Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Hi, the student last night who told me she just wants to marry a hot Italian guy and not worry about it.

And I asked her, I said, have you met this Italian guy?

And she goes, yeah, he's on the cooking channel of TikTok.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

We are currently looking for professionals or entrepreneurs who would be willing to discuss their communication challenges on this show.

All the details of booking a spot with me are found on the show notes.

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Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with Shellee Howard all the way from Southern California, joining us today to help you not only be college ready, but graduate debt free instead of begging for student loan forgiveness.

So let's welcome her to the show.

Hi, Shellee.

Hi, Roberta.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you for being here.

Welcome to the show.

And tell us a little bit about yourself.

So I have had the opportunity of being a fifth generation from Southern California.

And I have four children, two boys and two girls, an Italian exchange student and a Ugandan goddaughter.

So I love helping and inspiring teenagers all over the world.

I enjoy traveling.

And most importantly, I love what I get to do every day.

That's one thing we have in common, the traveling, because this is the third country I live in.

I don't seem to stay in one place.

Welcome.

Before you started College Ready, which we'll talk about in detail, what did you do after you graduated college?

That's a wonderful question.

So backing up a bit before that, I changed my major five times.

So I was a little bit confused in college what I wanted to do.

And now I completely understand why, is I'm an entrepreneur.

And most entrepreneurs just don't quite fit into a box, right?

It's a little more creative space.

So when I graduated from college, I graduated with honors in communications.

And ironically enough, the show being communication podcast, I find that fascinating.

I absolutely loved my major.

I remember asking the teacher, wait, I get a grade for talking?

This major is brilliant.

And of course, it was way more than just talking.

But it did resonate well with me.

And so when I graduated, I knew I wanted to go into sales and ultimately own my own business.

And I thought the best way to start preparing for that is learn how to sell, learn how to manage, learn how to communicate while selling and receiving.

And so I started straight out of college as a sales manager for Procter & Gamble, and I was selling cover girl makeup.

Yeah, so it was an interesting launch.

Not something I had planned to, but I knew I wanted a Fortune 500 company to train with.

And so I stayed with them for eight and a half years before I started my first business.

And now College Ready is the seventh business I have started, and I think it will be my final.

I really love it.

You really are an entrepreneur, and nobody can put you into one box.

So first of all, let's talk about the changing majors five times aspect.

We hear a lot of people doing that, because it seems as though a person might graduate high school even with honors, valedictorian, but sometimes they are not even sure what it is that they want to study.

They may think, OK, I signed up for this degree for engineering, and I changed my major because I like something different.

How should you determine, and is it possible to determine what you really love so you go straight to it instead of changing majors?

I love that.

Absolutely.

The answer is yes, you can.

My first born, he knew in eighth grade, and he stuck to it the whole time.

My second born, she knew in about ninth or tenth grade, and she stuck to it.

And my second two are in the same position.

I have a program in College Ready, and it's called See Our Future Now, where I'm a certified career coach.

And what that means to our students is we start with their gifts, their talents, their core values, and their advocacy.

Then we help them by asking them, do you like this or that?

From there, we guide them into, does this sound like something you would enjoy doing based on your skills?

We can then show them what career path they could take, what majors funnel into that career path, and we can even show them if a robot will be doing their job in five years.

That's a big one.

Hello, Chad GPT.

Yeah.

Those are some of the bigger fears right now.

And just a caveat to that, we are not saying, I don't know if you agree with me, but we are not saying that a person should box themselves.

No.

Yes.

But at least have some form of direction, especially when you go to college, because we're going to talk about the financial aspect of it.

Changing majors, you keep paying and you keep paying for new classes.

That's what we're addressing here.

That's a big part of our program is helping students understand if they plan now, they will pay less later.

It's opportunity costs.

If they don't know what they want to do, at least their top three majors.

It may not be, I know I want to be a CPA and live in Oregon.

They may not know that.

But they may know, I want a job that uses my gift of numbers.

That's a huge, you cut half of the careers out just by saying that one statement.

The hardest part is when students come and they say, well, I really like Lego, so I think I want to be an engineer.

Unfortunately, those two potentially might, but maybe structural engineer, but it's not the end all.

It's not you should go to MIT and pay for MIT and then find out later, you really just like Legos.

We need to have a better program for students than that.

Right.

Especially if you absolutely love Legos, but physics and math may not be your strong suit, so it doesn't necessarily mean go to MIT.

