'm focusing on today,
00:08:11.000 | is that they think the payoff is many, many years in the future.
00:08:17.000 | They think that the payoff is, "Well, after I finish high school and after I go to college
00:08:23.000 | and after I pay $150,000 for a college degree,
00:08:27.000 | then I'll finally start to make some money,
00:08:31.000 | and maybe I can have my student loans paid off by the time I'm 30."
00:08:35.000 | Well, this is nonsense.
00:08:37.000 | This is ignorant nonsense.
00:08:40.000 | Your focus on academics can pay off very, very quickly,
00:08:46.000 | possibly in as few as two or three or four years, depending on your age,
00:08:50.000 | if you know what you're doing and you're paying attention to life.
00:08:56.000 | Now, unfortunately, most of us, when we are teens, we are ignorant.
00:09:01.000 | I was ignorant, totally ignorant in high school, totally ignorant in college.
00:09:07.000 | I never even imagined that there were people out there who could give me good advice.
00:09:13.000 | I have a friend of mine who is a professional guidance counselor
00:09:17.000 | at an elite international private school,
00:09:19.000 | and his entire career is helping the children of elite parents
00:09:24.000 | to go and fulfill their dreams and be placed into a college environment
00:09:29.000 | that is a good fit for them.
00:09:31.000 | Not a single time in high school did I meet with my guidance counselor.
00:09:38.000 | I knew the guy's name, but I never had a clue.
00:09:41.000 | No one explained to me what a guidance counselor was,
00:09:44.000 | what a guidance counselor did.
00:09:46.000 | I didn't even imagine that there were resources out there that could help me.
00:09:50.000 | I didn't have a clue.
00:09:52.000 | When I went to college, I didn't engage in any strategic planning.
00:09:57.000 | I took an SAT exam.
00:10:04.000 | I never studied for an SAT exam.
00:10:06.000 | I just took it.
00:10:07.000 | I got a score.
00:10:08.000 | I assumed that that was the point of the test.
00:10:10.000 | I didn't know you could study for the SAT exam.
00:10:13.000 | I didn't know you could take prep classes.
00:10:15.000 | I didn't know you could take prep books.
00:10:16.000 | No one sat me down and explained to me how crucial this number was.
00:10:21.000 | I never had a clue.
00:10:22.000 | I just went, took the exam, got a score, figured, "All right, now that's done."
00:10:26.000 | I never took the ACT.
00:10:28.000 | I never tried for much of anything else.
00:10:30.000 | I took a few AP exams because I thought it would be fun,
00:10:33.000 | but no one coached me on actually preparing for the AP exams.
00:10:36.000 | I didn't know how to study.
00:10:38.000 | I just kind of naturally did okay and passed most of them
00:10:41.000 | and failed a few of them and kind of went on with my life.
00:10:44.000 | When I went to college, I applied to exactly one college,
00:10:47.000 | and I applied for exactly one extra scholarship
00:10:52.000 | simply because my siblings had all gotten the scholarship.
00:10:56.000 | I didn't know you could go and apply for many scholarships,
00:10:59.000 | so I got a little bit of merit-based aid from my university.
00:11:03.000 | I got a Florida Bright Futures scholarship based upon my GPA,
00:11:07.000 | and I got a Kiwanis scholarship because all of my siblings
00:11:10.000 | had all gotten a Kiwanis scholarship, and so I knew to apply for that.
00:11:13.000 | I never even dreamed that I could go and apply for more scholarships,
00:11:17.000 | and so I trotted off to school, and with the owed money,
00:11:20.000 | started borrowing money on student loans,
00:11:22.000 | and I just assumed that was the way it was.
00:11:24.000 | I was entirely ignorant of all of the world of money
00:11:30.000 | that could be thrown at me if I just exercised a little bit of attention
00:11:34.000 | and a little bit of initiative, and I desperately wish
00:11:38.000 | I had figured it out that I'd gotten coaching.
00:11:40.000 | I don't blame anybody. I don't blame anybody but myself,
00:11:43.000 | but I was too dumb to go and ask questions.
00:11:46.000 | So what I want to explain to you, either the teen or aspiring teen
00:11:51.000 | or parent of a teen today, is how wrong that thinking is,
00:11:56.000 | and I want to tell you why studying for school, taking exams,
00:12:00.000 | doing exam prep, applying for scholarships
00:12:04.000 | is probably the best-paying work that you can possibly do.
00:12:08.000 | Now, let me defend quickly the point I made about
00:12:11.000 | you don't have to wait for many years.
