Latest / Do I Need My Racket? / Ready-Set-Go

Transcript

Ready-Set-Go · Do I Need My Racket?

• 0:25
  Welcome to Do I Need My Racket Podcast, brought to you by In Her Name Foundation.
• 0:30
  And I am Cindy Swain, the host of this show.
• 0:33
  This is episode number 39, called Ready, Set, Go.
• 0:39
  All of us, no matter where we start our day, go through this very simple routine.
• 0:46
  Ready, set, go.
• 0:49
  We do that at the start of our day, whether we even realize it or not.
• 0:53
  We get up, we get dressed, maybe we take a shower, we eat breakfast, we have a routine
• 1:00
  we go through, pack a lunch, put things in our briefcase or backpack that we need for
• 1:05
  the day.
• 1:06
  Maybe you need your gym bag because you're going to work out at noon or you have a basketball
• 1:10
  practice game or you have basketball practice after school.
• 1:15
  You need your practice jersey, basketball shoes, water bottle, socks.
• 1:19
  Maybe you're going to work.
• 1:21
  You need your laptop and phone.
• 1:22
  Or maybe you're going on vacation and have to pack clothes for several days.
• 1:27
  You have to get ready.
• 1:30
  Or maybe you have doctor's appointments today and also chemotherapy.
• 1:36
  You have to prepare for that as well.
• 1:39
  Well, that's the ready part.
• 1:42
  The set part is what exactly is your plan?
• 1:46
  What's your strategy for the day?
• 1:48
  How are you going to tackle that first hour algebra exam?
• 1:52
  or who is going to guard the opposing team's best player
• 1:58
  tonight in the basketball game.
• 2:01
  What is your plan?
• 2:03
  What's your strategy?
• 2:05
  That's the set part.
• 2:08
  You have to get ready, you need your things,
• 2:11
  and then you have to have a strategy, a plan.
• 2:14
  The go part is you have to literally go.
• 2:20
  Maybe you drive to work, maybe you take the bus to school,
• 2:23
  ride your bike, or walk.
• 2:25
  And that all sounds pretty routine and simple, and it is.
• 2:30
  But maybe there are some days it doesn't go to plan.
• 2:34
  You don't have all the things you need.
• 2:36
  You forgot your basketball shoes.
• 2:38
  And no one was able to guard the team's best offensive player in basketball last night.
• 2:45
  Or maybe you're one in five of the kids in the United States,
• 2:52
  making up 14 million children, have food insecurity.
• 2:59
  They don't have enough food at home to eat.
• 3:03
  So when they miss that bus in the morning, they don't get breakfast.
• 3:09
  Or maybe you're 1.5 million of one of the kids of 1.5 million don't have a home.
• 3:17
  You sleep someplace different every single night or maybe even a car or makeshift shelter.
• 3:29
  But you still, despite all that, you have to be ready for the day.
• 3:35
  You have to have a plan as far as what you're going to do and you have to go out and do it.
• 3:41
  Well, one of the things that I believe firmly that every kid anywhere at any time has potential
• 3:54
  to improve themselves and make the world a better place through education.
• 4:01
  And one of the things that makes education even better that's leverage in education is sport.
• 4:09
  Being involved in sports is where In Her Name Foundation comes in.
• 4:13
  We support youth sports. We support girls in sports because you have better academic outcomes.
• 4:20
  You're more likely to graduate from high school. You have better communication skills.
• 4:24
  You organize your time. All kinds of amazing things that help you enhance your educational
• 4:31
  experience through sport. Well, the education piece is all about my guest for this show.
• 4:41
  And you're going to meet her in just a moment. But before I get there, I want to share a story.
• 4:48
  This happened my junior year in high school.
• 4:51
  I had taken the ACT test early because the tennis coach from Air Force Academy in Colorado
• 5:00
  Springs, Colorado, had called me and was inquiring about me playing tennis there at
• 5:07
  the academy.
• 5:08
  So a lot of the things had to be done early.
• 5:12
  And I didn't do well on the ACT when I took it.
• 5:15
  I wasn't a great test taker.
• 5:16
  Not those kind of tests.
• 5:18
  And I had to do a whole bunch of other stuff.
• 5:21
  When it all came down to making a decision, the only thing that I needed to do was pass
• 5:25
  the physical fitness test, which I knew would have been a breeze, but the Air Force Academy
• 5:30
  was just not for me, and I politely declined.
• 5:35
  But in the process of going through these college applications, when I met with my guidance
• 5:39
  counselor, he said to me, you know, you didn't do very well on the ACT.
• 5:47
  And then he said, and I quote, I remember this clear as day, you're not college material.
• 5:56
  And I thought, what is he talking about?
• 6:02
  My whole family went to college.
• 6:04
  My parents were public educators.
• 6:07
  My goal was to earn a tennis scholarship, play for a Division I school, and go to college.
• 6:17
  I fortunately had the wherewithal within myself to ask for a different guidance counselor.
• 6:22
  And I did, and I got paired with someone that then helped me with my application process, and off I went.
• 6:29
  But what if I had believed him?
• 6:32
  and didn't think I was smart or capable, or that, you know, I was lesser than, that, you know,
• 6:40
  kind of he doused my dreams, my aspirations, my goals. But, you know, as I think back about that
• 6:49
  experience, there isn't one thing that makes my blood boil any quicker is when an adult dashes
• 6:57
  a kid's dreams and potentials without thinking. Because I firmly believe that each child deserves
• 7:08
  a chance to have an education and go to college because by going to college you are going to make
• 7:16
  yourself better and those around you better people in the world a better place. Well this brings me
• 7:24
  to my guest for this show Shelly Howard founder and CEO of College Ready. Shelly is passionate
• 7:33
  about her work. She is relentless in finding resources, and she believes too, as I do, that
• 7:42
  every child has potential, and every child deserves a chance at a good education. Her work stands
• 7:52
  alone. It speaks for itself. She's helped almost 3,000 students, amassed $80 million in scholarship
• 8:00
  and grant money. She's amazing. And my conversation with her was absolutely delightful. And I think
• 8:09
  you will find it delightful as well. So let's just jump in and have a listen to Shelly Howard
• 8:17
  and listen to how she says, ready, set, go. I am proud to say I'm here with Shelly Howard from
• 8:51
  College Ready. Welcome to the show, Shelly. Thank you so much, Cindy. It's a pleasure to be here. And
• 8:58
  I can't wait to give your listeners some massive resources.
• 9:03
  That sounds great.
• 9:04
  So I just want to kind of go back.
• 9:07
  I always like to have my guests introduce themselves about where they grew up and how
• 9:13
  they went to college and how you got into what you're doing.
• 9:17
  So just give us a little summary.
• 9:19
  You got it.
• 9:20
  So my name is Shelly Howard.
• 9:22
  I'm the founder and CEO of College Ready.
• 9:26
  And I grew up, I'm actually five generations from Southern California, which is a unique
• 9:34
  thing, I've been told.
• 9:36
  A lot of transplants.
• 9:37
  I am a mother of four, two sons, two daughters, and have had the opportunity for all of them
• 9:44
  to get into their dream school and graduate without debt.
