 In today's video, I'm going to be interviewing Javier and Javier was in a very depressing PhD track program where he was in the lab something like 12 to 14 hours a day. So he was working extremely hard 80 hours a week in this PhD program and he looked ahead and realized that it didn't have very good job prospects even if he was able to graduate. And there were a lot of really bad things about the PhD program itself that he's going to go into in the video and I've spoken quite a bit on this channel about how graduate school can be a trap in many cases. So Javier was looking for a way out. He started looking for other career opportunities and he stumbled upon a very good opportunity where he ended up getting a remote job. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this video. So definitely stick around until the end with this one. If you appreciate these types of videos, make sure to gently tap the like button and let's get into it. What's happening guys, it's Shane here. And today I got somebody on the channel who comes from a very unique background. And I think they're going to have a great perspective, especially if you're somebody who's thinking about going to graduate school, right? So I've talked about graduate school on the channel a little bit. Don't want to spoil the interview or anything, but we are definitely going to be talking about that. But this person was in graduate school. They weren't very happy with it. And they decided to basically try to pursue a remote job where they could get into something without any experience. And I don't want to say any more because I'll just ruin the rest of the interview. So without further ado, welcome Javier to the channel. Thank you for coming on and sharing your story. And glad to be here, Shane. I'm glad to be here to be able to help people thinking about going into grad school. I could tell them the insides and outs. I've done it. I've been in there in the lab in the research assistant lifestyle. And I could tell you from the insides and outs, the benefits and the cons, which is the cons that led me to change my career to something more fulfilling, I would say, in my opinion. Got it. All right. Well, let's start before you even knew about your career or anything like that. Just give us a little bit of background of the situation that you were in before you discovered your new career and what you were doing. And maybe something around that, just talk about your professional experience. Well, I was doing my master's in nanotechnology and agriculture. So it was a new program. They're trying to find ways how to make plants grow faster with nanotechnology. So I was really good at chemistry. Now I was good at gardening. So I had the opportunity. They found me and they're paying for it. It was fully paid for. Everything was paid for. And I just have to continue doing research. It sounds like a sweet deal. But once you get into the actual inner workings of the scholarly society, academia, and you see how much it actually trickles down on what the real objectives are, then you see that it looks like a sweet deal, but it's only a sweet deal if you continue providing value to the university or something that can make them money. For example, I had some colleagues that their research wasn't as, let's just say financially gaining, didn't have as much means to make money for the university, and they had their funding pulled, or they had to pay for it themselves because mine was able to generate money because of new products that they can make for farmers or agriculture. Then everything was paid for. Now it sounds like it could be good. Everything is paid for. However, when you break it down where this stipend goes, you have to pay for classes. You have to cover rent. When it comes down to it, what I was actually making and spending money per hour is probably about $2.75 an hour when you actually break it down. So although it looks on the outside looking in, it looks like I had a full paid master's program and everything straight to track the PhD. When you break it down to it, how much money actually comes to your pockets that you can spend? It was about, I was probably working for $2.75 an hour, which is crazy, considering I was doing it probably about 80 to 90 hours of work in the lab every single week. And just to show you like some of the type of things that you didn't have to do, but if you want to succeed in the master's program, do the ones that get the papers published get the money. So for me, I was going to the lab probably at three in the morning to get data and then leaving at 12 a.m. the next day pretty much. When you go, so going from master's to PhD, things don't get easier. Things get harder. The hours don't get shorter, the hours get longer. So I had to sit down and think and I had to really plan out what I wanted to do with my life that I wanted to spend the rest of my life working in the lab, all day trying to work at a national research lab, being around dangerous chemicals. Because I want to try and find something that would give me more freedom to perhaps live the lifestyle. I want to live exercise, go hiking, travel, live remote. So I went online and I started searching for different things I could do. And luckily at the lifestyle, I did not maybe not right when I started, but I knew down the line if I left the PhD or the master's program and didn't go for PhD, I would have more freedom to do what I wanted to do. And it turned out to be the right choice because now I work remote from home, live in the mountains of East Tennessee, have a healthy body, exercise, travel. And learned other languages as well, learned another language as well. And if I compare it to where I would have been, if I would, if I would have continued with PhD, I probably would have been struggling to become a