What Are Some of the Highest Paying Jobs You Can Get Without a Degree - Ep. 8

Ryan: Aloha guys! And welcome back to Degree Free! We are your hosts, 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: Welcome back, guys. We're glad to have you, if you've listened to other episodes of this podcast and you're back again and ready to take action, then feel free to check out our website, which is degreefreenetwork.com. We do have a guide on there where we put all of this into one giant document that you can download and use as a checklist to help you accomplish getting degree free work. And if not if you're not ready to buy that guide, then keep listening, take notes, because we're going to tell you everything you need to know. Anyway. So without further

Ryan: Yeah, let's get into today's topic today. We are going to be talking about, we're going to be talking about one of the questions that we get asked a lot.

And the question is basically what are some of the highest paying jobs that you can get without a degree? So today's episode is really just an overview of some of the types of jobs that you can get without a degree that are very common. So we understand that you can pretty much go into any field and make a lot of money.

There's no right or wrong answer, any job that you apply to. And if they hire you without a degree, hopefully you can move up and you can make money, make good money in that industry. That being said, we get this question a lot because people don't know what to do. They don't know what to look into.

And so they just want ideas of things to start looking for. They want to know where the money is. Exactly, since that's pretty much everything. That's what matters.

Hannah: That's what works about you can say all day is about other things, but ultimately at the end of the day, work is about money.

Ryan: Yeah. Work is about there, there are other things, there are other things about work, but one of the largest things about work is money. And people ask us all the time. And so these are some of the, these are some of the fields we basically. Summed it up to four different fields that you can go into.

And like I said, this isn't a comprehensive list. There are plenty other industries that go into it's literally infinite. You can do anything, but these are some of the ones that we've seen.

Hannah: So number one and probably the most obvious is going to be entrepreneur. There's no cap, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you can create a business tomorrow that is going to make billions of dollars.

How do we know that? Because people have done that there are billionaires that don't have college degrees and the ones that didn't have college degrees because they started a business that was more than a billion dollars and that's how you do it. I think the thing about being an entrepreneur is that there's no cap to the amount of money that you can make.

Not really, but there is also no floor. So it's a risky thing to do as far as if you're looking for a way to make money. And that's your sole way of making money? We've talked about it before, but if you're just starting out, it's very risky to just be an entrepreneur. So if you're looking for a solid paycheck, right at the beginning, entrepreneurship is not where it's at.

Ryan: Not, maybe not where it's at, but it is very, as you said, risky, you can make it happen. There have been many people that have quit their jobs or never had a job and just started a business and became super successful. There's a lot, there's a lot of other people that have quit their jobs or never had a job and tried to start a business and then absolutely failed.

And we're just saying not, we always like to say that if you're thinking about starting a business and you have a job, or if you're thinking about starting a business and you don't have a job, get a job. If you're thinking about starting a business, While you still have a job, maintain your employment and start it on the side.

You're going to be able to make a lot more. You're going to be able to make better decisions. You're going to be able to think clearer. You're not going to have to worry so much about immediately making the business cashflow positive. It opens up a lot of doors gives you a lot more options. Options are really good.

Plus what it does too, is it spreads out your risk. So instead of having all your eggs in one basket, you gotta make, you gotta make this business work well, now you have a job to fall back on, so you still have income coming in the door. And one of the things that we tell people about entrepreneurship we've touched on it before, but just quickly here.

One of the best ways to be immediately cashflow positive is to start a services based business. So don't reinvent the wheel, whatever you see there, if there's a need out there fulfill that need whether or not that's washing cars, whether or not that's pet grooming, look up the local licensure or certification in your area for whatever it is that you're thinking about doing.

Get that, if you need it. And then just go ask people if they need it done, start taking money for it. Definitely. There are other ways to do it, but that is definitely one of the ways you can get started right now.

Hannah: And give yourself a shot. See how it is if your toe in the water, as it were instead of just jumping in head first.

Not that you can't, as Ryan said, there are people that have done that successfully, but there's a lot more people that have done that, that have failed than people that have done it successfully. And it's just a good thing to keep in mind because especially if you're at a point in your life where you don't have the money or the time to take that risk.

