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SNM228: Grow Your Business Without Bureaucracy with Lorraine Ball

• Jonathan Green : Bestselling Author, Tropical Island Entrepreneur, 7-Figure Blogger • Episode 228

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Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.

Our guest today is Lorraine Ball, a marketing strategist and marketing educator, who left the corporate space following her unhappiness with its bureaucracies despite her love for her job. She now works independently and helps prepare new entrepreneurs for the journey ahead through the Digital toolbox and her podcast, “More Than a Few Words”. 

In this episode, Jonathan and Lorraine discuss the dragging, almost obtuse approach that large corporations unwittingly adopt toward new ideas, and how new entrepreneurs can anticipate this tendency while employing tactically relevant strategies to deal with it.  

Episode Topics

  • [00:56] Meet today's guest, Lorraine Ball.
  • [01:32] How Lorraine left corporate bureaucracies to start her business. 
  • [08:38] Why do larger companies get so stuck on outdated ideas?
  • [14:33] How entrepreneurs can create an idea-testing process; be open to ideas and set target metrics. 
  • [21:50] Finding relevant up-to-date knowledge on entrepreneurship. 
  • [34:37] Do mastermind investments pay off? 
  • [39:35] Connect with Lorraine.  

Notable Quotes

-       “Companies hire crazy people and then they spend the rest of the time trying to cut their corners off to get them to fit into the corporate model" - [Lorraine Ball] 

-       "The reason you go to college is to learn how to turn assignments in on time" - [Jonathan Green] 

-       "The one thing you learn in corporate is Process" - [Lorraine Ball] 

-       "You have to surround yourself with people who are willing to bring new ideas" - [Lorraine Ball] 

-       "I want to be in the mastermind where I'm the dumbest person" - [Jonathan Green] 

-       "We don't need to be surrounded by people that are really far ahead of us, but people that are just a little bit further ahead of us" - [Jonathan Green] 

-       "Nothing changes in one session or one day" - [Lorraine Ball] 

-       "The customer is always right in matters of taste" - [Jonathan Green]  


Resources

“Thriving on Chaos” book [02:25]

Connect with Lorraine Ball

Connect with Jonathan Green

  • Jonathan’s book:

Connect with Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green: Grow your business fast by limiting bureaucracy with special guest LorraineBall on today's episode of the ServeNoMaster podcast. 

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Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and under appreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to ServeNoMaster podcast where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the south Pacific by bestselling author, Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.

Jonathan Green: I love wanna welcome to another amazing episode of the ServeNoMaster podcast. Today, we have Lorraine who went from working the corporate world into working for herself for discovery that well there's a lot of things we can do online. And I think over the last few years, a lot of us have realized that. What we saw as security and stability in the corporate world. Isn't what we really want it. Isn't what we really expected because when the chips are down. Sometimes, uh, things don't last. So I'm really excited to have you here. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, Lorraine. 

LorraineBall: It's my pleasure. I'm excited to be here.

Jonathan Green: So I'd love to kind of go through the phases of your journey. So I'd love to know how you kind of went through the traditional path and then what was that moment that you said, you know what, I wanna go on a different path. I wanna drive this car instead of letting some kind of sitting in the back seat. What was that moment like in your journey?

LorraineBall: So I wish I could tell you that this was a well planned path from start to finish, but I think like a lot of entrepreneurs, I was a little bit all over the map. Um, I actually have an undergrad degree in elementary education. I was a teacher and, um, went into corporate, got a, got an advanced degree in marketing and loved the job. Loved the people I worked with. But wasn't as crazy about some of the bureaucracy on top of me. And I always say that the, the pivot moment happened before, long before I made the leap. But the pivotal moment, I was listening to a radio interview with Peter Drucker who had written a number of books, but one of 'em was, um, uh, thriving on chaos. And in it, he says that what corporations needed to do was hire crazy people. And I thought that was brilliant. So I running down the hall to my boss. I said, what do you think? You know, they, he says we should hire people, not just within interesting resumes, but people who really think differently. And he said, well, why do you think we hired you? I was like, okay, you got that. And, um, he, uh, sort of set me on this path because I realized I didn't fit. I was crazy. I had different ideas. Um, unfortunately I never read the, the actual book until much, much later when I discovered that he goes on to say, companies hire crazy people. And then they spend the rest of the time trying to cut their corners off, to get them to fit into the corporate model. And so about two years later, I was working for another organization and it was, it was chaos. And I thought I can do this. And I see how they, what they need to do to solve the problems. They don't wanna solve them. But what I was doing was working and I went, okay, I'm gonna just do this on my own because doing it my way, um, recognizing how you needed to treat people. , uh, what customers really wanted, became very apparent. And I remembered that whole I don't fit. I don't fit and I don't want my con corners cut off. And so I founded round peg 20 years ago. 

