Top 3 Lessons We’ve Learned From You - Ep. 50

Ryan: Aloha folks. And welcome back to Degree Free. We are your host, Ryan and Hannah Maruyama on this podcast, we share fundamentals we've discovered and the mistakes we've made while self-educating getting work, building businesses and making money. We'll tell you how to make it happen. No degree needed.

Hannah: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. And if you wanna get a newsletter every week, That has, degree free resources, different job ideas, career options, paid apprenticeships, and just stuff that Ryan and I have found on the news that we find to be really interesting and cool. You are gonna wanna sign up for our newsletter.

You can get that by going to degreefree.co/newsletter to sign up for it. And we will send that to you once a week. You're welcome.

Ryan: Yeah. Awesome. And let's get into today's episode. It is our 50th episode. Of the degree free podcast.

Hannah: What?

Ryan: Yes.

Hannah: 50 episodes

of this.

Ryan: Yes, crazy. And so today we thought that we would do something a little bit different.

We would do the top three lessons we've learned from you guys. From the Degree Free community over the past 50 episodes.

Hannah: And we've only been able to learn this because you folks have been listening to us every week, which we are still floored by.

Ryan: Yeah, it's awesome. When we first started this thing, this podcast, we weren't sure what it was gonna be or if we would even keep doing it.

Right. I think we had 10. in mind, 10 to 12 and we were just like, let's try it. Let's see what happens. And you know, we're constantly grateful and humbled that we have people listening. People like yourself, people listening, people interacting and getting value out of what we do.

And today's episode. We wanna talk about the value that we get from you guys.

Hannah: Cause this is always something that Ryan and I would, Degree Free was always something Ryan and I would talk about. And it's something that we would bring up in conversation probably to the point where other people were annoyed of listening to us talk about the same things.

And so to find that we have consistent listeners who interact with our podcast and ask questions and that you folks listen and. You're part of this with us, and we're just consistently overwhelmed and humbled by that. And super grateful that you do.

Ryan: Yeah. Degree Free was always something that was on our minds, , for years, way many more years than this has been a thing.

Hannah: Yeah. Before we named it.

Ryan: Right. Exactly. You. But we were always, we were doing other things. We were, working multiple jobs, running other businesses, doing other things. And, we were busy and we didn't make time for it. And, luckily last year we finally said, you know what, let's take the time and let's see if this is something that people would find helpful.

Hannah: And when we did that, we found that there are a lot more of us than we thought.

Ryan: Yeah. And that's the first thing. That's the first lesson that we've learned. Right. We knew the numbers on it. 2/3 of Americans don't have college degrees.

Hannah: That's a lot of people,

Ryan: that's a lot of people,

Hannah: millions.

Ryan: Right. And we knew that going in, but we didn't actually realize that there were a lot of people out there that cared about the same things that we do, right? Like education, getting great jobs and like living our lives the way that we want. Right. And, education is one of those things is like, I'm not talking about college education obviously.

Right? I mean, I think that education. Happens every day. You're constantly learning. You're constantly improving.

Hannah: Yeah. We're talking about education, the value.

Ryan: Yeah. And a lot of people have come out in support of the Degree Free community of what it is that we're trying to do here and what other people are trying to do for other people, which is to share our resources and share our knowledge and experience in order to further people in their lives without having to go to college.

Right. One of the things that was really humbling and awesome to see is that. Degree free has come to mean more than just people that don't have college degrees. I mean, it always was, but like you don't have a college degree. Right? Yeah. And so you're definitely Degree Free.

Hannah: Yeah.

Ryan: But I do have a college degree, but you are too, but I'm degree free. I am degree free. Right. And to see so many people also identify as that, or at least find something. In the messages that other degree free people tell other people is huge. We have people, listeners, viewers, consumers of our content that come from all different walks of life.

We have people that literally didn't graduate high school to people that have two degrees or even their PhDs that are regular listeners.

Hannah: And that is really surprising, but it's something that, people feeling heard, people finding things that they didn't know they could do. And just this general group of people that has become active listeners either on the podcast itself or from TikTok and just the community as it grows.

That has been the coolest thing to see for sure.

Ryan: Yeah. Definitely. Which leads this into the second lesson that we've learned from you guys is that you folks are awesome.

Hannah: you're the coolest,

Ryan: Yeah. It's the support that we've seen complete strangers give to other complete strangers to help them on their journey is nothing short of amazing.

Hannah: I'm frequently almost brought to tears. Actually, when I see on TikTok, especially, when I see people who have taken time out of their day on one of our videos to walk other people who wanna get where they are, step by step telling them what they need to do in order to get where that first person is and just them giving of their time and their experience and their knowledge in this way to as you said, a complete stranger is the just, it's just the coolest thing to see.

And it, it makes me so proud of the group of people that, has grown up around this. And it's just so it's just so amazing.

Ryan: Absolutely from to people that comment on the tiktoks, which is huge to the people that write us on our, you know, and drop us emails. That's awesome, too. Right? Yeah. And if you guys wanna drop us in email [email protected]

Hannah: we read 'em

Ryan: yeah, we read everyone.

Hannah: Yep.

Ryan: Definitely. And, we also have like a mentorship questionnaire for people that are degree free to, it's a pretty long questionnaire. It's a pretty long thing, but every answer that we've ever gotten on it. it's super in depth,

And people

Hannah: took the time to do that, to share their story with other people.

And it's just unreal.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly.

Hannah: There was two specific occasions where I've seen this, that I just love, but one, there was a lineman who was talking a high school kid through how to go about getting a job as a lineman. And that the end resolution of it was this high school kid went and got a paid apprenticeship job as a lineman, which was awesome.

