30: How to Market Your Business with NO Money
Behind Their Success: Ep 30
Duane McHodgkins: I feel like I am so much more in control than I was working for companies. I I went through 10 years of really unemployment and underemployment.
Duane McHodgkins: And that was really frustrating, I did not feel like I had any control at all. there were two different companies where I was working at those companies and all of a sudden one day I walked in and they said, guess what? You're not needed anymore. And that's a huge deal.
Duane McHodgkins: Shock to you. What do you do if you're not prepared for that? And, and honestly, in both of those cases, I was not prepared for that.
Welcome to behind their success. This podcast is for people who are feeling stuck on their entrepreneur journey or in their careers. It's for people who want to scale and grow their businesses, learn about the power of mindset, or they just know there's more out there and they want to start making changes.
I'm Peyton Squires, the host of the podcast. I was never cut out to be an employee. And when I was an employee, I was bored out of my mind. So I made a plan. I [00:01:00] studied and passed the CPA exam in eight months while working all with the end goal in mind of quitting my job and starting my own business. I did that in 2014 and have been on an amazing wild ride since.
So now let's hear from other entrepreneurs and what mindsets and probably more important, what actions they have taken that have created and led to their success.
Paden Squires: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Behind Their Success podcast. I am Paden Squires, the host. And today we have Duane McHodgkins. Duane has, in 2010 started an I. T. Company. He has grown that business and has recently come out with a couple of books as well. Duane, welcome to the podcast.
Paden Squires: Thanks, Paden. It's great to be here. Yeah, Duane. give us a little bit of your background, where you come from and how you got where you are today.
Duane McHodgkins: Yeah. my long term background, I was not in it. I was actually in sales and sales management. And, I just got to the point where I was tired of it.
Duane McHodgkins: And, at one point I had a [00:02:00] job where I was traveling five days a week, just about every week. that got really tiring and I finally got out of that job into a job that got me home. But that ended up being a route sales job. I was working for Hostess, which I was in my mid forties going, you know what, this job is getting harder and harder on my body.
Duane McHodgkins: I don't think I can do this until I'm 65 or something like that. So I decided to make a change. And, in a conversation with my wife one day, she said, you've been helping friends and family with their computers for a long time. What about doing that? And, that was just like, boom. Oh, wow.
Duane McHodgkins: That's a great idea. So I started looking into it. I was planning to do some classes at a community college. Timing wasn't right for that. So I just went and got the books and taught myself.fast forward 10 years later, best decision I ever made. About two years into it, I was having a conversation with my teenage son and he said, dad, [00:03:00] you're not nearly as grouchy as you used to be.
Duane McHodgkins: So I took that as a sign that, yeah, I think I'm doing the right thing here.
Paden Squires: yeah, that's cool. You didn't really see a future or what you have right at the job, or at least not a long time future. how hard was that decision to, or I guess, how scary was that decision to jump out and do your own thing?
Paden Squires: Well,
Duane McHodgkins: the decision was made for me. I started with hostess like in 2008 or nine, something like that. and when I decided to do this business, my goal was I was going to do it on the side. until about 2015. I figured by 2015, I would have enough built up where I could just quit my job. At the end of 2012 hostess filed for bankruptcy and shut their doors.
Duane McHodgkins: And that's remember? Yeah,they were the company shut down completely. And then about six, eight months later, someone bought the assets. And kind of brought the company back. [00:04:00]
Paden Squires: Yeah, the brands are worth something. Yeah.
Duane McHodgkins: And so when they shut down, I kind of looked at it and I'm going, okay, so do I try to find another job that'll hopefully work out as well as that one did timing wise?
Duane McHodgkins: Because running a route, I was going in really early two o'clock in the morning, and so I was done by noon. So I would have the afternoons and the evenings to work my business. And I'm thinking, will I find something that's going to work that well going forward? And I wasn't sure I would. So I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go for it.
Duane McHodgkins: I didn't have enough customers to support myself at that point. But, you know what, when you are behind the eight ball, you will do what you need to do.
Paden Squires: man. That, yeah, that's so true. I find that,it's amazing what gets accomplished when it has to be accomplished, right? When you have no other choice.