professor right now, working in a national lab, working 90 hours plus, 90 hours plus for a week, and not really having the life that I want to live. Now some kids can't handle, it's a lot of pressure. I'm telling you, it's not, it's a lot of pressure when you get in those labs and you have to present your papers before different different corporations or different judging panels, different professors, and they want to ask you questions and stuff like that. And it's a different, what I can say is a different atmosphere also is that I don't know if you're in graduate school or if you're in a PhD program right now, but this is not to like knock anyone in there. But a lot of times what I've seen is that it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a think tank to see who's the smartest person in the room. So a lot of times people are not trying to glorify you because you're a researcher trying to disprove your research. And if they disprove it, they get like some type of pat on the back points because they're so smart. And it's all at the expense of the person that did the research. And those are the people that I would see in tears crying because they work so hard, has someone come and just pretty much discredit them. And the next thing you know, the research loses its funding or it's not as valuable anymore. And that's just the reality of the game. So I had to choose between that or digital marketing or any other career that's remote. It was an easy choice. Let's just put it that way. It was a very easy choice. Got it, got it. So before we get into the remote career that you got into, I just wanted to say really quickly, I have heard similar stories from dozens and dozens of people. Some of these people were my friends that I grew up with. They decided to go into PhD programs, biology, computer science, et cetera, just horror stories all around. Advisors stealing their research, literally stealing their research, plagiarizing them. And then they feel like they can't retaliate because they're the advisor and they can pretty much ruin your chances of graduating if you retaliate. Advisors just being super, super sketchy in terms of how they treat people in the lab, like especially females and stuff. I've seen some stuff like that happen. I mean, I can just tell you, I have so many different stories. Check out my video. I think I labeled it why you shouldn't go to graduate school. I kind of just break down every single reason why you shouldn't do it. And in your case, you were kind of lucky because it was fully funded for you, but actually many PhD programs are not fully funded. And then on top of that, even if they are, you can get your funding pulled. And the most ironic thing is the grad school programs that have the most people going to them, aka the ones where you can't really get a job with just a bachelor's degrees, are the ones that take the longest, are the most expensive, and are the least likely for you to get funded. The ones that are actually decent are the ones like engineering, where you're definitely going to get funded. And there's a lot of opportunity for you to advance. And then another thing is a lot of people go into grad school with the purpose of becoming a professor, probably less than 1% of people who go into grad school to get a PhD are actually going to become a professor. So it actually operates very similar to a pyramid scheme. So I could just go on and on about that, but that's not what the video is about. So let's move on to the next question I'm going to ask you, which is you discovered that you don't really want to do the grad school thing and you decided you wanted to discover some other type of option, right? Whether it had to do with your career, that you got a degree in, or maybe something else, how did you discover digital marketing? Well, I'll just put it this way. I knew I wasn't going to get a job with the degree. I got no offense to degrees, but what I realized is that the jobs that pay, the jobs that pay the most, a lot of times you can get in there without having, of course, engineering, doctor, you need to go through proper channels, but the jobs that pay the most for entry level and have given you the most freedom, a lot of times you don't need a degree for them. So what happened was I was in graduate school, I had, I just started thinking and I was looking for things to do. And what was my, I opened it for me is I became an insurance adjuster. So I, this is the first time I got to like travel outside of the state, go talk to different people. See, you did people from different walks of life. What was really shocking is I saw a lot of guys from like, from 27, 23 years old, I'll be up to like 65. All of them were saying the same thing. Man, I did everything I could. This is my last hope. I had, this guy was, he was like an engineer for like, he would do the engineering for the oil rig. So I think oil rigs, I mean, we always want oil. He would always have a job. He says, he would tell me, I just got laid off and I'm running out of money. This is my last hope. Aaron told me I had my degree in this and this is my last hope. So what that communicated to me is that these guys were professionals. They went to college, they did it right. Did the bachelors, they went to masters, got their degrees, went into the right industry that were associated with their degrees. But even though they did all that work, they were in the same position as me who I didn't even, I didn't even graduate yet. I was, it wasn't my last hope, but they're in the same place as me trying to learn something new to change their life. And that's when I realized that the degree is not really what's most important when it comes to your financial success in the future. But it's what you can learn, high income skills, stuff like that. Things