Right. Cuz he had expressed an interest and in a TikTok comment, someone took the time to say, all right, here's what you gotta do. And then he knew what to do. And then not only that, but there was a senior data, a data analyst at a big tech company who was helping a middle school math teacher in our comments, literally telling them here's what, , here's what course you need to take.

Here's what you need to learn. Here's what you need to master. Here's how to put it on your resume. Boom. There you go. And just seeing that, just seeing these people, Take that time and that stewardship of other people onto themselves and saying here, I'll walk you through how to do this, cuz I did it and I've been there and yeah, just it's awesome.

It's awesome.

Ryan: It's amazing. It really, really is. And it's something that. Like I said, we never thought that, I don't know. We didn't think that other people cared as much as we did about this type of thing and helping people and

boy, were

Hannah: we wrong?

Ryan: Yeah. And it's amazing. It's amazing. And the third thing that we've learned and these things that we've learned, these lessons that we've learned, obviously we've learned so much more than all of this and I, and we hope to learn more every day for me folks.

Hannah: And we do.

Ryan: Yeah, but these are just the top. And so the third one is gonna be that the possibilities are endless. Like it is crazy. We've learned that there aren't infinite amount of ways to make money. Yep. Almost the same amount of number of different jobs and roles to do.

Like it. Crazy. And there are even larger amount of ways to get to those destinations.

Hannah: Yeah, there is no one path.

Ryan: Right. We've had people from oil rig workers and truck drivers to chemical engineers and scientists reach out to us and all explaining their own degree free path

Hannah: . And how they got there and we're like, really that's crazy.

And they'll just, and they'll just lay it out. It's wild.

Ryan: Yeah. It's crazy, and seemingly disjointed events in your life, come out to, , when you step back and look at it and you're just like, wow, that's, how was this decision relevant to this decision away over here. And who knows?

I mean, there's just so many different ways to get to where you want to be in life.

Hannah: Yeah. And the most important part of this is just keep working, keep improving and keep learning. And ideally this community continues to grow and grow, and this becomes a place where we can all do that.

And that's what we're seeing. And it's, yeah. We're just super grateful for you folks.

Ryan: Yeah. And I think we bring up the possibilities are endless, cuz it's like there's no single right path. Anybody that tells you that there is a right path. It's just wrong. Yeah. Right. Like nobody can gatekeep your future.

Hannah: Yeah. Right. If you wanna do it, then figure out a way.

Ryan: Yeah. You don't have to and I'm not gonna harken on it too much, but that's what this whole thing is about. Right. Or at least it started with colleges or even job descriptions outsourcing their recruitment to a college degree and that obviously, as we know that's wrong, but don't let that. This should inspire you, right? The fact that there are so many possibilities and that there are ways to get around those things. There are ways to get experience. There are ways to make money. There are ways to live the life that you wanna live. And Hannah kind of touched on it briefly, but I think the most important thing to remember is that.

We just have to take action every day. Right? The hardest part is getting started. And then it's, I'd be lying to you to tell you that it gets easier after that, but when you haven't started at all, yeah, that's the hardest part it's getting started and you're gonna find that you're gonna hit a lot of road bumps and blocks.

But as long as you keep learning and you keep taking action every day, you'll be very shocked to find where you are in a year or two years from now. Like we have a lot of people that even within the short year that we've been doing this publicly, they have completely changed their life.

Right. And that really keeps us going right. It's those people that comment to us, or write us an email that says like your podcast, your content changed my life. I learned. About Salesforce. I learned about a Google UX certification, or I learned about coding and whatever.

I went and took action on it. And now I'm making, a hundred thousand dollars a year and now I'm making double what I used to make. And that all happened within a year. And that just happened with people taking action every day. And I mean, that's great that, and we're very grateful to get those messages.

So if you are if you're listening to this and you're finding value in it, please [email protected]. Please leave us a message. We'd love to hear your story, but we didn't do that. Not really.

Hannah: No.

Ryan: Yeah maybe maybe we provided a little bit of a spark, but they provided all the fuel.

Hannah: Yep.

Ryan: Or, I mean, we really didn't do anything.

Hannah: Yeah. It's just, , sometimes you just need to hear that you can and that those are the ones that really get me are the people who are like, yeah, I just started applying to jobs that say they require degrees or, yeah, I just started to applying. I just started applying to jobs that say they require this much experience, but I don't have that much experience and they get it anyway.

And this whole time they've just been self eliminating and all they needed was someone to say, you don't have to do that. Like you don't have to follow these rules that do not help you do not serve you and are completely irrelevant. And seeing that, I love the rule breakers, man. Those are the ones.

Those are the ones I love to. I love to see it. I love to see it. .

Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: And our hopes for the future, we hope to be doing this for a long time more.

Hannah: Yeah, I hope so.

Ryan: Yeah. We wanna help as many people reach their goals and potential as possible. Right. And, we're just super grateful.

And like I said, we're super humbled that there are people even listening to this right now. So yeah, if you guys are getting value out of this and the things that we do and you know of somebody that might value, the same content that we're putting out there and the same message. That are putting out there, you're going to share it with them.

, that would really help us out in order to grow this thing and, hope to do another 50.

Hannah: That's the goal.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And, , like I said, if you guys wanna leave us a comment or anything like that, contact that degree free.co is our email.

Hannah: We read them. We read all of them.

Ryan: Yep. We do. We really do. If you guys wanna support the podcast, the best way you guys could do that is by, sharing it to your friends and family. And then also leaving us a review anywhere that it is that you get your podcast.

Hannah: And if you wanna be. Part of the Degree free community as it grows and get more information, more resources and cool stuff that we're doing and cool stuff that we find for you folks, then go ahead and go over to degreefree.co/newsletter and sign up for the newsletter so you are in the loop.

Ryan: All right guys, until next time. Aloha.