Jonathan Green: So I think you brought up something very interesting, which is this idea of killing creativity. because it's how I view education system. Right? When you're in kindergarten, they're like paint, draw, try anything you want. There's no limitation. You can be good at everything. Do cartwheels do this, but as you get older, it's become more and more restrictive about what you're allowed to do. The music programs disappear, the art programs disappear. They start to say, oh, you're not good enough at this. You're not good enough at that stop you can't do sports anymore. You're not good enough at art shut down your art. And by the time you graduate college, the only thing you're taught is. And this is what, this is. What I learned is a lot of people say, oh, the reason you go to college, just learn how to turn assignments in on time. And I'm like, well, that's real. It's really training you for the drone life. And that's. the exact process, right? Of killing creativity in our younger generation and the lack of innovation. So I think it's really important to understand that we often think big companies have this advantage, cuz they have a lot of money. They have large teams, but they have so little ability to adapt and they move so slowly.

They have really long buying cycles and decision making cycles because, and I'm sure you can talk about this is when you work for a large company. Once you have an idea, you have to start convincing people, right? But when you work for yourself, mm-hmm, , you can have an idea and then do it the next day. And the speed at which we innovate is really why large companies are disappearing, right? This is why their entire record company model changed. And then how movies are made change and all of these things, because people that can create content very quickly are now dominating and able to get these massive audiences while large companies are still trying to figure it out. 6, 10, 20, 30 years later.

LorraineBall: Uh, you absolutely nailed it. I think that the one thing that corporations have, and I've always told, and I've had a number of young professionals come through my organization. The one thing you learn in corporate is process. and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think that's one of the places where a lot of entrepreneurs, um, get side wise is they don't have that, that foundation. They don't have the, okay, I need to do this. Then I need to do that. The difference is we can do it at a, like you said, at a much faster pace, but there is still kind of that thought process. Um, but yeah, I, um, One of the companies I was working for was sliding into bankruptcy. And I was running the creative team inside of a large insurance company. And instead of laying my people off, I convinced management to let me sell our services on the open market. And so essentially I was, yes, yes. And I was essentially running an advertising agency inside this insurance company and my argument was number one, I would be able to bring in enough money to cover the salaries of the people the company wanted to lay off, which I did. And number two, what a wonderful challenge and training opportunity for my team, because they could work on projects that weren't insurance related. We did a project for the zoo in the Speedway and, um, it worked. we actually covered our costs. Um, there were bigger issues in the company and I eventually left, but, um, you, you know, a company doesn't slide into bankruptcy without making a lot of mistakes, but our little world proved a model. It proved and proved for me that I could run a profitable business. I did know how to drive a team and I did it way better when I could keep bureaucracy at bay. 

Jonathan Green: So that's very interesting because we often hear these stories and I know a lot of people have been through this. That is that, that the only profitable department in the company, they go, we're firing 10% of everyone they go, but our department's profitable and they go, yeah. But the other departments aren't mm-hmm . And so you get punished for things are happening outside your control. I'm really surprised they let you do that. Cuz I thought your story was gonna end and they tell me it's about ideally fired everyone anyways, cuz I often see large companies make decisions that are they follow a process, but don't,

LorraineBall: mm-hmm, 

Jonathan Green: adapt quickly enough. And it's also very true that as entrepreneurs, we skip the process phase, unfortunately like now to start a company, you don't have to have a business plan. You stepped to get a loan, you had to submit a business plan and that phase has gone, unfortunately. So we go right into starting a business and we don't really know what we wanna do. We're not laser focused or we're not developing processes. That's certainly something that my business I wish I had started doing earlier. So what I wonder about is why. Um, do larger companies get so stuck on bad ideas? What I find very interesting one of my favorite things to talk about is Twitter. Cuz I don't know who use. But I know tons of large companies that make decisions based on what people say on Twitter. And I've been in full-time online marketer since 2010. I don't have a single friend or no single business person, who's um, Twitter presence is, would revenue who like uses something to try revenue for the business who uses Twitter actively. So I find it so interesting. These large companies are, look for Twitter for like, well, what movie, what should we change in a movie? People on Twitter are complaining and I'm like, I don't know anyone on.

