Joe:  Hey, good morning. What's up? Welcome to REI in Your Car podcast.

Joe:  I hope you're doing well. I just dropped my daughter off at school, and I was thinking about some things here. If I started all over again from high school, what would I do? I would probably not change anything. I went to community college for a couple years. Then I went to a Bible college for a couple years, and then I went community college again, and then did some internships. No, no, I went to Iowa State University for a year, did some internships, and finally graduated with a bachelor's in civil engineering in 2000. So, I graduated in high school in 1990, graduated from college in the year 2000. It took me 10 years to graduate. But I learned a lot of good things from that, right? I enjoyed Bible school even though I never went into the ministry, the professional ministry, you know what I mean? I think we're all in the ministry somehow, in some way. Oh, by the way, five years after that, I got my MBA. Whatever, right? It's nice to get a degree to have that sense of accomplishment that you did something. But have I ever used my civil engineering degree? No. Have I ever used my MBA? No, but I'm thinking about this because now we have four kids and our youngest is a freshman in high school, right?

And by the way, remind me, I'll talk about that and I'll finish my thought here, but I just bought this new Model X. And you know how sometimes when you're in two left turn lanes and usually everyone goes to the far left? I love this Model X because I get in whichever lane is shorter because I know I can pass everybody and cut in front of them. It's one of the funnest things about driving an electric vehicle like this is I just passed five or six people because I got in the shorter line and now I just past my sixth. Let's go!

Alright so my youngest is a freshman in high school and my oldest is 22. Just started his fourth year of college and he's studying to be a chiropractor. Our second oldest son is in community college just still trying to figure out what he wants to do. He's a smart kid. He's a really good kid. And then our oldest daughter, our number three, is a senior in high school. She's probably gonna go to college. But here's my whole point in all of this. When I started having kids, I was thinking about this stuff and I was successful in business and I had started a couple companies, you know? And so, I, since I quit my job in 2009, started doing real estate in 2009. And then a year or two after that, I started doing the podcast and selling education and publishing information and selling information. And I realized, you know, if you want safety, if you don't want any risk, you should get a job, be an employee for the rest of your life. And if you've got a good college degree, you can have some kind of security and safety, which is important. But I used to look down and criticize college education. But as I've matured and now, I have kids, I realized the importance of college. It is actually useful and important. It may not, you may not see the dollar for ROI on it with some degree. Maybe some degrees are pretty much pointless. I don't know, but I have a feeling my opinion on that will change as well but not listen to me.

Listen, this is really important. Those of you that are so quick to criticize college and people that go to college, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone has the risk tolerance and the capability and the desire and the stick-to-itiveness to take the risks to start their own business and to run their own companies. As an entrepreneur, like it's in my blood, I guess, right? My dad was a janitor at McDonald's when I was born and just liked cleaning. It's the strangest thing. He felt God called him to the, not to ministry full time, but to be a minister in the marketplace. He felt called to start a janitorial business and he's been cleaning toilets his whole life. Now, he started his own business back in the 70s, cleaning business. We moved quite a bit as a kid, as I did, and he probably started five different companies, five different janitorial businesses in different cities. And eventually when we ended up in Iowa, he had the largest cleaning business in the Midwest. I don't know, 150-something employees, lots and lots of clients. He finally sold everything a few years ago. He's in his mid-70s now and he's doing well, completely debt free and doing, doing really good.

So, he had that entrepreneurial thing in him as well, I think, and maybe I got it passed on. I don't know if it's a gene, I don't know if it’s part of your DNA, but here's my point, not everybody's cut out to be an entrepreneur. Now, my kids, it's interesting because when you are an entrepreneur and you have success in business, I'd be curious to know what you guys think of this and if you have seen the same thing as well. Your kids grow up and they don't wanna be like dad. They want to blaze their own trail, they want to do their own thing. I grew up not thinking my dad, I was never embarrassed of my dad as a janitor. I just didn't care. But I didn't want to be a janitor, right? And he offered to let me take over his business. And without a hesitation, I said, no way, never. To this day, I feel a little bad that maybe I said nos too quickly. I love my dad. He is the hardest working man I've ever known. But like, I don't want that business, I want my own business. So did I need my college education to get to where I am today?