00:12:13.000 | Here's the math of college. When people look at college,
00:12:17.000 | especially today in which it has now become very popular
00:12:21.000 | to gripe about college and to say it's not worth it,
00:12:24.000 | the whole system is broken, it's not worth it,
00:12:26.000 | and it's too expensive, what if college were free?
00:12:32.000 | What if college were entirely free?
00:12:35.000 | Even better, what if you got paid to go to college?
00:12:41.000 | Would that change the math? Would that change the calculus?
00:12:46.000 | And here I mean calculus in the sense that
00:12:48.000 | your own calculations of cost versus value.
00:12:53.000 | This is the missing point that people do not understand
00:12:58.000 | when it comes to college.
00:13:00.000 | I would be very slow to encourage someone to go to college
00:13:05.000 | if the cost of college was to go out and spend $150,000
00:13:10.000 | and borrow it on student loans to go and get a mediocre degree
00:13:14.000 | from a mediocre college.
00:13:16.000 | In that specific circumstance, I'm going to be on
00:13:19.000 | the anti-college bandwagon for that student.
00:13:23.000 | Instead of that, I'm going to go and encourage the student
00:13:25.000 | to go and get a quick, fast, and easy degree online
00:13:30.000 | so you can just check the box that I've got a college degree,
00:13:33.000 | and I'm going to focus on getting into a career,
00:13:35.000 | getting into work, and just getting the degree fast, easy, and cheap.
00:13:39.000 | I'm not going to go deep into college financing,
00:13:42.000 | but the idea that college today is expensive is absurd.
00:13:46.000 | College is only expensive at universities that publish
00:13:50.000 | their rates as expensive private universities,
00:13:54.000 | and it's only expensive if you don't get any financial aid.
00:13:58.000 | And yet, in the way the U.S. system works,
00:14:01.000 | they throw financial aid money at you if you're intelligent
00:14:05.000 | and get good grades and a little bit accomplished,
00:14:08.000 | even if you are dedicated to understanding the system.
00:14:11.000 | Ironically, I have an outline somewhere in my notes
00:14:14.000 | for a show that I had planned to do.
00:14:16.000 | I'll just give you the teaser of it.
00:14:18.000 | Did you know that the rate of--
00:14:21.000 | in which Scandinavia? I think it was Sweden--
00:14:24.000 | that in one of the Scandinavian countries,
00:14:27.000 | which has a lot of social welfare,
00:14:31.000 | in which tuition is entirely free,
00:14:34.000 | did you know that-- I think it's Sweden--
00:14:37.000 | has some of the highest rates of student loan balances,
00:14:41.000 | even though the college itself is free,
00:14:45.000 | without tuition, for everybody?
00:14:48.000 | It's astonishing.
00:14:50.000 | Whereas in the United States,
00:14:52.000 | there's so much money available for you,
00:14:54.000 | not only with regard to scholarships and financial aid,
00:14:59.000 | real financial aid, not loans,
00:15:01.000 | but in all kinds of grants and fellowships
00:15:03.000 | and things that are available to you,
00:15:05.000 | but even just in terms of the low cost.
00:15:07.000 | Let me stay on track.
00:15:09.000 | The point is, back to the $150,000 school.
00:15:11.000 | Now let's change it.
00:15:13.000 | Let's assume that I tell you you can go to a college
00:15:16.000 | and the college or some benefactor
00:15:18.000 | is going to pay the full cost of $150,000 for you.
00:15:23.000 | That $150,000 is going to cover all your tuition,
00:15:26.000 | all of your room and board,
00:15:28.000 | all of your expenses, your books,
00:15:30.000 | everything for you.
00:15:32.000 | And all you got to do is go to college and get good grades.
00:15:36.000 | Well, now everything changes
00:15:38.000 | because the normal course load
00:15:41.000 | in a university is laughably easy.
00:15:45.000 | Full-time is considered to be 12 to 18 credit hours per week
00:15:50.000 | over the course of two academic semesters per year.
00:15:54.000 | Let's say you're taking a full course load of 18 hours per week.
00:15:58.000 | Now, my engineering students and my mathematics students
00:16:02.000 | and somebody, maybe the physics student,
00:16:04.000 | something like that, will quickly know
00:16:06.000 | that yes, you do actually have to do homework.
00:16:09.000 | I never even dreamed of doing an hour of homework
00:16:12.000 | for every hour of class,
00:16:13.000 | even though I probably should have.
00:16:15.000 | I never did that.
00:16:16.000 | Not a single time did I ever do an hour of homework
00:16:18.000 | for an hour of class.
00:16:20.000 | So, but let's say that you do.
00:16:22.000 | Let's say that you're going to do an hour of homework
00:16:24.000 | for every hour of class.
00:16:26.000 | You're up to 36 hours a week of obligation.