Paden Squires: you can usually go a whole lot further than you certainly think you can when you have to. Yeah. When there
Duane McHodgkins: is no room for error,
Paden Squires: will have less
Duane McHodgkins: [00:05:00] errors.
Paden Squires: so the business has been running since roughly 2010, you know, you'veI know you've gone into some different ventures and some writing and stuff. What got you there? So
Duane McHodgkins: when I started building my business, I basically, I had no money, right? I was scraping to survive, so I couldn't throw a bunch of money at advertising or anything like that. So I went the free route, which was networking.
Duane McHodgkins: So I went on a meetup actually, and started looking for on networking groups that were in my area, found some groups and, that's a hard thing to start doing because you're going to just show up. You don't know anybody and come to find out it's not an overnight thing.
Duane McHodgkins: It takes time. You know, one of the things that people always talk about in networking is that, people like to do business with people they know, and trust. Well, it takes time. a while to build that know, like, and trust. but it worked out great. And that's the main way that I gain new [00:06:00] customers today.
Duane McHodgkins: So it's worked out well. but along the way, many of those business owners that I was networking with became real good friends. And, then COVID comes along and my business, I did fantastic during COVID. I was one of those deemed essential. Yeah.so it was great, but so many of my friends, their businesses were not deemed essential and they weren't able to go to the office or they weren't able to, really do their business.
Duane McHodgkins: So I had a lot of friends that were suffering and, driving around, I would occasionally see a business that had figured it out, they had pivoted. They found a new way to do business. one of the real telling things was. There was a brewery that I had driven by, and they had put up platforms in their parking lot and attached fishing tents to 'em, ice fishing tents,so now you could be inside, but outside that hole, it all works, right?
Duane McHodgkins: Yeah. They were able to stay in [00:07:00] business. There's a restaurant in Parker where I live, they had 50 of those ice fishing tents. And it's the neatest that there was a picture someone had taken from the roof of the building where you could see all these and that enabled them to continue serving,
Paden Squires: So
Duane McHodgkins: I just started seeing those kinds of things. I started making note of those. And one day the phrase business heroes of the pandemic hit me. And I was like, okay, I started writing down these ideas and I think I was probably Three, four thousand words in when I decided, wow, this could actually be a book.
Duane McHodgkins: And so I did a couple things at that point. I decided, okay, I'm going to, every morning I'm going to get up and I'm going to spend some time writing this and trying to get this done. I didn't know how many words I needed for a book at that point. I do now, the books that I write, they end up being around 150 pages.
Duane McHodgkins: And I can get to that point in about 30, 000 words. So [00:08:00] now I have a little bit of a, okay, I know kind of what I need to do. didn't know at that time.
Duane McHodgkins: But anyway, I told everybody that I ran into that I was writing a book and that did two things for me. So first off, that kind of puts the peer pressure on me because I know the next time I see that person, they're going to say, so how's the book coming?
Duane McHodgkins: And I don't want to be the guy that says, Oh, well, you know, I gave up on that. So no, I was forcing myself to continue doing this. The other thing that I did when I told them what it was about. There were people that said, Oh, you should talk to this person or you need to meet this person.
Duane McHodgkins: What they did is really cool. So that gave me more stories to add to the book. and it also led me down the path to finding the people that actually helped me put it all together. Cause I had no clue how you get a book on Amazon or any of that stuff. there's a lot of people, they do that for a living.
Duane McHodgkins: So.I'm all about let's find people that know what [00:09:00] they're doing instead of trying to do it all myself
Paden Squires: Yeah, and to back up I guess a little bit, you're talking about Starting, even just starting out your company was that you said you didn't have any money, right?
Paden Squires: and that's most people right when they're quitting or starting to just, you know, starting a business like You're broke or you certainly don't have enough money to go do a bunch of marketing or what have you. So like you have two choices in the beginning, right? It's either time or money, right? You didn't have money, so you, but you had excess time, right?
Paden Squires: And then you invested in that networking piece. And me, a similar story. I started my practice out of my living room, broke, or, just, I don't say broke, but just quit my job. and I networked the heck out of it. That's the only thing I knew. Hey, this is a positive thing to do.