that are actually valuable in the marketplace. So when I got back to college, back, went to the university, I was, all these things stuck with me in my mind and I realized, yeah, there's no way I'm going to finish this master's program. So at that point I had to make a decision. Do I want to just try and finish it just to get the degree and the, let's say, the honor that comes with it? Or do I want to just drop out and pursue what I knew would be right? So I decided I was going to drop out. And because of the nature of the research I was doing, there's not a lot of people that could mix chemistry and gardening in that way. So I told my professor that I'm thinking of leaving. Guess what he did? Gave more money. Okay, now I'm making $3 an hour. Big whoop. It's not something I'm not ungrateful, but it looks like more, but when you break it down, that's how much it really is. So yeah, they're paying for your classes. They're paying for your room and board. They're paying for your food. But in terms of like actual spending money, like what you can actually do to get ahead, like saving, yeah, they're not trying to help you. They want you to stay in the system. Like as you said, a pyramid scheme. So then I decided, okay, I'll stay for a little bit more just to make work on finish of the manuscript. I tell them again, I'm going to leave. He gave me more money. And then the third time I decided I'm going to leave, he gave me more money. But after the third time I was like, what am I doing? I'm just going to stay here just because of the money, because they're giving more and more. Do I want to go with what I know is going to be right? So after the third time, he offered more money. Or because I took the first two. But the third time I said, no, it's okay. I'm just going to, I'm done. I'm done. And I just left the program dropped out and started to look for things online at what I can do. And that's where I started looking at like coding. I looked at web development. And then I found Seth's course and I found digital marketing. And of course, I didn't know about it because I was straight out of the master's program. So I didn't really know much about, let's say digital marketing or other opportunities out there. So I decided to take the course, follow the instructions and go step by step and see what could happen. And as I was studying more about how the market is changing to a digital economy, I got more strength into the path that I was choosing. So in the beginning, it was like, I'm leaving my PhD. My master's program, don't know what I'm going to do. But then as I did my research and I started to see more, my eyes opened to the opportunity. And I realized that it was the best decision. So I just continued going forward. Although there was a lot of pressure to just go back as a PhD, it's fully paid. People dream of this position. They don't understand why they don't understand the end result. But once you look at it, leaving, in my opinion, was the best thing that I've done in my entire, one of my biggest, most important decisions I made. So I went to, then I found digital marketing. I went through the course. Still I couldn't apply for a job and got my first job in Atlanta probably about a year later after I left, or about eight months later after I left. Got it. Well, that is an awesome story. And it's one thing when I tell people about the dangers of graduate school, it's a whole other thing when you're hearing it from somebody who I just brought on the channel and just ask a genuine question. So please heed my warning, guys. Please do not make the mistakes that I've seen so many people make with this. It's a trap, right? It's a trap, like the me. It's a trap, okay? Be careful, guys. So thank you for kind of coming on and sharing your story about that. I hope it helps a few people out there who listen. Now, with that being said, let's talk about the course a little bit. So Seth has a digital marketing course. You looked into some other really good options that you mentioned. Web development, software development. There's some other really good options out there as well, web design, tech sales, data analytics, et cetera, other options you can get into without a degree or without any experience. But you settled on digital marketing. And that is something I've noticed is a lot of people do tend to kind of gravitate towards digital marketing. It's one of those that appeals to a lot more people for some reason. And you settled on it. You took Seth's course. So how was the course itself? Marvelous. Seth really set up the course in a way to help the person go from a beginner to let's say high intermediate enough to get a job. And what I liked about the course of that it was step by step. First he talks about the opportunities, which is what you want to hear when you first get into any new field. You want to see what's available at the end for me. Why am I doing this? He breaks it down for SEO, PPC, which is pay-per-click, Google Ads, social media marketing, email marketing. He breaks down what you can make entry level and has a whole chart. So you look at that. So I went through the video, took a lot of notes. Of course, that's from the schooling background. Always taking notes. Don't always need to do that. I had to unlearn a lot of things in graduate school. Let's just put it that way. So I took the course, went through each program, went through each class. And the one thing that I really like about Seth's course is he gives you, tells you what's the opportunity, then he gives you the ability to choose what you want to do. So like he gives you the opportunity to go into PPC, to go into SEO, to go into social media marketing, anything like that. And then one of the most, I think the most pivotal thing about the course is that he also teaches you how to generate your own experience. So like a lot of kids, when they first get out of college, or when your friend didn't get a job, they ask you. Well, you have a good resume, but you don't have the experience. But in Seth's course, he actually teaches you how to generate your own experience. So by the time you go to the job, you have the experience. And that is one thing that is, I would say that's the most important chapter of the course that helps you get the confidence and the experience that helps you land the job. And that's what I did, and it was a blessing. 