Apprenticeships ‘Better’ than uni/college? 🤔

Are apprenticeships better than going to college or university? Now, I have a very strong and clear opinion on this, and it's not always the most popular, but I was really reading a really fascinating article about a young apprentice who— it's actually National Apprenticeship Week, and I definitely think there needs to be more resources for young— well, all of us actually— for people to become entrepreneurs, to people to— for people to add value and contribute to society and get paid well and not be 25 and 30 and 40 and 50 years old and be drowning in debt. So I definitely think there needs to be, um, some changes in the system. However, let me tell you the story of this um, apprentice for National Apprenticeship Week. Now, by the way, apprenticeships are not just for 19-year-olds. They can be for 40-year-olds or 50-year-olds. So, um, National Apprenticeship Week, a teenager named Joshua Mims, who has started an apprenticeship at an electricity and gas company, he says that being on site and seeing the scale of the work, um, is amazing and incredible. Uh, he also says that, uh, it's much better because it opens a lot of doors for contacts and you get direction and earning capacity when you don't know what you want to do. So one of the big problems with college or uni is it's often too early to know what you want to do with your life. So by the way, let me know in the comments if you went to college or university. I did, but at age 17 and 18, all I knew is that I wanted to drink and I wanted to date. That was all I knew about life. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but it was almost like at age 17, you know, you go to careers advice at school and, you know, sixth form college, and if you're smart, you go to uni. And but I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I probably didn't know what I wanted to do till I was 25. So the problem is we're asked to know what we want to do with our lives really early in our life, but then it can— we can end up being 50, 100,000 in debt in 10 or 20 years' time. So might it not be a good idea to go to get some work experience, try 2 or 3 different companies and vocations, learn while you earn and earn while you learn and then try things out. Because when you commit to going to university, you commit to getting into debt for 20 or 30 or 40 years, and you commit to doing one subject and you don't even know if you would like it. So, you know, people say to me, oh Rob, you shouldn't regret going to university. It was, you know, really good education. It's a social environment. But I came out with nearly £50,000 in debt. In credit cards and loans, etc., paying for the halls of residence and obviously the education. And I've done nothing with my degree. I got a degree in architecture. Most people don't know that. Why? Because it was completely useless for me, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I'd committed. And so if you commit and you get yourself into all that debt, you can't change your mind. Whereas if you do an apprenticeship for 6 months and you're absolutely sure that's not right for you, you can go and get another one and another one. and you can try 2 or 3 different careers or vocations until you found the right one for you. Now, some people don't find their vocation of passion until they're 40 or 50 or 60, but why would you want to be £100,000 plus in debt until that point? So let me know what you think in the comments, by the way. Okay, so this young lad, Joshua Mims, 19 years old, doing an apprenticeship, said, uh, it's much better to have an apprenticeship because you can, you can get paid well to learn and you can get many doors and contacts opened. Now, a lot of his friends go to uni. He says uni's great, but you come out with masses of debt going to uni. You have a complete lack of, um, experience for work. Apprenticeship teaches you the value of money. It teaches you how to get a job properly, uh, and it makes you grow up a lot more than uni. I don't think I grew up at uni. I think I grew down at university. So please let me know what you think about this. Now here's my opinion, and I think it's important to share this content because I think there's a lot of people lost in life. I think there's a lot of people don't know what they want to do. I think there's a lot of people caught in the system. I think there's a lot of people who have that paradox between how much they should educate themselves and, and whether they should work. I think lots of people would love to start a business but don't have the confidence, etc. So this content is important So if you wouldn't mind, please do share it. My view is this: if you absolutely know by age 18 or 22 or whenever you're going to go and study what it is you want to do with your life and uni can teach it, going to uni should be good for you. But I don't— I think that's a smaller than a larger percentage of people. If you do not know what you do— what you want to do with your life and you're nowhere near it, I believe going and working for an entrepreneur and trying one or two different apprenticeships or working for different companies, even if you have to start at the bottom as the apprentice, I think that will cost you loads less money. I think it will leave you way less in debt. And then some— because sometimes you have to try a few things before you know what you want. Um, have you ever dated and then realized, I don't want to marry that person? And then you've dated again and you realize, I don't want to marry that person. Look, you know, if If you had to contractually be hundreds of thousands in debt going on your first date in your first relationship, you probably wouldn't do it. You need to try things first. So, um, if you do not know what you want to do with your life, go and try some stuff. Go and work for some entrepreneurs. If you want to be an entrepreneur, I don't think that's taught at uni very well. I really don't. Like, I know so many hundred millionaires or billionaires that actually either didn't go to— in the school system at all, like got kicked out of school, or really didn't feel that university education was what helped them be an entrepreneur. So if you want to be an entrepreneur and have a side hustle, I think actually mostly university won't help. Now, if you do business studies or if you do economics, then that could help. So, you know, that's just something to think about. But what it might be wise to do is go and study something like business or economics and