Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

 

 

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My guest today is Kelly MacLean.

Kelly is the president and founder of the Kelly MacLean Achievement Center.

She has a background as College Admission Representative and High School Varsity Soccer Coach.

Kelly formed a company after repeatedly witnessing high school students making mistakes in their search for the best college to attend, mistakes that often resulted in students missing scholarships, not being accepted at the school of their choice or switching schools and majors.

She realized how overwhelming this process can be and how costly mistakes are.

She felt there had to be a better way to help students find their path and formed College Recruiting Specialist.

Rebranded in 2019 as the Kelly MacLean Achievement Center, the company provides resources custom-specific to each student.

The goal is to reduce college expenses while finding the best college.

This is done through strategic planning and preparation that includes selecting a major, career planning, college selection, preparing for the test, scholarship applications and more.

The company continues then to work with the students through the freshman year in college to ensure their success.

She is also a certified trainer for the John Maxwell Leadership Program, an ACT test prep provider and a featured expert contributor for Stack Magazine.

This is only part of her experience in the resources the company provides.

welcome to my show, Kelly.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

So real quick, I reached out to you.

I liked your tagline.

You helped teens put their best foot forward while stepping into, most important, the college of their dream and the career of their dreams.

I'm excited to have you as a guest because during our initial meeting, you told me the story of how higher education got started with factories needing more educated workers like the Ford factory.

Basically, workers who couldn't do basic math, so we needed some more educated workers, but now the system's really broken and waited in regard to that.

Am I correct in that?

Yes, definitely.

They wanted to create employees, people who could follow directions, stay in one place for a long period of time, do basic math, basic English skills.

Over the years, because of competition with other countries, we've upped the level of those classes.

So we have AP Calculus and AP Chemistry and so forth.

But we haven't in any way, shape, or form devised education to be a stepping off point towards a career.

It's, okay, go ahead and do this with the main goal being get into college.

But college is so expensive today.

I don't think students should get into college without having a clue what they want to do.

Unfortunately, most people, their clue is, well, I know about 12 different careers.

I don't like this, this, and this.

So I guess I'll do this.

It's the best of what I know about.

I've been told, good in math, I'll be an engineer.

Got to get a job, right?

I'll get a job, right.

The parents all, yeah.

Yeah.

I also liked how your question, should someone graduating from high school go to college, when you told me that you actually had someone interested in being an engineer, that would be me, aerospace.

But instead of telling them to go into engineering, you talked them into going or you guided them, you didn't talk them into you.

You made them realize, you know what, it's okay if you skip engineering college, you want to fly airplanes, just go to flight school program instead of college, right?

Right.

So he was really torn.

I mean, great student, over a 4.0 GPA on a 4.0 scale, and had taken a lot of accelerated classes, but he really wanted to be a pilot.

Well, pilot training is in addition to college tuition.

It is not covered in the tuition even if that's your major.

So now you're looking at doubling the cost, and I said, well, you realize you don't have to, he really wasn't interested in going to college for, he didn't have a desire for that college experience.

He wasn't, oh, I can't wait to go to game day, I can't wait to be in a frequency.

He really had no desire other than, I want to get a pilot's license, and I'm like, okay, great.

So actually, the first step was I had him reach out to a local airport where they do flight training, and I said, take an introductory flight, see if you even like it.

Because what you think and what you do are two different things a lot of time.

That's good advice for any career, for anybody, right?

Percent, yes.

That's why we set up shadows for students.

I can't tell you the number of students who have, PT is a big career path for a lot of students initially.

Athletes who have been helped by a physical therapist, and enjoyed the process.

Well, of course, they enjoyed the process.

They were busy the whole time.

They were moving.

They were working out, so to speak.

And so they'll say, oh, I want to be a physical therapist.

Great.

I'm going to send you on a career shout out.

Oh, but I already know what they do.

Yeah, I want you to see it from the other side, the side where they're taking notes on their iPad.

The side where they're spending three hours at the end of every day, documenting everything, creating an upcoming plan, forwarding the information to the referring doctor, help care, whatever it is.

And so many students have come, I mean, over 80 percent of students have come back and said, not what I expected, don't want to do.

Wow.

So how do you help people discover their passion and what they do want to do either in college or a trade school?

So it's a process.

And I think that's, you know, we're such an immediate society.

We want things immediately.

We want to know immediately.

And that's not realistic when you're planning for the rest of your life.

So it is a process.

And we start with a Myers-Briggs test, which is just barely a jumping off point.

We have a proprietary interest inventory that we do with students, where we expose them to over 500 different careers.