00:16:29.000 | Let's say that you are an engineering student
00:16:31.000 | or a physics student,
00:16:33.000 | and now you're going to do two hours of homework
00:16:36.000 | reliably and consistently for every one hour of class,
00:16:41.000 | and you're going to take 18 credit hours.
00:16:44.000 | Guess what your obligation is?
00:16:47.000 | 54 hours a week.
00:16:50.000 | 54 hours a week, that's it.
00:16:52.000 | And you're living in a place where you walk to class,
00:16:55.000 | you walk back to your dorm room.
00:16:57.000 | That is the easiest life anybody can imagine.
00:17:00.000 | You have another 60 hours a week available to you
00:17:04.000 | that you could do anything you want.
00:17:07.000 | There's nothing you can't do when you're in college,
00:17:11.000 | even if you're taking a full load.
00:17:13.000 | So all of the things that people alternatively say,
00:17:15.000 | they say, "Well, you know what?
00:17:17.000 | I shouldn't go to college because I want to start a business."
00:17:19.000 | Guess what? Go start the business.
00:17:21.000 | Let someone pay for your college degree.
00:17:22.000 | Go start the business.
00:17:23.000 | Or they say, "I've got to work." You can work.
00:17:25.000 | My senior year of college is about the only year of college
00:17:28.000 | that I'm actually proud of.
00:17:29.000 | I took 19 hours of class, both semesters,
00:17:32.000 | senior capstone courses.
00:17:33.000 | I worked 40 hours a week at a job I had to commute to.
00:17:36.000 | I got straight A's, and I still had plenty of time
00:17:38.000 | for fun and travel.
00:17:39.000 | It worked fine.
00:17:40.000 | So you can work a 40-hour job.
00:17:42.000 | You don't have to choose is the point.
00:17:44.000 | This is what's fallacious about everyone who argues about,
00:17:47.000 | "Should I go to college or should I not go to college?"
00:17:49.000 | So if you're the kind of person who is college-bound
00:17:52.000 | based upon either you can do academics or you can hustle
00:17:55.000 | and learn to do academics, you should go to college,
00:17:58.000 | especially if you can get people to pay for it.
00:18:00.000 | So how do you get people to pay for it?
00:18:02.000 | Well, you sit down and you start figuring out
00:18:05.000 | how the system works.
00:18:07.000 | And the secret to the system is a couple-fold.
00:18:10.000 | I'm doing a very focused podcast here.
00:18:13.000 | I probably should teach a 20-hour class on it.
00:18:16.000 | But the basic idea is you need to highly qualify yourself
00:18:22.000 | on the metrics that people are looking for for qualifications
00:18:26.000 | and then market yourself to all of the people
00:18:29.000 | who are looking for qualified people like you.
00:18:32.000 | Now, there's a little bit of distinction that we need to make
00:18:34.000 | because the kinds of things that a student should do
00:18:37.000 | to qualify himself, for example, to get into an elite university
00:18:41.000 | are often different than the kinds of things
00:18:43.000 | that a student should do to qualify himself
00:18:45.000 | for getting a great scholarship.
00:18:47.000 | So I'm not talking today about admission to an elite university.
00:18:52.000 | Here's what I never understood, though, when I was young.
00:18:56.000 | I remember one time I was briefly--
00:18:59.000 | I was taking a class in college,
00:19:02.000 | and someone told me about a Harvard MBA
00:19:05.000 | and how prestigious it was.
00:19:07.000 | And I thought for a moment, "Hey, that'd be pretty cool.
00:19:10.000 | "Wouldn't it be fun to go and do something prestigious
00:19:12.000 | "like apply to Harvard?"
00:19:13.000 | So first thing I did was pulled up the tuition schedule
00:19:16.000 | for the Harvard MBA program,
00:19:18.000 | and actually at one point I actually toured the campus.
00:19:21.000 | I was in Boston for a business trip of some kind,
00:19:24.000 | and I toured the campus.
00:19:25.000 | And I thought, "Hey, that'd be pretty cool."
00:19:27.000 | But the first thing I did was saw the tuition,
00:19:28.000 | and I immediately assumed, "Well, I can't afford that.
00:19:30.000 | "I can't do it."
00:19:31.000 | I didn't have any understanding
00:19:33.000 | of how financial aid works for colleges.
00:19:35.000 | So if you're interested in going into an elite university,
00:19:37.000 | what you need to know is that elite universities
00:19:40.000 | have about a bazillion dollars in their funds,
00:19:45.000 | in their endowment funds,
00:19:46.000 | and if you can get accepted to an elite university,
00:19:49.000 | regardless of your financial situation,
00:19:51.000 | you're going to be able to go.