So I, I find it very fascinating. They get hooked on something that they think is a good idea and no one's using it. Everyone's using TikTok now, but they're still talking about Twitter and they're still, I mean, I'm sorry, it's not still talking about MySpace. So why do businesses get so stuck and where do these bad ideas come from?

That's what I'm really interested in because I'm amazed the number of companies that advertise on Twitter blows my mind. Right. Mm-hmm they know at least 5% are fake and it's probably more, we all know that mm-hmm but why, and there's this advertising model, as you talk about advertising marketing, that is not, um, results oriented like if I run an ad campaign, I spend a hundred dollars. I need to make a hundred to one because my business ROI driven, but these large corporations Coca-Cola McDonald's they run branding campaigns, which basically means we don't care if it worked, we don't measure results. We just measure, spend. And if we like the, ad. Why do companies do that and how do they get, where did the idea come from? 

LorraineBall: Okay. So I'm gonna get out. You, you threw out a lot of things all at once. And so, um, the first thing is there is a community on Twitter. Um, I, you know, I am a Twitter user. I've been a Twitter user since 2008. I have a community. The platform has changed. It has not aged well, To your point. Um, and I do think that there are other, um, there are other platforms, there is still a community and for some brands, it makes sense. Now, would I be going out there on a regular basis and using that as the only market research I'm doing? Only if I was an idiot, you know, it, is it an, is it an interesting way to sample. A niche population. Yes. Is it going to give you the full picture? No, but the bigger question is bad ideas. Where do they come from? Why do they happen? Why do they get funded, familiar with the story of the emperors new clothes? 

Jonathan Green: Yes, 

LorraineBall: the I, okay. 

Jonathan Green: That's one of my favorite source. That's how I feel about NFTs.

LorraineBall: Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely, 

Jonathan Green: I like they're only valuable. Everyone says they're valuable. So that's, I, that's why I think about that story all the time. So yes you have me with that? I mean, 

LorraineBall: okay. So in corporate, if somebody gets in the ear has an idea, maybe it's a good idea. Maybe it's not a good idea, but if they have the right allies and, and corporate in America, and I can go on and talk about, about that forever, they have the right allies, they build momentum around their idea. And if you walk into a meeting and four of the people are already there saying the emperors new suit is beautiful and you're like, he's naked. He he's naked. And you know, you, you, you may or may not depending on where you fit in the organization, say it. And so, you know, okay, let's fund it. Let's give it a try. Um, it's really hard when you have as a corporate senior manager, I won't even say an exec, but a senior manager. You state your reputation on this program, you're gonna keep throwing money at it because otherwise you may or may not have a job. And so I've seen a lot of people that protect programs that are bad ideas or were interesting ideas, but executed poorly, but they just kept doing it because it's hard. You know. It's hard to turn, um, a big boat around that's why. Okay. I'll give you another, like, I don't know, metaphor. That's why the Titanic ran into the iceberg. They saw it, but they saw it too late and they're like, screw it. We're committed. We're gonna keep going. Um, entrepreneurs don't have to do that. Um, you know, in corporate America, it is not. It's really not about what somebody tells you. You have to do. I, I learned this and, and it, it amazed me. I worked with a guy for eight years and, and one of the senior executives had an idea for a project that Rex thought was stupid. He just thought it was a dumb idea. he didn't do it at every meeting I, for eight years, three vice presidents, I watched this guy go, yeah, you know what? I was gonna work on that, but I have this other project and this is really important. And I'll do this first and eight years he just never did it. I, I, I was amazed, but then I also, when I needed something that, um, and because I had done him a favor, we had this personal loyalty. Hey, can you help me with this?

Absolutely got plenty of time for you. And people think corporations are these machines that just, you know, you gotta do what they tell you. Now, you, you work on you, you are selective and you, um, get your allies to support you. And, you know, we hope that the people at the top with lots of allies have good ideas and sometimes they and sometimes they don't. 

Jonathan Green: Is there a way for an entrepreneur who's going to the scaling phase or even an individual solo printer phase to have a bad idea testing system, cuz I've certainly implemented some bad ideas where people told me, Jonathan, that's a bad idea. Don't do it. Do it. I did. Anyways. They go, oh, the right was a bad idea. I wish I'd stopped it sooner and a great example in my own business is that, um, someone worked for me, came with me an idea and I was like, that's a terrible idea, but I have a policy that if I don't know for sure, it's a bad idea. I'll try it. Mm-hmm and it was the most profit week we'd had in like seven years. So I was wrong.

