 All right, you guys asked for it and I delivered. You wanted me to get somebody to come on and talk about apprenticeship programs that are outside of the trades. So I went out there, I did a bunch of research and I contacted an apprenticeship program that has an excellent reputation online and that is Discover Praxis. And I managed to get the COO, Mitchell Earl, of Praxis to come on for an interview. So that is what we're gonna be doing today. So he's basically gonna be telling you everything that you want to know about apprenticeship programs as well as praxis. So if you enjoy this type of video, make sure to let me know by gently tapping that like button. Let's try to get this one to 300 likes and also subscribe so you don't miss out on any content. So let's jump into the video right now. What's happening guys? Welcome back to the channel. Today I have another special guest you guys asked for it. You wanted me to go and get somebody who runs an apprenticeship program and that's exactly what I did. So I was able to reach out and get the COO of Praxis onto the channel. So Mitchell, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Yeah, you bet Shane. I appreciate what you're building with your channel and the content that you're putting out. It's exciting to be invited to come talk and share my story too. Awesome, well let's actually jump right into it. So I know a little bit about your story but I'm excited to learn more. So I know that you actually were one of the first few cohorts that Praxis ever had back in I believe like 2014, 2015 or so. So you're somebody who went through Praxis and then later on you ended up getting hired by them. So could you kind of tell me that story and how it all started? Yeah, so it's kind of a bit of a roller coaster ride but you know the best way to frame it is like to rewind the clock a little bit. I was your typical high achiever in high school, junior high. Like I had my sights set on very prestigious sort of traditional academic goals. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma. I knew I wanted to leave. I knew like sort of the best way out at the time from what I sort of learned in school was to go get into the best college, to get the best grades, get into the best college. Ultimately what was waiting on the other side of that was everything you could ever want in life, either a good job or financial security or all of those things. And I knew from a very young age I wanted to win the academic game. And so when I was coming out of high school I had looked great on paper, I had all the accolades and I had my sights set on medical school and I knew sort of there's this very safe predictable path and I was on that path. Go to medical school. When I got into college it was the first time in my life that I suddenly had this identity crisis. I realized I haven't ever really put much thought into what I want to do for me, what it is that I'm naturally interested in or curious about or what it is that really lights my fire instead of in playing this sort of risk averse game I've been sort of making decisions about my sort of next step in life based off of these perceived expectations I had whether they were real expectations or not. And so when I got into college it was the first time that I was like, whoa, hold the phone I better actually be really sure that this path that I'm on this is what I want to commit to especially for medical school. I was about to commit the next 10, 12 years of my life to this plan that I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted to be on. And so around the same time in college I got involved with this very early stage startup it was a media company and over the next few years this company just exploded. It went from a handful of people to several thousand and that sort of opened my eyes to this entirely different world that I had no idea about coming from the middle of nowhere Oklahoma. It was like, oh my gosh, this world of entrepreneurship this world of technology enabled innovation. And so as I was exiting college I realized I don't know what I want to do I know I want to be involved in business somehow I want to be involved in entrepreneurship I don't know what business I don't know what skills that I could offer that someone would actually pay me for today I don't know sort of how to go out into the world and convince somebody to hire me I hadn't put all those dots together yet and so all of my friends at the time college advisors sort of family around it was like the best way to go get into business is go back to school go get a law degree and MBA there's a very clear predictable path into this and something about that didn't sit right with me but because I didn't have a better plan that's what I set my sights on and so for the first several years out of college I was just out hustling I was taking every job I could I bounced around like sort of every six months for the first couple of years just collecting experiences trying to save up money with this sort of stated goal that I was gonna go back to law school I was gonna go get an MBA and I was doing things that sort of led to that I'd worked in financial services for a while I worked at a law firm for a while I had experiences that were sort of directionally correct but meanwhile I was trying to plan an escape route of how do I go is there a way to go break into business to go break into entrepreneurship without sort of all of these sort of detours detours in the sense of like wasting a bunch of time sitting in class seemed very boring to me even though I loved reading books I love learning I didn't like sort of the dynamics of school the other thing was