Jeff Fenster and Serafina Gargiulo redefine college as an entrepreneurial incubator, emphasizing adaptability, core values, and educational transformation.
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00:25 Hey everybody, welcome to Back to the Basics
00:28 with Jeff Fenster, where we interview college students
00:30 and bring them in to talk about entrepreneurship
00:33 and help pave the way for them
00:34 to be the founders of tomorrow.
00:36 I'm so excited for the inaugural episode.
00:38 I'm here with Serafina Gargiulo.
00:41 She's the creative mind who came up with this segment.
00:43 And so here she is today to be guest number one.
00:45 I'm so excited.
00:47 Hey, Serafina.
00:47 - Hi, Jeff.
00:48 Thank you so much for having me on the show
00:49 and I'm honored to be guest number one.
00:51 And also have to say thank you to David Meltzer
00:54 because if it was not for him,
00:55 I definitely would not be here.
00:57 And for how I came up with this idea
01:00 was that I'm currently interning for David
01:03 and when you were interviewing him,
01:05 I'm not doing too much right now,
01:06 just like, you know, I'm here to learn.
01:08 I'm the sponge right now.
01:09 And I was filming a little behind the scenes.
01:11 And as I'm filming behind the scenes of you guys,
01:13 I'm very engaged in what you guys are talking about.
01:16 But my brain is coming up with video ideas constantly.
01:19 And being in the studio, seeing the cameras and everything,
01:21 I was just coming up with ideas.
01:22 And one that came across was,
01:24 let's have college students come on the show
01:26 and give them that opportunity.
01:28 Because prior to that,
01:29 you were talking about how you attract college audiences
01:32 because you go to college campuses and talk.
01:35 And I'm like, what better way
01:36 than to have college students up on the show?
01:39 And not gonna lie, at first I had the idea
01:42 and I kind of shut it down at first.
01:43 'Cause I'm like, who am I to walk in here,
01:45 give him an idea, first time coming here,
01:46 first time meeting you.
01:47 But then I put that aside of like myself
01:49 and was just thinking of,
01:50 how could I bring value to other people,
01:53 even if it's just my idea?
01:54 I don't have to be on the show, not my questions.
01:56 Other people's questions, that could help other people out.
01:59 So I looked at that aspect and then I gave the idea to you
02:02 and you rolled with it and now we're here
02:03 and I'm super excited for it.
02:05 - I am as well.
02:06 I'm so grateful that you had the courage to take that step
02:08 because that's part of success.
02:10 You know, the point of my show that David was on
02:13 is the success formula and what those metrics are
02:16 and what those things are.
02:17 And the fact that you took that step,
02:18 I mean, this is awesome for me as well.
02:20 We get to have some fun.
02:21 I get to meet a bunch of aspiring and future entrepreneurs
02:23 and you get to be the mind that creates this whole segment.
02:27 I mean, you were producing a few of our other episodes.
02:29 So it's gonna be great to spend more time with you
02:31 and have that mind that's coming up
02:33 with all these video ideas.
02:34 And let's be honest, I mean,
02:35 you also have your own YouTube channel.
02:37 - Yes, I do.
02:38 I'm kind of working on two right now.
02:40 I have my own personal one that I'm working on,
02:42 but that one's just like testing out the waters
02:44 to see what I like to do
02:45 rather than like niching down right now.
02:46 But then I have another one called Society Perspective.
02:49 And with that one, I go out on the streets of San Diego,
02:53 I've done Chicago,
02:53 a couple other places that I traveled to
02:55 and simply ask people questions about life
02:58 that you don't usually get the chance to ask people.
03:01 Because if someone came up to you randomly,
03:03 it was like, hey, tell me your biggest regret,
03:04 you'd be like so caught off guard.
03:06 But when you have a camera and a microphone,
03:08 it's the lead way to talk to people.
03:09 And from that, I've built so many relationships
03:12 and gained so much perspective on life.
03:14 And I still have so much to go.
03:15 I'm so young right now.
03:16 I don't know anything.
03:17 And that's what I'm trying to do right now
03:19 is just learn and be a sponge.
03:20 And rather than listening to all the people
03:23 you see on social media all the time, which is great,
03:25 let's just talk to everyday people.
03:26 And sometimes it's those people
03:28 that give you nuggets of information that last forever.
03:30 And a lot of strangers have impacted my life.
03:33 So if I can bring that to other people,
03:35 then I'm happy to do that.
03:36 So that's what my channel is about.
03:37 - And I love it.
03:38 I learned about the channel today
03:39 and I'm gonna be an avid watcher because I agree with you.
03:42 I think we learn so much from everyday people.
03:45 It's not just the people that we think are famous,
03:47 we think are successful.
03:48 I learn from everybody.