• 9:47
  And that is how College Ready was started over 18 years ago, to help families just like
• 9:54
  yours, understand that there is clarity and there is simplicity and the process of getting in and
• 10:01
  out without debt is possible. So that's what I'm hoping to inspire people. Nice. So where did you,
• 10:08
  where did you go to school? Where did you go to college? So I graduated high school from Laguna
• 10:13
  Beach High School and I only applied to two schools. I was either going to surf in San Diego
• 10:18
  or snow skiing, Colorado. And my dad made it easy. I got into both. And he says, I'll help you
• 10:25
  out. You go to San Diego, and you can keep your car and I pay or you go to Colorado and I wish you
• 10:31
  well. And so off I went to San Diego as my undergrad. And then I went on to UC San Diego
• 10:38
  to become an independent educational consultant. And then from there, I really did most of my deep
• 10:46
  work on the ground. I started touring 25 colleges a semester. And so that was before my first born
• 10:54
  graduated high school. Okay, so so you were kind of inspired because you wanted to get your kids
• 11:01
  into college debt free as best you could. So how did did you have any sort of guide for this? Or
• 11:09
  did you just get a blueprint for this? Or just this is what I think I need to do. And this is
• 11:14
  the direction we're going to go? Cindy, that's like one of my favorite stories. So I am an
• 11:20
  entrepreneur at heart. And College Ready was my seventh business I started. So I always see a
• 11:28
  problem and then I provide a solution. And my oldest came home in eighth grade and said, Mom,
• 11:34
  I know exactly what I want to do after high school. And I'm like, what happened at school today?
• 11:39
  He said, well, that lady from the high school came down and said, we need to pick our classes
• 11:43
  for next year and that I needed decided what I want to do. And so I, I, I said, what do you want
• 11:48
  to do? And he says, I want to be a brain surgeon and go to one of those Ivy things. Sounds like a
• 11:53
  cool path to me. And I'm like, Oh, all right. And then he walks away and he looks back and he goes,
• 11:59
  will you help me? And that's how this whole thing got started. It was a child requesting help.
• 12:08
  And that was your oldest. Yeah, it was my oldest and I didn't want to let him down. If he had this
• 12:13
  huge desire and we had no medicine in our family I didn't know where to even get started right and
• 12:21
  now I get to help other people's children do the same so what made you think that you needed to
• 12:28
  just start you just went and visited colleges what were you looking for in that when you were seeing
• 12:33
  going to visit all those 25 schools what were you looking at per se that you're trying information
• 12:38
  that you're trying to glean from that. So as my mind works as an entrepreneur, I looked at what's
• 12:46
  the end result. If my son wants to go to an Ivy League school, and I want him to do it without
• 12:52
  debt, how are we going to do that? So by going to all of these different schools that I had
• 12:59
  planned to see, I was able to sit down with the financial aid department, the college admissions
• 13:06
  department, speak with teachers and staff and faculty and students. And I really just leaned in
• 13:13
  and I wanted to know the real, how the real people play the game because college is a business and
• 13:21
  most people forget that. So when you say how the real people play the game, what do you mean by
• 13:26
  that? So I wanted to know how were these people getting into college and how were they doing it
• 13:35
  without going into debt. That's the real story I wanted to uncover from, from the financial aid
• 13:41
  people. I will both, I want to, so two prong, I want to know what does it take to get in and what
• 13:49
  does it take to get out without debt? Those were like, that was my mission. And because that's what
• 13:56
  I wanted for my child. And so by going and actually being there, I saw how much selling they're doing,
• 14:05
  how much they talk about the the highlights and not so much about how many students graduate in
• 14:13
  four years to get a four four-year degree how many take five years or six years what is your
• 14:19
  retention rate how much does the average student pay here are you a generous school are you a
• 14:26
  stingy school I was asking these very deep questions because one it mattered a lot to me
• 14:34
  as the person who was going to be helping my son pay for this. And two, I had not a clue how in the
• 14:41
  world I was going to get him into an Ivy League school. I was the first to go to college on both
• 14:45
  sides of my family. So was it was were they willing to give you that kind of information
• 14:51
  when you were asking those real direct questions? I mean, you ask the right people? Absolutely.
• 14:57
  And that took me some time to navigate who were the people who were taught to sell and who were the people who were taught to give the real information.
• 15:09
  And that's not the same people. The people on the college tours are not the people that you're asking.
• 15:15
  They're sellers because their job is selling. Right. Right.
• 15:19
  And so having to go to the people who were actually in the trenches of deciding who got in and deciding how much people got.
• 15:29
  that's where I was spending my time. Did you find that there was a pattern at all from school to
• 15:34
  school when you finally got past the, the first, the sellers into the people that were actually
• 15:39
  the nuts and bolts of the organization or the universities? Did you find there was a pattern
• 15:43
  or was each school different? Um, yes. And so there was a pattern amongst the Ivies.
• 15:50
  There was a pattern amongst the top 20. Just so we know that the listeners know the Ivies are the
• 15:55
  ivy league schools which would be harvard princeton cambridge not cambridge harvard
• 16:01
  princeton pennsylvania cornell what am i missing yale did i get them all okay so sorry i forget
• 16:12
  the lingo is sometimes um i have to slow it down yeah um so the ivy leagues have been around for
• 16:19
  the longest amount of time and so a lot of people will think that they're the very best of the best
• 16:25
  And what I found is they're very similar in a lot of respects, admissions, finances, they use the CSS profile, which is the CSS is.
• 16:39
  So there's the FAFSA and the CSS profile, and those are the documents you need to complete if you want any kind of aid financially.
• 16:49
  Okay. Okay. And so I was seeing that similarity where I was seeing a lot of differences is state
• 16:57
  by state. In California, the UCs are a breed of their own. In Texas, if you're a Texas student
• 17:06
  and you graduate in the top 5% of your class, they treat you like royalty, totally different.
• 17:13
  In Florida, they have another unique plan. In New York, theirs is very unique. So I was finding
• 17:20
  by geography that the schools were actually different by state did you ever figure out
• 17:28
  why that was it was just or was it or it was just kind of random that they were that different
• 17:33
  no it's um how their state prioritizes education okay in some states the government is really
• 17:47
  supportive and they're trying to really lean in and help families in other states they look at it
• 17:53
  kind of as you're on your own and good luck and so that's the main difference is the support they
• 18:00
  receive from the top down and um the priority they place on it those would be the two main
• 18:09
  yeah and then when so my firstborn went to harvard and you know he applied to 12 schools
• 18:17
  got accepted to 11, got a full ride at USC and Harvard matched it. I was happy he was going to
• 18:24
  go to USC because that's an hour away from home. Instead, he went across the country. But he said,
• 18:31
  but mom, it's Harvard. And they were willing to match what he was able to achieve. And so it made
• 18:40
  it attainable for us. My second one, go ahead. I just had a question. So where are these schools
• 18:48
  then making their money, if they offer or match an offer, you know, if the USC offers this and then
• 18:55
  Harvard offers that and they match it, are the schools making money or is this more, how does
• 19:02
  that work? Because there's got to be, what's the motivation for the school to match another school
• 19:07
  to attract, like to attract your son? So here's the best way to look at it. I've learned to speak
• 19:15
  in a different language. You own a business, Cindy. And I come to you and I say, Cindy, I really want
• 19:21
  to work for you. And you say, can I see your resume? And I say, well, Cindy, I've been super
• 19:28
  busy at the beach. I've been on my gaming. I'm on my phone a lot. I just don't have a lot of time
• 19:34
  for extracurriculars or community service. And you say, come back later. Or, you know, sorry.
• 19:41
  Now, child B comes and they say, Cindy, I really want to work for you. And you say,
• 19:45
  Where's your resume? They say, well, I've worked really hard to get it down to four pages,
• 19:51
  but here it is. And I can honestly do your job for you. So you can go on vacation.