even though I had great scholarships did well on the LSAT had great GPA coming out of college I was still looking at probably six figures of student debt to go to law school and get an MBA and like try and do that as quickly as possible and that was something that really scared me because I was like I don't wanna take on six figures of debt unless I'm 100% certain this is the path I wanna go down so fast forward a couple of years I was weeks away from starting law school and MBA when I met Isaac Morehouse who was the founder of Praxis and I was trying to chart my own course at this time still I hadn't figured out another plan and he kinda stopped me dead in my tracks and we met we instantly hit it off and he told me something that was just very profound to me he said you seem like a smart ambitious hard work in person like why would you go waste several more years in school what if you could do it now what if I could make some introductions and help you go break into that now he said give me one year give me one year to help you and if one year from now you're not you don't have more clarity about what you wanna do you don't feel like you have momentum go back to school it's always gonna be there and so I was like well this is a very compelling offer you know let me push all my chips in the table let's just see what's the worst that could happen several months later I moved across the country I was a princessing the CEO of another earlier stage company I came into the company sort of right in the perfect timing it was before they raised any venture a capital and it was like probably four or five months before they raised their first round and over the course of the next three and a half years I grew into the sort of right hand of the CEO as this company went from 20 employees to 200 I got sort of the ground floor seats to that show and three and a half years later about the same time I would have been finishing law degree MBA I was looking at all of my peers who'd gone that route and I was like I'm already years ahead I don't have that student debt I feel like I just got paid to learn and get a real world MBA and so that sort of that stepping stone into a career and sort of into competency and into sort of this more refined vision for what I wanted to do was a result of apprenticeship it wasn't going back to school and learning through lectures or books it was getting out into the real world and sort of trial by fire that enabled me to sort of chart my own course and that's why I'm such a huge advocate for apprenticeships in general and why I'm so jacked up about what we're doing at Praxis All right, so that's an awesome story now you, I know that Praxis has a very kind of like tight knit community of people who graduated from it like all the alumni of Praxis I've heard nothing but really good things from them from the other people I've interviewed or people I contacted and asked questions to so you love Praxis so much that you decided to come back and get a job with them and then you eventually ended up rising up through the ranks and becoming COO so can you kind of talk about that a little bit? Yeah, for sure it's kind of an interesting like coming home story I guess but I'd reached a point in my career after going through hyper growth and having a couple adventures in the startup world at that point where I knew I was ready to go do my own thing or find the sort of longer term career game and one of the things that I kept encountering in my early career as I was someone who was probably overly ambitious for my age and station and the level of experience I had I kept running into sort of these glass ceilings and those glass ceilings were you don't have the right pedigree you don't have the right level of experience you're too young you don't have a long enough proven track record and that was a frustrating experience for me I had multiple different points in my career not just sort of in the work world but also in academia before I even got into the real world it was I kept coming up against this notion that you have to have all this experience in order to be able to do the job and I thought that that was wildly inaccurate I felt like if you can do the job or you can learn how to do it quickly you're just as good as the person who on paper looks like the safe bet and so it was that sort of repeated experience repeated lived experience for me that sort of lit this fire for me it's like I know that this is the way the world is I know that if you can actually do the work if you can actually deliver results that's what people care about an obstacle in your way is you have to be able to convince other people to give you a shot and then you actually have to deliver the goods and if you can do both of those things effectively you can knock down most of the obstacles in your professional life and so it was sort of this natural conclusion it was like my own lived experience plus sort of the skill set I've developed the context I've developed and sort of where I'm at in my career in terms of like what I'm ready to do all lines up perfectly with going and sort of helping other young adults who are just at the start of their journey overcome many of those same obstacles that I found in my way when I was starting out so I was seven, eight years into my career at this point and I felt like I had a really rich tapestry of experiences that would really enable me to I guess reach the people that that practice was trying to reach but also like to be able to come in and add more value to the business so I actually came in as the director of marketing the goal was to come in and help grow the business and around the