Now, let's ask the age-old question.

Is college for everybody?

I asked the question back, which would be, if not college, then what?

So I don't believe that every student has to go to college, but I do believe every student needs a plan for the day after they graduate high school.

It doesn't matter if it's a trade school.

It doesn't matter if it's entrepreneurship.

It doesn't matter if it's college.

As long as there's been thought put into it, there's this thing going on right now where kids either want to be an influencer.

Oh, there you go.

Right?

And they're like, Shellee, I'm just going to be an influencer.

And I'm like, well, where's your business plan?

And they're like, what do you mean?

I need a business plan.

And I need selfies for Instagram.

It's a real thing.

I meet with students every single day, and they think they want to be an influencer, and it's as simple as posting on social media every day.

And so a lot of times I'm helping students get outside of the phone, of the computer, and do it the old-fashioned way of, what are you really good at?

What are you meant to do?

What is your purpose, and can you live it?

And then guide them to get them there.

Because they really aren't getting support in high school, and a lot of times they think they know what a parent wants them to do, and they may not want to do it, so they just don't want to talk about it.

And so when I start working with students, I had a student last night who told me she just wants to marry a hot Italian guy and not worry about it.

And I'm like, wow, I really missed out.

And I asked her, I said, have you met this Italian guy?

And she goes, yeah, he's on the cooking channel of TikTok.

And I'm like, wow, I don't have anything to say about that.

Like, you stumped me.

And so it's a different challenge than it was just five years ago.

It's a new challenge of everybody's living in a world where they think everybody has it all figured out, and they're living this perfect life, and nobody wants to make a mistake.

So I get to be the gentle reality of saying, that's a great Plan A, but let's talk about Plan B and Plan C in case you don't want to be on your knees doing type work for plumbing when you're 60.

It sounds okay when you're 20, but when you're 60, you might want to own a plumbing business and have other plumbers working for you.

So there's not one path.

I can't put everybody in a box and say everybody should go to college.

I don't believe in that.

Both of my parents didn't go to college and they are very, very well off.

So it's not a belief in success for me.

It's really where do we meet that student and how do we support them so they live their best life?

So, Shellee, you're the buzzkill when all of us want to be influencers and marry hot Italian guys.

But here's the thing.

I like her.

But which is something also grownups struggle with?

If I am able to establish my purpose, what kind of exercises can I partake in?

Quizzes or something to determine what is my purpose?

Because some of us are still asking ourselves this in our 40s.

I totally understand.

I've had many adults asked to go through my program.

So I know that is a true fact.

What I will tell you is we start with assessments to get students to start thinking about who they are and what matters to them.

Most of them only have a reflection from the phone or the computer, and they don't truly have the depth of who are they, what matters to them, what is their purpose, and how they're going to live it.

And I think some adults go into adulthood still kind of drifting.

So I tell adults, I said, wouldn't you love the gift of by the time you were 18, somebody sat down with you and unpacked what does it mean to want to influence others?

What career would be great if you love influencing others?

What career would be good if you don't like people?

These are real things that we should be talking about.

And unfortunately, they don't in the high schools at all.

Families try, but they often say they're teenagers and they won't talk to me.

Teenagers tell me everything.

And I think it's a little bit because I speak their language.

I have never met a teenager I don't adore.

And so they may sense like it is a safe place and there's no judgment.

I just want them to be happy.

I don't think it matters what the name of the career is, as long as if they want to buy a new Ferrari every year, they can't be a botanist.

Like there has to be some alignment into what they want on a monetary side.

Because if they want to just go into the Peace Corps and drive the same car for the next 20 years, and that will make them happy, who am I to tell them that that's not a good plan?

But they need to know if they go to the Peace Corps that they don't get the Ferrari every year.

That's where the disconnect is coming.

That the price you pay for whatever it is that you want to achieve.

Everything has a different price, and those results you will get from paying that price for the Ferrari or for a simpler lifestyle, if that resonates with you.

And that's why we always say success means different things to different people.

For sure.

And then let's talk about the parental side of it.

Do you have clients, teenagers, who say, my parents are saying I have to go to college to have a bright future so they don't worry about me, but I don't want to go to college.

I have a different plan.

Can you convince them, Shellee, please, to say I'm not going to college?

It's an interesting thing.

I've had parents who have called me and say, you need to convince my child that they need to be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer, and that's all there is.