00:19:53.000 | I'm not sure that's always the right move,
00:19:55.000 | but just know that if you can get accepted
00:19:57.000 | to an elite university, you're going to be able to go.
00:19:59.000 | But there are many other paths,
00:20:02.000 | and if you want to go to college and not pay for it,
00:20:04.000 | you absolutely can make it happen.
00:20:06.000 | You may not be able to do it at an elite university,
00:20:09.000 | but you can certainly do it at a high-quality university,
00:20:12.000 | because if your academic credentials are sufficient,
00:20:14.000 | you can get a merit-based full ride.
00:20:17.000 | And a full ride, or even a full tuition,
00:20:20.000 | just to clarify the terms,
00:20:22.000 | a full tuition means they'll pay all your tuition costs,
00:20:24.000 | but you're still responsible for room and board and books and fees,
00:20:27.000 | or a full ride, in which case they'll pay for your tuition
00:20:29.000 | and your room and board and your books and your fees.
00:20:31.000 | So these are available.
00:20:32.000 | Full rides are available for an undergraduate degree.
00:20:35.000 | Full rides are available for a graduate degree.
00:20:38.000 | Full rides are available for law school.
00:20:40.000 | Full rides are available for medical school.
00:20:42.000 | It's available if you are a great student.
00:20:45.000 | And I'm convinced that anybody who has any ambition
00:20:48.000 | to do something like that can become a great student,
00:20:51.000 | because study skills, learning skills,
00:20:53.000 | they're just skills that can be learned in practice,
00:20:55.000 | and you can become a very effective learner.
00:20:58.000 | And you can choose a major or something that's appropriate for you.
00:21:01.000 | I'm not saying everyone can be a quantum physicist,
00:21:03.000 | just that you can find something that's appropriate for you,
00:21:05.000 | and you can get a full ride based upon your academic qualifications.
00:21:09.000 | So spending extra time on the weekend studying for school
00:21:14.000 | is the right thing to do.
00:21:17.000 | If you want to know the right thing to do,
00:21:19.000 | find an Asian friend,
00:21:21.000 | go and ask their parents what they think you should do,
00:21:25.000 | and do what their parents tell you to do.
00:21:28.000 | There's a great Asian stereotype for a reason
00:21:31.000 | about their parents making sure their children do well in school.
00:21:34.000 | Just do it,
00:21:36.000 | and you'll open up a whole world of access
00:21:39.000 | to great merit-based scholarships.
00:21:43.000 | However, that's just the tip of the iceberg
00:21:45.000 | when it comes to scholarships.
00:21:47.000 | There are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands
00:21:50.000 | of scholarships that you can apply for.
00:21:52.000 | Here's what I never understood when I was in high school
00:21:55.000 | that I desperately wish I had.
00:21:57.000 | Applying for scholarships is pretty easy.
00:22:00.000 | It doesn't take that much time.
00:22:03.000 | All you got to do is find a scholarship
00:22:05.000 | that you might in some way qualify for
00:22:08.000 | or might be relevant for you in some possible way.
00:22:11.000 | Usually you got to sit down and fill out an application,
00:22:14.000 | and then usually you need to do something like write an essay
00:22:17.000 | or demonstrate your qualification for the scholarship.
00:22:21.000 | Now there's some pretty amazing scholarships
00:22:23.000 | that will cover you for all of your tuition.
00:22:25.000 | There's scholarships out there that will pay for everything
00:22:28.000 | from an undergraduate degree all the way through a PhD, 100%.
00:22:32.000 | You're going to have to hustle for years to do those things.
00:22:36.000 | But all the things you do to ultimately get those scholarships
00:22:39.000 | are all the things you should be doing, period,
00:22:41.000 | to gain acceptance to an elite university,
00:22:43.000 | to get merit-based scholarships.
00:22:45.000 | It's all just the standard stuff of being
00:22:47.000 | a highly motivated, success-oriented teenager.
00:22:49.000 | And all it requires is a little bit of motivation
00:22:51.000 | for you to do it.
00:22:53.000 | And the whole world is wanting to coach you
00:22:55.000 | and wanting to help you as soon as you demonstrate
00:22:57.000 | a little bit of initiative if you're a teen.
00:22:59.000 | There are also tons and tons of smaller scholarships
00:23:03.000 | that all you got to do is you don't have to go
00:23:05.000 | and start some world-changing project
00:23:09.000 | to end hunger and homelessness in your area.
00:23:11.000 | All you got to do is write an essay.
00:23:13.000 | What I never understood was the math of this.
00:23:17.000 | And it wasn't until I was about a senior in college
00:23:20.000 | that I finally sat down and realized what it was like.
