How To Make 6 Figures Without A College Degree (A Tech CEO's Opinion)

Hey guys, it's Eric Siu here, and today we are going to talk about how you can get a 6-figure job, 6 figures, without a college degree. And this is coming from a tech CEO's perspective. So let's talk about this, because growing up, your parents always teach you, hey, you know, it's great, it's important to have a 6-figure job, and you're gonna have security there, you can take care of your family and all that. So it's been kind of implanted into our head. And, you know, we can debate whether 6 figures is good enough, maybe in another video. But today I'm gonna talk about how you can do it without a college degree. And just for some context for, you know, some of the companies that I have, you know, we do hire people with no college degrees. In fact, when I look at resumes, I don't really look at the college degree. I may be like, oh, you know, that's nice, or I might just gloss over it. I don't really pay attention to it. My parents try to make the argument that the college degree got my foot in the door. To be honest, I came out of college, you know, when it was the great financial crisis, and I— the best job I could get was almost like a minimum wage type of job. It was actually— I didn't need college for that. My parents continue to try to argue that today. Now, depending on when you're watching this, at least in 2020, you know, times are gonna be tough, especially if you're coming out of college, or if you're around the college age and you don't have a degree, which is why you're watching this video in the first place. So if you have no degree in the first place, you want a 6-figure job, and you think all hope is lost, I'm here to assure you that that is not the case, because I didn't do well in college. In fact, I almost dropped out of high school, and I almost dropped out of college. All right. So my whole thinking is if you can do it, if I can do it, you can do it. And again, we hire people with no degrees in some cases, but we just, we're very careful about how we vet people. All right? So how do you get that job exactly? A 6-figure job. The most important thing with no degree, the first thing is you have to think about how you can get a 5-figure job. How can you get your foot in the door? And what I've done in the past historically for people that I've wanted to work for is I've offered to work for them for free. I'll say, hey, look, I got all these insights for your business. I studied your website. Do you want me to just do it for you? And they'll say yes or no. I mean, like, okay, sure, I'll do it for you. But at the end of this, I do want to talk about if we can, you know, potentially work together longer if you like the work. Because a lot of these people, they're busy and they want people to take the load off their shoulders. And they're also gonna be flattered by the fact that you did work ahead of time and you actually showed that you cared about their business. So we had a lot of people, we still continue to have a lot of people that will work for us for free initially, and then it might become a full-time engagement, right? So that's what you want to do. Maybe foot in the door first, You might get an internship, and then you might get a five-figure job, and you're kind of you know you're climbing the ladder at that point. Now, what do you do after? So when I think about people that come and work for that come work for me, there's there's there's three different types of people ultimately. Now, the type one would be they need they need you to tell them what to do. All right. So this is how I'm looking at them. Like you know, there's employees that need to be told what to do. Okay. So that's type one. Type 2 is they'll point out problems, all right? So they'll point out problems, but they're not exactly gonna solve the problem, okay? So that's Type 2. Type 3 is they point out the problem and they come up with a solution, okay? Maybe there's even a Type 4. A Type 4 would be they come up with the problem, they come up with ideas to solve the problems with a solution, and then they volunteer to solve the problem. That's truly taking things off your plate. So you wanna talk about someone that is Probably like a C player, that's type 1. They need to be told what to do all the time, okay? And then maybe a B player might be someone that, you know, points out a problem. Maybe it's a B- player, they point out problems. So they're aware of what's going on. And then you have people that will come up with the problem and then they'll come up with the ideas, but they won't actually do the work. So maybe that's, you know, that's still probably around the same range, right? But an A player will actually solve problems. You are looking for problem solvers. So if you are a problem solver for an organization that's doing pretty well and your managers see it and they constantly see you as an asset and they see you as someone that is constantly taking things off their plate and it just feels like, you know, when you work with them, you know, these types of people, they give you energy. They feel like you feel relief working around them. It's not anxiety, right? It's relief in a good way. It's like, man, I know this person is gonna be on top of it. I know I don't need to look behind my shoulders. I know they're gonna be a force multiplier, okay? So this is why, you know, VPs of marketing or, you know, SVPs, CMOs, they get paid the big bucks. We're talking a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Because they will come in, they know the problem, they have solutions in mind, and then they will solve things. Not only that, they know the other people to hire, they have a Rolodex of people to hire. They will hire these people so you get even more leverage. Not only do you hire one great person, you get a bunch of other people that would love to join this person. So it shows this person has good character, this person has good relationships, Building skills. This person is a leader. The only way to build leverage in a company is to hire other people, right? So how do you think these people get up to SVP, CMO level roles, right? They they know how to build relationships again, and they know how to play the game ultimately, right? And the game is solve problems. It's it's simple enough. The Elon Musk has said this, right? You are paid directly in proportion to the level of problems that you solve. I'm paraphrasing. So If you think, you know, you're doing a job and you're being told what to do all the time and you deserve to be paid 6 figures, that is not the right way to look at it. This is why I'm saying you don't need a college degree to get paid 6 figures, okay? Even like when you're trying to think about going 7 figures, you gotta go beyond that. You gotta be— I just talked about the CMO, SVP level type people. You gotta be like that, but you gotta be even greater than that, okay? So I think it should be— for most people that are watching this, you probably have the potential to make 6 figures. You just might not have taken the actions necessary to get to that point yet, but I'm just telling you. Solve problems better than the other person. Okay, if you don't know how to solve the problems, go learn how to solve the problems. Look, ask questions. Okay, I can say it's easy to go get a mentor, but you keep asking questions, you get good at what you're doing. You're you know outside people, other people that are successful will become interested in you, and they might want to mentor you. Right? So there's talking about learning. There's talking about maybe potentially getting a mentor. There's talking about you know volunteering to go solve problems, and sometimes you might not necessarily be ready to solve the problem, but. Your manager knows that you have the potential to do it, and maybe you might not be ready right now to solve the problem, but they know as you go through the exercise, maybe if they give you that assignment, they know that you're gonna get through it, right? That's how you advance up the rankings, up the ladder really, really quickly. And people, by the way, people will notice that when— that you are getting better at problem solving, okay? People notice when people are B players, C players, D players, A players, F players, okay? It's very easy to notice. Especially in a small organization. So, these are just a couple things that you need to do to get that 6-figure job without a college degree. No degree required, okay? I think my college degree is worthless, okay? And I think I went to a pretty decent school. So, I'm just telling you, you don't need it, I think you can do it. The fact that you're watching this right now means you can do it. It doesn't matter what age you are right now, it's gonna take you some time, you know, for some people, gonna take you a little more time, gonna take you some more actions to get there. All you gotta do is take small little actions day by day by day. You should be able to get to 6 figures. And then I'm gonna make another video on how you can get a 7-figure degree with— or 7-figure job with no degree. All right, let me know in the comments what you think about this. If you actually want me to make that video, don't forget to hit the like button and the subscribe button. And if you're coming from podcast, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us grow, and we will see you tomorrow. Peace.