We ask them to tell us what is interesting, not what they want to do.

What the, oh, that's cool.

Oh, I didn't even know this.

What do you do when the parents are over their shoulders, or even in their own heads, they're thinking, because, I mean, you have to at some point, or a lot of people don't, maybe, which is good.

I think you should do the thing you really love to do.

But what do you do when money creeps into somebody's head?

You can tell they are passionate about that, but they're also like, I don't know if I can get a job, or do you also show them, here are the jobs and what you might want to do?

Yeah.

One of the things we do that I think is substantially different is we actually have a budgeting exercise.

I'll give you a great example.

I'm working with a family.

They have five children.

The oldest we've worked with successfully off to college.

The next four quadruplets.

Now, these kids have grown up in the same house, same environment, same everything, same school district, same type of grades.

I mean, they mirror each other very well.

When we went through the budgeting exercise, one of the questions is, what do you expect to pay when you're 26, 27 years old out on your own for a one-bedroom apartment here in this area?

Safe area, you can walk outside at night, but there's no gym in the building, there's no concierge service, just a basic safe apartment.

I got answers from these four children who have grown up together, $350 a month to $2,000 a month.

Now, the average here in greater Cleveland is probably closer to $1,100 a month.

So you can see the disparity.

Well, how can you decide if you're even looking at the right type of income level for a job, if you don't even know what it'll cost you to live?

Right.

So this gets us back into, you do that and then they realize, oh, I'm going to need a lot of money.

Like me, I want to rock climb travel the world.

That's how the engineering became more of a, of you got to do this, Dan, because if you're doing that, you're just not going to make enough money.

But yet, of course, what if back to the pilot, he was to not take pilot training because he could have made more in engineering.

How do you bridge the gap?

How do you convince people it's sometimes better to take less money and do the thing they want to do?

Because I tell them there is not enough money in the world for 40 hours of hell to be worth a weekend.

And you also have them go, probably most effective, go and shadow that whoever it is.

Right.

So is this how you want to spend your 40 hours?

And is that worth being the money you want to spend on the weekend?

How long?

Tell me about the shadowing process.

Is it like an hour for lunch, they meet with someone or they spend the day?

No.

It was much more day long, sometimes even a couple of days long prior to COVID.

Since COVID, it has changed.

Some people are doing via Zoom because they work at home, and I'm certainly not sending a high school student to somebody's house.

But they'll spend a couple of hours on Zoom and they'll really talk through it.

The great piece in addition to them really finding out a lot more, and we provide questions for the student because professionals will throw all this information at them.

It's like a fire hose coming at them.

Then the professional say, so do you have any more questions?

Students are still trying to process.

They're like, no, I think you answered everything.

Do they ever make it look more glorious than it actually is?

Just go, this is what I do for living, isn't it great?

It's be authentic.

Do they ever sugar coat it?

Yeah.

We give students a list of questions.

One of the questions is, if you could change anything about your job right now, what would it be?

Depending on how that answer plays out, it can lead to more questions, but it also could lead to somebody saying, oh, I didn't realize I'd have to do that.

Yeah, I don't think I'd like that either.

The other 80 percent come back to you then.

Is that the statistic, like 80 percent of people?

We started tracking it because we were shocked at the number of kids who wanted to do physical therapy and came back and said no.

Then we fell over again.

Then repeat the process, find a different, try something else, go out.

So you probably have to get started doing this at least a year, year-and-a-half before you graduate from high school.

Right.

We like to start with juniors so that we can start narrowing that funnel, so we can start talking about realistic majors.

What are some of the up-and-coming careers that students should know about, the ones that are going to be hot in your future?

Not that we should say go for the money or get a job for certain, but maybe it's something they hadn't thought of.

What would they be?

A lot that students haven't thought of.

So for instance, a lot of times, well, I shouldn't say a lot of times, but often when somebody is thinking medical career, they're very limited in their focus.

There's nurse, there's doctor, and they don't think about all of the other opportunities within the medical field.

Sometimes students will say, I want to be a surgeon, and then they're thinking about what type of surgeon, and I'm like, have you thought about being a periodontist?

They're like, what?

What's a periodontist?

A foot doctor?

No, it's actually a dentist.

They do surgery on soft tissue and bone, so it's really in-depth.

There's a lot going on there, and you are really helping people tremendously because obviously we need our teeth, we need our appearance, and so forth.

So, I mean, my gosh, my teeth.

I could go back in time.

I mean, I did flush and brush and floss real quick, all time, but I'm going through the worst process right now with a tooth, a root canal that got pulled because it rotted out after years.

