The NoDegree Podcast – No Degree Success Stories for Job Searching, Careers, and Entrepreneurship

The way school teaches doesn't match how Scott Drake learns. He says he learns by doing and gaining experience. Maybe you can relate. Listen in as he tells Jonaed how he started out in publishing and got recruited by Microsoft by cutting his own path. Want to get in touch and/or support Scott? LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Consulting & Coaching Services Jump Coach Website Resources Mentioned in this P...

He said he learned more and made more money in high school than he did in college. Seth Hymes is a bit different from most guests we’ve had. He does have a college degree but his experience after college made him realize college isn’t necessary for success.  Listen in as he and Jonaed discuss the business of education and why students don’t need to go to college and incur life-long debt, for succe...

He started playing table tennis on the dining room in his home in Lagos, Nigeria. The youngest of six siblings, Olajide Omotayo‘s love for the game started at the age of nine. Years of training paid when he won the Men’s Singles at the 2019 African Games. As current Champion of African he competed in this year’s Tokyo Olympics. Listen in as he shares his story with Jonaed. Want to get in touch and...

His life took a turn for the better after he was adopted. Before then, Daniel Hall had a traumatic childhood. He started learning programming from the age of 8 and by the time he was 13 he was helping college students with their exams. Listen in as he tells Jonaed how he learned that chaos breeds success. Want to get in touch and/or support Daniel? LinkedIn Thank you for sponsoring our show. If yo...

He had a lisp so he couldn’t speak well. Chris Delaney is also dyslexic so he couldn’t read and write well either. He struggled to finish high school and his grades were so poor he thought he’d be doomed to work in a warehouse earning minimum wage for the rest of his life.  Listen in as he tells Jonaed how volunteering led to discovering his path to success. Want to get in touch and/or support  Ch...

He started working from the 4th grade. Not because entrepreneurship was encouraged from a young age but because his mom was a single parent. Today Matthew Higgins is a successful HR professional, although he has a record. Listen in as he tells Jonaed about how bussing tables in restaurants sharpened his communication skills and how he rebuilt himself after spending time in prison.   Want to get in...

Between Kindergarten and 6th grade his mom married 5 times and he attended 14 elementary schools. Six of those were in the 6th grade alone. Richard Bliss had what he describes as a disruptive childhood. Listen in as he tells Jonaed why he didn’t go to college and how he became so valuable to a $2B company that the CMO and CEO told him he had a job with them anytime he wanted. Want to get in touch...

He’s a white guy solving a diversity problem and his company just secured $20M in funding. Not something you’d expect from a high school dropout, right? Well, that’s exactly what Ben Herman did. Listen in as he tells Jonaed about his early start as an entrepreneur, why he dropped out of high school and ultimately created Canvas –the #1 diversity recruiting platform that allows job seekers to find...

This burnout multimedia technician decided to take a trip across Southeast Asia. While in Taiwan, Anesh Daya realized he couldn’t speak the language. So, he decided to learn from locals by just asking them how to say different phrases that could help him get around. He became an ESL (English as a Second language) teacher while he was there and took this skill with him back home to Canada. Listen i...

He was reading business books from the age of 16 thanks to his older brother. Still, Karl Helm wasn’t sure what he wanted to be in high school. He thought he’d be a lawyer and later started college. But since he wasn’t focused in college, he dropped out and joined the Navy. Listen in as he tells Jonaed about his stint as an actor, waiting tables with Mark Ruffalo and how his relationship-building...

Fail fast. Fire fast. Quit fast. That’s Ryan’s approach towards learning. In school, his report card showed where his interests were. He did great in classes that really interested him but did REALLY bad in classes that didn’t. He went to college but had a hard time maintaining motivation to show up to classes. Listen in as he tells Jonaed how he learned to become passionate about what he wanted t...

He grew up in the hood, never got good grades and was arrested in high school because of a fight. With the tears in his mom’s eyes etched in his memory and the fact that his crew didn’t show up to help him out, Vishal (Victor) Rampaderat decided to change for the better.  And while we’re taught that good grades lead to success in life, his bank account and success in business tells a different sto...