00:23:23.000 | I mentioned the scholarships that I got when I was in college,
00:23:27.000 | one of them being a Kiwanis scholarship.
00:23:30.000 | And this was a local Kiwanis club where I was from,
00:23:34.000 | and they gave out a very simple scholarship.
00:23:38.000 | The application for the scholarship
00:23:40.000 | was simply an application that you made.
00:23:44.000 | You submitted your grades and other qualifications.
00:23:47.000 | I don't remember now at this point.
00:23:49.000 | I remember going for an interview,
00:23:50.000 | a simple interview with the team,
00:23:53.000 | and I was granted the scholarship.
00:23:55.000 | The scholarship was fairly modest.
00:23:57.000 | I don't remember if it was $500 a semester
00:23:59.000 | or $1,000 a semester, but it was something like that.
00:24:03.000 | Let's call it $500 and be a little bit more modest.
00:24:06.000 | It was a $500 scholarship.
00:24:09.000 | And so every fall and every spring,
00:24:12.000 | I and my parents would go to the Kiwanis scholarship luncheon.
00:24:15.000 | And it got to be really great
00:24:17.000 | because I didn't make any use of it at all.
00:24:20.000 | But I got to know some interesting people
00:24:21.000 | who were leaders in the community,
00:24:23.000 | members of the Kiwanis club.
00:24:24.000 | I got to know and appreciate some of the people.
00:24:26.000 | There's so much more I could have done.
00:24:28.000 | When I coach college students,
00:24:29.000 | I just want to grab them and shake them and say,
00:24:31.000 | "Don't be as dumb as I was.
00:24:32.000 | "This is your chance,"
00:24:34.000 | and teach them how to network with people.
00:24:36.000 | Anyway, I was dumb.
00:24:37.000 | But I would go to this, and they would bring me up,
00:24:39.000 | and they would give me the $500 check.
00:24:40.000 | They would feed us a nice lunch,
00:24:42.000 | and we would see all the other scholarship recipients.
00:24:44.000 | It was great.
00:24:46.000 | It wasn't until the end of college
00:24:48.000 | that I sat down and I tried to figure out
00:24:50.000 | how much money did I actually get from Kiwanis?
00:24:54.000 | And the answer, if it was $500 per semester,
00:24:57.000 | the answer, do the math,
00:24:59.000 | eight semesters, $4,000.
00:25:04.000 | That was how much money I got from the Kiwanis club, $4,000.
00:25:09.000 | And all I had to do was fill in an application.
00:25:12.000 | It probably took 30, 60 minutes.
00:25:14.000 | Go to a single interview.
00:25:16.000 | It took not much time at all.
00:25:18.000 | And then they fed me lunch and handed me $500 each semester, $4,000.
00:25:27.000 | What was my hourly rate for that Kiwanis scholarship that I got?
00:25:32.000 | Let's assume, let's ignore the free lunches.
00:25:35.000 | There's no such thing as a free lunch,
00:25:37.000 | but sometimes there is if you get your grades right.
00:25:39.000 | So let's say I had three hours, four hours into it.
00:25:44.000 | My hourly rate was easily $1,000 an hour.
00:25:49.000 | $1,000 an hour I got paid for filling out an application
00:25:54.000 | for a Kiwanis club scholarship in my local area.
00:26:00.000 | That's a pretty normal thing in the world of scholarships.
00:26:04.000 | I remember when I became aware of scholarships,
00:26:08.000 | I would see sometimes the low value,
00:26:11.000 | a $250 scholarship, a $400 scholarship,
00:26:14.000 | and I just dismissed it as being pointless.
00:26:16.000 | What I didn't understand was it was a $250 per semester scholarship.
00:26:22.000 | A $1,000 scholarship in many cases is $1,000 per year
00:26:25.000 | or $1,000 per semester.
00:26:28.000 | And so if you're looking for a high-paying summer job,
00:26:32.000 | dear high school sophomore, dear high school junior,
00:26:35.000 | probably dear high school freshman,
00:26:38.000 | senior, yeah, you should still be doing it,
00:26:40.000 | starting when you're a freshman, you're a sophomore, and you're a junior.
00:26:44.000 | I am convinced the highest-paying summer job
00:26:47.000 | that you could possibly do is applying for scholarships.
00:26:52.000 | Let's assume that you can apply for scholarships
00:26:55.000 | and let's assume that you can get one out of four,
00:26:58.000 | 25% success ratio.
00:27:00.000 | From my research in the world of scholarships,
00:27:02.000 | for a reasonably qualified student,
00:27:06.000 | decent grades, decent test scores, good reputation,
00:27:09.000 | good involvement, a little bit of community service,
00:27:11.000 | those kinds of things,
00:27:12.000 | I don't think that would be an unreasonable expectation
00:27:15.000 | that you might get one out of four
00:27:17.000 | or one out of five of the scholarships that you apply for.