Ryan: So second on the list of jobs that could potentially be high pay is sales

Hannah: Sales is the golden goose. The reason is because you can be an employee, but in a lot of, in a lot of ways, you can make a lot more money than some of the highest people in management at your company, because if you're bringing in money, you can make more money.

If you are selling and you were selling a lot, typically you are going to be making money that reflects how high you're selling. I've worked with people  who were really good at sales and easily made six figures a year, no degree. Pretty, usually pretty flexible schedules too, because if you do work at a sales job and you fulfill your quotas or exceed your quotas, you can, you will be rewarded with an amount of leeway as well at your job.

Because if you make your, if you're, if you make your quotas, then your work is done. Yeah.

Ryan: If you can sell, you're always going to have a skill that you can take with you anywhere and everything in sales, basically. Down to communication between people down to selling yourself in a job interview relationships, you name it.

So selling is definitely one of the jobs. That you can get paid the most, but it's also a really good job. That's going to teach you a lot of useful skills for life. One of the things that people, when we say sales, one of the things that people will think about is they think about. Selling cars or vacuums door to door.

Hannah: They picture the picture the dad from Matilda selling the car with the sawdust and the, in the end. Yes. That's exactly what they picture. When people say that they picture that and then they picture the people at the kiosks at the mall that are always trying to put cream on you. Those are the people that they picture that said, I think that a lot of you would be blown out of the water by the amount of money those people make. Blown out of the water. Some of them are extremely good salespeople and you can make a good amount of money selling anything if you were good at selling it.

Ryan: Yeah. And so I guess that's just one of the things that we can talk about here is that there's a lot of different types of sales or there, and there's a lot of different things that you can sell.

So you can sell software, you can sell windows to a large high rise building. You can sell, you can work for you can sell services. Yeah. You can sell services. I was just about to say that you can work for like a Terminix or something like that and sell pest control.

Hannah: Or you could work at selling land development deals, and then you can work at selling construction bids, and then you can sell windows and then you can sell a service to clean those windows.

And now you've completed the circle of sales.

Ryan: It's a chain of sales.

Hannah: It's a circle of sales.

Ryan: So generally speaking sales is pretty broad, but if you can become good at sales, You can make a lot of money and generally speaking, it depends on what, what it is you're selling. But if you learn the sales process, for the most part, you'll be able to go anywhere and learn how to sell whatever it is they're selling for the most part, it gets a little different. Different sales for different people. The sales cycle is longer or shorter or whatever, more technical, less technical, high dollar, low dollar.

Hannah: It's also worth noting that for women specifically women have been proven to be better sales people than men. So if you are a woman while it is much more uncomfortable to learn sales, because it's just not fun.

It's not really it's work to learn how to do it. But if you can, statistically speaking there, you're more likely to do well at it. If it's something that you've been considering, definitely see if there's some sort of sales job you can pick up because the skills you learned there will help you in overcoming objections and navigating your professional life and also negotiate with your boss and with your peers, with your coworkers and just in general for careers in the future as well. It's just one of those things that I personally think that women need to learn how to do sales.

Ryan: What are the numbers? Is that your personal opinion that women are better at sales or is that fact?

Hannah: No it's fact. Look it up. Yeah. It's real. Women are better at sales than men.

Ryan: Interesting, I did not know that I believe it.

Hannah: It's not to say it's not to say that there's not more male salespeople or men don't sell more because there are more male salespeople it's that women in the same role as men tend to do better.

Another aspect of sales would be real estate sales. The largest amount of self-made millionaires in the U S are real estate millionaires. They have made money somewhere in real estate and because the largest amount of jobs in real estate are real estate sales, right? They're real estate agents. And they're selling.

They're selling real estate. It makes sense that there might be something there as far as real estate sales, too, to look into, if that's something that you've ever been interested in. There's, it's a licensure process. So it's not really a hard, it's not really a difficult job to get into.

And while it probably is difficult at the beginning, while you're trying to build up a client base and everything like that if you can figure out how to sell houses, you're gonna make money. Those are big purchases. That's high dollar sales.