You need to do that, and I can't do that.

That does not align with my values.

But what I do help students understand is their parents are concerned that they want them to be successful and provide for themselves.

And if I come at it from a place of understanding what that looks like, like how much money do they need to live the life they want to live, that's the number one disconnect.

Students don't have an idea how much electricity costs, gas, paying rent.

There's a massive disconnect there.

And so they don't understand why they have to go to all that school, and they don't understand why they have to work as hard as their parents, because they have a great life the way it is.

And especially if the parents are providing the life, it surely is great.

And I tell parents all the time, if that's the case, stop buying groceries, stop driving in places, stop giving them a cell phone, like stop all of those luxuries, and they'll have a really good idea of how challenging life can be if they don't pick a path that's going to set them up for their future.

You remind me, when I was 19, I had been doing university two years.

I worked for an engineering firm.

My first job, and it wasn't a big paycheck.

I hadn't even graduated yet.

I remember my parents sitting me down, and I hated them, Shellee, trust me.

Sitting me down and saying, out of my salary, this is how much I'm going to pay monthly as part of the bills of the house.

Not that they struggled, which is another part I didn't like.

I'm thinking you don't need my money.

I need my money.

I need my money.

What is wrong with you, mom and dad?

But you know what?

Two years later, the company transferred me to the head office in another city where I had to find my own apartment, sign my own lease for the first time.

And that training from home of getting used to paying for stuff, it wasn't so hard when I got there, because I was used to paying.

And it's tough.

Being a parent, nobody said it was easy.

And I tell parents this all the time.

When we signed up, nobody said, oh, here's the easy path.

But if we want our kids to turn out and be successful adults, sometimes we have to do the hard thing, and that is helping them understand that at some point, it's going to be healthy for them to move out of our home and to start their own life.

And what kind of job will provide for them so they will always have enough to live on?

So they don't come back to my basement.

I'm sure that's every parent's concern.

Now, let's talk about when you finish high school and you want to apply to go to college because you help with being college ready.

First of all, the college admissions process.

Are test scores the only things that count, or is there more that you need to be in order to...

Because we've even seen stories that, like, Fox News, I think there was the one that went viral where the guy said, I had a perfect SAT score.

I still didn't get admitted to your Ivy League.

Is that the only thing that makes you stand out?

No, unfortunately, that doesn't make you stand out.

So the number one most important thing is a student's GPA, their grade point average.

And colleges want them to show they want to learn and they're willing to work hard to do it well.

That's what they're asking for.

Show us that you want to learn and that you work hard at it.

That's your grades.

The second thing is a test score.

But those two things, remember, somebody will always have a higher GPA and a higher test score and a lower GPA and a lower test score.

That is two out of the seven things that colleges look for.

So if students are just doing a GPA and a test score and they're not doing the other five, they're at a huge disadvantage.

And that is the challenge back in the day, right?

You applied to a few schools, you gave a GPA, you gave a test score, and that was it.

Now students may have to write between five and 18 essays per school.

So the competitiveness is significantly higher.

The cost is significantly higher.

Last year, our students earned $23.3 million in scholarships.

That was 51 students.

And people are like, that can't be done.

And my students have proof that that can be done, but they worked really hard to stand out.

They didn't just go to school.

They did community service.

They led in their community.

They did extracurriculars.

They had great letters of recommendation.

Their essays were amazing.

Colleges are not looking for students who are just smart.

I mean, you can be really, really smart and still not a productive citizen.

So they're looking for students as a whole.

Who are they?

What matters to them?

College is a business.

And so remember, they need your money as much as you need them.

And so they're looking for the resume that's going to stand out.

So Roberta, think about it like this as a business owner.

If I came to you and I have never worked before, but I really want to work for you, you may give me minimum wage and you may hire me.

But if I come to you with an incredible deep resume that says that I could double your revenue in six months based on my past experience, would you not hire me and pay me more?

Way more.

Because that's what I foresee for my business if you come in.

That's what colleges want.

So if they see you've been successful, you're going to continue to be successful, and then you're going to go put their diploma on your wall, and everybody's going to go, oh, I want to go to your school because so-and-so is incredible.

So it's advertising for their future.

And so how do you become this all-rounder, not just smart and 4.0 GPA type?

So you mentioned doing work in your community.

Is there anything else other because we'll talk about the essays a little bit.

Is there anything else?