00:27:20.000 | So let's assume that it takes you on average
00:27:22.000 | about three or four hours per scholarship.
00:27:25.000 | I think that's pretty excessive, but I want to be very fair.
00:27:29.000 | Once you have a system for organizing yourself,
00:27:32.000 | I think many scholarship applications might take you an hour or two.
00:27:37.000 | The key thing that's going to take a while
00:27:39.000 | is often going to be writing an essay.
00:27:41.000 | So your goal should be to get very good
00:27:43.000 | at writing essays very, very quickly
00:27:45.000 | and write a custom essay for each individual scholarship.
00:27:49.000 | Let's assume that it takes you an hour
00:27:51.000 | to write an essay of a page or two, maybe two hours.
00:27:55.000 | So again, four hours per, let's do three, three hours per.
00:27:58.000 | So you apply for four different scholarships,
00:28:01.000 | four different $1,000 scholarships,
00:28:03.000 | and you get one of the four.
00:28:06.000 | It's $1,000 a year usually for a small scholarship,
00:28:10.000 | and all you got to do once you've gotten it
00:28:12.000 | is do like what I did is show back up to the Kiwanis Club luncheon,
00:28:16.000 | and there may have been an annual kind of check-in with me.
00:28:18.000 | Forgive me, it's been a while now.
00:28:20.000 | But the requirements to maintain the scholarship are pretty low.
00:28:25.000 | So it takes you three hours per scholarship application
00:28:28.000 | times four for a total of 12 hours of work,
00:28:32.000 | and you get one $4,000 scholarship
00:28:35.000 | that's worth $4,000 over the course of four years.
00:28:39.000 | What's your hourly rate?
00:28:41.000 | 4,000 divided by 12, $333 per hour.
00:28:45.000 | But wait, there's more.
00:28:48.000 | Scholarship money, when it's used to pay for tuition, is tax-free.
00:28:53.000 | So it's even better than, you know,
00:28:56.000 | what would you have to pay for that
00:28:58.000 | to go out and work in order to earn the $333 per hour?
00:29:04.000 | Where are you going to make $333 per hour consistently?
00:29:08.000 | And then what would you have to do to go out and actually make it post-tax?
00:29:12.000 | The numbers are beautiful when you start digging into them.
00:29:16.000 | They're fantastic.
00:29:18.000 | So the question is how many scholarship applications could you make
00:29:22.000 | if you were really motivated?
00:29:25.000 | Here's another little thing that I never knew.
00:29:28.000 | I never knew that there's no limit
00:29:31.000 | as to how many scholarships you can win.
00:29:35.000 | I knew this a little bit
00:29:37.000 | because I had a sister who got really good grades,
00:29:40.000 | and she got a high-merit scholarship from her university,
00:29:44.000 | and so she got paid to go to university.
00:29:46.000 | But it wasn't very much.
00:29:48.000 | It was some thousands of dollars.
00:29:50.000 | It wasn't tens of thousands of dollars per year.
00:29:52.000 | It wasn't until later I realized
00:29:54.000 | that a motivated, dedicated student could pretty easily hack this system
00:29:59.000 | and be paid tens of thousands of dollars per year to go to college.
00:30:05.000 | Now imagine--back to that college discussion that I said--
00:30:08.000 | imagine that you did well with academics,
00:30:11.000 | so you were qualified in order to get into a college that you wanted to go to,
00:30:15.000 | and imagine that all of your expenses are covered by your scholarships,
00:30:20.000 | all of your tuition payments,
00:30:23.000 | all of your own board, your books, your class fees--everything's covered.
00:30:27.000 | And in addition to that,
00:30:29.000 | you've got $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year of pocket money
00:30:35.000 | that's coming in from 15 or 17 different scholarships that you have won.
00:30:42.000 | What could college do for you in that circumstance?
00:30:45.000 | All you've got to do is stay in good standing with your college,
00:30:49.000 | go to class, get good grades.
00:30:52.000 | You should get good grades in college.
00:30:54.000 | Go to class, get good grades.
00:30:58.000 | But you still have all the rest of the time available for you.
00:31:01.000 | And you're being paid a couple thousand dollars a month,
00:31:05.000 | plus all of your expenses paid, for doing that.
00:31:11.000 | Now what could you build,
00:31:13.000 | knowing that you're in college and you're getting a college degree,
00:31:16.000 | but you also have time to build your business, make connections.
00:31:21.000 | Think of the internships, the unpaid internships you could get.