Ryan: Yeah, those are big purchases and yeah, it's difficult. And it's difficult because of exactly what you said.

There's a low barrier to entry. It's pretty easy to pass a real estate exam. I can I've when I was working in the restaurant industry, I knew so many people that have their real estate that had their real estate license, who are like trying to sell me a house. But then also wait tables and what makes you think?

One: I'm flattered I am flattered. Yeah. You think that I can buy a house, especially here in Hawaii? I thank you.

Hannah: You must think really highly.

Ryan: I'm a busser. You are a waiter. You're the server. You're paying me. What makes you think that I like, and that's just that's poor marketing. That's poor sales.

Hannah: Or I don't know.

Ryan: Or really good or really long term.

Hannah: Because now I need to buy a house. Are you going to call, who are you going to call?

Ryan: Ghostbusters.

Cause I don't think, I don't think many of those people are still doing it. I don't think, I don't think many of those people are still doing. It's difficult. It's a tough, it's a tough one.

Hannah: Whoever is still doing it is definitely going to get your business. Think about who maybe they were playing the long game dude.

Ryan: Exactly. And that's exactly what you have to do in sales, right? It's sales, it's marketing, it's market. You don't one of the things I will say about sales and it's just a side note and alluded to it earlier, but if you can learn the sales process, when I learned the sales process, when I learned how to sell.

You can see a distinct turning point for the trajectory of our lives of my life, my career. When I learned how to sell,

Hannah: I think we should. So I have one point about the, I want, I have a question about the keeping up with the Joneses aspect of real estate agents or real estate brokers, or people that are in real estate.

And then I want to ask you about your experience getting into sales. So the first question is. So what you were saying about the I'm just curious. Cause we recently talked about real estate agents and how they have to look a certain way in order to get people to buy from them. Do you think now you would be more likely to buy from a real estate agent that looks a certain way, that dresses a certain way.

That has a nice car. I'm curious. Cause we've like we've talked about in the last couple months, a couple of times about different things we've seen. What do you think?

Ryan: Yeah, that's a good question. I guess the answer is, I don't know. I would like to say that it doesn't matter, but how can I know? If this person rolls up in a 2001 Toyota Corolla, and is like, but can sell my house. I'd like to think that I would select them to sell my house.

This person rolled up in a Tesla and I felt like they couldn't sell my house. I'd like to think I wouldn't let them sell my house.

Hannah: What if they rolled up in a cyber truck?

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. I don't know. Ask if we can go for a test drive. Drive Tesla, drive a Tesla drive.

Hannah: So for your sales experience, I'd like to know.

So I'd love for you to share with the class, how you got into sales.

Ryan: Oh yeah, sure. So I got into sales by accident. I was bartending in Georgia and there were these guys that came into the bar during the day and they would stand out on the street trying to not even sell people. They're actually in marketing. So it was their job to pull people off of the street, give them a bunch of free stuff to go attend a two hour presentation on something that eventually the hope was that they bought think timeshare. I think almost a lot of people are. Experience at least with getting heckled by one of these people.

And that was so they came into the bar and the manager he liked me and he offered me a job I didn't want to at first. And then you got us fired and then, since you, since he got us fired, I needed a job immediately. And that was sales that they paid immediately. So it didn't, there was no training period.

If I could sell, I think I got paid for the first week. I think I got paid $10 an hour for a guaranteed 20 hours for that week. Something like that. And I was okay that's not a lot of money, but it's something and it was good at the time because I needed immediate cash. We needed money because we just got fired.

And then, so I went out there and I learned how to sell. I learned how to completely cold, stop people, get them to stop, give them a bunch of free stuff. Convinced them to do something that honestly, they probably didn't want to do, in the hopes that, the actual salespeople the next day in the sales room, would convert.

And then if they, and then if they converted into a sale, I got a portion of that sale. And it turned out that I was. Pretty okay at it. Wasn't a natural, it took a lot of practice. A lot of practice within that week. I'm not naturally good at speaking. And so I had to practice a lot of the spiel.