Paden Squires: It's going to help, but you're right. it was two to three years down the road before you really start to see the seeds of that actually start to sprout. Yeah.
Duane McHodgkins: And that's another thing that I did. So, there were more mornings where I woke up. I was wondering what I was going to [00:10:00] do today, so what I did is I created a spreadsheet and I actually called this spreadsheet seeds taken from Robert Louis Stevenson.
Duane McHodgkins: And so what I would do is, okay, if I've, if I wake up this morning and I've got customers to go to great, I'm going to go deal with those customers. If I don't, I'm going to open up my spreadsheet and this spreadsheet, it was basically, 12 pages.
Duane McHodgkins: It was a calendar for an entire year and, across the top, I had every day of the month. And going down the side, I had different things that I could do to move my business forward. So if I don't have a customer, then I look at that and I'm going, okay, what can I do right now to move my business forward?
Duane McHodgkins: And I would do those things. And I would make a note on the spreadsheet that I did it. Okay. Now, if that turned into something, then I would highlight it. So I could actually go back and I could see, look, I did these things. they, Came to fruition. They brought me business. [00:11:00] This is fantastic. and I kept that up for probably the first three years of my business until I got to the point where, you know what?
Duane McHodgkins: I don't have time to do this anymore, but I, then it was all habits. So if I wake up and I don't have anything going on, I do have a list of things right here that I can do to move me forward.
Paden Squires: So that's amazing. And there's, there's a couple of points here and, and to go back, I couldn't read the, uh, Robert Louis Stevenson says, don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant,
Duane McHodgkins: there it is.
Paden Squires: it's, yeah, I mean, that's so true. And like, I can already tell by talking to you and just, just meeting you today that, the organization you put around that, the thought you put around that, Not a lot of people do that and are not necessarily connecting today's actions with tomorrow's results, right?
Paden Squires: Like everything, everything is delayed, right? Nothing is like instant and where people begin their business in the beginning. They start planting some of these seeds and show up the next day and wonder why there isn't like a [00:12:00] cornfield, that's just not reality.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Dune, what would you say is,your number one skill or what has led to your ability to grow your business and be successful?
Duane McHodgkins: Probably the first thing is to just go out there and do it, keep a positive attitude.
Duane McHodgkins: I'm a person, I'm a scorekeeper. Okay. And I know this about myself, so I built in a lot of different things where I could keep score to prove to myself that I'm moving forward. And that's what motivates me. So
Paden Squires: You game, you gamify it, right?
Paden Squires: Like you almost turned it into a game and you keep getting little rewards. Exactly. And
Duane McHodgkins: That's, I found out what works for me and that's what I've done. during COVID. And this was, this was in my first book, lessons from the business started the pandemic, I talked about the fact that a lot of people that were sidelined, they would, get up in the morning or maybe not get up in the morning.
Duane McHodgkins: leave their [00:13:00] pajamas on, go sit in front of the TV and just binge some shows on Netflix or whatever. And when you do that, you're setting yourself up for failure. if you don't have anything going on, you get up, you get dressed and you go through the motions as if you do have things going on because you're creating habits.
Duane McHodgkins: And when you create those habits, They become automatic and you just do them and you're ready to go. So that morning when you wake up and you do get that phone call that says, Hey, I want you to do this. You're ready to go do that. But if you're not getting up, if you're just spending your time lounging around, you're not going to be ready for those things.
Paden Squires: yeah, that's so true. thinking back on it. So I'm a CPA and CFP, so I do everything kind of tax and wealth, but, that pandemic hit right in the middle of tax season. And, it was such a, uh, shock. And it's funny, I can go back to my calendar and go back and look at 2020 where like early March, [00:14:00] you know, there's no joke.
Paden Squires: I have 20 plus meetings a day and then 20 plus meetings a day from February all the way to early March. And then you hit mid March and there's nothing. Just stopped all of it. So it was a really weird time, right? And I, I would say I'm much stronger now than I was then, but it was so easy to even creep into that where you talk about okay, you got nothing to do.