LorraineBall: Mm-hmm 

Jonathan Green: at least I said, let's try it cuz maybe I'm wrong. And I kind of have that system in place cuz the only time I say we won't do it is if I've tried that exact thing before I had the idea previously and didn't work. So if it's something specifically I've tried, but if it's something new, I try to always try it for that exact reason because I have. I've been doing this for 12, almost 13 years. Now. I have ideas that are 13 years old, that things that didn't work 13 years ago, work now, or things have changed. The technology has changed or the culture has changed. So how can we, as we get older, as we run our businesses longer, put in place a process to be open to good ideas that we don't realize are good and to stop bad ideas. And so we don't follow the path of the Titanic Companies. 

LorraineBall: So I think, I, I think in, you know, in your question, you really had the answer. The first is you have to surround yourself with people who are willing to bring you ideas. You have to create an environment that encourages people that says there aren't bad ideas. There are just some ideas that are gonna be better for us than others. And when someone, um, I've had people come to me, uh, and I sold my agency 18 months ago, but until then I had, you know, 10 people and I hired people who were creative, were looking at different technology. And if somebody came to me and said, Hey, we need to be looking at this. I'm like, okay, do some preliminary work. get me more details. And, you know, you said you didn't have a business plan. Um, one of the things I did in corporate is I actually reviewed business plans for our customers and I, I probably read three or 400 plans. So I, I think a lot of people spend too much time on them, but gimme a, give me a basic plan. Give me. You know, how much is this gonna cost? What do you think it's gonna generate? Or, um, you know, why do you think we should do it? And then how long do you think we need to do to, to do it, to get an idea of if it's working or not? Um, I, uh, I always will try new technology and I'll hop on it for a period of time and see, you know, yeah, it's interesting but does it fit our, you know, does it fit the business model? But the other thing that I think entrepreneurs don't do is set up a metric that says, I think this is gonna work. I think it's going to generate X. Okay. It has to generate X less, 20% for it to be viable. I think it's gonna be X. And if it generates X plus 20%, man, we got a winner and then measure it. You know, um, uh, clubhouse, I don't even know if it's a thing anymore, but, um, but, but 18 months ago I was like, okay, this is, this is interesting. Um, I should do this. And I had a friend of mine and we did it first six months. And at the end of six months, we looked at each other and went not so good. And instead of continuing to do it, we thought, you know what.

We're committing 15 minutes or 30 minutes every Friday morning, let's switch into a Facebook live and let's see what happens with that. And for us, for our target audience, um, that made a whole lot more sense. And we did it on Facebook and LinkedIn and we push it to, to YouTube. And now she's cutting it up and doing little like 32nd snippets for TikTok but that made sense because we could then go, oh, there are people watching. There are people watching the recordings. We can do other things with this. And we set a metric that said, if we're not getting this kind of audience we're done. And so I think that's the key be open to the ideas. But on the other hand, have that metric that says we're gonna get to this place in this amount of time. you know, if, um, if you say you're gonna get to a hundred sales and you get to 50, but the trend is going up, maybe you were optimistic on your timeline. If you said you were gonna get to a hundred sales and you got two, maybe you need to rethink it. And I wanna say just one other thing real quick. You said, you know, if, if it's something I've tried before and it didn't work, I always would ask one more question, which is okay. It didn't work when I did it. Here's what I did. How will you do it differently? Because maybe they're smarter than you are. I mean, not you personally, but you in, in general.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. That's a really good way of phrasing it. So for me, that's, if it's exactly the same idea, if they're like, oh, let's try this on this platform. I'm like, no, I tried exactly that if they have a different spin, I'll try it, but that's a really good point to make sure it's different. One other thing that. Um, have discovered the past few years, there's a huge library of knowledge about how to run business and corporations and all of these books that are really designed for like how to run a business and how to scale. And I've read tons of them. Some that are really popular and run by these really big agencies. And I so discover that a lot of the way they approach business, it doesn't exist anymore. Very rarely . Does someone work for the same company from 22 to 52? It's really changed with most people who work for me, work for me somewhere six months to three years and most of the time they quit because they wanna have a new adventure, not because they're unhappy, they wanna try something new. And that's really like a shift in the culture. And, but a lot of these companies have these, a lot of these books teach these things. And at first I was like, wow, something's wrong with my business? People don't wanna stay here a really long time. And then I talk to everyone. I know it's the same thing. I only have one friend who has people stay with him a long time and he pays three to 10 times more than anyone else in this industry, he pays a huge over, just so people don't leave. And it's very interesting that all of this traditional knowledge that comes from corporate, like a great example, is this book good to great.