03:49 I've made more money off of everyday human beings
03:52 just through my businesses than I have getting to
03:55 walk next to the A-listers that maybe everyone's aware of.
03:59 So I think that's brilliant.
04:00 Obviously, I'm a huge fan of you
04:02 and I'm gonna be a huge fan of your show.
04:03 And I hope everyone watching
04:05 starts to watch that show as well and send her ideas.
04:07 I mean, Serafina's the future.
04:08 So send your ideas to her.
04:10 She's great.
04:12 If you have any suggestions for her,
04:13 I'm sure she wants them.
04:14 And same for the show.
04:16 Obviously, we're launching this.
04:17 If anyone's watching and wants to be a part
04:19 and a future guest on Back to the Basics with Jeff Fenster,
04:22 we're gonna give how to do that at the end of the show.
04:24 So let's start, Serafina.
04:26 - All right, so let's see.
04:28 A lot of questions going on.
04:30 But one of the first things is in business,
04:32 obviously you have the money side and everything
04:34 and learning all that.
04:35 But all of it, if you're starting it, it's with you.
04:37 And you have your own beliefs that you stay true to yourself
04:40 as well as in business, I would say so.
04:44 And one of the things, turning it to college,
04:46 is college, when you enter, it's a new world,
04:50 new environment, new people.
04:51 You're exposed to many different things.
04:53 It is very easy to get pulled in many directions
04:55 of people to say, go do this, think this, say this.
04:59 With all of this noise going on,
05:01 how does one stay true to their own beliefs
05:04 with all of the noise going on in college?
05:07 - I think it starts first making sure that you have clarity
05:09 of what your beliefs are.
05:11 And I know it doesn't sound like the most fun exercise,
05:14 but write them down.
05:15 I write down my five core values.
05:17 I know them on the back of my hand.
05:18 So I know who I am and what I'm standing for.
05:21 If you don't really know,
05:22 it's really hard to stay the course.
05:24 So I would say step one, identify what those are,
05:26 what you believe they are today.
05:27 And they're gonna change.
05:28 You're gonna evolve and grow as a person.
05:30 I mean, you're coming into college from a child,
05:32 and you're now either 17 or 18 when you start college,
05:35 and you're evolving into this young adult
05:37 that's gonna then take on the world,
05:38 and you are being exposed to so many different ideas,
05:40 cultures, opportunities.
05:42 So you don't wanna tune out the noise.
05:44 You wanna help the noise shape you.
05:46 And so if you realize like, hey, I stand for this,
05:50 I'm gonna look at every opportunity through that lens,
05:52 and does that help me be a better version of this?
05:55 And so I do that in business too.
05:56 I mean, that's the same issue you're dealing with
05:58 and discussing in college,
06:00 you're gonna deal with in the real world,
06:01 especially as you start your companies.
06:03 'Cause you have a team of people that maybe work for you
06:05 that have ideas.
06:06 You have the real world telling you your idea,
06:08 something if you're doing something that's never been done,
06:10 everyone's gonna tell you it's not gonna work.
06:12 I mean, imagine the person who came up with Twitter,
06:14 right, or Facebook.
06:16 - I think they're crazy.
06:17 - Or Google, you think they're crazy.
06:18 - Like they're actually delusional,
06:19 but those are the people that are
06:20 on a different frequency than you,
06:21 and no one can understand it but yourself,
06:23 only you can visualize it.
06:25 - Correct, Elon Musk is crazy.
06:26 You're gonna do what, reusable rockets?
06:28 No, can't be done, but then it's done.
06:30 So you don't wanna stifle that.
06:32 You don't wanna not listen to the noise,
06:34 'cause that's gonna help shape you,
06:35 but at the same time, you need clarity on you.
06:38 And it's an important exercise.
06:39 And when you know you,
06:40 from there you can start to really grow.
06:42 And I don't expect 18-year-olds to know themselves.
06:45 I don't expect 40-year-olds to know themselves.
06:46 Like, we're always changing.
06:47 But you can say, hey, today, at this age,
06:50 at this point in my life, seraphina stands for blank.
06:53 Who am I, and who do I wanna be?
06:56 And then, okay, you hear some noise,
06:58 you have an opportunity,
06:59 does that help me get to who I wanna be,
07:01 and does that go against who I am?
07:02 If the answer's yes, tune it out.
07:04 If the answer's no, embrace it.
07:05 - Got it, definitely.
07:06 And I think that's a great perspective to have.
07:08 And something with beliefs is that
07:09 they're constantly changing,
07:10 because you are having new opportunities, new people.
07:13 And if someone is in college,
07:15 and they wanna shift their paradigm
07:16 that they're currently living in,
07:18 how would they shift their own paradigm
07:22 that they've been stuck in,
07:23 without getting judged by other people?
07:27 Because some people would look at them like they're crazy,
07:29 like, what are you doing, why are you doing that?