Paden Squires: It's so easy to creep into other types of habits that aren't planting seeds or helping you. down the road, everybody sits around and watches Tiger King for weeks. and yeah, and, not a lot of God accomplished. So what would you credit as the best decision you've ever made?
Paden Squires: Dwayne?
Duane McHodgkins: I think, just deciding and then just doing this business. Cause. Yeah, my life is so it's not less stressful. It's a different kind of stress. I feel like I am so much more in control than I was working [00:15:00] for companies. I mean, prior to all of this, I went through 10 years of unemployment and underemployment.
Duane McHodgkins: and that was really frustrating, I did not feel like I had any control at all. I had, there were two different companies where I was working at those companies and all of a sudden one day I walked in and they said, guess what? You're not needed anymore. And that's a huge deal.
Duane McHodgkins: Shock to you. And yeah, it's blown. What do you do if you're not prepared for that? and honestly, in, in both of those cases, I was not prepared for that. And now, you know what, okay, maybe I'm my own boss or maybe I have a thousand bosses, either way, but the bottom line is if one customer fires me today, that's okay.
Duane McHodgkins: Because I've got a lot of other customers. So that puts me more in control.
Paden Squires: very similar path where it's in the beginning you're scraping and doing whatever and you'll do about anything for [00:16:00] anybody for a paycheck.
Paden Squires: and I did a lot of that. But as you grow your business, as you get more prepared, as you get more skillful, and this is going to sound bad as in like, when I say it's like no one customer matters to my business and of course they all matter. But what I'm getting at is I have control to do what I want because I don't necessarily need any.
Paden Squires: yeah.
Duane McHodgkins: NowI've made the mistake a couple of different times in my business. Where, I had what I called like the golden goose, this was a customer that ended up being 25, 30 percent of my business. And, Hey, that's fantastic. Cause you know, boom, you, your business is growing up.
Duane McHodgkins: It's great. But when you've got that much tied up in one customer.that can come to a stop real quick. And twice that happened to me and it wasn't, it wasn't bad in the first situation. It was basically, Hey, things have changed in our business and we've got a lot of stuff [00:17:00] going on. So we're bringing it in house.
Duane McHodgkins: the company had grown when I started with them. There were like 15 people. They were a franchising company and by the time they took it in house, Their customer service alone was probably 50 people and they had over a hundred franchisees around the country. So it really made sense for them to bring it in house, so there was no real feelings other than the fact that I just lost 30, 35 percent of my income problem that happened one other time to since then, I've been real careful to not let it happen.
Duane McHodgkins: anybody have that much co And that's a hard thing t youI've done is just try to are other customers that financially as that customer Yeah.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:00] And to, you know, to circle back to your answer of like, you know, the best decision you've made was just to kind of start. I give that same answer to that question, right? Like I don't. The best decision I ever made was to just quit my job and start. And somehow I was brave enough to do it at the time. And I, I don't know what it was and I finally decided to do it. And, it's amazing. And, a lot of people get stuck, right?
Paden Squires: They just, they get stuck in the planning and thinking about it and, All of a sudden, five years goes by and you still haven't necessarily done any. You just got started.
Duane McHodgkins: Yeah. I've run into those people too. And,I remember a guy I'd met at a networking event and, he said, yeah, I'm working on my business plan.
Duane McHodgkins: I'm like, oh, okay. What are you planning to do? And he told me, and, I'm like, okay,how long have you been, well, I've been working on it for about six months, and I told him, I said, look, I said, Eventually, you probably will need a business plan, especially if you're, planning to, make this a very large business and [00:19:00] maybe, sell it at some point, but to start a business, you have to sell something, whether that's a product, your service, whatever it is, it's not a business until you sell something and you can, you can go back and you can put the structure in place, but until you sell something.
Duane McHodgkins: It's an idea. It's just an idea. Yeah.
Paden Squires: That's so true. it's so easy to get stuck in that. And it's, I would assume a lot of that is fear, right? Like you just want to start and realize you can't do it. Right.and another point is like, as a guy that's, you know, Got a myriad of LLCs and owned all kinds of different types of business.
Paden Squires: I have never once written like an official piece of paper saying, Hey, this is what I'm going to do ever in my life. so it's, yeah. And of course you have no idea what to put in that business and plan it until you start actually doing stuff. Like you don't know what you're doing until you get in there and start bumping around and messing stuff up.