Yeah. Just go through it and go through it and go through it enough. I had to learn how to overcome objections because nobody wanted to do it.

Hannah: Nobody wanted to go in during their vacation and sit in a room for two hours.

Ryan: Last thing you want to do on your vacation for the vast majority of people, there are some people that go to all these things and then just get the free stuff and they leave, which is good, right on.

Good for you. Good for you.

But for a vast majority of people, they're on vacation and that's the last thing they want to do is sit in a fricking room with high pressure salesman for two hours. But anyway that was my experience and it was a great experience. It taught me a lot. It taught me a lot and it taught me.

I was already a hard worker. I felt I felt like I had good work ethic, but I never had. The and I had good people skills cause I was a bartender for so many years. I ha I could speak to people, but I wasn't good at speaking spieling to people so much as an at least appealing to them in a way that I wanted them to buy something from me other than like a drink, a cocktail, which is still sales, selling cocktails, or selling a $30 dollar, a plate of food as a server, as I did, that's still sales as well.

But it's just different when it, when you're selling, when you're selling that different, when you're selling a different product. And yeah that completely changed my life. It was exhilarating to get my first to get my first deposit. That was exhilarating. I was so excited, and it's still exhilarating now.

Whenever I sell somebody anything. And but learning that helped me to understand business better, helped me to understand marketing better, helped me to understand everything like everything about business.

Hannah: It was a pretty, it was pretty good experience and it has translated into our business and to be completely Frank it was pretty good money.

It was pretty good money. There was some kid that started working with you too. When you were there, he was like 17 or 18 years old. I don't know if you remember that, but he was there for a minute and as a 17 year, 18 year old kid, if he, if you're selling and you were making a couple grand a week, Yeah.

That's no joke if he were to consistently close that's eight that's a K month. Yep. And that is good money. And that is zero degree.

Ryan: Yup. I didn't use any of my degree skills and I'd be, I was taught sales by maybe one of them had a degree. Maybe.

Hannah: He wasn't using it.

Ryan: Yeah. None of them were. Yeah. And they didn't need it. These guys were salt of the earth guys, so these guys were rough, but these guys are real, except for,

Hannah: except for.

Ryan: Yeah. Except for one guy.

Hannah: Yes. Except for one guy who was very genteel.

Ryan: Yeah. But everybody else there. Everyone was pretty rough around the edges.

Hannah: Hustlers, actual hustle. That's an actual, that's what an actual hustler looks like.

Ryan: It was pretty good. It was a good experience. I'm glad, I'm glad I had the experience. But, yeah. But once you learn the process, you can go and sell, you can go and sell anything,

Hannah: There's no cap on that. There was no cap on the, yeah, no. So there you go. That's it. So you can make however much you can make.

Ryan: Exactly. And then that goes for even like high going into like really high paying, really high dollar sales, yeah, tech sales, or even like jet engine sales or plane sales, right?

Or land development, sales, things like that, things where, or even if you're a lawyer. If you're a personal injury lawyer, and you're trying to sell your services to this person that who needs your services, if you got, if you're making that there could be a million dollar sell a sale depending on what it is.  You know that's a lawyer, but yeah. Anyway sales is yeah, so sales is going to be the second one.

Hannah: The third one is going to be tech. The reason it's tech is because it's one of the most degree free accessible fields, just because of demand right now.

Also it's probably one of the fields where being self-taught is less of a stigma and more of a selling point. Also, I think that a good self-taught developer is preferable almost all of the time. That said we're not just talking about developers. A lot of times when we talk about tech people just literally, they think coders, like they think Silicon valley, they think the hacker in the spy movie, What we're talking about is surrounding tech.

So in tech there's developers, and then there's a lot of people around them that understand technical things and do minor technical things to support their work. And that includes management. That includes analysts. That includes people who coach the development team. That includes a lot of different people who influence all of that designer.

So many things. And so tech is one of those fields where you can make. Good money, especially if you get in at some big company and you know what you're doing. And I think that's one that's often overlooked again, because if you're in tech, you have the ability to get into startup companies, too.