• 19:56
  Who are you going to fight for? True. True. Yeah. Good point. Good point. That's all it is. I mean,
• 20:04
  it's life situation at its finest. Okay. You go to work and you do the minimum. You're not getting
• 20:11
  a raise and you're not getting a promotion. Right. You apply for college and you're not putting in
• 20:17
  not, you're not going to get it. It really comes down to nothing that's free. It's either time or
• 20:24
  money or energy. Correct. Yeah, I could see that for sure. So, you know, I'm just, I was looking at
• 20:31
  some of the things before we got on the Zoom call here and it says you have for your applicants
• 20:38
  100% acceptance rate. Is that correct? So whatever school they decide to go to, they'll get in even,
• 20:47
  you know if it's it could be I mean there's some because Harvard what's their acceptance rate
• 20:52
  probably like less than 10 percent right it's less than that it's it's somewhere between four
• 20:58
  and six okay yeah I figured that that number is important to understand that not every child I
• 21:05
  work with wants to go to Harvard so you have to be mindful I help students with a 3.0 to a 5.0
• 21:13
  plus okay and so it's if everybody wanted to go to harvard that would not be possible because not
• 21:21
  everybody should that do go and do that correct right right because it would be i mean you would
• 21:28
  have to really commit you know early and there's just a couple other things so um like you have
• 21:37
  what am i reading here so so far i'm looking at this and it says you've done 80 million dollars
• 21:44
  in grants, merit scholarships.
• 21:48
  Is that a correct, like 80 million?
• 21:50
  That's how much money that's been,
• 21:53
  I don't want to say doled out,
• 21:56
  but is that how much money that's been offered to kids
• 21:58
  in the last 20 years that you've been doing this work?
• 22:02
  Right, so this is our 19th application season.
• 22:07
  So over the last 18 years,
• 22:09
  our students have earned over $80 million in scholarships
• 22:13
  from four buckets of money.
• 22:16
  The money is there. People just don't get it. They either throw up their hands. Go ahead.
• 22:24
  What are the buckets?
• 22:26
  Oh, I'll share. I'll share. Yeah. So parents will either throw up their hands and say,
• 22:32
  I make too much money. I'm not going to get any. So they don't even try.
• 22:36
  Or the student doesn't want to do the work. So then they don't try. And so people are really
• 22:42
  frustrated that they're not getting scholarships but they're not trying to get scholarships either
• 22:47
  so um the four buckets of money come in this way the first bucket is the biggest bucket and that's
• 22:56
  the institutional bucket that bucket of money right now harvard has 53 billion dollars in
• 23:04
  endowment so everybody says there's no money getting into harvard's the hard part the money's
• 23:14
  they're an incredibly they're an incredibly generous school my son had 12 different roommates
• 23:20
  every one of them was receiving some kind of grant very generous school and then i talked to
• 23:28
  families helping them understand that there are generous schools and there are very stingy schools
• 23:33
  and it would be good for them to know which are generous and which are stingy before they apply
• 23:38
  well of course yes they they don't they don't take the time they let their 17 year old do it
• 23:44
  based on location to the beach or the name of a football team or, you know, the US News and World
• 23:53
  Report rankings. None of that makes sense at all. And so we're trying to educate families that there
• 24:00
  are opportunities. So institutional is the biggest bucket. Then we get into merit. That would be the
• 24:07
  student with the high GPA or the high test score or the scholar athlete or the lead in the school
• 24:14
  play first chair in music asb president these are the kids who put in the effort just going back to
• 24:22
  business right to write the to write their resume gotcha just building the resume right and preparing
• 24:29
  for adulthood that's also what it comes down to so that's the second bucket the third bucket is
• 24:36
  independent scholarships there is a scholarship right now for ten thousand dollars a year if
• 24:43
  you're a vegan okay for any college for any college anywhere if you're a vegan you'll get
• 24:54
  ten thousand dollars a year yeah there's one right now fifteen thousand if you have one green
• 25:00
  eye and one brown eye how do you find these i mean i know you're not going around and asking
• 25:10
  your kids let me see your eye color but parents do know if their child has one brown eye and one
• 25:18
  green eye and it's you're serious there's a $15,000 scholarship for one okay what are some
• 25:24
  other ones do you there any others that you can think of my son won a $25,000 scholarship for
• 25:30
  leadership so he loved being a leader and so it wasn't hard for him at all he just applied and he
• 25:38
  won $25,000 a year for being a leader and these independent scholarships are outside of the
• 25:44
  university itself. These are different. Yes. Okay. Okay. Go with the student. It has nothing to do
• 25:51
  with how much your parents make or don't make, how much you do or don't make, has nothing to do with
• 25:56
  your high school, has nothing to do with anything other than the student. Interesting. Yeah. And so
• 26:06
  this money is out there. The fourth bucket is need-based. That's if your family makes under
• 26:12
  $100,000 in total for most schools for the IVs, it's under $200,000. And those are going to be
• 26:21
  under the need based category. So that doesn't tap into everyone. But there are families, I'm
• 26:27
  sure that that would be helpful for Oh, sure. And so I had in my first book, how to send your
• 26:33
  student to college without losing your mind to your money, I tap into 10 colleges or universities
• 26:41
  that are tuition free all you have to do is work at them interesting so you yeah you really did go
• 26:51
  out and explore all these universities to see you know not past you went past the selling part to
• 26:57
  get to the nuts and bolts where okay this is the money we have these are the pockets or these are
• 27:02
  the buckets and this is what that's interesting because you're right it would be like every school
• 27:07
  would be somewhat different you know uh that's it was state to state that's very interesting
• 27:13
  because those are some of the questions that I wondered about is were there independent
• 27:18
  scholarships outside of the university that kids could tap into um for sure and then you know the
• 27:24
  merit-based I know that um you know I coached a kid years ago um that really wanted to go to
• 27:32
  Princeton had the grades but Princeton is all merit-based from what she told me and that she
• 27:37
  would be accepted super duper smart kid and it was more of an of like if the family was going to
• 27:44
  decide to let her move that far away from home um but you know and that kind of made me think it's
• 27:51
  like how many how many schools out there that are merit-based and that was a few years ago so that's
• 27:56
  interesting because there's you said there how many skills 10 10 universities that are merit-based
• 28:01
  is that what you said no there are 10 that are tuition free it doesn't matter merit or not okay
• 28:07
  it's just you have to work public institutions or private uh some are private some are public
• 28:14
  it's a mix okay and so I I think what happened is I just got super frustrated with
• 28:21
  families saying we can't afford to send our child to college and yet I was finding out
• 28:28
  and getting this year I had one student one student all by herself well with our help
• 28:34
  earn $427,000 in scholarships. Oh my goodness. She's making money while attending college.
• 28:42
  Wow. Yeah. So I got super fired up and because everybody would just tell me we can't afford it
• 28:49
  and that our kids aren't going to go. And I'm like that, that is not how it works. There is
• 28:55
  lots of opportunities. And so it was my mission and still my mission to help over a million
• 29:03
  families navigate this process so they have clarity and understand not only how do I get
• 29:09
  accepted, but once I do, how do I know if it's a good return on my investment of time and money?
• 29:15
  Exactly. Because one of the statistics, it said it's a 300% return on your time investment in
• 29:20
  money that I read about you. And it would be, I mean, if you could actually make money
• 29:26
  uh, while you're going to school. Um, yeah, that's, it's, it's just incredibly fascinating,
• 29:32
  I think. Um, so how do kids, how do people find you? Well, for your listeners, I actually have
• 29:43
  a site they can go to, which is college ready plan, P L A N dot I N F O. So it's college ready
• 29:51
  plan.info there. They will see a video of me saying welcome. And then they have an
• 29:59
  opportunity to schedule 30 minutes to get clarity about their family because every family has their
• 30:05
  own nuances oh for sure the the details are endless and so on a podcast i can only speak to
• 30:13
  so many average but um one-to-one i can speak to detailed so that's the first gift i give to
• 30:19
  your listeners the second is my website with reference resources so if you go to college
• 30:25
  ready plan.com slash resources. I have how to calculate your student aid index for families
• 30:34
  who don't know what that is. Just know that is how much colleges think you should be able to pay.