Paden Squires: Yeah. I
Duane McHodgkins: it's good to have an [00:20:00] idea of what you want to do, but a formal plan. It's going to change on a, sometimes on a daily basis.
Paden Squires: and I find that all the time too. And have these conversations with my wife or business partners. It's like, I don't even know why you try to plan like more than three months out.
Paden Squires: Like I, you got the big vision and the goal and okay, this is where we're going, but like tactically, the world changes so dangerous and different opportunities and what have you, like you need your North star and Then you just gotta pivot constantly, right? And how do I get to my north star as, you
Duane McHodgkins: Know, as fast as possible?
Duane McHodgkins: It's like using GPS, right? So you take a wrong turn and what happens? Recalculating. that's, Like, oh man, I just cost
Paden Squires: myself a year! Wild stuff. your best decision was getting started,tell us about some, uh, you know, a bad decision or a mistake or, something that, you know, now that you wish you would have known then,learned a
Duane McHodgkins: lesson from it.
Duane McHodgkins: So there have been a few times where I've had someone call me and say, [00:21:00] Hey, we need, Someone to help us with this and whatever this is. And it's something that, it's not necessarily in my wheelhouse, but man, it could be lucrative. This could be, um, you know, a pretty good customer. And there've been a couple of times where I've, okay, I'll do it.
Duane McHodgkins: it's not something I should be doing and it's not ended well. and I've learned from that. And since then, and I think this is. Becoming more secure in yourself and your strengths and what you do. Cause you know, hopefully you get to a point in your business where, okay, I know who my customer is.
Duane McHodgkins: And if you're not my customer, I'm going to tell you, I'm sorry, you're not my customer because you can't be everything to everybody. And it's hard to make those decisions sometimes, but Boy, it makes your life so much easier. Once you decide, okay, this is where I work. [00:22:00] This is what I do.
Duane McHodgkins: I'm not going to do this stuff over here. So
Paden Squires: I've learned, or I've committed that mistake countless numbers, especially early, right? Like we go back to early where you're like, Hey, I just want to make some money. Who wants to give me some money for something? But yes, as you develop, as you get more confidence, as you get more revenue and customers, you need to get very clear on who you work with because if it's outside of that narrow lane, it's not efficient for you, right?
Paden Squires: It's not nearly as profitable necessarily for you, right? if I do this one thing over and over again and get really good at it, like it's super easy and quick for me and I know exactly what I'm doing. And I'm super helpful to the client. I get out in this other world. I don't know what I'm doing.
Paden Squires: I gotta figure it all out. I hope I'm doing the right thing for the client, like all these different problems. And like I bid something or give a quote on something like, I don't really know if that's right or not, because I really don't know what I'm getting into. there's a myriad of problems.
Paden Squires: And then you get your not [00:23:00] ideal clients, right at your client base. Transcribed And it just creates a whole lot of inefficiencies and just honestly, just flat out distractions. Yeah.
Duane McHodgkins: Yeah. you learn, uh, that the rule of 80 20 is so true. you get that one customer that they try to monopolize 80 percent of your time and you're not making any money off of them, but then you get those other customers that, uh, boy, they really.
Duane McHodgkins: Appreciate what you do and, uh, you tell them what it's going to cost and they don't bat an eye and, and then you go, okay, I need to concentrate on those kinds of customers and try to stay away from, uh, from those ones that are, just, they're going to nickel and dime you to death and just.
Duane McHodgkins: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Paden Squires: And in my experience and just growing, my business is from a 24 year old kid and is out of his own house. To what it is today. yeah, it's just, I guess what I look for in clients is almost [00:24:00] quality of people at this point. You know, if you're big, small, there's things I'll do for a lot of small clients that someone would say, why are you doing that?
Paden Squires: But I see it as an investment in that person because I think that person's worth it. Yeah. Does that kind of make sense? Right. Like,I will invest time in some college kid or whatever that's trying to hustle and get stuff and give advice. Right.if it's, there's so many clients, like you said, the 80, 20 and everybody tells you that like you would be better off to fire your bottom 20 percent of clients literally every year.