00:31:24.000 | Think of the programs you could go on,
00:31:26.000 | the study abroad programs and all the different things you could do.
00:31:32.000 | Now it completely changes the calculus of the college decision.
00:31:38.000 | So what's necessary to do that?
00:31:40.000 | Well, first of all, you have to be capable of doing the work in the academic environment.
00:31:48.000 | And I promise you, you are capable.
00:31:50.000 | If you're getting bad grades right now,
00:31:52.000 | it's probably just because you don't care
00:31:55.000 | and you don't understand how much of a difference this could make for you.
00:31:59.000 | It's also probably because you've never taken any training on how to study,
00:32:03.000 | how to learn effectively.
00:32:05.000 | It's the dumbest thing in the world that will put students through a 12-year academic gauntlet
00:32:09.000 | and only rarely will there be a caring teacher
00:32:12.000 | who will give them a class on some useful study technique.
00:32:16.000 | And the world of learning science has completely changed.
00:32:20.000 | The work that's been done over the last 20 years is outstanding.
00:32:23.000 | So dig into the world of learning science.
00:32:25.000 | Grab a book on how to learn.
00:32:26.000 | Go to the library.
00:32:27.000 | Take a course on how to learn.
00:32:28.000 | There's all kinds of stuff.
00:32:29.000 | There's great YouTube channels out there.
00:32:31.000 | My favorites are Benjamin Keepe, who has a YouTube channel on it,
00:32:36.000 | and Justin Sung is one of the biggest ones.
00:32:38.000 | So go to YouTube, put in Benjamin Keepe, K-E-E-P, and Justin Sung,
00:32:44.000 | and let the algorithm feed you that kind of stuff,
00:32:47.000 | and learn how to study, learn how to learn, learn how to learn efficiently
00:32:50.000 | so that you can get more work done in less time.
00:32:53.000 | Then think about the stuff you're going to be involved in.
00:32:55.000 | Doing well with academics is not sufficient for you to get into great colleges
00:32:59.000 | and get other things.
00:33:00.000 | There's more to it.
00:33:02.000 | But the point is, go after it.
00:33:05.000 | And if you're not currently doing it, start caring and doing it.
00:33:08.000 | Then you need to just simply put in place a system
00:33:12.000 | where you're going to handle all the stuff well.
00:33:15.000 | You're going to do well academically.
00:33:17.000 | You're going to do well with your test scores,
00:33:21.000 | and you need to start collecting and build a system for applying for scholarships.
00:33:28.000 | If you're coaching people who are younger, younger than, say, ninth grade--
00:33:33.000 | by the way, I think a good time to start this kind of discussion,
00:33:35.000 | obviously parents have to make the decision based on what their child can handle.
00:33:41.000 | I don't want to create a meat grinder of a system
00:33:43.000 | where we just yell at people all the time, and you've got to do this, you've got to do this.
00:33:46.000 | I think there's benefit to childhood.
00:33:50.000 | But one of the things that you should focus on with students who are younger
00:33:54.000 | is get them accustomed to the work.
00:33:56.000 | So I've got a 10-year-old, and one of the things I'm really focusing on
00:33:59.000 | is building all of the core skills.
00:34:02.000 | In the early years, it's really important that you build strong academics.
00:34:05.000 | I've talked about that extensively elsewhere.
00:34:07.000 | You need to have great readers, people who read all the time,
00:34:09.000 | because that's one of the most important ways to do that.
00:34:11.000 | You need to be really good at math, so you should be doing math every single day
00:34:14.000 | with a great math curriculum, constantly, every single day, building those math skills.
00:34:18.000 | And then writing. Writing is a fundamental skill.
00:34:21.000 | So it needs to be fairly easy and simple for a student to sit down and bang out an essay.
00:34:26.000 | And that's just a skill that can be built.
00:34:28.000 | High school students sit there and stare at a blank screen
00:34:30.000 | and can't bang out an essay in 90 minutes because they're not trained on it
00:34:34.000 | and they're not practiced on it.
00:34:35.000 | So get a great writing curriculum and get them banging out essays every day.
00:34:39.000 | And when you get to the point where you can churn out essays,
00:34:42.000 | then it's going to be pretty simple.
00:34:44.000 | I heard an idea recently. I was listening to a scholarship advisor talk about this,
00:34:48.000 | and she said she had a friend of hers who would pay –
00:34:52.000 | he would pay his children very young, before high school,
00:34:56.000 | I think late elementary school and middle school.
00:34:59.000 | He had a system where he would pay his children $5
00:35:02.000 | for every scholarship application that they made.
00:35:05.000 | And he didn't care whether they were even eligible.