I had two teeth pulled because they're like, oh, we'll just put implants in.

I'm like, oh, okay, that sounds easy.

Oh, no.

I have so much.

It's actually fascinating.

There's nerves in your mouth that go to places like bundles of wires where one can affect the tooth on the other side of the mouth up or down and not be where you think it is.

And so they're doing cat scans on me to try to.

It's this tooth.

Just pull it.

I'm in so much pain.

That's not the tooth.

And I'm like, you got to do something.

The ibuprofen is not working.

The Tylenol is not working.

The only thing that saved me is the gas station attendant said, have you ever tried that gel you put on your teeth?

And I did.

And it was just a nerve.

Yeah.

Dentists, I think they have one of the most important jobs on the planet.

Yes.

Yes.

And periodontal, that extra step.

So they're not doing cleanings and cavities.

They're really getting in there and fixing the types of problems you're talking about with surgery and so forth.

And most students have never heard of it.

Well, you can't become something if you've never heard of it.

No, most students don't know what a penetration tester is, or as I like to ask them, do you know what a pen tester is?

And they're picturing like they're going to use Bix all day and like, right.

I don't know what that is.

A penetration tester is somebody who tries to penetrate websites and payment services and different things like that.

So they're basically trying to hack the system.

And that's really big, big up-and-coming career field where there's a lot.

And a lot of people think like, oh, if it's computers, it's going to be eliminated by AI and that is completely incorrect.

So a lot of people don't understand what AI is and is not.

But it is surprising to me as we're filming this, doing this, that software engineering, software is actually kind of, maybe it's the economy in general, it's not as hot as it was a couple of years ago.

No, that is true.

Yeah.

Software engineering is not what it was at one point in time.

And I think that's why it's important for students to really understand if they are intrigued with computers, what are the up-and-coming jobs?

Because again, too often, parents will give them misguided or dated information.

Oh, become a programmer.

There will always be a job.

Well, you can come right out of high school and program.

You can learn that on YouTube and Code Academy and so forth.

But one thing I also picked up on talking to people in the field was, like any job, and maybe this is a good question for you to answer.

Because you have this great program, people finding careers, picking a college, graduating.

But what they're telling me is, and it's for the software engineering, they're really looking for people with experience.

It's still a great career, but it's like the cliche for any college degree.

You graduate with no experience.

Think about it, if you're an employer, unless you love to bring people up and you're willing to invest in the employees and keep them around for a long time and train them, you want someone with experience.

Why would you hire someone with no experience?

You're paying them.

Right.

So how do you manage that in terms of helping someone plan for a career, and you don't want them to work full-time while they're in school, because their grades go down, but they need some experience?

So co-ops and internships are absolutely the best way to go.

And there are some schools who have unbelievable co-op programs, where it's built into the curriculum that, oh, you're going to do a summer co-op.

This year, it's the curriculum, and we have people who will help you secure that co-op.

If an employer takes on co-ops, by the time the co-op is going back to school, that's at the end of that semester, the employer has trained them.

What I hear from my students is that they're offered jobs.

Hey, as soon as you graduate, let us know.

We'd love to have them because they have a tested commodity.

They know they work well in their company.

They've already been trained on all the basics.

So it's an ideal, it's a win-win situation for companies to offer co-ops when they know they're going to be hiring, because it allows them to try people out.

Yeah, because it's like you've already done orientation.

You know where the cafeteria is, you know what the company is about, people like you, and they're not going to pay you and hire you to do an expert job.

It is entry level, but you're not starting from scratch.

What is a co-op?

I've heard the word internship.

What's co-op?

So co-op is coordinated opportunity between this college and the employer.

So they've worked together to design these programs, where students do have those same opportunities.

Some are paid and some are unpaid.

So it's not that co-ops are unpaid and internships are paid.

Co-ops tend to be the way colleges talk about it if they're involved in the process, versus an internship is often something a student just gets on their own.

The word co-op sounds like a marketing plug for the college.

It's because we helped you.

Co-ordinate it, yes.

That's good.

They have connections.

It makes it easier than finding an internship on your own.

How did they balance the work study?

Do some students at colleges for this co-op program, do they get credit and time allowed in their major for the hours per semester to take that to go do that?

Or is it like working a job on the side where they still got to make time for it?

It's usually full time during one semester or more.

Some colleges, there is an engineering school in Michigan that is on trimesters.

So you attend class, then you co-op, then you attend class, then you co-op, then you attend class, then you co-op, so they're inventing the skills they're learning along the way.

Again, they have opportunities while they're in Michigan, they have opportunities across, well, actually around the world, but definitely across the country.