You can get a job at a startup company and get equity at that company. And then again, it's risky, not as risky, probably as being your own entrepreneur because you don't take the full brunt of that. You're still a W2 employee, but if you get a job at a startup and you get equity or stock options, you're again, there's no ceiling really there's no ceiling for you. And even if you're not working in a startup and you're just working in normal tech job, you're still going to be making more than the average person. Definitely more than the average college graduate. And probably definitely more than your average PhD, which is 84,000 is not that much.

Ryan: Yeah. Tech is definitely a popular industry. Like you said, Definitely you definitely don't need a college degree to get into a lot of tech jobs, a lot. And some it's almost to a lot of people, it's almost a point of pride even that they don't have degrees. Like I didn't need a degree to get this job.

Hannah: Absolutely.

Ryan: And so one of the things just going back, just backpedaling, just a little bit, one of the things that I did want to start off, I did want to say at the very beginning, After we talked about entrepreneurs before we talked about, because now we're going to be talking. We're not, we're all talking about jobs, all the jobs, sales, whatever, tech, whatever.

One of the things that we tell people at the very beginning, everything about getting a job, not necessarily to be an entrepreneur is if you want to be highly paid, you're going to want to look generally speaking. You're going to want to look. Profit centers of a company. You're going to be one.

You're going to want to look at the sales side. You're going to want to look. If you're looking at a profit and loss sheet, if you're looking at an income statement, you're going to want to work on the top line, where they are bringing money in.

Hannah: For us lay people, that's, who's making the money? Who's making the money for the company?

Ryan: Right.

Hannah: What department are those people in?

Ryan: Exactly. And so,Perfect example is sales, right? For any company, salespeople are always profit centers. Why? Because they go and get, they go and make money. A good example of a cost center normally is something like accounting or HR, something like that.

Unless the company is an accounting company unless they're selling HR, unless they're selling HR service. And then, yeah, then you're the product then you're the service totally different. Totally different. But for the most part administratively, if you work in house accounting, if you work in house HR, if you work in-house cost center, whatever.

Hannah: Let's use an actual company.

So let's say it's a construction company with 50 people. You've got four HR people and you've got four accounting people and your income starts to go down for whatever reason. You're not making as much money. You're not going to cut the guys doing the work. You're not going to cut the people selling the jobs.

You're going to cut the extra accountant. You're going to cut the two extra HR people who you no longer need.

Ryan: Yep, absolutely. You're gonna you're still gonna need sales and you're still gonna need the people to build it, and then. That's definitely, that's one of the, that's one of the ways too, when you're thinking about what fields to go into, that's a good way to start, especially if you're thinking about money, because one, usually those people that work at profit centers, normally they make more money because they're in charge of making money.

That's their job is to make money. And then also the second point with which is what you just said is that. Generally speaking, your job is more secure because the company needs you in order to make sales.

Hannah: Because if you're not there, they'll make less money.

Ryan: Exactly. Positioning yourself at a profit center is a good way to make more money and a good way to ensure that you're going to be, you're going to be sticking around.

Hannah: And we're not also, I just want to say, cause I can hear the hackles on the HR people rising as we say that, but HR, we're not minimizing HR. All we're saying is that there, there are some jobs that you are a cost center. You are, you'd bring no money into the. You might save money in some risk, but that's different.

If the risk is not realized, and if the risk is not realized and your value, your entire value is the possibility of mitigating risk, then they're going to cut you because you're not necessary. And it's just something to keep in mind. This also goes for people who are additional managers and if you have a manager and an assistant manager and an assistant to the general manager and you go into rough times, and again, I'm saying this because a lot of people were really, I saw this, but a lot of people were extremely shocked when they're supporting administrative or supporting management jobs disappeared overnight.

And I was not because. I was like, dude it's the math they don't need you. You are not part of the bare bone structure. So your job, as much as you thought it was secure, it's not because you are, they don't, you don't bring any money in. You're an additional cost. That was fine when business was booming.