Everyone says, oh, it's such a great example of what great companies do. And it's like, all of those companies are down. I think at least two of them went bankrupt. Fannie Mae and circuit city are gone, right? Like circuit city. Now it's just a Twitter account that someone took over. But we read these books that have things that didn't work any that don't work anymore because I think the way people approach life and business and the way we've shifted from valuing things to valuing experiences, at least the younger generations have a lot of that mindset. So how can someone, um, find knowledge that's still relevant? 

LorraineBall: So I think some of the most relevant information, and I did read, I mean, I did read some of the books. I do have a, you know, a classic marketing degree, but the most relevant information that I got as a business owner is when I joined good mastermind groups. When I spent time with other business owners who were either about the same size as I was, or maybe just a little bit bigger because learning being able to, to throw out a question and say, okay, I'm thinking about buying a building, anybody here bought a building. Okay. What should I consider? What are, you know, what's good. What's bad. What do I do? I'm thinking about hiring another person. I'm thinking about hiring somebody who works, you know, remotely now today, of course, that's, you know, like a thing, but 20 years ago, that was a very strange idea. So having those conversations. Not, I mean, I'm not discounting the books. There are interesting themes in books, like good to great.

Um, some of them still apply though. The examples are gone and, and part of it is, um, think about a beautiful race car. You know, or just a, a really expensive automobile and it will work for a period. I mean, it will work for a period of time and that period of time might be 10. It might be 20 years if you really take care of it. But there's a moment that, that elegant vehicle just won't cut it anymore. And you have to change the engine. You have to reconfigure it or you just park it in a garage and it's not that it wasn't brilliant. and it still kind of works, but it needs to be adapted. And I think that's really what's happening with a lot of those, um, books that use big companies. And as an example, but also I'm gonna say, if you are running a company with five, 10 people. don't look at model. Don't look at Coca-Cola. That's not your model. Maybe look at one department in Coca-Cola look at a skunkworks project within a corporation, but don't look at the corporation cuz that's not your world.