Duane McHodgkins: It's hard to do. It is. It is. Yeah. So when I started my business, another thing that I found was, there's a service called thumbtack and it's kind of like Angie's list, those types of things. But, uh, when I started out Thumbtack for, a service provider was really inexpensive to do.
Duane McHodgkins: And so I used that to get customers and it's great because, I would get a text message, Hey, so and so is [00:25:00] looking for this kind of help. And I can click the link, go into my phone and I could put a quote together for him in a few seconds. And if I did that, I think it cost me something like seven, eight bucks.
Duane McHodgkins: if I, Was able to get the quote to him, you know, and those I win, some of my wouldn't, more often than not, I did win them, but I had people that would come back on me and say, well, that seems kind of expensive. Will you do it for this? And I got to the point where I'm like, no, this is what I charge.
Duane McHodgkins: based on my experience and everything, this is what I charge. If you think it's too much, then, good luck, but you've got my information. If something changes and guess what? A number of times, those people would come back to me and say, yeah, I went with the least expensive guy and now I need some help because now I'm so okay.
Duane McHodgkins: Great. That showed me that I'm on the right track here. I'm doing what I need to do. Cool. And, yeah, but that's a really hard thing to do.
Paden Squires: you know, it's,it's funny [00:26:00] sometimes in similar experiences where it's like, oh yes, the cheaper option is done and then they come back to you and you got to go clean up.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Duane McHodgkins: Well, what took me an hour is now going to take me two. So
Paden Squires: that quote actually went up. let's say going back to 2010 or whenever, right? When you're starting, what piece of advice would you give yourself, right? What, if you could tell yourself one thing about, this journey going forward, what piece of advice would you,
Duane McHodgkins: there are things that I've discovered along the way, and I wish I knew those things when I started.
Duane McHodgkins: a lot of this is in my first book too, on how to remain essential. So what I discovered is. in I. T. There were a number of tools that I used that people would say, Hey, what kind of antivirus should I use? What backup solutions should I use? And I was always quick to tell them, here's the best one.
Duane McHodgkins: And I would help them get it on their computer and everything like that. And after a while, I kind of realized, you know what? [00:27:00] I'm like the best unpaid salesman for these companies. Yeah.so I started looking into it and, the antivirus that I used, they had a great program. I was able to, uh, offer it for the exact same price they were offering it, but I was making like 30%.
Duane McHodgkins: So it was fantastic. So now I'm actually getting paid. I'm not leaving money on the table. And then I had a couple companies that I did work for and, Hey, do you guys have an affiliate program? Do you have a partner program? no, we don't have anything like that. I'm like, okay, no worries. but at that point I would try to find another product that was similar, was of high quality that I felt good about.
Duane McHodgkins: And if I found one and they had a program, I'd switch to that one. By doing that, I found out that, okay, I'm not working as hard as I was before to make the same amount of money, which is great. I'm going to customers and the customer isn't spending any more money, but I'm making more [00:28:00] money, And so that was a win. The company that's selling the product, they're winning because they're selling more because I'm more apt to sell it. They're getting a great product and I'm supporting it and I'm getting paid to do that. So. Everybody wins. And that's the kind of deal I like if Everybody wins.
Duane McHodgkins: Yeah.
Paden Squires: Heck yeah. it's truly, in every situation you can, find a win win. Now it can take some exploring, but in every situation you can come to an agreement of a win. So Duane, before we got on the podcast here, I heard you got a new book dropping.
Paden Squires: Was it today? Uh,
Duane McHodgkins: Actually yesterday it dropped. Yeah.
Duane McHodgkins: So which, which is always so much fun. It's weird because my first book, the day it launched, I was all over social media. This one, I really haven't done that that much because I'm planning a launch party. And I want to wait until I have all the books in hand before I do that.
Duane McHodgkins: So it'll probably be about a month out, but everybody knows that I've written it and this, so this book is a little, it's a little different, but I think it's really right up there today with what's going on in the world. It's called the higher [00:29:00] education scam. And the second part of that is it's debunking the myth that everyone needs a college degree.