• 30:39
  It's a very important, very important piece. Then I have a resource on how to help your child figure
• 30:48
  out their core values. Who are they? What matters to them? What are they good at? That's where
• 30:55
  scholarships come in. It's getting that clarity about themselves. And anyway, there's just a ton
• 31:01
  of resources that I give your listeners. And then, of course, I have two bestselling books on Amazon
• 31:06
  for your listeners at $4 each. And that way they can go on. If they're a do-it-yourselfer,
• 31:13
  pick up a book, and it's an easy read for a busy parent.
• 31:17
  So how many people do you have? I know you're the kind of, you wear a lot of hats as president,
• 31:23
  CEO and founder as I do with my organization as well. So how many people do you have working with
• 31:28
  you or under you? Are you small? Yeah, we currently have seven. Our team is small and mighty.
• 31:38
  My team has been with me most of them over 10 years. And I really thought, I mean, I did for
• 31:45
  the first probably 10 years, I didn't think I needed anybody. I really thought I was everything
• 31:53
  to everyone. And then I realized, wow, there's professional essay editors out there that are
• 32:00
  quite better at editing essays than myself. And the financial strategy, like I know everything,
• 32:08
  but I'm not a financial advisor. So I wanted to make sure I had people that could answer those
• 32:14
  type of questions because I can give all of the information, but I can't tell you what to do about
• 32:20
  it. So now I have a team that I can, you know, support families with. And I think that has made
• 32:27
  it even more powerful because I bring the best to the family. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know,
• 32:33
  like for me, it's my board of directors. They each have an expertise that we, we kind of feed
• 32:40
  off of each other when I need help with tech issues or publishing or writing blogs or articles,
• 32:46
  what have you I have people around me or advertising that kind of help me with that so
• 32:52
  yeah that's fascinating so what's do you I'm assuming that you also work with high school
• 32:59
  educators and counselors do you team up with with them as well I wish unfortunately I have tried
• 33:06
  endlessly over the years okay but the problem is they look at us as competition because if they
• 33:16
  were doing if if they think parents think that they should be doing what we do and they don't
• 33:22
  have the time number one and the training to do what we do and they wouldn't have the experts
• 33:29
  that you surround yourself with um you know that just focus on certain you know like financial
• 33:36
  planning high school counselors are not financial planners they wear a lot of hats and they're very
• 33:42
  good and i'm not and i'm not saying anything you know poorly to reflect on uh public educators my
• 33:47
  family proudly was in public education everyone except myself uh my dad was a was a college
• 33:54
  professor who taught teachers how to teach and student teachers my mother was also a teacher
• 33:59
  middle school for decades and my brother also taught um i did not sort of i went into physical
• 34:06
  therapy where it was more one-on-one teaching but not in the classroom so a complete respect for
• 34:12
  public educators and in the service that they provide but no you're right they can't do
• 34:16
  everything and in today's world they have so many more things that they're dealing with you know
• 34:22
  crisis situations and and you know just all kinds of things that go under their hat where they they
• 34:30
  don't have the time to really individually if you if you have say a guidance counselor and in you've
• 34:36
  got like 50 students that and they're all going in different directions they all have different
• 34:40
  issues it's just it's hard to just kind of keep you know contact with them considering all the
• 34:47
  other activities and things that you have to do it would be difficult so yeah I often tell parents
• 34:53
  if you think that they're handling it ask your child how many times they have met with physically
• 35:00
  met with their high school counselor and that will tell you the whole story very very rarely
• 35:08
  unless they are in trouble or they're struggling with something but the good students they are just
• 35:15
  hey your kid's doing great they don't need us exactly yeah you are you are right on that for
• 35:22
  sure so do you have you mentioned what's your what's your end game what's your ultimate goal
• 35:29
  you said you want to reach a million families? Absolutely. How many so far? Well, here's where
• 35:36
  I lost track. Prior to COVID, I had two physical offices and I was traveling a ton in person doing
• 35:43
  large presentations on this information. And of course, that all changed with COVID. And then
• 35:50
  this year alone, I've been on over 170 podcasts. So how do I know what that touch has been at this
• 35:58
  point is, is the reality. And so my goal is just get the word out there. College is a business,
• 36:08
  just like buying a home, just like buying a car, just like saving for retirement. It has to have
• 36:14
  a plan. You can't just go about it or worse, leave it to your 17 year old and hope they can navigate
• 36:21
  this because they are lacking financial literacy and a hundred thousand dollars a year to them.
• 36:29
  makes absolutely no sense. They can't even fathom what that's going to do to their future.
• 36:35
  Oh, for sure. It kind of reminds me of, you know, I'm at the point where I'm navigating end of life
• 36:41
  issues for both my parents. And there's just a huge lack of communication from different medical
• 36:48
  agencies, doctor's offices, equipment suppliers, insurance companies, pharmacies, navigating their
• 36:55
  websites, understanding what they're saying. Unfortunately, I have a background in health
• 37:01
  care, and I don't know how anyone in that particular generation in the 80s, upper 80s
• 37:07
  and 90s, my dad is 94, my mom is 92, could navigate that on their own. They have no idea.
• 37:13
  And I could see it's a similar thing where you have, and it's not that my folks aren't
• 37:18
  willing to do that. They just don't know what to do, you know, how to tap into things.
• 37:24
  I want to know what to do.
• 37:25
  Yeah. And so I could see that. I mean, it's, it's a, maybe an odd comparison, but also a definitely real life comparison where I could see a teenager. I mean, my teenagers at 17, I mean, maybe my daughter might be interested in money, just go shopping more, but my boys would be, Oh, well, all right. You know, or, uh, what's in the refrigerator? Let's, you know, kind of thing.
• 37:50
  So which leads me actually to my next question is, I think at our conversation that we talked earlier, you do a like a mental aptitude test for kids when they're in middle school.
• 38:02
  Talk a little bit about that.
• 38:04
  Absolutely.
• 38:05
  So what we've seen since COVID is in social media is that students are spending so much time on their technology that they've lost touch with who they are.
• 38:17
  I don't know if they ever even got there because of their age, their generation.
• 38:22
  But, you know, back in the day, we would spend time on the street and you learned I'm fast, I'm slow, I can jump, I can't.
• 38:28
  You just like to braid hair like you just kind of like you tested it out.
• 38:33
  Right. Now these kids are seeing everybody's best day on Instagram and they don't feel they're smart enough, not tall enough, not pretty enough, just not enough.
• 38:42
  exactly and it's such a tragedy for them because now they don't know who they are yeah and to what
• 38:48
  end is that going to stop you know it just with ai and the inventions of all the other kinds of
• 38:53
  things it's a hard generation to tap into i would see i could see yeah because they've lost that
• 39:00
  spontaneous play um you know i i once had a friend and i think this was a highlight compliment would
• 39:06
  that you could put my three kids in a cement room with a rubber ball and they'd figure out a way to
• 39:11
  make a game of it and I took it as a compliment because kids don't have that spontaneousness that
• 39:17
  they lack that creativity and if they're not stimulating it they don't think that way they
• 39:22
  their whole thought process changes if they don't have the opportunity to just explore
• 39:28
  it's very important especially when brains are still developing because I'm sure you know
• 39:33
  they're not fully developed until they're well starting into adulthood to 25 plus years before
• 39:38
  brains are finally developed so um if they spend a majority of that in technology and just from my
• 39:45
  experience with with working with kids you could definitely tell the ones that have stepped outside
• 39:51
  of the technology realm and and you know that that's where sports comes in for me is um it puts
• 39:59
  you out there in a different light you know when you're on the tennis court per se you you can't
• 40:04
  go to your computer and look up an answer. You have to figure out in a, you know, use your
• 40:11
  creativity. Okay. If they're hitting it to my forehand and I keep missing my forehands,
• 40:15
  what's going on here? Or boy, they, you know, when I serve to their backhand, they don't ever
• 40:20
  get it up to the net or they, you know, so let me, you know, you change your strategy, get creative.