Jonathan Green: I think that's really good piece of advice. Um, both about the masterminds and about kind of the advice you follow, cuz oftentimes it's exactly, we're following a model for a business. We don't want, like sometimes people are really interested in a biography like, oh, this is my favorite business leader. I'm like, yeah, but do you like their life like do you cuz it's part of it, right? If you follow someone's advice or how to build a business, you'll end up with their life and you see people that are massively successful. Their kids don't talk to them anymore. Their, their, their personal life is over. They don't have any friends and it's like, you have to look at the totality of it. And I think that's important is to listen to, to where you get advice. And the best thing I ever learned was to surround myself with people that were about 10% above me. I like to be in a mastermind. I wanna be in the mastermind where I'm the dumbest person. That's like what I'm trying to fig always trying to get into where everyone's 10% smarter so they pull me up but that's a really good lesson. We often think, oh, I have to get a mentor. Who's really far ahead. And a great example for me is I made my first dollar online in 2007. So I don't really remember what that feels like the same way it does for someone who did it last week. And that's why we often think, oh, I can't teach or start teaching online because I haven't hit a high enough level of success, but actually that's you can remember what it feels like those first experiences that you know, I'm unfortunately, and it happens to all of us. Right? We get jaded to experience this. Like the first time I made a dollar, I was so excited. I was like, oh my gosh, I made a dollar. It's magical right. Now if you know, I get like a royalty check or paying for a dollar. I'm like, I don't even pay attention to it. And it's, why I think there's so much value in people that are earlier in the journey. Right? Most people are beginners. So people that are a little bit intermediate have a lot to offer. And that's who you should surround yourself with. I sometimes meet people who they'll pay for really expensive one day coaching package from like a celebrity. Like if I said the name, you know, who I'm talking about, it's like 10 or $20,000 for one day. And most of my friends who've paid for, it said, it's the worst money they ever spent because the advice is so far past where they are. And, and that's often what it is, is like this person doesn't know what it feels like especially, um, if it's someone whose parents gave them a huge amount of money start their company, I'm like, yeah, you don't have that advantage. it's a different position to be in, or like sometimes. When I get approached by someone who's like, oh, here's how I do Instagram. I'm like, yeah, but you're beautiful I'm not. So I can't replicate that element. like, I just can't. Okay. A lot of my feedback is Jonathan's ugly. That inspires me. Like I get reviews like that all the time. I accept it. That's what people they go, oh, I don't wanna handsome guy. I'm like, well, thank you. And I'm okay with that because I look regular and that's not a problem. I have my dream life, but, um, I always look for that. Is it something I could replicate or is there something missing that I can't replicate? I don't have the ability to replicate being beautiful. Some people don't have the ability to replicate like a really nice studio or all that stuff. So there's always, what I look for is, is the person. Someone who's life I want. And is what they're teaching me replicate board, or did they start out with an advantage that I don't have that I can't replicate. Right? Did my, did my parent, did their parents give them five, 10, 20 million to start their company? That's a good advantage. And if you don't have that, that's probably how you should follow. And that's really good because it's, we don't need to be surrounded by people that are really far ahead of us. we, these people that are just a little bit further ahead of us and that's really, I think that's a really amazing piece of advice. I appreciate you sharing that because we often, um, one thing that I've always been interested in is sometimes people that are really big, their team I'll end up getting approached by some other team. They go, Hey, do I do a session with one of our certified coaches? And I go, oh, what's a certified coach. It sounds like an employee. Right? I'm an entrepreneur. I only wanna learn from people that have done it because there's a very different feeling. When you're the number two, because we're, they're number two in a company and the project fails. You still get paid. We see all these people that drive their C into the ground. They get paid these huge exit amounts to get rid of them. You don't get that when you're really on your own. Right. Like if I make a mistake and kill my company, no, one's giving me a goal to parachute. It's all on me. And that's a feeling we have when we're the one in the game, right. When you're running your agency, it's different than when you're running an inside insurance company because you, everything is on you. It gets that next level where it's all on you. And there's that feeling of being in the game, in the arena, on the trapeze, without the net, whatever metaphor works for you that, um, that's who you have to learn from is people that are doing it the same way and start it in a similar place to you. So I think that's really good. Um, would you say?

LorraineBall: You know, you said something though, but I wanna wanna comment on one thing you said though, because, and, and, and you sort of buzzed by it really fast. And I thought, oh my God, that is so important. Is this idea of people who pay huge amounts of money for one, one session one day, The reason that's a waste more than anything else is nothing changes in one session or one day there's no magic wand. You know, if anything in your business or anything in your life, it's, you gotta show up and work on it on a regular basis. And that's what, that's one of the other reasons why a mastermind group that keeps holding you accountable that keeps bringing up the things you said you were going to do is way more and more advantage then one session with a genius, because they may be able to spout all sorts of fabulous things, but you can't implement all of them at once. 

Jonathan Green: Yeah. That's really good. Um, they, me to buzz by it, but it's, you're exactly right because , um, I remember the first conference I went to, um, I took all these notes and I realized at the end of I go, I, the next conference is in a year. I can't do all these things in the next. we can, um, make this mistake of trying to do a whole bunch of things. We're looking for like the magic beings, whether it's the perfect course, the perfect trainer, the perfect mentor. And, um, there's this, this phrase that people say, it's like, oh, if you do a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. And, well, that's not true like you still have to work. I, and that's. You can enjoy it. I love what I do. Right. I love what I do, but also there's a part of me that when someone noshows on a podcast, I'm like, oh, I can go swimming with the kids. It's there's this thing inside of you, right? That like still likes not working. Like it's, it would be a lie to say, you always wanna be at the computer, but we have this expectation that there's no grind or that there's no sweat equity or effort that goes in to online company. And I find this very interesting, cause I, you know, Grow up traditional education. I worked at a university and there's this mindset of, oh, I'll pay a quarter million dollars to university and at the end, maybe I'll get a job. And how do you choose your degree? Whatever. I feel like, like there's not a logic to it that says very few people, at least choose their majors based on their career. They want afterwards. Right? Like my sister, huge corporate lawyer, our history degree, what, she's not our history lawyer. And it's all these decisions we make. Right. We have to go back to college for grad school to undo what we did in undergrad, but we.