07:30 Come party with us, come do this.
07:31 But you're like, no, I don't wanna do that.
07:33 I wanna stay true to myself,
07:34 or I wanna change and become a better version of myself.
07:38 - I can answer the first part,
07:39 but the second part, without being judged,
07:41 I can't solve that one.
07:42 You will be judged.
07:43 Being judged is part of it.
07:46 It's unfortunate, it's a judgy world.
07:48 I mean, we judge everybody.
07:49 Even our siblings, our parents judge us,
07:52 we judge our parents.
07:53 Oh my God, my mom's gonna embarrass me.
07:55 That's judging.
07:56 We don't understand that we all come
07:58 from a different perspective and a different era.
08:00 That being said, if you wanna make a shift,
08:03 you have to take immediate, decisive action.
08:05 So my core values, for me, are make friends, have fun,
08:10 take immediate, decisive action.
08:12 Kaizen, get 1% better every day and be change ready.
08:15 Which means that fifth one and the third one,
08:16 take immediate, decisive action and change ready
08:18 means I'm willing to redefine myself at any moment.
08:22 And I'm willing to take an immediate,
08:24 like what you did with me and this show.
08:26 Take the immediate action, ask the question.
08:28 Worst case, you get made fun of.
08:30 Listen, I know it hurts in the moment.
08:33 I know it's embarrassing.
08:34 I know we wanna be cool, we wanna fit in,
08:36 but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
08:38 You're never gonna get ahead and make that shift
08:40 if you stay doing the same thing.
08:42 Whatever you did yesterday is gonna get you
08:43 the same results that you got yesterday.
08:45 So you've gotta be willing to do it.
08:47 And being judged just means you're doing,
08:49 people judge because either they're too afraid
08:51 to do what you're doing, they don't understand it yet,
08:54 or they just don't like the idea that you're growing
08:57 and they're not.
08:58 And the majority of people aren't growing.
08:59 So I don't like being judged any more than anyone else.
09:03 And going on social media and exposing that to the world
09:05 and doing shows, trust me, I have friends
09:08 make fun of me all the time.
09:10 And I just kinda say, yeah, I'm learning.
09:12 I'm willing to be made fun of.
09:14 I have radical humility, I'm gonna accept it.
09:16 But when you accept it, it's freeing.
09:18 Once you realize, hey, you might think of something
09:21 I say on an episode and think,
09:22 oh, that was a dumb thing to say.
09:24 I don't want you to think that.
09:25 I want everyone to like me,
09:27 but not everyone's gonna like me.
09:28 Once I come to that conclusion, I'm like, you know what?
09:30 She may feel that way today,
09:31 but I'm gonna win her over tomorrow.
09:33 It changes.
09:34 - Definitely, Enoch and I were actually talking about this
09:35 on the drive up about, I'm reading a book right now,
09:38 it's called "The Courage to be Disliked."
09:40 And in the book, he was saying how true freedom
09:43 is actually accepting to be disliked by people.
09:46 You are not going to be liked by everyone.
09:48 And if you are actually disliked by people,
09:50 it's actually a better thing,
09:51 'cause it shows that you're staying true
09:53 to your own beliefs.
09:54 And if you were sticking, if everyone was agreeing with you,
09:57 I don't know about that,
09:58 because some things out there you see,
10:00 you're like, ooh, you question it,
10:01 'cause it goes against your own beliefs.
10:03 But tying back a little bit to prior to college.
10:07 So whether that's high school,
10:08 everyone comes from different backgrounds
10:09 and different situations.
10:11 If someone is debating to go to college,
10:14 but they don't know exactly what they want to do,
10:16 some people go into college
10:17 with their major being undecided and figuring out their,
10:21 but it comes at a cost, that's a lot of money
10:22 that you could potentially be wasting.
10:24 What would you tell to someone
10:26 that is thinking about going to college of what to consider?
10:29 - So I think this is an important thing.
10:31 And I'm gonna say this, I went to college,
10:33 I went to graduate school.
10:35 If I had to go back, I would do them both again.
10:36 So I'll preface it.
10:38 College is not what most people think it is.
10:41 Most people think college prepares them to be something.
10:44 It's not that.
10:45 College is the bridge from child to adult.
10:49 It's that time where you continue to expand your horizons
10:52 and be exposed, 'cause like you said,
10:54 a lot of people come from small towns, big cities,
10:56 but it's one simple location.
10:58 Then they leave that nest,
10:59 they leave that small, tight community,
11:01 and they get exposed to this big, massive university
11:03 with all these strangers from all over the world,
11:06 and mom and dad aren't there,
11:08 and their friend group's probably not there,
11:10 and they have to remake friends as a young adult,
11:12 not friends that they were born into
11:14 because they lived down the street.