No, but I'm glad I did it because I learned a lot and I also met my wife. She was not in college, but I met her while I was going to college. I met here at a church we were going to at the time. And now my kids, you know, my two boys have done real estate deals before. They know how much money they can make. When they were doing deals, we did about one hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars in profits. Now, I only paid them 15 percent of the profits. And what was interesting is I paid them an hourly wage or 15 bucks an hour. And then out of the deals, I paid myself back. So, you know, if let's say a deal was $10,000 in profit, $1,500 of that profit was theirs, one of theirs. And then if I had already paid them $500 in hourly wages, I only then paid them an extra 1,000 bucks, right? But at the time for them, they were like 13, 14, 15 years old. It was enough for them to buy some cars. They made some good money. They bought some nice cars. You would think they'd be like, oh, light, nice. Let's do this more. Let's do some more deals. I want to do more real estate dad Tell me more about what you do how you do it if they were to know or see how much money I'm making in my education business in software and done-for-you marketing and consulting and services and info products and all that you'd think they would be like Joe our dad. Can we help you? Can we do this as well because like, you know, I'm thinking way more than I don't want to brag.

But I'm gonnahumble brag here. I'm taking way more than lawyers and doctors. Okay, so it's a great business.But at what cost? Like this business, there is a lot of risk that you have to take. And it's not for everybody. And that's my point. My boys now, they don't want to do what dad's doing. They would rather work at Smoothie King or at the Car Wash or Door Dash. One of my sons delivers a lot for Amazon. I'm just like, okay, that's cool. Maybe I don't wanna push it on them. Maybe they just don't understand the value of a dollar yet. They don't know understand like, oh my gosh, like you have work really hard to make a little money. And they've just been living from home. So we do make them pay the car insurance, the cell phone bill, and the only thing we really, they live for free at home as long as they're going to school, part-time or full-time and working part- time or full time. So anyway, my point in this is, as your kids are growing, man, I guess some advice that I could give, and I'm still in the middle of it, but like, don't knock college because it's important. I want all of my kids to go to college now. Before I was like, no, I think college is dumb, but now, yeah, I think it's probably a good idea. Because you got to figure out what you want and at college, you're going to meet people, you're gonna make friendships and connections, you gonna learn about the world, you going to learn the basics of history and math and how to write, how to do a business plan. If you're taking some business majors and finance classes, you are going to learn about profit and loss statements and balance sheets.

So guess what? That stuff is important. I didn't think it was important until I got five hundred and something thousand dollars in taxes owed to the IRS and I came this close to going to jail. I've talked about that before, by the way, if you've never heard me talk about that, probably four or five years ago. I was in a huge IRS problem. It's all because I didn't understand the numbers. Now, I was an idiot, but like I was making a lot of money, but I kept on paying my taxes late. I kept on filing extensions, and I kept paying off my old taxes while I'm making more money to pay off my taxes, but then I wasn't getting current on my current taxes, and I just kept on snowballing and I got into huge, huge debt and it was very embarrassing and humiliating and difficult. But we got through it because I implemented profit first. But here's my point in all of that. Like there is some value and use in a business degree where you can learn about financial statements. You can learn about making money, what cashflow projections are, that kind of stuff. You understand what I'm saying here?

Now my boys, they're also thinking, it's funny because we've adopted all four of our kids. And I don't know if the entrepreneur gene is actually a thing, but some of them have it and some of the don't. Some of them want to go to college so they can start their own business. Every kid's different and is there a one-size-fits-all blanket thing for everybody? No, you got to find out where your kids are what your kids Are interested in you need to let them figure it out on their own and it's funny because I have some friends who are in The similar situation their kids are getting older and at first they're like no college is dumb big waste of money big waste Of time, but now almost every single one of them is like, yeah You should go to college you should get a degree because it is important that you can learn a lot of valuable life skills. And you know what? You're only in your early 20s, your late teens, early 20's, and you're not going to get it all figured out yet. You're not gonna know where your life is going to go, and you’re not gonna have it figured out. And things change. You may go one direction, and you find out later, yeah, you know, I don't like that direction. I'm gonna go this way instead. So I guess my final advice is, as I go, ask God for wisdom. If anything, I have learned, and I still got a long ways to go. But when I ask God for wisdom, He gives it to me every single time, and He'll give it to you. He'll get it to your kids. You just ask for wisdom. Don't doubt in your heart, but believe when you ask God something, He's going to give it you. So if you ask Him for wisdom Lord, give me wisdom with my kids. Give my kids wisdom. What kind of college or career or business should they go into? Tech school or regular traditional college. Yeah, and God will give you wisdom. He'll give you favor, and He will help you because God knows we need it. All right, that's all I got. I just wanted to share that. Hopefully that helps some of you who have some kids and you're wondering what on earth are they doing? What are they gonna do? What am I gonna do. It'll all work out. Okay, we'll see you guys. Bye bye.