Info

Successful Dropout

Interviews with successful entrepreneurs who left college to pursue their ideas.
RSS Feed
Successful Dropout
2020
September
April
March


2019
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June


All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: June, 2017
Jun 30, 2017

This week Kylon shares a personal story of depression, worry, and anxiety. He uses this story to talk about how to kick the habit of worrying in the a$$. 

Resources

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them.

Join the Successful Dropout Nation!

  • Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast.
  • Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed.
  • Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!
Jun 26, 2017

Brett Veinotte has worked in education for the last 17 years, in a variety of capacities. Most recently, he was the vice president of a tutoring and educational consulting company in New Hampshire. Brett began working as a counselor and outdoor educator at a boarding school in Vermont in 2000, and was eventually promoted to lead teacher of a specialized campus. He then taught at a private day school in Manchester, Vermont from 2004 to 2006, where he designed new curricula for all classes he taught, including American History, World History, Media Ethics, Film History and a variety of mathematics courses. He completed masters level coursework in educational leadership, and the secondary education certification program at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. After leaving classroom teaching in 2006, Brett began to work exclusively as a private tutor in the greater Boston area. Much of this work was related to standardized test prep but also included providing essay writing support to college applicants, leading training sessions for prospective teachers planning to take state certification exams and serving as a liaison between parents and public schools to address student needs and parent concerns.

I discovered Brett through the School Sucks Podcast and Youtube channel where he teaches thousands of people the art of self-education, critical-thinking, self-knowledge, personal growth, and a whole lot more. Loved chatting with this guy! 

Here are a few of the things we discussed:

  • Thoughts on career, college and School Sucks
  • Above the Snowflakes? the current college culture
    the future of higher education
  • The student loan bubble and the "college is necessary" bubble
  • Aesthetic diversity versus intellectual diversity
  • The consequences of social engineering in college
  • Live off campus!
  • Direct vs indirect credentialing
  • Just in case learning vs just in time learning
  • Transferable skills
  • Personal accountability, success is not an option
  • Kids are not defective

 

Resources:

  • School Sucks Project - Go check this out. HUGE website and podcast full of great advice and resources. 

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them.

Join the Successful Dropout Nation!

  • Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast.
  • Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed.
  • Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!
Jun 23, 2017

This week Kylon chats with Derek Magill. Derek helps people skip college, build a career, and educate themselves. He is also the Director of Marketing at Praxis and the author of an upcoming book on building an unconventional career.

Resources

  • Magill.co - Derek's website. Also a great example of a personal website that showcases your value very effectively. 
  • Discover Praxis

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them.

Join the Successful Dropout Nation!

  • Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast.
  • Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed.
  • Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!
Jun 19, 2017

Gautam is the founder of Peeyr.com, a peer education marketplace that connects top high-school and college students to their peers for in-person tutoring sessions. He's a high-school dropout on a mission to create more opportunity within our education system and help students find their passion. Previously, he launched satus.org, a "How to Start a Startup" program for young founders and was a partner at Ankorhem, a product design agency based in Dallas. He's 19 years old.

Gautam is another Successful Dropout who is changing the way we educate ourselves. I had an absolute blast chatting with him and I love the "why" behind everything he does. Everything he's built, he's built to solve a problem or challenge that he himself experienced...I think that's the essence of entrepreneurship - building creative solutions to solve problems, and the best way to do that is to solve your own problems.

Here are some of the topics we cover in this episode:

  • Can entrepreneurship be taught?
  • Gautam cheating on a test and how it changed his life - great story!
  • The ridiculousness of teachers unions
  • Competing in the closed formal education system
  • Permission versus freedom mentality
  • The ABSOLUTE importance of introspection, examining your thoughts and experimenting at an early age
  • A bunch more!

Resources:

THANK YOU!

Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page.

Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them.

Join the Successful Dropout Nation!

  • Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast.
  • Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed.
  • Follow @kylongienger on Snapchat!
Jun 16, 2017

Kylon shares some insight from entrepreneur and philosopher Derek Sivers on how to make life sized decisions. 

Jun 12, 2017
Dallas Swain dropped out of High School at the age of 17 and had to pull himself up by the bootstraps to live. Even running miles between jobs. Throughout it all, he has remained determined, knowing the only thing that could hold him back was himself. Dallas now works full time in North Dakota as a maintenance contractor and he has worked his way up through the skilled labor force without a high school degree. At 23 his future looks bright with big plans for the future as he lays the groundwork for his new business. 

I enjoyed this episode because Dallas is really the first "blue collar" guest we've had on the show. He's a great example of the fact that you can have a lot of success in the skilled labor and trade industries without a college degree or even a high school diploma. It was great to chat with him because one of my first jobs and eventually my first business was in the trades, so we had that in common. I notice that a lot of people tend to shy away from blue collar work, or they view it as less desirable than, say, working at a startup. But there is a lot of value in learning a trade, and if you enjoy hands-on work plus instant and tangible results, you would probably enjoy a career in the trades, and developing a great career here is very possible! 

Jun 9, 2017

Eric is a former philosophy student and screenwriter and an accomplished writer and researcher. He is best known for his blog Barking Up The Wrong Tree, which has been around since 2009. Much of the blog’s popularity is due to how useful it is to people and there are currently just under 300,000 subscribers to Eric’s newsletter. His blog topics typically revolve around  science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life.

I shared a post of Eric's on my FB recently. The post followed 81 valedictorians after graduation to see where they ended up. It sparked an interesting debate in the comments and so I decided to invite Eric on the show to talk about his findings.   

Jun 5, 2017

Rainesford Stauffer is a 23-year-old writer who has been published by Forbes, USA TODAY, and The Hill, among others. After a diverse high school education, she dropped out of college her freshman year and spent two years shaping her own education through internships, writing, and communications. She's given two TEDx Talks and serves on the Advisory Board of (south by south west EDU) SXSWedu. For her day job, she works in communications, and is the editor of Gap Year Stories, a platform that publishes student perspectives on shaping your own learning experiences.

 Rainesford and I have a lot in common with our mindset around education and entrepreneurship...she also owns a hot yoga studio, which is one of the businesses I own as well. In this episode we talk a lot about uncertainty, not knowing the answer, anxiety, and how messy and unclear times are actually the key to finding your way, learning, and ultimately success. 

There are so many quotable snippets in this episode, Rainesford is the real deal - a go-getter, a self-teacher and an entrepreneur. She's the epitome of a Successful Dropout. 

"Usually when you are shaping your own path, it's a combination of belief in something that matters to you, incredible amounts of effort, and just the right amount of risk."

"Sometimes the greatest opportunities, moments and endeavors in your life are really messy. They aren't cookie-cutter, they aren't picture perfect and to me I think that's the magic of it."

Jun 2, 2017

Kylon helps us learn a couple new words he made up that allow us to understand what type of credentialing we are pursuing, and which type is best. Don't get lost in the weeds here. The basic idea to remember is that direct-credentialing is always better than indirect-credentialing. 

1