So you do community service, you're a leader in your community, you do extracurricular things, anything else?

So it's not just doing them, Roberta.

That's the challenge.

As students think of it as, I've got to check this box.

So I do my 20 hours of community service, and I hand out water at the Race for the Cure.

That's my thing.

Do you think colleges are not wise to take zero effort?

They're not going to be like, whoa, Roberta handed out water at Race for the Cure.

She's amazing.

That's the challenge is students are just checking the box.

That's not what colleges want.

I can spend a whole episode on this, but I'll try to give you the brief.

Service is good, better, and best.

All community service is good.

You're serving your community.

You're doing a good thing.

But you're not impressing colleges if you're just tutoring.

Every smart kid tutors.

Not a big deal.

So then what?

Well, first, figure out what do you love to do?

What are you passionate about?

Who are you?

What can you share with the world?

Now go serve with that.

Because now you're excited.

You're lighting people up.

You're giving of yourself, and you're excited to do it.

But what is best?

Best is where you actually find something that really bothers you in the world.

It could be children without water.

It could be human trafficking.

It could be anything that lights you up that just says that is not fair.

Now go change it.

That's what colleges want to see because they learn.

You're tenacious.

You're determined.

You're focused.

You're driven.

You're an advocate.

You're going to make life happen.

That's what colleges want to see.

And guess what?

If every one of our 18-year-olds did that before they left for college, our world would be way better than it is right now.

That's why at the end of graduation ceremonies, the commencement speaker would usually say, now go out there and change the world.

Yeah.

And that's what we're helping students do one at a time, because not every student has the same passion or the same advocacy.

Right now we have a program called Empower Education.World, where students from all over the world that are part of College Ready are building classrooms in Uganda.

So when I was there in February for 17 days helping entrepreneurs, I saw there's a huge need, because when young girls start their menstrual cycle, they're considered unclean, and they can't go into the village schools.

I know, it's terrifying, right?

So when I left, I came home on fire to change that, because it's not something that little girl asked for.

It just happened.

And so I got really excited, and I was telling my students as I was meeting with them, and they're like, let's go do something.

And now 37 kids and myself have built three classrooms for young women to be able to attend school when that happens.

So we're changing lives literally by getting them education so they can go out into the world and make a difference.

That's community service on a whole other level.

And kudos to you and your students for doing that.

Now let's talk about the essays.

You say that you help your student clients stand out.

If you think about it, when you're an admissions officer, Howard, doesn't every essay sound the same by now?

It doesn't unless a student talks about COVID or a student talks about mental illness, because those are the two most overwritten subjects, and I don't make fun of them at all.

I'm not brushing them like it's not a big deal.

It is a big deal.

But can you imagine an admissions reader reading hundreds?

I couldn't because of COVID.

I couldn't do this.

I couldn't do that.

Okay, well, there were students who still did.

They did it safely online from the comfort of their own home.

We have 100 passion projects that we help students do during COVID.

So they were still serving their community safely.

To answer your question, you would be amazed at some of the incredible essays.

We have a student this year who wrote about his love of playing the piano and how he related that to what it must feel like to have the perfect surgery as a surgeon.

And he did a compare and contrast about his two loves of what he really wants to do in life.

And it just was powerful.

Like, you got to know this young man and what he was all about and what he valued and who he wants to become.

And it was brilliant.

I mean, several years ago, a student wrote about his visit to Costco and all the free samples, and he got into an Ivy League.

So it can be something simple.

It doesn't have to be this profound, world-changing.

So if I don't have the profound, world-changing experience, I don't know what to write on my essay anymore.

So think about this.

If you're just tutoring people, and again, that's not a bad thing.

That's a nice thing, but you can't write an essay about it.

But you can write an essay about building three schools in Uganda so the young ladies can continue their education.

That's how essays are built.

It's by doing and experiencing and stepping in to something bigger than themself.

If they have nothing to write about, that just means, unfortunately, they didn't have a lot going on in their teen years.

I'm South African, and I have a South African friend who was taking care of kids in a family here in America as an au pair.

And she said when she first came to them, because obviously she had been a student, so the kids are young, she thought, okay, do you need my help with the homework and everything?

The mom said, I have that covered.

What I need you to do is teach them things that the American school system is never going to teach them.

And she thought, but what?

And the mom said, you are from South Africa, right?

Apartheid ended when I was 18, and she's my age.

So the mom said, teach them about that.