11:15 So the Jeff Fenster I was at 17,
11:18 the Serafina you were at 17,
11:20 we now have to go into the world
11:21 and make new friends, new relationships.
11:23 And so if you look at college as like,
11:25 I'm going to college and I'm gonna go get my MBA
11:27 when I'm done, and I'm gonna go work on Wall Street,
11:29 that's great.
11:30 College is not gonna get you ready for Wall Street.
11:32 You wanna be a doctor,
11:33 undergrad's not gonna get you ready to do surgery.
11:35 You wanna be an entrepreneur,
11:36 undergrad is not gonna get you ready to be an entrepreneur.
11:39 No matter what profession you think you wanna do,
11:41 college is not there for that.
11:43 College is there to help groom you
11:44 and expose you to new ideas
11:46 and help shape the person you're gonna be
11:48 while teaching you more ideas
11:51 and also letting you learn how to learn.
11:54 College is not a traditional curriculum.
11:56 The teacher doesn't care if you show up or not.
11:58 It's not like elementary school, middle school, high school
11:59 where if you don't show up, you get a truancy,
12:01 mom and dad get called and you're in trouble.
12:03 No one cares.
12:04 You're paying to come.
12:05 So this is your opportunity to say,
12:07 I am becoming an adult.
12:08 I am becoming the person I'm gonna be.
12:11 I'm gonna learn the tools I need to be successful
12:14 at whatever profession I want.
12:15 So going in undecided,
12:17 I went in with a goal of having a business degree
12:20 at University of Arizona.
12:22 I switched.
12:22 I took an accounting class.
12:24 I couldn't make the two sides match.
12:25 I hated it.
12:26 And I'm like, I can't do this.
12:28 So I left business degree and I switched to another major.
12:32 I switched that major and ended up majoring
12:34 in regional development,
12:35 which is basically real estate.
12:36 I ended up going to law school to be a sports agent.
12:39 And then I started apparel and HR company,
12:41 a few other companies.
12:42 And now I own restaurants.
12:44 My degree had nothing to do with that,
12:45 but what it did teach me was I learned things along the way.
12:48 So long-winded answer to your question,
12:50 but if you're not sure who you want to be
12:52 and what degree and undecided,
12:53 I still think go to college, get exposed to that,
12:56 make mistakes, try classes in different fields
12:58 and jump around.
12:59 The average, I think the average college student
13:01 from what I've learned changes their major two times.
13:04 So you don't need to know going in and yes, it's expensive.
13:07 Yes, it's potentially a waste of money.
13:09 If you're looking at it under the wrong lens
13:11 of I need college to prepare me for this specific profession,
13:15 it's a waste of money.
13:16 If you look at colleges,
13:17 I'm going to use this as a tool
13:18 to become the best version of myself
13:20 and identify and figure out who that is
13:22 and build incredible relationships.
13:25 It's cheap.
13:26 - Yeah, I think you hit so good with that.
13:30 And I think a lot of people can resonate with that
13:31 because around me, including myself,
13:33 I thought that whatever major I was going in,
13:35 that's my end all, be all.
13:36 Originally, I was social work.
13:37 I don't want to do anything with social work now.
13:39 If you're a social worker, props to you.
13:40 I cannot do that.
13:41 I don't think I'm built for that.
13:43 And I realized that and I didn't have to stick to doing that
13:46 and a lot of people think that they have to,
13:48 whatever they choose, that's end all, be all of everything.
13:50 So that's so good that you showed that example
13:52 of there's so many different routes that you can take
13:55 and open that to other people
13:56 that are listening to this.
13:57 - Hey, everybody.
13:58 Looking for great insights?
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14:26 - And now on the back end of college,
14:28 I've also seen a lot of, like towards the end of college,
14:31 I've seen, I'm still in college,
14:33 but people graduating college
14:35 and they feel quote unquote lost after college.
14:37 I've seen a lot of that.
14:39 And people will be like, no one talks about this,
14:40 they don't know what to do with their lives.
14:41 Yet they thought that college was going to prepare them
14:44 for real world.
14:45 Why do you think people have that feeling
14:47 and how could you avoid the feeling
14:48 of feeling lost after college?
14:51 - Well, the challenge with college is
14:53 it is the last step before adulthood,
14:55 like where you're completely on your own.
14:57 Like once you're done with college,
14:58 now you don't have that education component
15:00 that tells you what you need to be doing
15:02 Monday through Friday.
15:03 So now it's, I need to get a job,
15:04 I need to go into the workforce,
15:05 I need to figure out who I'm going to be.
15:07 If you don't identify that in college,
15:10 you can feel lost coming out.
15:12 I felt lost.
15:12 I graduated college early at 21,
15:16 three years at U of A.
15:18 And I had no idea what I was going to do with myself.