So it was ironic because one of my students was co-oping literally about 10 minutes from Clemson University, and I'm like, Clemson's got a great engineering program.

Why are they?

They worked out this situation with a school in Michigan, and so it's great for those students because they get to see other parts of the country, they get paid, but it's 100 percent focused on their working 40-hour weeks when they're in those co-ops.

So this leads to my next question, which is, once you help them find a career, then it's, how do I find a college?

I want to throw in real quick that knowing what you just said, in the past, I would have just been like, oh, I want to live in Colorado, or I want to live in San Diego, and actually, it's only four years, might be nice and fun if you want to party school, but your co-ops probably in factors like that, probably what you got to look for, right?

So we think, we believe college should fit students in three ways.

The first is academically, it has to be able to get them to where they want to go.

I use the analogy that when most people plan vacation, they pick their destination first, like, I want to go to the beach, I want to go to the mountains, I want to climb this mountain, whatever the case is, and then they figure out how am I getting there?

What's the flight situation or what's the best path to get there?

College is the flight.

The destination is not college, the destination is the career.

How is your life going to look for the 40 years after you graduate from college?

What does that look like?

How are you setting that up?

So we encourage students to figure out that destination first, the career, have a good idea, and then let's take a look at the majors that can get you there, and then what schools have those majors.

But we're very, very mindful.

The second way a college has to fit is socially.

So it has to have the surrounding area that you want, the type of activities that you want.

If you are unhappy in college and you went there solely because of the program or the school's name and you're unhappy, you are not going to get involved in additional clubs.

You won't take on any leadership.

You won't do anything extra research, other things because you don't like it.

Now your resume is so limited.

You're not happy.

Trying to apply for a job.

So you've shut yourself in the foot because you name of a school which makes no sense.

Also, then actually when you do your co-op, the people you work with are going to see you're not happy and they're going, do you really want to be here?

I mean, why would I hire you?

Right.

Then the third way is financially.

Because too often families prioritize name of school.

It's not until students have been accepted in that school, gives them zero scholarship money and they're like, oh wait, we thought we'd get something.

Well, no, because your kid's just like everybody else.

They have no reason to incentivize your kid to come.

They got 70,000 applications this year.

What did they do?

They don't need your child.

They're like, we don't want to pay $82,000 a year?

Well, we should, yeah.

So we started discussing that much earlier in the process now, because I learned after a tearful conversation with a student one time that.

So let's say if you have your career, you have a couple of colleges, and now you're really laser focused because like, this is what I want to do, and there was a co-op there.

How do you help students get in, like craft the best application and stand out and have the best chance of getting accepted?

So that's what we have been doing for the last little bit, really concentrating in that area.

But it begins before their junior year really, because colleges we're seeing really want, the more selective the school, the more they want to see initiative from the student.

Parents often are comparing their child just to the other students in their class.

So if you have a high-performing student who is the president of Key Club and in National Honor Society, and also does X, Y, and Z, you may feel very confident that that's what a college is looking for.

But initiative is stepping out on your own and doing something.

Initiative, there's no barrier to joining Key Club.

The students get an announcement.

Anyone who'd like to join, please show up at room 102 at the end of the day.

Everybody does, so you're not really standing out.

Right.

Exactly.

Even if you're a president of Key Club, okay, that shows you're well-liked, but they also know that there's a teacher who's moderating, there's someone who's helping, making sure everything's happening and getting completed.

We like to make sure our students have initiative projects so that they can really stand out.

What are they passionate about?

What would they like to see changed in the world?

I love working on that with students for a couple of reasons, because students always think it has to be bigger than it does.

They always think that it's going to be harder than it is.

They always think it's going to take much more time than it does, and we show them how they can start making an impact.

They don't have to wait till they're an adult.

Give me an example, because I'm overwhelmed.

Actually, you're saying it's not this hard, but yet I'm like, I don't know what would I do.

I think it would have to be huge, important to get in my college application.

What is some examples?

Well, I'm going to pose the question to you like I would a student.

Let's walk through it really quickly.

What are you most interested in changing?

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

Let's face it, you're not going to change world hunger, or the climate, yourself today.

Be in your area.

What's something you'd like to see change in your community, in your area?

My community, my area.

Change.

Wow.

Even your state.

Even my state.

I've come to a place in my life, I'm pretty good with people just, I'm like, I'm not going to change the world.

I do want to see people be happy.

I do want to see them not stuck in a job or a grind.

I'd like to see less depression, less I'm just going through the motions, less suicide.

Okay.

So if you were a teenager in a high school.

Real quick, good point.