• 40:25
  Maybe the person is playing at a real slow pace and you want to pick it up because you're kind
• 40:30
  of losing your momentum or vice versa. I mean, you're out there and you're kind of on an island
• 40:36
  when you're in a sport same whether it's a team softball basketball people are other people relying
• 40:42
  on you to use your skill and your creativity your perceptual motor skills kinetic you know kinetic
• 40:48
  energy all that kinds of stuff goes into it and if kids are not getting that uh it's sad it's sad
• 40:58
  that's why i'm such an advocate for getting them out of the technology room and getting them out
• 41:04
  playing in something. And it doesn't even have to be school sanctioned. It can be dance, ballet,
• 41:09
  martial arts, archery, whatever it is, just out away from technology into kind of a real more real
• 41:17
  wide world experience. Because sports really can you, if you can, you know, we talked about this,
• 41:25
  use it as a leverage, you can, you know, you put it on your resume, but it also can teach you some
• 41:30
  of those leadership skills and communication and organizing your time and all it goes hand in hand
• 41:36
  because if you've got you know several classes you've got to study for and you have basketball
• 41:41
  practice after school okay which topics are going to be the priority how am I going to organize how
• 41:48
  much time I'm going to spend on that because I get home at six I've got to eat you know it really
• 41:53
  changes for kids and and I think we're missing that because kids are not they're they're the
• 42:00
  The number of kids participating over on sports is falling for a number of different reasons.
• 42:06
  But definitely technology.
• 42:07
  I think they just, they don't think they're like the same thing.
• 42:09
  They don't think they're good enough.
• 42:11
  If I can't play in college, why go out?
• 42:14
  You know, they get that same kind of messaging.
• 42:16
  So, yeah, interesting.
• 42:18
  Interesting.
• 42:20
  So recognizing that and, you know, meeting with so many families.
• 42:24
  And I would ask the student, you know, do you have any does any decision on what you want to do after high school?
• 42:33
  And they just shrug and they feel bad. And so I don't want to leave them there.
• 42:39
  That's a terrible feeling. So I started what's called See Your Future Now.
• 42:44
  And what that is, is I meet with students or one at a time and I help them to get clarity about their gifts, their talents, their core values, their advocacy.
• 42:55
  the things that really matter to them. And then I've created a gamified version of helping them
• 43:03
  get clarity about what career would be a good fit. So it's do like this or that in helping them to
• 43:09
  get there. And then I meet again, and we unpack it where I can actually help them to narrow down
• 43:17
  to their top three careers, the education that they need to attain to get there, how much money
• 43:24
  they'll be making five years out 10 years out and if AI will have taken that job before they get
• 43:30
  I think that is an excellent point right there underlying exclamation point is to talk to them
• 43:37
  about a career of which they will be able to support themselves and also is it going to be
• 43:42
  replaced by AI because I think the whole professional field is going to be changing
• 43:47
  with that so at what age do you I mean how long does that take when it's probably each kid is
• 43:53
  different, but how long does that take for you to establish that kind of relationship with that kid
• 43:58
  so they can understand what they want and need? And at what age does that happen? I mean, what are
• 44:04
  you seeing? So just like any other child or family, they're all going to do it at a different
• 44:11
  time. How I know it's time is when they have intellectual curiosity. So what does it take
• 44:17
  to be a dentist? Or, you know, who sells houses? And what does that look like? Or, you know, that
• 44:25
  lady who does my hair? Does she also do nails? Like, just just starting to really, I giggle
• 44:32
  about this, because my oldest, I'll never forget his intellectual curiosity hit, we were on the
• 44:38
  East Coast, and we were driving on a toll road. And there was actually a human being in there,
• 44:43
  and people are throwing money into the thing.
• 44:46
  And he goes, how do I get that job, mom?
• 44:49
  That job looks awesome.
• 44:51
  I could play my Game Boy and I could sit there,
• 44:54
  listen to music and people throw money at me.
• 44:56
  Like all day long.
• 44:58
  Like that was the first time I heard him really think about,
• 45:03
  oh, what am I going to do after high school?
• 45:07
  What does that look like?
• 45:09
  And then we can start talking about how important is money to you?
• 45:12
  do you care about money or do you not do you want to go into the peace corps or do you want to be
• 45:18
  a multi-millionaire like what does that look like and then we can help them to get clarity about what
• 45:24
  their gifts and their talents are those things that they were born with the things they've had
• 45:29
  to work hard for and then we can talk about their core values you know if they're and i don't think
• 45:34
  kids get an opportunity to do that no they don't i think they're pressed into a mold as is this is
• 45:41
  what i should think this is what you know based on the school system they're in based on the school
• 45:47
  district they're in maybe where they live they're pressed into a mold instead of someone actually
• 45:52
  sitting down and talking to them what do you really like to do what do you really what what's
• 45:59
  fun for you uh i think that's a it's a great conversation to have with kids along with you
• 46:07
  know financial future i don't think enough schools do like the financial future thing and there was a
• 46:12
  couple of questions I was going to get to in a minute, but you know, the four-year undergraduate
• 46:18
  degree in some areas, um, it's just not financially feasible. You know, when I was in, when I was in
• 46:24
  college, you could get a degree in art history and go out and get a job. You know, you can't do
• 46:29
  that anymore. Uh, it's just, you just don't have marketable skills. People will just like, oh, art
• 46:34
  history. What is that? And a lot of schools don't even offer it anymore. I know the one that I
• 46:38
  graduated from University of Kansas, I think that's been eliminated. But, um, so what do you
• 46:43
  think about that? I mean, the four-year degree, have we reached a tipping point with college
• 46:50
  institutions? What do you see the future trends for them? So I think it's important to realize
• 46:56
  that if you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a CPA, or an engineer, you have to get a college degree.
• 47:02
  It's non-negotiable, right? So for all of those families, guess what? You need that degree to go
• 47:09
  get that career. But for those who want to be an entrepreneur, influencer, you know, something that
• 47:19
  is not a traditional career path, there's new things that are opening up. There are wonderful
• 47:29
  opportunities for students. There is now, yes, so there's now an entrepreneur's path where there
• 47:36
  never was prior. And what I'm learning more and more about students is once they figure out who
• 47:42
  they are, if they're really good at math, science, history, English, language, sport, like they're
• 47:48
  just really good at all of them. They're an entrepreneur. They don't fit into a box. And
• 47:55
  that's hard for people who come from a box, because it seems like they they're all over the
• 48:02
  place. Well, that's kind of true, but really it's because they're really good at a lot of things.
• 48:08
  And so my goal is to help students to get so clear about who they are, what matters to them,
• 48:16
  and the impact they want to make that we actually prove it. I created a nonprofit
• 48:21
  called empowereducation.world. And in this organization, teenagers from middle and high
• 48:29
  school, and now into college, come together once a week, and they're creating impact. They have
• 48:36
  built two schools in Uganda, an orphanage in Oaxaca, School for the Blind in India, and some
• 48:42
  local opportunities as well. And here's why it's important. And that's your entrepreneurial
• 48:48
  path? No, that's for every student, because here's what happens. If you think you want to be,
• 48:56
  let's just say a doctor. We have a passion group inside of this project that writes books for the
• 49:03
  children on malaria or first aid, or how do you help provide CPR? I promise you in these third
• 49:11
  world countries, there's nobody talking about CPR. And it's such a basic thing that these
• 49:17
  teenagers are so excited to teach to these other children. Well, there's no better way to show a
• 49:25
  student, is that their thing? Unless they do it. And when they do it and they find massive joy and
• 49:33
  they're really like, I love this. Now it's their why. Now they're motivated to go and do more.