Duane McHodgkins: And you know, it's, it's really weird. Cause as I talk to people, everybody agrees with me, but yet collectively as a society, we're still putting that out that, okay, you're graduating from high school and what's the first thing everybody says to you? Where are you going to college? And honestly, there are so many of us that really have no business going to college.
Duane McHodgkins: I did high school for three and a half years, and I realized that I had enough credits. I did not have to go that last semester. I'm out. I despised sitting in a classroom. It was not fun. It was not something that I mean, it was a struggle for me to do that. and I know there's a lot of people like that.
Duane McHodgkins: So why would you encourage those people to spend that kind of money and that much time? to further that [00:30:00] education. There are so many other options and. There are good options.
Paden Squires: Yeah. And you know, and especially in today's rapidly changing world,I'm about to turn 37 and you know, when I was in high school.
Paden Squires: I was basically told, you go to college or you're going to live under a bridge and that's just not true in today's world. there's just so many different options. And the cost benefit analysis college is, it's certainly getting worse. And the university system was designed, gosh, however long ago, but the whole idea was this, all these smart people came together and they had all this knowledge at this school to disseminate to everybody.
Paden Squires: They don't have any special knowledge that you can't find for free or very little cost on the internet. and I promise you the stuff you go and explore and self learn, is going to be way more valuable, way more important to you than [00:31:00] necessarily just going to take some courses at college and checking a bunch of
Duane McHodgkins: boxes.
Duane McHodgkins: Now, I will say this. I believe there are two types of degrees. Okay. And I'm not talking, you know, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts. No, what I'm talking about, there are skills degrees. Okay. So if you want to be an accountant, you want to be an engineer, you want to be a doctor, you want to be a lawyer, and there's a number of other ones.
Duane McHodgkins: just professional stuff that they have programs in college that will teach you what you need to do those things. Problem is these other degrees. And, um, a lot of these, they kind of fall under like the humanities type degrees and those types of things. I call those the soft skill degrees. And it's, they come in every, um, ethnic variety.
Duane McHodgkins: So you could have Hispanic studies, Asian studies, whatever, whatever you want to do, they have those. And when you Google, what kind of a job can I get with [00:32:00] whatever it is studies, they all say the same thing. Cause I've done this on a number of them. And when you Google it, it comes up and says, You can get a job, or you can get a number of different jobs, working with people with this kind of background.
Duane McHodgkins: So they don't really teach you anything about any job. What they're teaching you is, this is how this culture works.
Duane McHodgkins: It's not all that helpful. So, what I've found in my research is, if you go and get one of these degrees, And the other amazing thing about the colleges is this. If you want to get an accounting degree, that's 120 credit hours.
Duane McHodgkins: If you want to get a Russian literature degree, that's 120 hours. Engineering, 120 hours, everything is 120 hours. So now let's talk about trade school.There are programs to become a truck driver and they range from three weeks to maybe [00:33:00] six months there at different schools. And when you leave that program, you get a certificate that basically says we guarantee this person has gone through all the steps, has all the licenses, everything they need to be a truck driver. if you want to be, um, You know, a cosmetologist, you want to cut people's hair. there's a program for that, and the majority of that program is hands on, actually doing it. And, in all those programs, everybody takes the same classes. it's not like college, where, well, I decided to take anthropology, well, I decided to take geography. There's a big difference between them. I think that, If someone has a certificate, they go through a technical program, you can guarantee that they know what they're doing. And everybody that comes through that program will have the same education, not so much with a four year degree.
Paden Squires: I've had some of these kinds of conversations with people on the podcast in the past.
Paden Squires: and, as a guy that, has all [00:34:00] kinds of degrees and certifications from universities and colleges and whatever. I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying. I even taught college for five plus years. I totally agree. And it's, I think the main issue is like the difference between theory and practice.
Paden Squires: So much of that is taught, you know, there's so much theory and whatever taught, like, and to me, it's like, you go into a school to even go in to get a business degree. It's like, has anybody in that school ever operated a business for one day in their life? Like in reality. And, there's this great quote.