Because when I started with you, I was thinking you mentioned junior.

Are we backing up even further now to sophomore year in high school?

Yes.

Yes.

Especially for initiative projects.

So it doesn't look like you just did something to check a box right before applying.

This is great.

This is great because to me, it seems like the depression starts way earlier when people are like, my gosh, what am I going to do when I grow up and get a job?

Yeah.

Okay.

Continue.

So if I had a student who was talking about depression, I'm going to say, well, have you ever struggled with depression?

Is this why it's close to you or maybe a family member?

They might say, yes, they have.

So have you seen a therapist?

Yes, I've seen a therapist.

Great.

Here's what we're going to do.

I want you to contact your therapist and I want you to ask them if they'd be willing to do a talk at your school.

Then when they say yes, and they will, I'm positive they'll say yes.

When they say yes, the next thing you're going to do, and I'll help you craft a whole one-pager about, they'll do the research, the student has to do the research.

What's the percentage of kids in high school suffering from depression?

What are some ways they can work on depression that they may not bear up?

In different facts and stats, we're going to put together a really colorful, amazing one-pager.

When we get the one-pager, you're going to go to your principal and you're going to ask your principal if you can start a mental health club and that you already have a speaker lined up, your therapist is going to come in and speak.

Then what you're going to do is you're going to reach out to, maybe your therapist talks about art therapy, maybe your therapist talks about music therapy.

You're going to reach out to an art therapist, you're going to reach out to a music therapist, you're going to have them come in and talk, show how that works.

You're going to make it more accessible for your classmates to be able to talk about issues they're struggling with, in a way we can actually get help and not feel ridiculed.

Well, I can see how this all leads up to, I mean, this is in sophomore year.

You have three years in high school.

By the time you hit college, you're absolutely going to know what you want to do, where you're going.

You're a leader and colleges love leaders.

Why?

When people are shown on TV for having done something, what does it say underneath their name?

Stanford graduate, Yale graduate.

Colleges love that.

And your experience.

If you start when you're in high school, by the time you graduate college, you have six or seven years of practical experience.

And not sitting back waiting for someone else to do something you see.

And that's what makes a great student.

Because someone who is interested in changing things, is interested in bettering the community, whether it just be their high school community, whether it be their neighborhood, their city, their state.

They are the people who are going to be taking initiative in the workplace to make things better.

They are going to take initiative that are going to help companies grow.

They are going to be more thoughtful of coworkers, of other people.

They are just going to be the type of people employers want to hire.

They are the solution people too, because they have been dealing with the problem for seven years at least.

So they have already got a lot of answers.

So here is a different scenario, one that I think you help people with also students.

Let's say, and Matthew McConaughey, I read his memoir and I'm going to use his as an example.

He was in college, he was going to be an accountant.

I'm speaking of the actor.

And, of course, his, I think, correct me if I'm wrong or Matthew, I'm just doing the best I can.

I think it was like, well, it's like a lot of situations.

His parents, his dad was putting up a lot of money.

He didn't have that much money.

Going to college was a big thing because it's a lot of money.

We don't have that much money.

And you want to be an accountant, probably because he thought he could make money.

He could make money or just get a career.

He had started down the path and he's afraid to call his dad and tell him, you know what dad, would it be okay if instead I went to film school?

Because he just looked inside himself and he thought, you know, I like creative stuff.

I've been writing stories.

Like you mentioned about writing stories early in high school.

He had been writing stories.

He was creative.

And thank God, his dad said yes.

He threw, he's like, my dad said yes, but he also said, make me proud or something to the fact, if you're going to do it, you do it.

Which inspired him.

So a question for you, Kelly is, what can a college student do if they're struggling in the major they chose, all of a sudden they have this insight and want to switch majors or even transfer colleges because they have to?

How do you handle that?

Okay.

Well, we can't talk about Matthew McConaughey.

With all right, all right, all right.

So what I would tell the student in college is, suddenly you are inspired, like I want to go to film school.

Great.

Start making some films.

Start posting them on YouTube.

Start getting some feedback.

Just be able to show your dad, like, look, I'm really doing it.

I had a student come to me one time and his parents were just insistent, like, oh, he should work in sports.

The number of boys who want to be in sports management overwhelm, okay?

And they don't realize there's not, like, I can go work for a sports team if I'm an accountant.

They need accountants too.

And if you want to be actively involved with the players, there's certain roles.

But just to go into sports management, like, where are you going?

And a lot of students don't realize that.

So the parent said, he can cite every statistic, every fact, like, he has it all.

He just like, this is his world.

He knows everything.