00:35:07.000 | He didn't care whether they were able to do it.
00:35:09.000 | He just paid them for making the application.
00:35:11.000 | And his point was that by starting in seventh grade,
00:35:14.000 | and now he's paid them $5 per scholarship application,
00:35:17.000 | he's got them lined up so that when they're eligible at ninth grade,
00:35:21.000 | not only do they have a bunch of essays that they've thought through
00:35:23.000 | for all these scholarships they've applied to and, of course, not gotten over the years,
00:35:27.000 | but now he can start pooling from them and say,
00:35:29.000 | "All right, let's grab this essay that you wrote previously. Let's polish it up."
00:35:32.000 | And they're all ready to start actually making those applications.
00:35:35.000 | And I thought, "Brilliant. Brilliant. I'm going to do it."
00:35:38.000 | I don't know if $5 is the right number, but it sounds pretty good.
00:35:42.000 | You know, get a student used to doing two or three applications a day,
00:35:46.000 | and you've got an amazingly productive thing to do.
00:35:51.000 | Now, scholarships are not the only thing.
00:35:53.000 | So back to the comment I made where I said this could pay off in a couple of years.
00:35:57.000 | One of the things that people ignore is they ignore all the things that can be done during high school,
00:36:02.000 | all of the youth congresses and the study abroad programs.
00:36:06.000 | I was going through a bunch of stuff this past week looking at all the programs the U.S. government does.
00:36:10.000 | The U.S. government will pay for all of your expenses, all your expenses to go and study abroad for a year,
00:36:17.000 | go to Germany, take a year of school in Germany or in Georgia or in many places.
00:36:22.000 | There's all these youth congresses and all these things.
00:36:25.000 | I never even imagined applying for any of that stuff.
00:36:28.000 | I don't know why I didn't. I was dumb. Don't be like me.
00:36:32.000 | I just never thought that was my thing.
00:36:34.000 | I didn't see myself as the kind of person who could do that stuff or who would do that stuff,
00:36:38.000 | and I'd never want to set the example for me.
00:36:41.000 | And so if you're coaching your child, obviously you know what your child needs,
00:36:45.000 | but this stuff's available to you. It's all out there.
00:36:49.000 | And that stuff can be paying off even just during high school,
00:36:53.000 | where you can do it pretty early, and it just builds your story.
00:36:56.000 | It builds the whole package.
00:36:58.000 | So I beg you, don't be dumb like me.
00:37:02.000 | Don't think that, "Oh, I just have to sit back here,
00:37:05.000 | and the only pathway to my dreams is for me to work and earn money."
00:37:08.000 | No, it's not true.
00:37:11.000 | There are many pathways, and there are rich people, mega billionaires,
00:37:16.000 | who have created all kinds of charitable foundations to throw money at you.
00:37:21.000 | And all you've got to do is qualify yourself for that,
00:37:27.000 | and then expose yourself to it by making the applications.
00:37:35.000 | I'm not going to go into any more technical details.
00:37:37.000 | I just want you to know, if you're a teenager,
00:37:41.000 | or if you're coming up on your teenage years,
00:37:44.000 | and/or if you're coaching a teenager in some way, shape, or form,
00:37:49.000 | your teens can reliably and consistently earn
00:37:53.000 | more than $100 an hour through this system,
00:37:58.000 | and in some cases, much more than $100 an hour.
00:38:02.000 | There is no higher-paying job or opportunity
00:38:07.000 | that is as consistent and effective
00:38:10.000 | for a motivated, organized, and disciplined teenager
00:38:15.000 | than getting good grades, getting good test scores,
00:38:21.000 | getting on the pathway into college based upon acceptance,
00:38:25.000 | extracurriculars, community service, community involvement,
00:38:28.000 | having one thing that you're really into that tells your story effectively,
00:38:34.000 | and applying for lots of scholarships.
00:38:39.000 | There's no reason why the kind of student
00:38:42.000 | who should be going to college from an academic perspective
00:38:46.000 | shouldn't be paid to go to college in our current system.
00:38:53.000 | Do it.
00:38:55.000 | There's lots of people out there--
00:38:56.000 | sorry, there's some people out there who've done it.
00:38:59.000 | You can do it, too.
00:39:02.000 | It will pay off in the long run.
00:39:04.000 | If I went over my list of the stuff you could do
00:39:07.000 | with those four college years,
00:39:09.000 | given the numbers that I described to you
00:39:11.000 | of what's possible to you just of college being paid for
00:39:14.000 | and all you got to do is get good grades,
00:39:16.000 | it's astonishing what you could accomplish
00:39:18.000 | during that phase of your life.
00:39:20.000 | But it starts in your teens.
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