15:20 I applied to be a Marine,
15:21 or enlisted in the Marine Corps and I applied to law school.
15:24 Not knowing which was for me
15:25 and not thinking either of them was for me.
15:27 All that being said, when you graduate college,
15:32 you have to look at it as
15:33 this is the next step in my development.
15:34 And when you think of your life,
15:36 you gotta stop, we have a tendency to think
15:38 of our lives in one year.
15:40 Like what am I doing right now?
15:42 Go inter.
15:43 Yeah, you might owe money,
15:44 you're 22, 23 years old,
15:46 like now's the time to be broke.
15:47 Now's the time to make mistakes.
15:49 Now is the only time.
15:50 A lot of us didn't have, or you know,
15:53 families and kids, some people do,
15:54 and for them it's a little different.
15:56 But if you're not married and you don't have siblings,
15:57 or children to take care of,
16:00 then you have the freedom to go be reckless
16:02 with your finances in the sense of,
16:05 go take a job doing something that you think you may like.
16:08 Go do internship for something you think you may like,
16:10 and live off macaroni and cheese, right?
16:12 Like that's the time.
16:13 And when you start to do that,
16:15 you find, you change from being,
16:18 sitting having too much time
16:19 and kind of feeling lost to being active.
16:22 And there's three phases.
16:24 There's I have nothing to do,
16:25 so I have so much time to live in my head
16:27 and feel lost, anxiety, stress, et cetera.
16:30 There's the active, where you're so busy being busy,
16:33 you're not being productive, you're just being busy,
16:35 but you don't have time to think about being lost,
16:36 you're just busy and you feel like I have no time,
16:38 but I'm not getting ahead.
16:40 Then there's productivity, which is strategic action,
16:42 where you are actually moving towards your goal
16:45 because you've defined it.
16:46 The goal for me, and if I was to say to you in college,
16:49 is to define your goal.
16:51 Define what you want to be.
16:52 If you can't figure it out after four years of college,
16:54 do something else.
16:55 Try a job, try a profession, get into something,
16:58 see if it's for you, change, jump around, travel,
17:01 figure those things out.
17:02 But don't feel stuck where you need to know
17:04 who you're gonna be at 22.
17:06 I had no idea, not even close.
17:09 And I've changed my profession
17:10 every three to five years since.
17:12 Payroll and HR company, digital marketing agency,
17:14 restaurants, construction.
17:15 I jump around like a yo-yo.
17:17 - Yeah, the only constant,
17:18 or the only thing that's constant in life is change,
17:20 and that's something that is difficult
17:22 for me to accept sometimes,
17:23 that everything's evolving, everything's moving.
17:25 You're growing, we're all growing.
17:27 Who knows, the next two years
17:28 you could be doing something completely different.
17:29 You never know what's ahead.
17:31 And speaking of never knowing what's ahead,
17:33 AI is up and coming,
17:35 and you see that a lot of AIs can take over jobs.
17:40 What skill sets would you tell college kids
17:42 to hone in on and get really good at
17:45 that AI can't take over?
17:47 - Relationships, humanizing the aspect.
17:51 AI can do a lot of things.
17:53 AI can't do this.
17:55 AI is not gonna sit down with you,
17:56 look you in the eye,
17:58 have that courage to have a conversation,
18:00 and get to know the person.
18:01 And when I say that, I mean,
18:02 those are the jobs like sales,
18:04 those are the jobs like social work,
18:06 those are the jobs like any job around empathy
18:09 and compassion, someone has to run the AI for now,
18:12 but AI is gonna take a lot of the mundane jobs away.
18:16 Robotics is gonna unfortunately
18:18 do a lot of those same things.
18:19 So we have to start thinking about our career
18:21 in a way of what humans will always want
18:23 is a human connection.
18:25 So any profession around human,
18:27 it starts there, and it unfortunately,
18:29 what I see with too many college kids today
18:31 is they've lost the ability to have actual communication.
18:35 It's text or email.
18:37 Even my own daughter, my youngest daughter, she's 11,
18:39 she's more comfortable texting me questions
18:41 and asking them when she doesn't know
18:43 what I'm gonna answer.
18:44 Like, can I sleep out at a friend's house?
18:45 She'll text it to me when she's in the house.
18:48 And she's like, well, I was scared you were gonna say no.
18:49 It's like, you need to remember, we're humans.
18:52 We gotta get back to that.
18:54 The other thing with AI is I think
18:56 you're gonna notice that if you're not paying attention
19:00 to it right now, you're probably a little far behind.
19:02 Like, understand how you can use it
19:04 as a tool in your toolbox.
19:07 AI, no one knows what's gonna happen.
19:09 It's a scary thing.
19:11 I think it's gonna replace a lot of jobs,
19:13 and it's gonna make the way we think about jobs different.