And he played football in the fall.

He did not have a winter sport.

And he played baseball in the spring.

And I said, great.

I said, I want you, I said, you know, the girls basketball coach?

Yeah, I know the girls basketball coach.

I go, good.

Great.

Tell them you want to take stats or you want to announce the game.

Well, I don't know about that.

I'm like, if this is what you think you want to do for 40 years of your life, you need to get started now because if you think you're going to go off to college and you're suddenly going to feel confident in asking that coach to do it, you're not because you have no experience.

Or is that what you want to do?

Is it as fun and glamorous as you have the picture in your head of?

He never did it.

I said that's not really what you want to do.

You think because it's fun and glamorous, but is that really what you want to do?

Because if you were really passionate, you would overcome the fear to go ahead and at least try.

While announcing may have been out of his comfort zone, taking stats, you know all these stats for all these other teams, you should, like this should be a no-brainer.

Yeah.

Which actually, if I remember, I'm going to tell the story partially wrong, but more or less when Matthew was in college at film school, he literally was starting to skip classes to go do some activities, films or stories off on his own.

They were like, you got to come to class, you're failing.

He went in and made an agreement with his teachers.

Can I pass the class if I do this, but I have to do this on the side.

He was that passionate about doing what he wanted to do.

Yeah.

When a kid is passionate, when they're willing to step out of their comfort zone.

So financial aid cost, let's talk the cost because everything sounds great, wonderful to how do we find the money.

How can we make the dream happen and reduce college expenses?

Okay.

Number one way to get scholarships is to have good grades and good test scores.

Even though a lot of schools are test optional, test scores still come into play in a lot of schools, where you may be able to get accepted without them, but you don't get scholarship money without them.

Or we're seeing more schools go back to requiring an ACT or SAT score.

But I think good grades are super important just because schools incentivize them.

That's where the money is.

But not only that, but you're doing your kid a favor by enlisting outside help to teach them the appropriate study skills.

So a lot of times parents will call us in there, my kids got a C or a D or an F in math or science or English, and they did well.

They were an AB student all through middle school, but now in high school, this is where we're at.

Oftentimes, I hear, well, the teacher's terrible, everyone's failing, and there's a lot of terrible teachers out there.

There's going to be terrible professors in college, there's going to be terrible bosses in life, and your job is to figure out how to be successful in spite of that.

A lot of kids think if they come to tutoring, I believe we're substantially different than everyone else though.

But when they come to tutoring, I don't want to teach you this week's work to make school easier.

I want to get you to where you need to be right now to make sure you're not missing any foundational pieces.

But then what I want to do is I want to show you how to study so that you can do this on your own forever.

So while we do the tutoring, I don't want to see kids every week, maybe before a big test, maybe with a tough concept, something like that.

Unlike most tutoring companies where they're like, okay, it's every Thursday, it's 6 p.m.

and it's this much and you come every, I don't want kids to come dependent on.

I want them to know there's availability when they need it, recognize when they actually need it.

And it's not a matter of studying longer.

It's a matter of studying smarter.

I tell kids all the time, I can give you a spoon and ask you to dig a ditch and you could do it.

This reminds me of, so me and my brother were both engineers, my older brother by two years.

He was, we were both working full time trying to get the experience.

So mind you, we both ended up on academic probation at the same time.

I got out of mine and I graduated a little bit before him, and I observed what you're talking about.

Now, this word study habits, I didn't know.

That's another abstract concept.

I'm like, I don't need that.

I don't know what that means.

That sounds too formal.

But we're speaking of is, he's a brilliant person, really smart.

He's the type to just thought, all I have to do is read the book, and I can wait till the night before, or maybe I can skim it.

He's not a speed reader with perfect recall memory.

How's that supposed to work?

He is smart.

Oh, I get this.

I get this.

I'm like, you have to literally memorize it.

That's the game we play.

It's a game.

It's not how smart you are.

You got to play the game like you're saying.

What he didn't even realize is the highlighter.

I'm like, let me show you.

You just do this.

Take the highlighter and as you read, highlight every important thing.

Not everything because you're going to go back and review this.

Tomorrow or two days from now, I know you don't think you have to.

You just did it.

You go back and you only reread the highlighters, and you keep doing that for a week every other day, and then you're going to remember this.

He just, I mean, I couldn't make him do it.

I think he saw me do it.

He's like, it worked for Dan.

I'm as smart as him or smarter.

He started doing it and he graduated the year after I did.

It came down to study habits.

What does that word mean?

We didn't know.

I didn't understand what the word meant, but I showed him, here's how you do it, and then he got it.