But as soon as business shrinks, It's not financially wise to keep you any more. So they cut you in your first ones on the block. And so same thing goes for if you're the last hired HR last hired accountant, last hired admin assistant last hired, junior manager. Just keep it in mind because if you know where you are, then you're not going to get blindsided by that.

And that's much better. There's nothing wrong with your job. It's not to minimize your job. It's to make sure that.

Ryan: Sorry that I should've said that earlier. But I'm glad that we were able to touch on that. I forgot to mention that earlier. And then the last industry con very, a little contradictory to what we do, what we've been talking about management and everything like that.

The last industry is management actually. And it's certain types of management we're talking high-level management.

Hannah: Yeah, I would say mid to high level. If you are somebody who's managing again a person who's managing a team that makes money, that's a secure place to be.

Ryan: Exactly. That's exactly what I was gonna say.

Hannah: I was gonna say a team that's making good money, not a team that was making good money. And then you came in and now it's making less not you. You're probably not in good shape.

Ryan: But if you're a manager, if you're a high to mid-level managers, If you're a mid to high level manager and you're coming in on your increasing profit decreasing costs, you're paying for yourself.

Hannah: Increasing speed, efficiency, delivery.

Ryan: Yeah. That is one of  the best ways to prove your worth. And then hopefully you get paid accordingly to the amount of worth that you bring in.

Hannah: Correct.

Ryan: Management alone. As far as in-house management, doesn't really bring in money,

Hannah: Cost center. Management is a cost center.

Ryan: But it can save money.

It can expedite it. It can make things more efficient. Leaner.

Hannah: They can also keep the owner depending on how large your company is. It saves a lot of time and energy for whoever is in charge, right? The more people underneath you, ideally, the less work you're having to, the less actual work you're having to do.

So having a good manager, if somebody is competent and especially if that person is in charge of making money and they're making more. Then man that person's, you're good to go. And I've seen and read and heard things of, not that there's no cap, cause I'm sure that there is, but depending on where you are, depending on how much money you bring in.

You can pretty much, you can ask, you can always ask for whatever you want. I don't know that you always get it, but if if you put the time in and you're getting results and you're in charge of a team that's making money, the likelihood of you being able to make a good amount of money is high.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is it for today, guys. I think that we've covered a lot there. This is a kind of a little bit of a quicker episode today. Just get those four main ideas across really it's and there's nothing to say that these are the only things that you can go into in order to make money.

Hannah: Please let us know if you have, Hey, what about this? We want to know. We're very curious.

Ryan: And there's something that we've learned throughout the years of just talking to people about it is that. Man, there's a job for everything. There is a niche for literally everything and you can make a lot of money doing almost anything.

And but these are just some ideas to, to think about entrepreneurship, sales, tech, management, you name it. You can make a lot of money doing it. The only thing I will say I did well, I do want to stress that. And I should have done it at the beginning. Like I was saying, I do want to stress, that for the most part when talking to people about this, I always tell them too, if you're thinking about making money, if you're thinking about security and making money, maybe you should start looking at where the profit centers are in your company, whatever company you're thinking about working for whatever industry you're thinking about working in whether or not, if you're an accountant or you want to be an accountant.

Instead of going to any, want to make money doing it, instead of going in house accounting for a mechanic garage, go work in an accounting firm where you go, where you are, the product where you can make more money.

Hannah: It'll make you more secure. It'll keep your income and your job more secure.

Ryan: Yeah.

Yeah. All right guys, that's it. So thank you so much for tuning in. If you have. Liked what you've heard so far, please subscribe. Please leave us an honest review. It really helps other people. See the podcast and give us a broader listenership. We want to get these ideas out there for everybody.

Hannah: If you want to take action and start poking around on Google and doing research. Please do that. If you want to take action on some of this stuff, as far as you want a little bit of guidance and you want some worksheets and you want a little bit of context to go through this stuff out and organize the ideas that you're having about this.

Then you can pick up our guide on degree for your network.com. You don't have to, though, if you want to just keep notes of what we're saying, it's, we're telling you, we're telling you the same thing, but if you want it all in one place, that's where it is and yeah. Hope, hope you liked today's episode.

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