then do your side hustle on the side. So my business partner used to do that. He went to university and got a degree in economics, then he got on a work apprentice scheme, if you like, after uni, and he did his side hustle selling DVDs and running little businesses on the side. I thought that was really smart. So yeah, please let me know in the comments what you think of this. Someone's just said they did an apprenticeship in construction, so they go and work on the tools for a bit in construction, and then they learn how to run their own construction firm. Surely learning how to run a construction firm is going to be way quicker, easier, and better if you go and work on site and work your way up, as opposed to learning theory of construction at university. Do you know the founder of— sorry, the CEO, the top guy in Tesco started stacking the shelves, Terry Leahy, and then he moved his way up and up and up and up until essentially he was the top dog in the company. Now you're probably not going to be able to get there without going through the ranks, you know. I thought that was a really smart way to do it. So look, if you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, go to a good uni and get a good degree, because that's how you become a doctor or a lawyer. But that's the system, you know, more the public sector system, whereas the private sector system I just don't think school and college is set up and built for that. Now, many parents want their children to go to uni, but why? So they can say, my son went to Oxford, my son got a first in law. But what if your son doesn't want to go to Oxford and your daughter doesn't want to get a degree in law? So I would definitely say be very careful how you project onto your kids. And surely what you want to give your kids is resourcefulness. You know, what's more important for your kids? Um, having a degree in one subject learned in a sausage machine recital system, i.e., memory recall, or being resourceful, being able to sell, being on the street, being out of hustle? What's more important? So you understand here, I knew someone who studied law, then became a lawyer, then left to be an entrepreneur. And it probably took 7 to 10 years to study to be a lawyer, and then 15 to 20 to earn any half-decent money. Okay, so if you want to be an entrepreneur— I— many people don't talk about this because, you know, I was encouraging people to start their business if, you know, they want to be an entrepreneur. Do you know a great halfway house to start your business is go and work for an entrepreneur? So there are official apprentice schemes which can be really useful, like this chap Joshua Mims did an electricity— electricity and gas utility apprenticeship. That's an official apprenticeship. And that's one good way. But you can get an unofficial apprenticeship by going and working for an entrepreneur. And that's what I did in 2006. And, you know, most of you can do that. You can go and work for a small to medium-sized firm where you might get a little bit of access to the entrepreneur. You can work your way up. You can start on telesales and work your way up the company. And you're going to work your way up a company much quicker if you work in a small to medium-sized firm that is owned by an entrepreneur. And you can learn while you earn. And then maybe, you you know, in the future you're ready to start your own business and you do your side hustle on the side. So let me know your thoughts on this subject. Um, please hit the share button because I think there's a lot of lost people who don't know what they want to do, uh, yet the schooling system is somewhat forcing them down a road they don't want to be down. Also, I strongly believe that you should not be 25 years old and £100,000 in debt to study something that you don't even know you want to do because the system tells you that's the right thing to to do. To me, that's almost a scam. Almost. So, you know, I shouldn't have gone to uni. Here's why. And people say, Rob, but you know, you've got a degree in architecture and you're in real estate. I've never used it. The reason I should not have gone to uni is because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and I was nowhere near that. And yet I got myself 50 grand in debt in a 3-year degree with the halls of residence and the education and everything else. And so then, then I'm sort of, you know, tied from the start because I've got to pay all this debt back first, which can take your whole life. Now, by the way, I have a podcast called Disruptors. It used to be called Disruptive Entrepreneur. Disruptors, formerly known as Disruptive Entrepreneur. So if you want to be a start or a scale-up entrepreneur, if you want to build your side hustle, and if you want to learn from 100 millionaires 500 millionaires and billionaires. If you go to robmoore.com/pod— robmoore.com/pod— I've actually got some gifts waiting for you there to celebrate the 6-year anniversary of my podcast, and you can gain access to my Disruptors Podcast. If you're a bit unsure of your career and where you want to go, whether you're 25 45 or 65, it doesn't really matter, then I would definitely catch up with some episodes of the Disruptors podcast because I think it could really help you. You'll see the gifts on the page, robmoore.com/pod. If you want to start a scale of business, those gifts and resources, there's 4 of them on that page, will really help you. And then on the thank you page, you just get the links to subscribe to the Disruptive Entrepreneur, formerly now known as Disruptors. There's 800 episodes and there's so much content on starting and scaling your business and getting better financial education and knowledge. The world has changed, parents. Just need to let you know that. And 20 years ago, you know, if you were relatively well educated, you'd get a degree and then you would form a good career. The world has changed, and now there are teenagers earning millions on YouTube, and there are people in their early, early 20s billionaires from Bitcoin. And this stuff is not— YouTube and Bitcoin is not taught at university. But people really don't talk about the shame behind going to university, which is the vast amount of debt that you can get in and how you can get trapped and locked into the system and basically become a trapped taxpayer. And you don't want that. So please hit the share button. And many of you are saying, I'm going to share this with my, um, teenage children, um, because I just think we need to get this out a bit more. Now