We, I'm a huge fan still of actual index cards.

Like, oh no, I'm doing it on Quizlet.

I'm like, it is not the same.

I want you to hand write the word because the act of writing cements it into your brain versus looking at it.

I want you to use pens and pencils.

Ninety-seven percent of all written words you see in a day are in black and white.

Your brain makes no conscious effort to memorize all of them because they're all similar.

If you have something written in red, something in pink, blue, yellow, all of a sudden, now you're paying attention because it's unusual to your brain.

Your brain is going to take note of it.

So you're going to write them in colors and right before you go to bed, you are going to go through your notecards and there will be the, yep, it's this and on the back, that's what it is.

Oh, wait, I didn't get that right and I'm over here.

They should make a class in that mandatory in high school the first year.

They should, but again, we're still in the education realm of creating.

Harry Ford, Henry Ford.

Okay.

So grades, the question was money, grades very important, get good grades, the cliche saying, and then that's so you can get a scholarship, correct?

That's the reason we're getting good grades is we want a scholarship.

Yes.

And college scholarships are the best money, because whatever they offer you the first year, you get every year, as long as you don't end up on academic probation, as long as you keep your grades up, you get that.

So they give you $15,000, that's 15 times four, that's 60 grand.

No one else can hand you 60 grand for anything at that age.

It's worth it.

And it might be the make or break, or in terms of can I go to the college with the co-op program that I would really want to do, that will get me the dream job and the career that I really want to have.

So sometimes you really got to bite the dust, get out the highlighter, get the index cards, hammer down.

It's only for a couple of years.

It's the old system, the Henry Ford system we're playing.

It's like a Monopoly game.

Just do it.

It's a game.

That's part of the, how do I put it?

I didn't learn much in college except how to play the game, how to study the habits and follow the flow chart and the rules.

But I had my eye on things.

I just realized I had to do what.

Not up to you, Dan.

You don't make the rules and you want to get there.

This is what you have to do.

So backing up, I think we got sidetracked on the Matthew McConaughey, what you were singing.

Oh, you gave me the example of they thought they wanted to switch and they didn't, which is probably valid in going back to your 80-20 percent thing, probably 80 percent of people who think they want to switch.

They got to go back through, they should go back through the exercise of go spend time with the mentor, do it for a day, especially if you're going to switch because that's a big deal.

Because you might come back and find, you know what, I'm going to stick with the original plan.

Right?

That was okay.

Let me give you a shocking number.

Right now, according to the National Center for Education Studies, it takes five and a half years to get a four-year degree.

That's the average, five and a half years to get a four-year degree.

The number one reason though is changing majors.

And too often students change majors because they're unhappy, they have a crappy professor, they weren't 100 percent committed to it.

It was like kind of that fallback of, I don't know what I really want to do, but this is the best of what I do now.

And then once they get the crappy professor, they're like, oh, do I want to keep doing this?

Probably not.

But the girl down the hall, she seems really happy in her major.

Oh, wow, you really like it?

That's great.

Hey, mom, okay, so I'm going to switch majors because the girl down the hall, she's doing this.

And literally, they're changing majors based on someone else's path, and not something that they've proven is really their path.

That's a huge mistake.

You see somebody happy and you're like, whatever their happiness is, if they're meditating or they're doing yoga, that's what I got to do.

Right.

Instead of finding out what is really going to happen.

Right.

But let's say you really do, you did make, I don't like to use the word mistake, but you had an enlightenment.

Then how do you manage that?

Well, I think-

There are probably some listeners who are inspired by this conversation, but they're like, okay, I'll do it moving forward.

But I feel like making a change.

Sure.

It's funny because usually during spring break, every year I do get some brand new clients that are college kids.

Went off to college thinking one thing, went through the first semester complaining.

Parents are like, oh, it's just first semester, it'll get better.

Then spring semester, the kid is like, look, I don't want to do this.

I don't see myself coming back here unless I can do something else.

I need something else.

The depression.

Right.

We work with students throughout college.

We've also worked with adults to help them try to figure out what does that path look like for them and how can they get there.

Again, a lot of people think everything we do is focused on college.

But as I mentioned, the student who wanted to be a pilot, I've helped students who wanted to work for our local electric company become a linesman who makes $90,000 a year.

Electrician.

I helped a girl start a business.

I mean, so there's a lot of different things we can provide assistance with that is kind of working backwards to the case where you you kind of guided the engineer into or the wannabe engineer who really wanted to fly airplanes, wanted to be a pilot.

So it's possible, Kelly writes, someone could come into your office, kind of like depressed and like, man, all just killing me.