One of the kids, when he was going to college, they married now.

He wrote that in his paper.

Because it's something like the mom said, it's something that he's going to know, but he's not going to know from the American school system.

So sometimes having this global outlook, instead of just regurgitating what you learned at high school, in your own school system, it also helps us out, because that's what made him stand out when he was writing his essay, something that probably anybody was applying that he didn't write about.

And it was children telling his story, and that's all colleges want.

They don't want to learn about your grandparent.

They want to learn about you, and kids have a hard time talking about themselves.

So it's not an easy essay to write, and that's why we start students as young as seventh and eighth grade, starting to think about and starting to build these activities, honors and awards, these leadership extracurriculars, because sometimes you have to try a few before one sticks, and they want students to be trying things, not just computer time or video games.

Not at all.

And then when it comes to standing out, now let's talk about the in-person interview.

They have those, right, before they make the final decisions?

It used to be in person, and now it's online.

Yeah, it is a Zoom interview, and I tell all students, unless they are socially uncomfortable talking to people, that they should do it, and they should tell about what they're passionate about.

They should share what they've done and how it impacted them.

It's a brilliant time to let their personality shine and get excited about what they've accomplished.

Now, if a student hasn't done anything they're proud of, probably not a good idea to do an interview because it will just make it stand out that they have not done much.

But for the most part, I think every student should have that opportunity to say how amazing they are.

Every teenager has something they should be proud of.

So if they say, I don't have much to talk about Shellee, do they then skip that and not apply at that college?

No, you can apply.

You don't need to interview.

Interview is optional.

It is like an advantage if you do, but it's not a disadvantage if you don't.

It just helps one more person, and it's usually an alumni that does the interview.

It's just one more person confirming.

This person is real, and they did what they said.

Because I'm thinking that's a precursor to your actual job interview when you graduate.

For sure.

As is the resume, students now are building LinkedIn profiles, providing their letters of recommendation, writers with a beautiful resume.

It is very similar to applying for their first job.

Yes, because we have found that sometimes you can graduate magna cum laude at Harvard, but you don't get your dream job because you don't know how to sell yourself at a job interview.

Yeah, I remember my son's first job out of Harvard, and he graduated with 1B.

Pre-med, absolutely did great, loved it, learned a lot, and he wasn't sure about going on to medical straight away, so he got a job working for Bain Consulting, a consulting firm.

And he was all of 23, and he was making six figures.

And I asked him one day, I said, what do you do there?

You've never had a job.

He's like, Mom, I know how to think.

That's what I learned at Harvard.

And I'm like, oh, OK.

And truly, you know, sometimes it is that simple.

The connections you make in college can lead to opportunities that maybe you wouldn't have gotten.

You just brought up a good point, the one about, sometimes if you've not decided yet after high school, if you don't know whether, do I want to go to college?

Do I want to go to trade school?

Do I want to be an influencer?

Is it OK to take a year off to determine what drives you, what gets you excited, or is that a waste of your time in life, basically?

So you can look at it a few different ways.

Again, I look at it from a non-judgmental side.

What I will tell students is it doesn't get easier to apply to college after you've taken a year off and done nothing.

It doesn't get any easier and you don't have more time.

Second thing is it's a lot easier to get accepted straight out of high school than it is as a transfer student.

Statistically, it's much lower chances as a transfer student or a gap year.

And so if you use a gap year wisely, it could be amazing.

If you have unlimited funds and you can travel the world and become an international speaker or international business person, that's going to make your resume look beautiful.

But not many teenagers have unlimited funds to be able to travel the world.

So then if you just say backpacking, so that's not as impressive, obviously, as what you just mentioned.

Backpacking is absolutely, if there is a purpose, if it's just I don't want to go to school, I just want to go have fun.

No, that is not it.

But if they're like, you know, I really need to get to know myself, and I'm not ready yet to make that commitment, I'm going to go hike this mountain, or I'm going to go challenge myself here, or I'm going to go learn two languages, or if they have a purpose for the gap year, it can be brilliant.

But what I typically see is students who are burned out from learning, and they just don't want to do anything, and so they end up getting a part-time job, and just really not making progress, and then they make a few bucks, they buy a car, and now they don't want to be poor again and live the college life with top ramen.

So you have to be really, really careful, because if you don't use it wisely, it's a very easy thing for a child to be like, why would I work hard when my parents buy my food, they make me dinner, they wash my clothes, and I just kind of hang out?