• 49:42
  So do you have any of those programs here in the United States for underprivileged children that
• 49:47
  you work with? Yes. So there's several and we usually do it based on the students in the
• 49:54
  organization. They're either tapped into them as a parent would be or they themselves. I have one
• 50:03
  student who found out that he was hard of hearing well into middle school. They did not catch it all
• 50:10
  the way through elementary school. And so he is helping us connect to a nonprofit for the hearing
• 50:18
  impaired children because that matters a lot to him sure it does and so we we pick things that are
• 50:25
  meaningful to the student and not the other way around many parents make the mistake of oh let's
• 50:33
  go do this and the student's like I don't want to go paint old ladies nails at the elderly center
• 50:38
  like gotcha but I know people I know kids that would love doing that yeah but that's not you
• 50:44
  yeah yeah and so some students when the parents suggest that they're like no i don't want to do
• 50:50
  that and the parent gets frustrated and thinks they don't want to serve but it's just they don't
• 50:55
  want to do what the parent suggested sure and yeah and i think that's yeah that's that's really true
• 51:02
  um so you know if kids are you know from a financially challenged group because i know that
• 51:10
  you know, meeting with you and working with you, you know, it costs money. How do those
• 51:15
  underprivileged kids tap into your resources? So one, becoming part of Empower Education
• 51:21
  is a nonprofit, and there's no fee to do that. So anybody can join. And we created it so it was
• 51:29
  all inclusive with no barriers to entry. And inside of there, they get to learn leadership,
• 51:36
  They get to learn serving others, compassion, empathy, prioritizing.
• 51:42
  I mean, the skills that they learn and they're leading each other.
• 51:47
  I don't lead them.
• 51:48
  So it's a student led organization.
• 51:50
  So the beauty of that is they're learning to lead other people in doing something that
• 51:58
  they are deeply passionate about.
• 52:02
  And so anybody can tap into that.
• 52:04
  And I think that's super important for any other student.
• 52:07
  who has financial challenges, my suggestion is find what do you deeply care about and then go
• 52:16
  and do it. It doesn't cost you a dime. Anybody would be happy to accept your time and your
• 52:26
  energy to make somebody else's life better. And I think that's really key. And I think that's
• 52:31
  really key for parents to hear because kids need to, it's in sports too, you know, they're really
• 52:38
  good at it, but they have to show ownership to it. Like, you know, in order to be, you're a good
• 52:45
  athlete and the parents have an idea that they're going to go on and play in college and have all
• 52:50
  that. But, and I see so many times where they're good, but they don't really take ownership of that.
• 52:56
  Meaning it's not really, they're not driven. They're not passionate about it because it's
• 53:00
  not coming from them. It's coming from outside pressure and it doesn't work, you know, but when
• 53:05
  you see those kids that actually grab on and take ownership to it and make it theirs makes all the
• 53:13
  difference in the world because they're passionate about it and they're gonna stick with it why am I
• 53:21
  doing this if they can't answer why are they doing it they shouldn't be doing it right right
• 53:29
  it has to be a reason and so many people choose not to do things and that's okay but when a child
• 53:38
  does find their thing and they're all in and they're excited and they're the one who is waiting
• 53:43
  by the door with their cleats in hand or their racket in hand that is a completely different child
• 53:51
  than the one who can't find their stuff and they're running late and it's disaster oh yeah
• 53:56
  i hear you had someone both ends of the spectrum or it's like you know with us it's fine if you
• 54:04
  commit yourself to this project or this team, but you have to stay to the end. If you don't like it,
• 54:10
  too bad. You got to stay to the end. And I'm sure you've went through that too, that there were
• 54:16
  things they were involved in or seasons of sports or whatever. And he's like, when is this going to
• 54:19
  be over? Because it's torture because you know, they're miserable. You're miserable, but it teaches
• 54:24
  what I, what I tell them is that you need to get skills out of this situation that you're going to
• 54:29
  be able to navigate life with. You may not like it, but you're going to be in a work situation,
• 54:33
  a college situation where you don't like it but what it's this is going to give you those skills
• 54:39
  to navigate through it and get through life because life is like that life is is there's
• 54:43
  always twists and turns and ups and downs constantly for sure absolutely um this is such
• 54:50
  a great conversation i'm so glad that uh we're having this because i think this information is
• 54:55
  fascinating um you know answering i've you know so many questions whirling around in my mind right
• 55:00
  now. But what about, because, you know, one of my sons, I want to say the late bloomer,
• 55:08
  you know, super smart, super capable, but just, you know, you just, we tried, you know, private
• 55:17
  tutors and a lot of different things. We just could not get the light bulb turned on. He eventually
• 55:21
  did turn it on himself after, you know, a little bit, a couple of years in college and got things
• 55:27
  turned around. And, you know, what do you say to those kids that, that just aren't college ready
• 55:31
  when they're in high school because there are they're just that is it's just like they aren't
• 55:36
  ready to go to college they need to work for a year or they need to you know do something a
• 55:42
  little bit different what do you what do you say to those kids do you still if they would come to
• 55:46
  you after high school even though they might be a bit older you'd still take them in under your
• 55:50
  wing when they were ready to work for sure and a lot of I work with a lot of transfer students
• 55:56
  who weren't ready to go directly into a four year university. So maybe they decided to go the
• 56:03
  community college route or work route or gap year or whatever that is. And so we can help them as
• 56:10
  well. But here's what I like families and students to be thinking. If college, if you are not college
• 56:18
  ready or not ready for college, what are you ready for? Or what are you missing? To just say,
• 56:28
  I'm not, I don't want to go to college. That's okay. And I honor that. Honest to goodness.
• 56:34
  I consult with families and say, here's a great trade school or, but my concern is what I hear
• 56:42
  and see most often is parents have told their children, Hey, college is not it. Like I went to
• 56:50
  college. My parents said, just go, you'll figure it out. You'll grow up and, you know, take on some
• 56:56
  loans, it'll be worth it. And these adults are, they graduated, they didn't use their major,
• 57:03
  they're still paying off their loans and they're bitter. And I would be bitter too, right? But that
• 57:09
  was bad advice. And that's still going on today because you have a huge dropout rate. Like my
• 57:17
  husband teaches at Michigan State University here in Michigan. And I was reading some statistics a
• 57:24
  few years ago, but the dropout rate was almost 50%. The kids will, but that's not just, you know,
• 57:30
  that's not just MSU, that's other schools too. It, you know, say it's a four, a four-year public
• 57:35
  institution, state institution. The dropout rate is 30 to 50% because the kids get there and they're
• 57:43
  like, I hate my major. I don't know why I'm wasting my time. And then they have debt that they can't
• 57:50
  pay off. And so that's what gets me super fired up about what I do. Yeah. Is because just because
• 57:58
  your parents didn't do it or didn't have the, the, the gift of the wisdom that on how to do it
• 58:05
  properly, please don't look at college and say, it's not for you. If you don't know, it's, you
• 58:12
  know, one way or the other, I get a lot of students right now who want to be influencers
• 58:16
  and they're like here check me out on tiktok i have like 50 billion followers and i'm like great
• 58:23
  how much money did they pay you no i just told you i have 50 billion followers and i'm like
• 58:29
  but that doesn't pay the bills i got what are you gonna do with that right how are you gonna
• 58:35
  monetize that well i don't know and i said well where's your business plan well i don't know how
• 58:41
  to make a business plan. And so a lot of what I do is I don't tell them no. And I don't say that
• 58:52
  silly or worse. I help them understand and go through the process in their mind of where do
• 59:00
  you want to live? What does that look like? Do you always want to live in your bedroom at your
• 59:04
  parents' house or do you want to move out? Well, how much is that going to cost? Well,
• 59:10
  well, when do you want to do that? What does the timing look like? How are you going to afford to
• 59:14
  do that? What is going to sustain you? Do you want to have roommates? Do you want to have a family?