here's the thing. If you go to uni and you don't know where you want to go, you know, what you want to do with your life, if you quit, that's going to cost you. It's going to cost you money and loads, loads of wasted time. If you go get an apprenticeship or work for an entrepreneur for 6 or 12 months and it doesn't work out and you quit, it's not going to cost you. You've got some experience, you've earned a bit of money, you work out what you don't want to do, you've got something on your CV, and then you can go and get the next role. So it's much less risk to to change your mind when you're actually working in an apprenticeship or for an entrepreneur than it is to quit a degree. Because, you know, it looks really bad to quit your degree on a CV, but getting another job is all part of having a CV. So you've got to think about this. So let me do a quick summary. So there's a young lad, there's just been an article on him because it's National Apprenticeship Week, and his name's Joshua Mims, and he started an apprenticeship an electricity and gas company. And he said being on site and seeing, you know, how this business works, construction and utility, is so exciting, amazing, and incredible. He's learning project management. He said it's much better to be an apprentice because you open doors and get contacts. And he says it's a lot of fun and he gets paid to learn. Now here's the thing, when you are an apprentice or you're working for an entrepreneur, you get paid to learn, whereas at university you get in debt to learn. What would you rather do, get paid to learn or get into debt to learn? Would you rather get into debt to learn or earn while you learn? So something to think about. He said many of his friends go to uni, but, um, it's great and fun, but you come out with debt, you lack experience. Apprenticeship teaches you about the value and the management of money. It teaches you how to get a proper job, because a load of people go to uni and come back and can't get a job because it's almost like they're institutionalized into uni and they're actually not in the real world. You know, if I had a CV and I saw someone who'd just come out of uni or someone who's got 3 years' work experience in the role I'm hiring, I'm probably taking the work— the guy with work experience or the girl with work experience than the youth, the fresh out of uni. I think that's why a lot of people struggle to get jobs out of uni, because they haven't got practical on-the-ground experience. And he reckons it makes you grow up a lot quicker when you're actually working. You know, you've got bosses, there's consequences of you know, mistakes, etc. So I say this: you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, you've probably got to go to uni, but only if you know you want to be one. If you think you want to be one, why don't you get an apprenticeship at a law firm? Why don't you do that for a year and see? Earn while you learn and learn while you earn and actually know if it's what you want to do. In many ways, going to university is too early. I get that, you know, you finish school, you go and you get a degree And I get that it needs to be at the time when you're sort of self-sufficient, which might be 18 to 21. But many people don't know what they want to do until they're 25 or 30. And, and so then you feel forced into a system and you feel forced to, to choose a vocation when you're not ready. So in many ways it's too early. So get an apprenticeship, go and work for an entrepreneur, learn while you earn and earn while you learn. Here's the irony as well. I don't know about you. By the way, did you go to uni? Let me know in the comments if you went to uni. My tutor didn't even have a practicing— wasn't a practicing architect. He didn't have an architect's practice. He was just a theorist. He wasn't practicing what he preaches. So imagine you went to the doctor and he says, "You need surgery. I'm going to give you emergency surgery." And you said to him, "Have you ever done surgery?" And he went, "No, but I've read some books on it. Here's the knife. Are you ready?" You'd be like, 'Piss off!' But a lot of tutors at uni aren't practicing what they do. They're not doing it for a living. They're tutoring for a living. And you get masses in debt, and then you're in the school system, and then you essentially become, you know, a forced taxpayer. We need more entrepreneurs in the world. Entrepreneurs start and scale businesses. They change the world. They create useful products and services. They solve all the world's problems, and they hire and create all the jobs, and they pay the public sector, and they fund the tax revenue and the running of the government. We need more of these people. So by the way, I'm always open for apprenticeships in my company. So, you know, if you do want an apprenticeship in being an entrepreneur or a property investor, um, DM me. We're always open to those applications. We try and be, um, you know, give as many opportunities as possible. And if you want to continue to educate yourself on start and scale up entrepreneurship um, getting better financial education and knowledge rather than getting £100 grand in debt going to uni, just subscribe to my podcast. It'll always be free. robmoore.com/pod. robmoore.com/pod, as in podcast. I've got some gifts for you there, by the way. Um, I'm celebrating the 6-year anniversary of my podcast, The Disruptive Entrepreneur, now known as Disruptors. Uh, and if you want to be a startup scale-up entrepreneur, those gifts and resources are going to be really useful for you. Take my word for it, go check them out. Um, I spent a long time creating them. Uh, and also on the thank you page of robmoore.com/pod, you'll see there links to subscribe on iTunes or non-Apple devices, always free. Uh, and look, I think that, um, we're in this very disruptive time where there's these young hustlers setting up businesses and making a load of money, and there's these kind of people getting left behind, more traditional kind of workers or small business owners. And, you know, they're getting evolved out. You know, if you've got a local retail business or if you're just, you know, working in a, you know, in a traditional company, your career's big time at risk. So now is the The Age for Entrepreneurship, for doing your side hustle, for creating multiple streams of income, for building digital assets. And you know, a lot of that content you can get at robmoore.com/pod. Thanks for tuning in, you legends. And remember, if you don't risk getting