Like, why would I do college?

That sounds hard.

That's what you have to be careful of.

Now let's talk about the best part, the money.

How do you apply for the funds, be it a college or a company?

I don't know if it works the same way here as well, because back home, you either get funded by a college scholarship or a company that you will then have to work for after you graduate for a limited period.

Very few do the company route.

That's typically somebody going to go back and get their MBA or PhD where they're already working for a company and then they pay for them to go and get more educated.

But typically in the US, right out of high school, they have a couple of choices.

They can ask their parents to co-sign a loan because they can't get a loan on their own.

They can apply to the most generous colleges.

In my book, How to Send Your Student to College Without Losing Your Mind or Your Money, Chapter 10 gives you 10 colleges that are tuition free.

All you have to do is work.

There is nothing truly for free, but there is work for education.

And then the other thing is there's independent scholarships, there's need-based scholarships, there's merit-based scholarships, there's institutional scholarships.

There's so much money.

Harvard's Endowment is like 63 billion right now.

They have enough money to take care of all this, but they only want to spend it on the students who are working hard and proving that they're going to be the next Nobel Peace Prize winner or somebody who's going to be impacting the world.

That's who they want to associate with, and that's who they're willing to give money to.

There's plenty of money.

If it says I don't want to go to college because I don't want to go into debt, that just means they don't want to work to get scholarships to not go into debt.

So that's the challenge.

My first born did debt free out of Harvard.

My second born did debt free out of Alabama.

I've proven it several, several times.

I have a student right now who is at Vanderbilt, not one of my own children, but a student from College Ready, and she started as a sophomore, and she got a full ride all the way through her master's program.

But she worked really hard.

I'm not going to say it was an easy process, but nothing in life is free and easy.

There's always a price, even if it's not money-wise.

Look at all the student loan forgiveness, like it sounds like it's going to happen, and then tomorrow it sounds like they're backtracking.

So depending on that doesn't seem like a sure plan for sure.

No, I tell students, you know what?

Why put yourself in the unknown with a plan and a strategy?

It's all mapped out.

And that's what we help students do, is we help them create a standout strategy to get into the college of their choice and to make sure it's an academic, social, and financial fit so they don't go into debt and they don't pick a major that doesn't have a job.

Ooh, that's another can of worms we might need to come back for on this show.

Because some of these degrees I've heard about, I'm thinking in South Africa, we don't have that.

Almost into me like to say, when you think of a degree and you think, if I graduate from that, who's going to hire me?

Unless you're entrepreneurial, which some people are not, and that's okay.

But sometimes when I hear some of these degrees, I think, huh, what kind of job do they look for the day after graduation?

Yeah, people are surprised when I tell them the most unemployed major is psychology.

Why?

Because when a student graduates college and they look for a job, there's no job called psychology, because you have to go on to get your master's or PhD.

Well, most students who pick psychology pick it because they don't like school and they want an easy major.

So they don't want to go on to get the further degree.

So now they've spent all this money and time on a college degree that has no job associated with it.

So unless you actually want to go all the way, become a certified psychologist, there's no point in studying it at bachelor's level and leave.

It's a wonderful thing to have.

Don't get me wrong.

I mean, understanding how people think, how they communicate, like, that's fascinating.

I was a psych major, one of my five majors.

I loved it.

But when I found out that I would have to go to potentially two, four, six more years of school, I'm like, no, that's not a good major for me.

So I just want students to have a plan, not just wing it and see what happens or parents to say, we'll use our retirement to pay for it.

And then I say, well, what happens when you retire?

And then another one I've heard a few of my friends have a gripe with is if you study criminal justice, but then don't go to law school.

If it's just a criminal justice degree, and then you say, I'm now I'm going to look for a job.

What kind of potential opportunities?

I'm trying to draw the parallel with the psychology one as well.

If you just end it there at bachelors level.

That's what students need to consider before they apply.

And then the other thing, Roberta, that makes it way more complex.

Not every college has every major.

So if you go pick school A, and you're like, Oh, I think I want to be a biology major.

And then you take like organic chem, and you're like, Whoa, I so don't want to be a biology major.

And then you're like, but I want to be a PE teacher.

And your school doesn't have that degree.

You have to transfer colleges.

Not every college will have every degree.

So I told students, we need to go in to schools and only look if they have your three degrees that you potentially could have.