same time we launched another company that ultimately we split into two entities and around that same time it just made sense that sort of in order to take the business to the next level it needed to be sort of a solo focus and so the CEO and I we took over the business about two and a half years ago and the goal has been to continue to grow the business but also and probably more importantly is ensure that the quality of the program experience and sort of the outcomes that our customers are getting are very, very high quality. Awesome and let's talk about just for the people who are watching who maybe haven't looked it up or haven't looked at the brochure or anything like that which by the way, I will link Praxis down below if you guys are interested in it I'll link some information down below definitely check that out in the description probably the pen comment as well but can you just kind of give like a 30,000 foot overview of exactly what Praxis is like how long it is and the different phases that people would go through if they were to join Praxis? Yeah, for sure. So Praxis is a year long business apprenticeship program it is for hardworking ambitious young adults who want more than the traditional college experience so if you're somebody who considers yourself entrepreneurial or you have an interest in business already or maybe you just, you don't have an interest in college and you know you wanna go start your career now that's like the right sort of raw materials if you have a good work ethic you wanna go get started you're interested in personal professional development and building real skills those are all sort of the right attributes in terms of the program experience it's a year long for the first six months we take you through a fully remote program experience which combines sort of our curriculum live workshops, project-based learning peer and advisor feedback and the goal is to help you explore different career paths within business build the skills you need to actually go access those careers and then ultimately sort of the big kicker here is actually go land a full-time job at a growing business all within six months the second half of the program this is where sort of the rubber meets the road you are starting a new full-time job and for your first six months on the job in addition to whatever training the business is giving you as you start your job our team is also there to give you additional support, coaching, sort of resources we wanna make sure that by the end of the year the end of that 12 months you feel like you are well into a new career path or maybe your first career path but the fun doesn't stop there you have lifetime access to our community our coaches, our curriculum, our hiring network all of those are sort of the icing on the cake in my opinion Got it, so just to kind of clarify the first six months or so are basically teaching people some fundamental skills that basically everybody needs to know in the workplace and kind of just the basics of those like sales, marketing, operations, that sort of thing and then also helping people figure out what they are interested in maybe like what their personal strengths are what their passions are what type of career path they wanna go down in order to reach their goals and then the second six months is after you figured out what type of career path you wanna go down you get them in an apprenticeship a full-time apprenticeship essentially where they are actually working and earning money and learning valuable skills on the job so is that kind of an overview? Yeah, so a couple nuanced things here that I think are really important to get across is the first six months it's more than just sort of the basic bare minimum skills so there is sort of the foundational professional skills component so things every young professional needs to know but it is also there are also career path specific skills that you're going to build so the goal is not to push you down a specific career path it's to help you discover what paths are out there and one important thing that I like to communicate is I'm under no naive illusion that the goal of the program is to help you find what to do for the rest of your life instead how I tell people to think about this and what I would encourage most young adults to think about is the goal is to help you find the strongest possible starting point and actually help you go get into a career early in your career so that you can build momentum professionally going out into the real world and getting that first early career experience is going to expose you to more opportunities it's going to sort of expand the surface area of possibilities for you and give you a better sort of foundation to make decisions about what is possible and what's actually out there that might be interesting for you as far as the second half of the program they're hired as full-time employees from day one which is something that I'm also very proud of and something that I think is a very good jumping off point yes it is an apprenticeship and I think that we like to talk about it as an apprenticeship for several reasons one we want you to go into your job and treat it like an apprenticeship your goal is not just to collect a paycheck or to be a Soso employee it's to go in and learn and to be mentored by other people who are farther ahead of you in your career and it's to continue to rely on the network and the community of Praxis to help you sort of level up very quickly and sort of accelerate that first leg of the journey into your career got it and just to be clear about the apprenticeship part I'm curious about this you actually have