100% agree. I mean, experience is pretty much everything. Like really when, you know, business owners, hiring managers are thinking about whether they want to hire you for an entry-level job. They're thinking, you know, does this person have the skills? And if they do have the skills, how can they demonstrate that they have the skills? And the best way to demonstrate that you have the skills is experience, right? So definitely highly recommended to figure out some way of getting experience because it is kind of that catch-22 situation where, you know, you need this experience to get the job, but in order to get the experience, you have to get the job. So there is kind of a cheat code to how you can get experience in many cases that Seth shares in the course. I'd like to say that, sorry about that. I'd like to say that also, not only do you just get the experience, but what I've learned being in the industry is that Seth has you put your own money in the game, which is something most marketers have never, most people to have never done, I believe so, but in marketing, most people have never done. So put $100 in Google Ads and see what happens. And what I found is once you put your own money in the game, the learning exponentially increases because it's your own money and you don't want to lose it. And that really, really facilitates tremendous growth. So I put about $100 or $150 into the Google Ads and I was thinking that's at the time, because I was just out of grad, just out of graduate school, didn't really have much saved up. And I was in it, I moved to Atlanta to find a better, take more opportunity. That was a lot of the time at that time. And I was thinking, oh no, I gotta really pay attention. And because of that, I learned a lot. When I went to talk to employers, I could tell them, I started with my own money in the game. No, how they say, what I learned, I learned down in the trenches, stuff like that. Employers love to hear stuff like that. It shows you have the grit to do what is hard and it really helps us. Yeah, that is a great point. And real quick, guys, if you do want to check out, learn more about Seth's course, he does have like a free masterclass. It's about three hours or so. He goes over the different parts of digital marketing. So like pay-per-click, SEM, SEO, social media marketing, all the different parts. And depending on your personality, you might decide to go down one route or the other. And watching that is going to really help you to decide, basically. So I will put that down in the description as well as the pinned comment below, if you want to check it out. And next, let's go ahead and ask about the money, if you don't mind, okay? Not a problem. What would you say you were making for like your first entry-level job if you're comfortable talking about it? And then what was kind of the progression now that you're about four years into your career? So what I can say, entry-level job was like just a little bit over 40K. That's the first job, which is a lot better than most entry-level positions. I tell you, I tell you what. So it was about just a little bit over 40K. What I can say about the transition is once you get in the industry and get your experience or like manage 100 accounts, manage 200 accounts, manage a couple of million dollars in that spin, really it's your choice where you want to go. You either go for the big bucks or you can go for the freedom. I chose the freedom. So when I was in Atlanta, first job, after working there for about a year, I got an opportunity to take a 120K ping job in Atlanta. It was in-house. I would have been in like an actual, like an actual corporation working with them. That's what's called in-house for like one main brand. I had that opportunity or I had the opportunity to work remote for probably a little bit less than half that pay. So that was a big decision. Should I have gone for the 125K per year? I'm going to say just a little bit over 60K per year. Well, this was before the pandemic hit and I decided that I wanted to go for freedom because I realized the importance of having the time to develop yourself and that's when the greatest growth happens. The greatest growth happens when you're, well, in the lab, perhaps there's grad school reference when you're working on yourself or learning new things. That's when you have the greatest growth. So I could have took the 125K job and then it would be comfortable down at Atlanta to make 125 easily down there or take a little bit over 60K and then move to a place that I could have the lifestyle that I wanted to live. So I ended up going to the 60K route and I moved to the mountains of West Virginia. It was middle of the Appalachian so right on the Appalachian trail. So I was making 60K over there. The rent prices are a lot lower than Atlanta. Living a comfortable life went hiking pretty much every day. Did the creeper trail, did the appalach... No, did parts of the Appalachian trail and it was a really good lifestyle living in the mountains there. Then after that I decided because I wanted to get another job and I needed more access to utilities. So it is beautiful like in the middle it's like Damascus, Virginia. However, the internet is very slow with my job I need internet. So I