This is not my thing.

You know, what do you want to do?

Why don't I be an airplane pilot?

Okay, let's look at that school.

Really?

I never thought of that.

I do that, right?

Right.

And again, I think a shadow or in the case of the pilot, you know, taking a test flight, talking to the people who are doing this, getting more information is so incredibly helpful.

Because, you know, perception is great, you know, if it helps build hope, but perception is often not reality.

So, you know, getting that real information to make sure that you are on the right path and not just thought it would be different.

That reminds me, it only took me one visit to the stockbroker's office when I was in engineering classes, calculus and differential equations.

I'm like, you know, if all I want to just make money is, I hear these stockbrokers are killing it.

So the college on the college board, I saw somebody, a stockbroker in town who put up a note, you know, if you're in college, you want to come by, see what's like a day in the office.

You know, come by at lunch, give me a call, we'll meet.

So I did, I met him at lunch and was just like, okay, why don't I ask him, how do you like your job?

He's like, I don't.

I'm like, why do you do it?

Makes a lot of money.

Oh, never mind.

Didn't take long.

I didn't like the office setting, I didn't like the vibe.

He wasn't happy.

Now, I will say there's a lot of stockbrokers and financial advisors that are wonderful and they love their job and they're helping people and they love that.

It wasn't for me.

But all it took is before I switched majors, thank God, on a whim to business from engineering.

I just went for one lunch meeting for an hour is all it took.

That's a great idea.

Go out and do the shadowing and then the other things you do also sound great too.

It's a good process you have, Kelly.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I find too, it's best if the shadow is not a relative of the person.

I can see that in anything.

It's like if you write a book or you write a song or anything creative or life planning, career planning, you bounce stuff off your family and friends, but you want to be careful of that.

They have good intentions.

If they didn't, they wouldn't give you their opinion if they didn't love you and have good intentions, but it's conflict interest.

Yes, for sure.

Yeah.

What else?

Did I go over most of the big topics we were going to talk about?

I think so, yes.

I think so.

The Matthew McConaughey story, that's a great story.

His memoir is fantastic.

Now, mind you, he is talented.

He does have the talent, but the idea of, it also reminds me of Brad Pitt, the actor Brad Pitt.

He was literally, I think the story goes, about to graduate his last semester.

His dad, I believe, was a truck driver.

Also, like sent him to college.

It's not cheap.

He literally didn't graduate.

He literally, he was back East someplace, and he got in his car and drove out to Hollywood.

He's just like, I'm going to be an actor.

I just know that's me.

I'm just a waste.

One semester is all I would have taken him to graduate.

It's a waste of time.

It wasn't easy though, because he is good, of course, but he wore the chicken outfit on the street, and did wave the sign, and try to do the menial job in his first acting gig.

As the story goes, his audition, he was horrible.

He didn't get it.

Somebody who was there was like, you should take an acting class, an acting coach.

He's like, really?

What are those?

It hadn't been for that person, and it hadn't been the right class probably.

His talent, I mean, maybe we all have talent somewhere inside of us.

We can do anything if it's what we really want to do.

Some have more talent than others.

That's what got him started.

His next audition, he killed, and then he got a role, and then from there on, it's history.

He's one that made it pretty radical.

I'm not suggesting any listeners do anything that radical.

First go see Kelly.

Promise me first to go see Kelly first.

But you bring up a really great point, and I say this all the time.

Getting some extra help, whether it's tutoring, figuring out a career, mental health issues.

Look at the people who are the best in their industries.

Look at athletes.

These guys making millions.

They don't have one coach.

They have several coaches.

LeBron James, he is the head coach of the team.

He's got his own personal trainer.

He's got a mental coach who works out things with him.

He has a business coach for all the industries he's running.

He's not just like, oh, I can handle everything on my own.

I don't need someone.

So it's really important that we think about, Brad Pitt went to acting class.

He had a coach who coached him up, so he didn't have to keep playing the chicken on the street.

People need to be more open to-

That's for help.

That's for help.

Right.

That's for help.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So for more information, you can check out Kelly's company has a free and private Facebook group called College Made Easy.

That's her Facebook group.

Her company is the Kelly MacLean Achievement Center.

The website is kellymackellymap.com.

Information and resources and her contact information will be in the show notes.

Kelly, thanks so much for being a guest on my show.

It's a wonderful service you provide.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for finding me.

I wish you and the students and parents you help continued success.

Thank you very much.

I think what you're doing is great, bringing some options to people out there so they can help find their purpose and be happy in life.

That's great.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Have a great day.

You too.

Thanks.