• 59:21
  And I just take them through this beautiful scenario of seeing their future. And they come
• 59:27
  at it like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like I better get on with myself. Like I have to figure
• 59:33
  something out. And I think it's because parents of this generation have been so incredibly
• 59:40
  amazing parents that they haven't allowed their child to fail. Oh, yes, yes. Amen on that. Yes,
• 59:49
  yes, yes, yes. You learn a lot by failing. We call it at College Ready, failing forward,
• 59:55
  which means what did you take from it? What did you learn? What are you not going to do again?
• 1:00:01
  How did it shape your character? Like, it's okay. Well, when you have this generation that we're
• 1:00:07
  taught everybody gets a trophy and nobody fails it's really hard for them to get to this next
• 1:00:14
  level right and it's terrifying it is you know it is university of michigan for this fall semester
• 1:00:22
  they are not giving a b c d f grades for all freshmen pat it's going to be pass or fail i
• 1:00:31
  kid you not scouts honor yes because students are coming in for that exact reason they've had ap
• 1:00:38
  courses, straight A's all the way, you know, highly competent in all these other areas. They
• 1:00:43
  get accepted into the school, but they get a C on their first paper and fall apart. And I saw that
• 1:00:51
  a lot in sports where you, you, you're out there, especially in tennis and, and, and the girls
• 1:00:56
  didn't know how to lose, you know, and in life, there'd be a lot of losses, unfortunately, but
• 1:01:02
  there are a lot of wins, you know, a lot of good wins, but there are also losses. And I find that,
• 1:01:06
  that that we want to be such good parents in this generation that we don't want their kid you don't
• 1:01:12
  want your kid to be unhappy you don't want them to experience but sometimes they just need to battle
• 1:01:19
  it out and yeah and that's that's where in you know again comes the whole podcast theme you know
• 1:01:27
  with do i need my racket um because it's what you take from sport out into life into you know
• 1:01:35
  college or work or family and how do you use it you know um it's kind of an extension of yourself
• 1:01:43
  but yeah it's i fully agree with that is and i don't know how we get back to that how do we go
• 1:01:51
  backwards you know it's like how do we go backwards with social media where it's just
• 1:01:55
  doesn't have such a large imprint how do we go backwards with parents where we can just okay
• 1:02:02
  back up a little bit, back up about 10 steps and just watch, just listen. You know, how do we do,
• 1:02:08
  I mean, how do we do that? Are we, are we going to continue to just keep pushing the envelope with
• 1:02:13
  social media and AI? And, you know, I got, I got my kid in this dance program and, you know,
• 1:02:19
  it just, it's on and on and on and on. And, and, and I see that and it just creates anxiety in
• 1:02:27
  these kids and it creates anxiety in parenting. How do, what are your thoughts on that?
• 1:02:34
  it's all comes down to communication. It really communication is the key to help your child
• 1:02:40
  navigate and not in agreement. You know, it was the coach's fault. It was the teacher's fault. It
• 1:02:48
  was, it was somebody else's fault. It wasn't me. And I would always tell my, my child, I say, you
• 1:02:54
  know, that finger you're pointing at them, what do you own? Point it back at yourself. What do you,
• 1:03:01
  what was your part in this? Oh, you didn't turn in your homework. Well, then that teacher who was
• 1:03:08
  disappointed and gave you a low grade probably did the right thing. Are you going to forget your
• 1:03:14
  homework again? Well, no. Okay. Well then you learn the lesson. Let's move on. There you go.
• 1:03:19
  And so I would just help each of my kids in a way that it was affirming of what you got out of it.
• 1:03:28
  Right. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody's going to, you know, make choices. And hopefully
• 1:03:34
  as you navigate them and you communicate with them, my expectation was not that they won every
• 1:03:40
  single time and that they competed at the highest level. If they wanted to do that and they failed,
• 1:03:46
  I'd be like, wow, what a great opportunity that was. You saw what the highest part of that bar
• 1:03:52
  looks like. Now you can either go practice and go get it again, or you cannot. But that's a
• 1:03:58
  beautiful choice you get to make. And I think that is what helped my son get through medical school.
• 1:04:04
  When we talk about the challenges of going to Harvard and getting his first B,
• 1:04:11
  and now we can giggle about it. Like it was a reality for him. And he was okay. He's like,
• 1:04:17
  mom, guess who's getting their first B? Like he owned it. He's like, I'm okay with it, mom. Don't
• 1:04:22
  you worry about me yeah and I that was what I was most scared about of him going across the country
• 1:04:28
  and going at such a competitive place and then when he goes to medical school and he goes you
• 1:04:35
  know mom at least half the kids are not going to go on like they're not going to pass you know
• 1:04:40
  step one or step two and I said how does that make you feel and he goes well I'm going to give
• 1:04:45
  it my best shot and see what happens that's all you've got that's all you've got so what do you
• 1:04:51
  think about i mean there and there are other schools besides university of michigan that
• 1:04:54
  aren't going to give out grades and just pass fail for freshman week what are your thoughts on that
• 1:04:58
  just curious i have a high school right now and i won't say the name of it but they're giving
• 1:05:03
  smiley faces and sad faces no letter grades are you serious i am serious they've taken it to a
• 1:05:14
  whole nother level and when i have to calculate the gpa you do how many smiley faces and how many
• 1:05:19
  sad faces? How do you calculate that? We have to go back to the high school and help get a rubric
• 1:05:26
  of helping us understand what does that mean? Well, they don't want the kids to compete and
• 1:05:32
  they don't want the kids to be stressed out and they don't want. And I'm like, okay, but what
• 1:05:37
  you're doing is confusing the heck out of everybody. How do they even know if they're
• 1:05:43
  doing well or not? Yeah. And it's a different philosophy and I'm not here to argue it for or
• 1:05:49
  against, but I'm just saying that some of that is causing what's happening when we, when we send our
• 1:05:59
  kids into adulthood, the first time they fail, I remember I sent my daughter to the Czech Republic
• 1:06:05
  of Prague. She wanted to go to school in Europe and she was the fourth child and the baby. And I'm
• 1:06:11
  like, I don't know. I don't know. She doesn't seem like the type. And I created a list of 20 things
• 1:06:17
  that she had to accomplish for me to feel comfortable and her dad to feel comfortable.
• 1:06:22
  And it was not until the day before she left, she finished number 20. And it was things like
• 1:06:28
  book a flight, get on the flight, let us know you're on the other side, book a hotel,
• 1:06:34
  like little things that if she got caught up in an airport and a flight was canceled,
• 1:06:41
  she would have had to figure out on her own. So we set her up ahead of time.