She was a law student with a 4.0 GPA when she decided to drop out of college. Ironic, since she was obviously an excellent student. Listen in as she tells Jonaed how her resume never made it pass the ATS system, how her love of learning made her successful anyway and how her experiences have curated an awesome resume that has nothing to do with a Master’s Degree. Want to get in touch and/or suppor...

He was not one of the cool kids in high school. Interestingly, Buster Scher was thankful he wasn’t. He got his start at 15 when a video he posted went viral. He strategically built his company, HoopsNation, around that success and hasn’t looked back since.  Listen in as he tells Jonaed why the best decision he ever made was not applying to college and what he thinks could change about the educatio...

He was an entrepreneur before he knew what the word even meant. Ryan got his start reselling basketball and football cards in elementary school. In high school he saved up $700 working at Subway and used it to start an LLC. By the end of his freshman year in college, he wanted to drop out.  Listen in as he tells Jonaed how he stuck it out until his Junior year but how he ultimately felt relieved w...

Working at IBM proved to be more detrimental to his job prospecting than not having a degree. As mind-boggling as that sounds, that was exactly Scott Hutchings’ experience. Listen in as he tells Jonaed how he started his career working in a warehouse, learned his way into new companies and roles before becoming the founder of Global Coin Solutions, a company that enables charities to accept donati...

Like many with Asian backgrounds, Kelvin pursued an engineering degree in college because it could lead to a lucrative career. But the sudden passing of his mom drove him down a path of introspection and self-discovery. And what he discovered was software engineering wasn’t for him. Listen in as he tells Jonaed how he grew in the midst of grief and is now the CEO of Loocrum, a performance marketin...

He worked five jobs simultaneously, bought his first house delivering pizza and bought a pizzeria with no money. If you think that’s impossible, well you’re in for a treat because that’s exactly what Nick Bogacz did.   He had an entrepreneurial spirit before the age of 10 and fell in love with being a pizza delivery driver. Listen in as he tells Jonaed what happened when he tried to get “a real jo...

He was working from the age of 14 and knew he’d become an entrepreneur. To Riley Seaburg school just meant sitting all day steering at the clock and he was bored. He tried college but quickly realized that wasn’t his path. He knew that he had to learn the fundamentals of what he was interested in doing so he took individual classes at a community college. Listen in as he recounts working at 14, at...

Ariel was a straight A student in high school. In college, she worked two jobs to pay her way through school. When she got a “B” in one class, this perfectionist reasoned that it was best to drop out until she could  be the best at it and focus. Well, that time never came. Listen in as she shares her story and how deciding not to go back to college was a strategic business decision. Notes: Want to...

Growing up in Saudi Arabia, Junaid wanted to be a pilot. But taking computer science in high school put him on a different path. When he immigrated to the US he took computer science and took a lot of networking classes. Lead by his curiosity, he was always tinkering. Listen in as he tells Jonaed about building computers, graphic design and ultimately how he became a User Experience & User Interfa...

By 16, this poor farm boy had 6-8 people working for his welding company. Later, Norman Crowley sold his company for 200k.  He didn’t stop there though; he went on to start other companies that sold for millions. Despite his successes though, he insists that life is about getting shit done and money is just a byproduct of that. Today he’s the owner of Crowley Carbon, a company on a mission to cool...

Podcast Summary: He’s a social media influencer with 6.4million followers on Facebook. Contrary to popular opinion, the road to “over-night” success isn’t easy or fast. Markian Benhamou (pronounced Ben-a-moo) got his start while attending college at USC. His marketing class didn’t teach them about social media so he founded a Social Media Club. He started making videos on YouTube and eventually dr...

He got his parent’s blessings to drop out of college. Naturally, Marc Thibodeau’s parents were concerned initially. He felt like it was a waste of his time since he didn’t learn any of the practical aspects of marketing or business. So, he made his case before his parents by showing his parents his plan for dropping out. Today he’s the Co-founder of CoachLab, an all-in-one platform to help coaches...

“Earn 70k or more this year selling cars.” That’s the ad Timothy DeJesus saw in the newspaper when he was trying to figure out if he was going to re-entroll in college. He passed his first semester but failed almost everything his second semester. He decided to apply for the job. Listen in as he tells Jonaed what it’s like after 15 years in the business, the lessons he learned, advice and book rec...