LorraineBall: Except except that you, you know, one of the things I, I, I'm gonna interrupt you here because one of the things I really object to is, so people go into college now and they are treating college as if it was vocational education you get in in freshman year, you have this rigid career path, or you have this rigid course path, and they're not enough people that are just pursuing liberal arts degrees. Just learning how to think, just learn a being introduced to art and culture and history from around the world. And, um, it's really sad that, and, and so I don't mind the idea that you go back to, to graduate school, to figure out what you really wanna do, cuz let's face it. Even if you know what you wanna do, what is it today? People are gonna change, not just jobs, but careers four and five times in their life. 

Jonathan Green: so,

LorraineBall: so yeah,

Jonathan Green: so that's a great point. So I'm a big Antico person, but, and a part of it is that only in America. If you go to college in England, it's $2,000 a year. So you go after four years,

LorraineBall: mm-hmm 

Jonathan Green: you owe basically what the lunch fees were for a freshman in America.

It's the fact that it's so prohibitly expensive. Like the number of people who are paying off their student loans in their sixties is significant in America. Ike, it's, I forget the exact percentage, but it's not zero, which it should be like 40 years later. You're still paying off college. I think that for me is the problem is that the price has skyrocketed so much. I think it's gone up 2000% in the last 30 years, whereas inflation's gone up like a 108%. Like it's a huge difference. The richest company, America's Harvard, they have $54 billion in the bank just in cash. And they still charge these massive sums for people. And. I do think exactly a lot of what used to be the value of college 40 or 50 years ago. Right. They say these things like, oh, it's the connections. But then when they all had to do online learning and they go, oh no, the price is the same. So is the connections, the value? 

LorraineBall: Yeah. 

Jonathan Green: And I think there there's gonna be a revel to education, but what's interesting to me is people pay these massive amounts of money, go into debt for 20, 40, 50 years through graduate school. But then when you go, let's learn a specific skill and I'm actually a huge fan of vocational school. I think it's great too. Because, you know what, you're getting you go, oh, at the end of this, I know how to weld. And I grew up near, um, I grew up near the school where all the mechanics for, um, race cars go to school.

So, you know, oh, I go to this school and I know how to be a stock car, um, race mechanic, which is a very skilled, very specific job, right? Like it's only place, you know, gonna change it higher in 40seconds. Really great profession, very specific thing, or where I live in on my island, the richest people are people that are underwater welders. Cause it turns out that's like a super hard, super dangerous job cuz you have no scuba diving and welding and um, you don't wanna mix up the wires. So there's these vocational jobs that are really, really very valuable and there aren't enough people that do it because I think unfortunately we've undervalued them, which is a shame because they're so important and I'm a big believer in that stuff. Like I love. um, that thing, and I think that's what kind of is happening is now there's we don't value. Like it's, it's interesting, cuz I'll say, oh, here's a program. That's a thousand dollars. You'll learn how to do a very specific thing. You know what you're getting and it's the same people that will jump in and spend a quarter million dollars on college with no idea how it's gonna end that we have this trouble of seeing this type of education is valuable. So I think that's kind of what I'm talking about. It's the same way people go.Well a mastermind costs five, 10, $20,000 a year. What am I gonna get out of it? and they don't, sometimes they don't see the investment, I guess that's where I'm trying to drive to with my really long question. 

LorraineBall: Yeah. I, I mean, I, I, I agree with you that, that, that, um, we have undervalued vocational education. We have undervalued the, um, the technical skills that run our economy. I mean, really that run our world. Um, but I, and, and I do think that there is a place for both. There's a place for college. There's a place for vocational education. And I think depending on where you wanna go in your life, what I object to is the vocation aliesing of college where they're, they're, they're essentially running you through a very narrow program. That's designed to create a very specific skill to me. That's not what college was for. And, and it's really unfortunately cuz you get people who come out and they're like, well, yeah, I have a degree in tourism and event planning. Great. Um, know anything about history? No, we didn't have to take any history. Okay. How about little anthropology, anything, anything about how our world works, because that's kind of what it was supposed to be and yeah, you, uh, I think you're paying a lot of money to big corporations and I agree with you. The, um, I teach, uh, marketing at college level and I hate, I, I stopped with the online courses and I stopped with the accelerated here.

Give us money. We'll give you a degree in six weeks or. That's not, that's not, that's not how you learn stuff. 