had to look for another place and then I moved to the mountains of East Tennessee and because we're kind of like in a technology corridor because of all the universities over here I get up probably about a thousand megabytes per second internet speed. So compared to Virginia in Damascus area there's 25 megabytes per second and here it's a thousand megabytes. So I made the move down here. Once down here I decided to look for another job and applied and interviewed and then Lord and then was able to land another job that pays over six figures now and it just depends on the choice. So I could have been making over six figures probably two years ago, two and a half years ago but I went the freedom route and that's just not saying there's anything wrong with any route that you take. You could go for the big bucks you could go for the lifestyle and for the lifestyle ended and ended up paying out pretty well right now so I'm very comfortable. And also in terms of what I was going to say do you have something? Oh I was just going to ask is the job you have right now that's over six figures is it also remote? Oh yeah 100% remote. Nice so you got the best of both worlds. Eventually yeah that's right, that's right. That's awesome man, congratulations you're just living the dream right now. Thank you, I have some plans to go overseas I learned another land, I learned Portuguese so maybe Angola, Portugal, Brazil and also I can understand Spanish now which is nice. So just that's why I chose the freedom because when you have the time to work on yourself to think just to think not to be like going eight hours a day maybe like spending two hours a day a few hours a day working remotely where you want to live you can learn another language you can learn another skill you could get into shape do whatever you want I was hiking every single day in Virginia and I like hiking so. Yeah that's awesome and I did forget to ask real quick how long did it take you to get through the course and then after you got through the course how long did it take you to land that first entry level job? So for me to go through the course it took about a month and then together the job only took about probably like a little bit less than a month now that was so let me give a little background to the situation so when I first I had to make a decision either I stayed I lived like real in South Texas really close to the border and there's not a lot of digital at that time there was not a lot of technology technological advancement not a lot of digital marketing jobs so I had to make the choice so I want to stay here and look for the look for the nearest city was San Antonio and there's only about four jobs available so I had to make a choice so I want to stay here and try and get those four jobs in San Antonio or move to Atlanta that has over a thousand opportunities so I moved to Atlanta didn't really have didn't already know I didn't know anybody so it was a little bit tricky trying to find set things up there eventually I found I had like a little negotiation deal to I could stay there if I do some work there and stuff like that and what I would do actually is this is what many people maybe people might not know this part of the story but what I would do is I would go even though I wasn't working I'd treat finishing the course and finding a job was my job so I was probably going I went down to McDonald's for fast internet and I would probably be there from like 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day going through the course doing what he says practicing and applying and if you do it like that of course you could probably finish if you do it like you could probably finish the course within like half a month if you are just watching it but I was watching I wasn't just passively watching it I was actively watching it taking notes planning looking up things who am I going to apply for first re-tearing my resume for the right person so I would say if you're really dedicated you could probably finish the course course in a month and then the next month you could probably get a job that's how it worked for me and of course every experience is going to be different but that's my experience all right well thank you so much for coming on the channel and sharing your story Javier really cool I can relate to your story so much because I've had so many friends who kind of fell into the grad school trap some of them were able to get out of it some of them actually followed it all the way through but I have not heard very many good things about grad school let's just put it that way especially going down like the PhD route if you go for a professional degree that can be a little different because it's like very obvious what job you're going for but going on the PhD route it's rough most people should not do it like I'd say 97 to 99 percent of people should not do it for sure I agree 100 percent yeah very like that really it's definitely you should never do it for the money from a financial perspective it's pretty much never worth it from a you're trying to like move your field forward perspective I guess you can say that it could be worth it for certain people in that situation but from a financial perspective pretty much never going to be worth it from the time that it takes if you get your PhD and then how much you make afterwards it's not going to be worth it but thank you so much for coming on the channel and sharing your story I think this is going to help a lot of people and have a good one thanks for having me and I'm glad hopefully people take advice take that listen to Shane trust me people have been where you're going and people listen to people that have been there and I have the lifestyle you want don't listen to the professors that tell you the PhD is the golden dream trust me