Paden Squires: I always Berra, who's, you know, an extremely quotable guy. He says, in theory, So in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is, which is so true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Duane McHodgkins: Again, I'm not a, I'm not against higher education learning. It's just not for everybody. In the book, doing research for it, I discovered [00:35:00] that the general population of adults in the United States, 36%.
Duane McHodgkins: have a four year degree. That's all. So why are we pushing all these kids right out of high school to do that when most of us don't even have that?
Paden Squires: Yeah. and even that it's like the absolute lack of people in all the trades and different things where there's massive opportunity. and you know, you brought up cosmetology, I have several cosmetologist clients that make a great living.
Paden Squires: I mean, a very good living doing what they do. running their own business and all these things,they probably got their certificate and, you know, a few months at a hair school. but it gave them all the skills they needed to just take off and run. And certainly it was a whole lot less than the six figures or whatever you're going to spend on a college degree.
Duane McHodgkins: So my, uh, daughter. Her goal from the time she was like in second grade was to be a reporter and she ended up going [00:36:00] to, going to college and getting a degree in, uh, broadcast journalism. She became a TV reporter, and she did that for about five years.
Paden Squires: should have come to the University of Missouri's number one journalism school.
Duane McHodgkins: Yeah. . she actually, so she went to, uh, in Denver, there's a school called Metro, and it's in downtown Denver. It's a great school. It used to be more of a business person's school,but now it's a traditional university. But, she took all of her classes there and they actually had a program that it was a club that this club, they called it met media, for metropolitan state, university, but, in this club, you could create radio shows and they would play on their, uh, public service radio.
Duane McHodgkins: And they also did a, uh, 30 minute long, newscast every Friday morning. And For four years, she was involved in this 30 minute newscast every week. She was an anchor. She was a reporter. She was a camera person. She produced it. She directed it. [00:37:00] She did everything she could do in it.
Paden Squires: And
Duane McHodgkins: so. When she went to get her first job, she had been working in a newsroom for four years.
Duane McHodgkins: She knew all of the industry acronyms and she was using the tools that they were using. She was doing all the things that they were doing. could she have done it without that program? Yes, she could have, but she would have had a much harder time. And in fact, her best friend that she met at her first job didn't have it.
Duane McHodgkins: opportunity to do something like that. And she really struggled her first year in the newsroom. Whereas my daughter, it was like, okay, this is, I've been doing this for four or five years. Now, had my daughter not gone to college, but just got involved with a club, she still could have done the job and she would have been fantastic at it.
Duane McHodgkins: it needs to change. there's things where you [00:38:00] don't need this sitting in classrooms. She had to take Anthropology and she had to take Geology. Really has nothing to do with being a reporter,
Paden Squires: She'll never think about any of that stuff ever
Duane McHodgkins: again. No, no. So, that's, uh, yeah, that's where I'm at with it.
Duane McHodgkins: I would really like to see all of that change. and hopefully, my book will get, The conversation going more and I'm encouraged by things I'm seeing out in the world. It seems like the tide is beginning to turn, so That's awesome, Dwayne.
Paden Squires: That's awesome. Dwayne, uh, appreciate you coming on.
Paden Squires: What's the best way, um, people can connect with you?
Duane McHodgkins: everything that I'm involved with. It's all on one page on the internet and it is called Dwayne. com.
Paden Squires: Dwayne. com.
Duane McHodgkins: Yeah. Yeah. I was lucky enough to get that domain a few years ago. And it's just, Hey, this is great.
Paden Squires: So it's Duane spelled D U A N E.
Duane McHodgkins: Correct. Yes. Yes. there's links to all of my social media there. There's links to my first book, my second book. I [00:39:00] haven't got it up there yet cause I just got the link today. So,but on Amazon, if you just type in Duane McHodgkins, both of my books will come up. if you go to my first book, you can probably find my second book fairly easy that way too.
Duane McHodgkins: So yeah.
Paden Squires: That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I would say the time this, certainly time this podcast was released, guys, that the books should be up there on Amazon and, check out the way well, Duane, like I said, I appreciate you coming on today. fantastic conversation and listeners. We will, uh, catch you next time.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people as we're trying to accomplish our goal of helping create more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me, Paden Squires, or going to www.padensquires.com On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we can actually interact. [00:40:00] I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