19:15 So start to play with it, start to use it,
19:18 use it to answer questions even
19:20 that you're gonna write an essay.
19:21 Like, ask it the question.
19:22 Don't copy it and plagiarize it.
19:24 You'll get in trouble for that.
19:25 But ask it the question that you have on your essay,
19:28 see the answer, and then rewrite it from there
19:30 or humanizing it, and then it's an incredible tool.
19:32 It's an amazing time saver.
19:34 - Definitely, and the human,
19:36 what you're talking about a little bit earlier,
19:37 the human component of just being able
19:39 to communicate and talk to people.
19:41 I'm still working on that.
19:42 I'm on the journey, nowhere near where I wanna be,
19:44 but when I'm doing my interviews and stuff,
19:46 I'm learning all about human nature.
19:47 I'm reading the room, reading their energy,
19:49 understanding how people work,
19:50 and getting to talk to them.
19:52 And that's what people lack with social media now.
19:54 You don't wanna say something to someone's face,
19:56 you just text it, say it behind their back.
19:58 No one's able to say it to their face.
19:59 And people that are saying hate comments and stuff,
20:01 they probably would not say that
20:02 to the person's face most likely.
20:04 - And it's also a life hack, right?
20:06 If you're sitting listening to this in college
20:07 and you wanna know a quick life hack,
20:09 look, and you're trying to get into the workforce,
20:11 don't send an email or a DM to someone
20:13 you want something from.
20:14 Find a way to meet them in person.
20:15 Look them in the eye, especially if they're older than you.
20:18 And I mean, truthfully, had you sent me a message
20:20 about Back to the Basics,
20:21 I probably wouldn't have given it as much thought.
20:23 When you looked me in the eye
20:24 and we had the conversation about this segment,
20:27 I felt the passion in your face.
20:29 I saw it, I was like, "Absolutely, I wanna be part of that."
20:30 Like, you excited me from it because of this.
20:33 And that's how the best sales work.
20:35 - And it's all about putting yourself out there as well,
20:37 because yes, I was blessed to even have the opportunity
20:40 to give you that idea,
20:41 and how I even got with David
20:43 was just putting myself out there
20:45 and bringing value to him.
20:47 I was like, "Hey, can I just film a little bit
20:48 "of your interview that you're doing at State?"
20:50 'Cause he was coming to talk to at my school.
20:53 So I did that, and that led me to another thing,
20:54 and led me to the next, and led me here.
20:55 So if you don't, like, I didn't feel qualified at all.
20:57 I was like, "Who am I?
20:58 "I don't know what I'm, like,
20:59 "who am I to be doing this?"
21:01 So I think if people are listening
21:02 and they don't know what the next step is,
21:04 don't think, like, yes, have an idea of what you wanna do,
21:07 but just push the needle a little bit, just keep going,
21:09 and just don't think about it too much,
21:11 because if you sit with it more than 10 seconds,
21:13 all the negative thoughts are just gonna come.
21:15 You know, you just gotta put yourself out there, for sure.
21:18 - And I feel the same all the time.
21:19 I'm not qualified to do half the things I do.
21:21 I go through those same emotions,
21:23 and so you're always gonna have those emotions.
21:25 It's putting those emotions down inside your head
21:27 and realizing everyone sucks until they don't.
21:29 Everyone starts day one,
21:31 whether you're, you know, a famous actor or actress.
21:33 They had to try the first time.
21:35 The first time on camera, they sucked.
21:37 Singers, the first time they sang, sucked.
21:39 CEOs, sucked.
21:40 We all suck.
21:41 And that's okay, embrace the suck.
21:42 Recognize, like, hey, you know what, we're gonna do it.
21:44 I'm gonna try, and if I get shot down, who cares?
21:46 No one remembers, except the person asking, you know?
21:49 So put yourself out there, have the courage,
21:52 have the confidence, and amazing things happen
21:55 when you take that first step.
21:57 - Yeah, definitely, that can go a long way
21:58 for a lot of people, and I hope that some people,
22:00 if they're thinking about something,
22:01 just go out and just do it.
22:03 And I have a couple of, like, little rapid questions.
22:05 So, however long you want them to be,
22:07 but kind of on the faster end.
22:09 So, what do you think is the most useless degree in college?
22:13 - Communications.
22:15 - Why?
22:15 - 'Cause communications is so broad,
22:18 it doesn't really address anything specific,
22:21 and it's just a piece of paper.
22:22 I think that you need to niche it down
22:24 inside communications and say,
22:25 this is what I'm doing, and why.
22:28 'Cause most other degrees are very specific.
22:30 You know, pre-law, pre-med, accounting,
22:33 finance, sales and marketing,
22:37 veterinary, you know, veterinary,
22:39 and communications touches, like, 150 different jobs.
22:42 So, I just feel like you need to niche it.