At least we know they're not going to have to transfer because every time a student transfers, it's an extra hundred thousand dollars to the bottom line.

And then the whole application process and the essays and everything we've talked about.

Yeah, because not every class will transfer to the other school.

So now they just wasted time, money, and now they're super frustrated.

And I get it.

That's why that's not a plan.

That is a do, but there's no planning to it.

Can I just use one last example of family that is friends of mine?

They put away a college fund for their daughter.

I would like your opinion on who was right in the situation.

So the parents put away funds for the college for their daughter.

While she's studying, she's working as a paralegal for these firms.

So she's gaining experience.

And the more she talks about what she does at work, she starts to get suggestions that she can actually do certificate courses instead of a bachelor's.

She loves being a paralegal.

She loves it.

And then she decided she's going to talk to her parents and say, I'm stopping the bachelors.

I think she was halfway about two years in.

I'm stopping the bachelors.

I don't need it because these certificates will still lead me to what I want to do.

And the parents said, no way.

We want a bachelors.

That's what we've been saving up for for years.

You're not doing that.

You have to finish college.

And so what would you say when there's that?

Because it's not that she doesn't want to study at all, but she seems to have started her own path.

And are the parents not understanding or are they looking out for her?

It's the parents' money.

They should be able to do what they want with it.

Nothing is due to any child.

And so it's really not up to her.

If that's their money and they want to spend it on a bachelor or not give it to her, that's their choice.

If she really wants to do the paralegal and she really wants to do it, she'll figure out how to do it.

She can take out work.

She can do it a little slower.

There's lots of paths.

But I have to be careful because parents don't sign a document that says you must provide all financing for a child's education.

It's a gift.

And if a student says, I don't want to do it your way, then the parents are, I don't want to give you the money that we wanted to do it that way.

Both of them are choices.

So I have to say, being that I'm a parent and I've been on the college side, I totally get it.

And that's why the 529 plan is very scary, is because what if a student doesn't want to go to college?

The families put away all this money in an account that's only for education.

And it's very dangerous.

There's so many better opportunities to finance or to put money away for education.

And so we help educate families on the FAFSA, the CSS profile, the SAI expected family contribution.

In the US, it is very challenging to complete all the forms properly, to get to the money.

And so we help our families to navigate that, because 71% of the families who complete the forms do it wrong.

And that's why they're not getting scholarships.

That's a very big one.

Yes, because like you said in your book, you want to graduate debt free without losing your money or your mind.

So what is one last tip you can give the students and anyone listening if they want to graduate debt free?

Do not leave it up to your 17-year-old.

They have no concept of $300,000 in debt.

They don't even have a clue what that means.

They're just like, yeah, free money, let's do it.

I want to go live in Santa Barbara and surf, and it's going to be amazing, and that's so dangerous.

But yet families, I've heard time and time again, well, if they're going to be an adult, they should take care of this.

We're going to step back and let them do it.

And I say, would you allow them to buy you a home without being involved?

We're talking the same amount of money on a lot of situations.

Parents, they need you.

Even if they don't want you, they need you.

They certainly do.

Thank you so much, Shellee Howard, all the way from Southern California, the founder and owner of College Ready.

You have shared so many insights with us.

Is there one last thing you were hoping to share that I haven't asked you?

I would just share that there is a ton of money out there.

There are plenty of scholarships.

Try not to believe everything you see on social media in the news.

It really isn't that bad.

Our students are getting tons of money, and so I see it every day that there is a lot of money.

It's just you need to go after it.

You can't not do something and then just wish for it.

I would certainly take your advice when you realize the student loan debt interest rates are crazy.

Nobody wants to be tied to that after graduating, certainly, yes.

Thank you so much for the work that you do, Shellee.

And then before you go, where can we find you online?

So the best place to find us is our website, and that's www.collegereadyplan.com.

And you'll see my free book on there.

You'll see all kinds of free resources.

We are all about helping you gain knowledge to make the right choice.

collegereadyplan.com Thank you so much for being here today.

This has been such a pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me.

My pleasure.

Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

If you are willing to be on the show to discuss your communication challenges and see how we can help, please book a slot on my Calendly, and the details are on the show notes.

We are so glad that you've joined us.

We have more special guests who will be sharing more leadership tips and strategies on this show in this month of February.

In addition to our first couple interview, who will be discussing the role that communication has played in their marriage.

So stay tuned for more episodes to come.