Jonathan Green: Yeah. I think that this is very interesting. I know we've gone down a little bit of a rabbit hole which happens when I talk about these topics, but I like when people have different opinions to me. Um, and I think that's the thing is that college seems more, more shifted to, um, less of questioning. Like it used to be the Socratic method. You ask questions to find answers. So now it's they tell you. The answer and everyone's in alignment that you don't see as much disagreement. Unfortunately, people think if I disagree with someone, I have to hate them. Like, there's this, but, and it's, I think that's part of what also I see happening. And that's why when I look at school for my kids, I think about that. I'm like, I. . I disagree with a lot of people. I'm friends with one of my best friends. I disagree with him about almost everything. When I first met him, I was like, man, I don't like you at all, but how else do we, like, how else do we learn other than hearing, um, other ideas so that's kind of where I come from is that, um, and I, that's why I like to ask questions. Where sometimes they, someone disagrees me cuz at least now we're talking about something and it's interesting. And I think what you're saying about the, cuz it. the thing about colleges ex you're exactly right. Is that you go in, they're like you gotta pick your major, gotta pick your major, you gotta pick your major and very rarely. Is there a connection between the major and your career. Right? And there's a lot of, um, I think there's too many majors. Like they have thousands and they, um, You do come out, not knowing a lot of stuff. That's really important. Like you don't know history, you don't know math or my favorite thing is people always say this quote, the customer's always right. And I'm like, that's not the quote. The customer's always right in matters of taste. He was talking about if a customer wants to buy an outfit that looks ugly. You don't tell them, you let 'em buy it. If like most customers have, most people have bad taste. Most people have bad taste in fashion. Right. and high fashion is confusing. Why would I wear swim shorts with a tuxedos jacket? I don't know. That's high fashion. I don't get it, but we think, oh, that means you have to let customers treat you like trash. And it's like these quotes come from nowhere that gain all these power because we don't know history or one of my favorite quotes that sometimes people will say is like, um, if we wanna rebuild a new future was tear us under the past. And I'm like, that's a Hitler quote. You should definitely know if you're accidentally quoting Hitler like, that's really important to me. And it's interesting people, oh, I didn't know where that quote came from. I'm like kind of important and, um, 

LorraineBall: Kind of cut. Yes.

Jonathan Green: So I think you're saying about history is very good. Um, that there's a lot of value in that. And I just think that unfortunately we're shifting to, if college wasn't so prohibitively expensive, I don't think I'd have as much of a problem with it. I think I'd be okay with it. But when I think about, I could give my kid $25,000, 10 times in row to start a job to start a business, they'll probably hit on one. That's what colleges, that's the, I think it's the cost that hits me. But when I look at like in England, they're like, oh, it's two people were complaining when they raised it to $2,000 a year. I was like, what? I got a master's degree at a really good university for $10,000 English version of Harvard. I was like, man, in America would've cost me a hundred thousand dollars and taken twice as long. I had a one year instead of two and it's so different. And I think that you brought up some really cool stuff and, um, I'd love to hear where can people learn more from you learn more about what you're talking about, learn about. I believe you have a digital toolbox that you wanted to tell people about. Where can people learn more about you and kind of follow you on your journey?

LorraineBall: So, um, two things, if you are looking for sort. Just general conversations like this and, and kind of quick hits marketing. My podcast is more than a few words and you can find it wherever you listen to podcast. But if you are an entrepreneur and you are starting out and you are interested in learning the basics, that's really what the digital toolbox is. And it's digitaltoolbox.club. and one of the things, and we were talking earlier about this idea that you can't learn everything in one session. Um, I've really gotten away from a lot of quick hit webinars and really move to a model of self-paced learning where you have five or eight short videos and quick assignments, because I think that's really how people learn. And it's the same information that I would present in a one hour webinar, but broken up in a way that people can, um, uh, actually put into practice what they're learning so that they don't get to the end of the class and go, well, that was good. 

Jonathan Green: So that's amazing. So that's all @digitaltoolbox.club or more than a fewwords.com. And of course, we'll put the links in the show notes. Thank you so much for giving us your time. I really appreciate this has been really informative and I know my audiences will be really excited. Thank you so much for your time today, right? 

LorraineBall: Thank you. This was fun.

Jonathan Green: Thanks for listening to today's very special episode. Traffic is a topic near and dear to my heart. If you're just starting out or even if you're advanced and you could use a little more traffic, you're going to love my new free guide traffic bomb. You can get it absolutely positively free right now @ServeNoMaster.com four slash bomb.

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