22:43 And so, if you see communications, you're like,
22:45 yeah, but what does that mean?
22:46 You have to always ask.
22:47 So, that's why I find it the most useless.
22:48 - Got it.
22:49 And then, do you think college makes you think
22:51 inside the box, or outside the box more?
22:54 - Inside the box.
22:55 College is a place of higher learning,
22:58 and education is a syllabus,
23:00 and a syllabus means they created one simple model
23:03 that is supposed to teach everybody, which is a box.
23:06 Thinking outside the box means you just start to think,
23:10 and whatever happens, happens.
23:11 And that's one of my secrets to success in entrepreneurship
23:14 is when I come into an industry,
23:16 I like to come in with zero experience.
23:17 I think experience is the most overrated prerequisite
23:20 to being successful and starting a company.
23:22 So, when I start a restaurant,
23:23 or I start a construction company,
23:24 by not knowing how to do it,
23:25 I'm not thinking the way everyone else
23:27 in the industry does it, 'cause I don't know.
23:28 It's not that I, like I said, I don't see a box.
23:30 I don't know the box is there.
23:32 So, outside the box thinking is very disruptive,
23:35 and that's where the new things pop up.
23:37 That's where new ideas come,
23:38 and where a lot of growth can happen.
23:40 - Totally, and kind of visualize yourself
23:43 in a classroom setting.
23:44 You're in a classroom setting, you know, big lecture, okay?
23:47 And you have your professor in front of you,
23:49 and he starts pushing, I would say,
23:51 more like political beliefs onto the students.
23:54 What would you do in that situation?
23:55 - So, I get asked this,
23:59 I get brought into political conversations a lot.
24:01 - Yeah, I'm not saying to get into that,
24:03 but I'm just saying like, in college,
24:05 'cause technically you're supposed to do
24:06 what your teacher is teaching you,
24:08 but when you have to write a paper,
24:09 and you don't agree with the political side
24:11 of what they're saying, what do you do with that?
24:13 - I write the paper.
24:14 In law school, what you do in law school,
24:17 what law school is different is you have a set of facts,
24:20 and they make you argue one side or both sides.
24:23 Did Tommy steal the balloon?
24:26 Argue that Tommy did.
24:27 Did Tommy steal the balloon?
24:28 Argue that Tommy didn't,
24:29 which means you have to always be writing
24:31 about things that, in a view that you disagree with,
24:34 and that style of thinking is so powerful.
24:38 So, if I'm in a class,
24:38 and the professor is political on one side,
24:41 and wants me to be on that side with him or her
24:44 for the purpose of this essay or exam,
24:46 I'm gonna put myself in that position,
24:48 and I'm gonna argue the strengths of that case,
24:49 and I'm gonna pretend that I believe in it,
24:51 even though I don't, because I'm in their class,
24:54 and I need to get ahead.
24:55 I don't need to always, there's a saying,
24:57 if I leave you with one thing from this episode,
24:59 this has saved me so much money,
25:02 and it made me so much money,
25:03 and it's a simple question.
25:04 Would you rather be right, or would you rather win?
25:07 If you'd rather be right, fight the fight.
25:10 Tell them, "Hey, I don't agree with this politically.
25:12 "Walk out, don't do the test."
25:13 You get to be right.
25:16 If you'd rather win, just do it, 'cause guess what?
25:18 You still get your beliefs tomorrow.
25:19 No one's forcing you to change your beliefs.
25:21 They're forcing you to pretend
25:22 like you believe in something else,
25:24 so you're an actor for a course.
25:25 Who cares?
25:26 There's a lot of things I don't agree with
25:28 that I have to do, but I do them because I wanna win.
25:31 And for me, winning is getting ahead
25:33 and not creating a lot of turmoil.
25:35 So if a professor in a class or in any situation
25:39 was political against my views,
25:41 religious against my views,
25:42 as long as it wasn't something like,
25:44 I'm not gonna do something
25:46 that completely is against my morals,
25:47 but politics is more of a broad thing.
25:51 I'm not gonna talk about terrorism or things like,
25:54 I'm not gonna be a terrorist.
25:55 But as far as politics aside, those are the areas.
25:58 I just always remember, would you rather be right,
26:00 or would you rather win?
26:01 I always would rather win, so I'll be a chameleon.
26:04 I'll dance the dance for the professor.
26:05 I'll laugh about it.
26:06 I'll tell my friends, I can't believe I'm writing this.
26:08 This is crazy.
26:09 - People post about that.
26:10 - And I have fun.
26:11 - If they have a certainly political standpoint,
26:13 they're like, yeah, I'm currently trying to write an essay.
26:14 Right now to get an A, I gotta be a whatever
26:16 on the other side right now, which is so funny.
26:18 - But that's such a valuable tool.