• 1:06:46
  and that's what i'm trying to help families understand is if you plan for the unknown
• 1:06:52
  it's never the unknown right it's interesting you always have a way interesting you say that
• 1:06:58
  because with my kids when they took it's it just scared me to death i was in you know neurologic
• 1:07:03
  rehab my whole professional career head injury spinal cord just scared me to death to give my
• 1:07:07
  kids at 16 a driver's license and turn them loose right but what i did with them was we went to the
• 1:07:15
  ATM. How do you get money out? We had, I made them go through a drive-through car wash. I made
• 1:07:20
  them to go fill up the gas tank, you know, or do these things that require a lot of extra thinking
• 1:07:25
  while they're driving and they actually have to pay attention. I, you know, and in my daughter,
• 1:07:30
  we pull into this drive-through car wash, which was kind of a little quirky. So you had to kind
• 1:07:34
  of work with it. And I did it on purpose. She just about had a panic attack because she had to
• 1:07:38
  forward, backward, forward, backward, you know, several times. But I said, you got to get through
• 1:07:43
  there you've got to get through the car wash you know it's the same kind of mentality where you just
• 1:07:47
  they need those skills you're right in order to be able to take care of themselves self-care yeah
• 1:07:55
  for sure oh what a great conversation I and I can tell you're just so passionate about it just
• 1:08:00
  looking at you on the screen you know it's it's uh so I just just curious you know did you did
• 1:08:07
  you play any sports when you were in high school and college or or participate in any sort of
• 1:08:10
  sanctioned activity i did so my thing was softball and i played softball for the usa
• 1:08:17
  and it was back in the day um but i got to wear the usa letters and we played in hong kong and
• 1:08:24
  china and i was probably the smallest catcher that they had ever worked with but i was mighty
• 1:08:31
  fierce how tall are you i'm only five five five five and yeah i'm just not a very big person at
• 1:08:39
  all. And so I had no problem blocking the plate, holding my own. I was like, I was fierce is the
• 1:08:47
  way my dad used to put it. And I learned so much. I give so much credit to some really great coaches,
• 1:08:56
  um, to some great, uh, teammates who challenged me to the point where I started to second guessing
• 1:09:05
  myself and who also encouraged me when I didn't think I could do it. And I remember when my coach
• 1:09:12
  told me I had to throw from behind the plate to center field without a bounce. And I'm thinking
• 1:09:17
  there's just no way ever that's going to happen. And he was able to coach me through that. And
• 1:09:25
  that that mind shift of some things possible, right? And I just have to figure out the how
• 1:09:33
  it's possible, I think gave me the skills that I still use today to run my businesses.
• 1:09:41
  For sure. Yeah. Cause you, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, it gets me down to the end. And we talked
• 1:09:47
  about this is the, the, the theme of do I meet my racket is, is metaphorical. It's, it's something
• 1:09:53
  about yourself that you carry with you off the court, you know, off the track, off the field
• 1:09:58
  or what have you out into life like what and you use it because you have to swing at life
• 1:10:05
  all the time hit or miss and I think that's a good conversation because sometimes you're going
• 1:10:09
  to miss terribly and sometimes you're going to hit a lot of them straight on you know so
• 1:10:15
  so Shelly after all this discussion and and uh which has just been absolutely delightful what
• 1:10:20
  would you say your racket is um I think it's the mindset if you don't have a plan you plan to fail
• 1:10:30
  my coaches, my parents, they always told me, you know, it's up to you to put your cleats in your
• 1:10:37
  backpack. It's not up to us. That's having a plan. It's up to you to put your papers in your book
• 1:10:44
  bag to get to the teacher. It's not up to us to run them to you if you forget them. And so it
• 1:10:50
  always has stayed with me. And even as we're going into this world of AI, and I've jumped in both
• 1:10:56
  feet because I need to guide these teenagers to what's coming. Right. It's the same thing dealing
• 1:11:03
  with AI. If you think for a minute, it's going to think for you, you are way, way, way, way, way
• 1:11:11
  kidding yourself. Right. You have got to have a plan and you need to know what the outcome is
• 1:11:17
  going to be before you even give it to an AI agent. So it, to me, it's really thinking things
• 1:11:26
  through and knowing that you've done everything you can to be successful. And then you've just
• 1:11:32
  got to step into it. Right. It's just one more humor. I was thinking about have a plan and
• 1:11:38
  putting your things in your backpack. So I would drop my kids off at school every morning. And
• 1:11:44
  there was more than one occasion, my middle son would just get in the car, you know, go from the
• 1:11:53
  house, garage, car, have everything, but would not have his shoes on. And well, you're going to be
• 1:12:02
  late because now we have to turn around. You know, the other two got out. We have to go find your
• 1:12:06
  shoes. And then, you know, he would have to get them on and then explain I'm late because I forgot
• 1:12:11
  my shoes, you know, but that's just the same kind of, kind of mentality is, is, yeah, you, you have
• 1:12:16
  to have a plan. And, and I, I can safely say now that all three of my kids, they graduated from
• 1:12:22
  college they are working and successfully you know professional people and and yeah so if you
• 1:12:30
  had anything else you wanted to add after all this this conversation what would that be anything else
• 1:12:35
  you'd like to say to the audience a couple of thoughts for parents one your child has no clue
• 1:12:42
  how much a hundred thousand or four hundred thousand dollars is and if you think they do
• 1:12:49
  ask them how much things cost just randomly and so please do not let them navigate this and just
• 1:12:57
  they're terrified and if they look like they're procrastinating it's because they don't want to
• 1:13:04
  make a mistake and they don't know what what to do so exactly either they need your help or they
• 1:13:09
  need somebody's help but don't count on them do it on their own that's definitely important
• 1:13:15
  And the other thing is, most families believe they make too much money and they just throw
• 1:13:22
  up their hands and say, I guess we'll just have to do this.
• 1:13:26
  And please do not do that.
• 1:13:28
  I'm telling you, our families are receiving boatloads of money and they're no different
• 1:13:34
  than your family.
• 1:13:35
  So please just think those things through.
• 1:13:39
  And the last thing is, parents, you've got this.
• 1:13:41
  Yes.
• 1:13:42
  I really want you to know you've got this.
• 1:13:45
  Well, it's been great having you on the show, and I look forward to speaking with you in
• 1:13:52
  the future.
• 1:13:54
  Thank you for having me, Cindy.
• 1:13:55
  Thanks.
• 1:13:56
  Well, thanks again to Shelly Howard for being on this show today.
• 1:14:00
  And if you'd like to get a hold of her and get more information, here is her email address.
• 1:14:07
  Shelly, spelled S-H-E-L-L-E-E, at collegereadyplan.com.
• 1:14:15
  Because all of you, every student out there has potential and deserves a chance.
• 1:14:23
  Every student and family is unique.
• 1:14:27
  And there is a place out there for you.
• 1:14:30
  There is a plan out there for you.
• 1:14:32
  You just have to start somewhere, somehow.
• 1:14:35
  You have to get ready.
• 1:14:37
  You have to have a plan.
• 1:14:39
  And then you have to go.
• 1:14:40
  And just remember, it's never too late or too early to start planning for college.
• 1:14:47
  So why not start your journey now?
• 1:14:51
  Start writing your story.
• 1:14:54
  Start using your own voice, making your spot, making your place in the world.
• 1:14:59
  Because today is the right time to begin, ready, set, go.
• 1:15:08
  Once again, I'd like to thank Tudor Big from Big Sound and Lighting
• 1:15:14
  for editing and producing this podcast and for providing the original theme music.
• 1:15:19
  Now for a bit more about Cindy Swain,
• 1:15:22
  President and CEO of In Her Name Foundation and the host of this podcast.
• 1:15:26
  Cindy is a licensed physical therapist, certified yoga instructor,
• 1:15:30
  former tennis coach, and Division I collegiate athlete.
• 1:15:33
  She is a happily married mother of three and spends her free time gardening,
• 1:15:37
  beekeeping, and cycling.
• 1:15:39
  Cindy loves the Kansas Jayhawks and is an exercise and sports fanatic.
• 1:15:43
  For more information about In Her Name Foundation, visit our website at inhernamefoundation.org.
• 1:15:52
  Join us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, and subscribe to our newsletter.
• 1:15:57
  Make a donation.
• 1:15:59
  We look forward to meeting all of you again and sharing our next episode of inspiration.
• 1:16:04
  Until then, see you next time, and be prepared to bring your racket.