partnerships with different companies where you will essentially like you know somebody says hey you know I want to go into I don't know digital marketing I'm just making that up but like you know if they want to go into digital marketing you'll have like a partnership with a company who regularly hires digital marketers from you is that correct yeah so the placement process is sort of too pronged we do have business partners all over the country they are regularly looking for talent and they are regularly turning to us and they like to hire our alumni and our apprentices they know what sort of quality to expect but another part of the placement process is helping our apprentices learn how to navigate the job hunt on their own so we don't just put them in jobs or match them they have agency over that process and that's by design too we want to help them not only explore the awesome opportunities that are available through our network we also want them to learn how to start the job hunt from scratch and go about identifying opportunities how to conduct an effective job hunt and how to ultimately like go do that on their own whether they're hired from the business partner network or outside we want them to walk out with a toolkit for life and their career and so it's not always just so easy as like hey you're gonna start your job at this company on X-Date report there it's nothing like that it's much more like we want you to be involved in the process we want you to conduct a process that we've perfected so let's talk about typically the apprenticeship like I know that you put people in jobs in all kinds of different areas but typically when they're going through that job is there kind of a range of how much money they tend to make yeah so this is gonna vary by skill set or career path but so some of the common career paths that our alumni or apprentices could expect to start in roles like sales, marketing, customer sport, business operations obviously there's some nuance what level of experience you're coming into into the program with if you're a fresh high school graduate with like one year of work experience that's a little bit different than somebody who's like you know 25 and has three to five years of experience in some actual skills so keep that in mind it's like any other job-hop process there's some variability but our apprentices and alumni have incredible earning potential in sort of the career path center on we guarantee a minimum starting income of $36,000 so great starting point but the average sort of first year income first year earnings for our alumni historically is just north of $50,000 also a great starting point that's on par with what you've seen from college and beats many colleges in terms of like sort of the expected earnings for recent graduates so and with the added bonus that it didn't take four to six years and there's not the five figure student debt yeah they're essentially getting paid to learn because the program itself does cost some money and we'll get into that here in a moment but the second half of it you're getting paid to learn so you're basically recuperating the entire cost of the program that's at least what like Pete and some of the other ones that I was talking to yeah told me yeah for sure so the total tuition is $12,000 but our graduates and our alumni like express like we guarantee minimum starting income of $36,000 today so you can expect to graduate with six months work experience you're getting paid like a full-time employee for that you can expect to earn you know $36,000 over six months so you're walking away with an ROI on the program immediately by the time you graduate that's also something that we're proud of but we want you to have sort of an awesome outcome yes we can't, we have to charge we can't run the program for free but we want you to have a better starting point professionally than sort of what the traditional path looks like which is delay adulthood delay your career for four to six years start out with a massive parachute of five to six figures of student debt and also do all of that without gaining any meaningful real-world work experience that's a dangerous place to start and so we've tried to flip that on its head and design the most sort of practical starting point for people all right and then just out of curiosity how long has the program been around how many people do you typically accept to the program every year and then how many total alumni do you have that have gone through practice yeah so program's been around since 2013 launched our first cohort shortly after that and we have been perfecting the process year over year since right now we are working with about 150 apprentices per year we have 10 cohorts per year we work with approximately 15 individuals per cohort we like that sort of personalized experience that everyone gets and we have 500 plus alumni and counting and adding to that every year and many of them are very engaged members of the community still so it sort of continues to build on itself sort of the value of that community that's a core part of the program experience is you're going to also tap into this robust community of other young professionals who are you know they're doing awesome things in their careers awesome all right well thank you so much for coming on talking about apprenticeships in general and practice and kind of sharing your story with us really appreciate your time thanks for coming on and maybe I'll get you back on the channel we can talk about it again later yeah I appreciate it Shane always a pleasure to come share more about what we're building over here and thanks for your time today