26:19 If you can put yourself in the shoes of your opponent,
26:23 of a differing view, when you get into the real world
26:26 and you're dealing with real world problems,
26:28 the ability to see it from a perspective
26:30 that you disagree with and fight their fight,
26:33 guess what, you know what they're fighting for.
26:35 So now you can reverse engineer it and pick it apart
26:38 and manipulate the situation back so you can win later.
26:40 It's a phenomenal sales tactic.
26:42 It's a phenomenal manipulation tactic,
26:45 and it's a great thing to hone.
26:46 So look at it as a way to learn that,
26:48 not the politics side.
26:49 - Definitely, and my last question is,
26:51 if you were, Jeff, you're in charge
26:53 of the whole college education system.
26:56 What is one thing that you would change about it
26:58 that would change all future generations with college?
27:01 - I would completely change general ed.
27:04 To me, general ed would be how to buy a house in America,
27:07 how to take out credit and use credit effectively,
27:09 how to invest in stocks and crypto and other assets,
27:12 so investments, and how to succeed financially.
27:16 And then the final one was every single person
27:17 would have to have an internship.
27:19 You'd have to have an internship at least two of the years,
27:21 in my opinion, if not all of them.
27:23 And by doing that, we're actually creating a system
27:26 to enable people to go into the real world.
27:28 I am blown away at how many young adults
27:30 that leave college that don't know about credit,
27:32 they don't know about investing,
27:34 they don't know about personal finance,
27:36 and they've never done an internship.
27:37 So they're coming out with this piece of paper,
27:39 but they're, unfortunately,
27:40 it's the same as a high school degree at that point.
27:42 You don't know anything.
27:43 And we live in a capitalistic society in America.
27:46 We're built on capitalism,
27:47 so the one thing that we all need to learn
27:49 is how money works.
27:51 It's a voodoo topic that everyone's afraid of,
27:53 whether you're a teacher or you're an entrepreneur,
27:55 I don't care, money is everything in America.
27:58 So if you don't understand how to invest your money
28:00 and have it work for you, you're never gonna get ahead.
28:02 You're always gonna be upside down.
28:03 You're always gonna be a slave to the man or the woman
28:06 and living paycheck to paycheck.
28:07 You've gotta understand these things,
28:09 and I don't think we're teaching our youth that.
28:11 And then the internship, because college, like I said,
28:13 it's just teaching you how to define yourself
28:16 by doing an internship with a real company.
28:18 Whatever field you're in, if you're a veterinarian,
28:20 go be an intern at a vet.
28:23 Being exposed to it gives you a taste
28:25 for what your whole life is gonna be about
28:27 and make sure that A, you like it,
28:28 B, you understand what are the tools, skills
28:30 that I need to hone, and three,
28:32 it's giving you the relationships
28:34 with actual people in the workforce.
28:35 So I think if college did all those things,
28:37 we would set a lot more young adults up for success.
28:39 - You would definitely save a lot of people
28:41 if you're in charge of that,
28:41 because the basics that a lot of people don't know,
28:43 and I'm still learning myself,
28:44 because college is not teaching me that.
28:46 I'm learning some stuff that I'm looking at,
28:48 I'm like, why, literally why?
28:50 I get it if I had a passion about it,
28:52 but I'm kind of in the direction,
28:53 I kind of know my passion, yeah,
28:54 I can get exposed to new things and learn new things,
28:56 but if I know kind of the route I wanna take,
28:58 I'm gonna go on it and just see how far that can take me.
29:00 I don't wanna be spending my time and hour
29:03 learning about something I literally do not care about.
29:06 I think what you said would just be so much more
29:08 beneficial to a lot of people,
29:08 and that's the importance of just learning
29:10 from other people and outside sources, for sure.
29:13 - Well, Serafina, this was so fun.
29:15 I'm so excited for this segment.
29:16 I'm so grateful that you came up with it
29:19 and had the courage to bring it to my attention
29:21 and help me launch this whole thing.
29:23 We're excited to bring on other students
29:25 from around the country and bring them here
29:26 into studio to ask questions and really give back
29:29 to the collegiate group of future entrepreneurs.
29:32 If you're watching this, also, please be a fan of her show.
29:36 We wanna support all of our guests,
29:37 and Serafina is a future leader,
29:40 and so we are so excited.
29:41 Thank you so much, Serafina.
29:42 - Thank you, if anything, for taking the time to do this,
29:44 and I deeply and so appreciative
29:46 of everything that we talked about, so thank you.
29:49 - Thank you so much for listening.
29:51 If you're looking to level up
29:52 your relationship capital game,
29:53 then take a minute and text the word Jeff
29:55 to 33777 for a free copy of my
29:59 Network to Millions playbook.
30:01 The link will also be provided in the show notes below.
30:04 See you guys next time.
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