Reinvention Through Education in the Age of AI | The FYM Show

And we are back with another episode of the FYM Show with Ty and Yo. That's my man Ty. I'm Yo. And today we will be discussing reinvention through education. Now, this idea came through Ty. Now, Ty, what is it about that title, Reinvention Through Education, that you would like to kind of expound upon before we jumped into the, the actual episode? But like, kind of explain that title and why it came to mind.

Um, I think that it's important to note that there's a lot of competition in the professional work world, in the work ecosystem. And here in the United States of America, besides practical experience, having an education is kind of like the X factor in a lot of ways where people won't even take you serious if you don't have like an education, right? So you can be at a job, been at that job for 10 years, and you won't get to the highest clip of performance no matter what your results are if you don't have a degree, right? Unless you're the founder of the, of the company, or let's say you in a high-level sales position where you just bringing a lot of money.

Yes.

But, but practically, a lot of those roles, you can't have upward mobility if you don't almost go back to school. I've been hearing multiple people in their late 30s, early 40s going back to school so that they can actually go deeper in their current professions. But then you have people that actually have their degrees from an undergrad perspective, wants to pivot into another career, and then they go and go into a master's program that can probably help them You know, have more of those, I guess you would say accolades to speak towards those different things. I had to do it to get my NFL certification. I had to go back and get my master's, something that I didn't really foresee happening, but you know, it happened because I needed to accomplish a goal that I desired, right? And so reinvention through education is, I think, something that is evergreen topic that happens to so many different people and just wanting to sit down today and have a dialogue around it.

Now, Ty, do you have any tips for business owners and entrepreneurs who have a business that's running fairly well that requires a lot of their time, but they also know that they need to go back to school to extend their education to improve their business? Like, what did you do in your time to build the discipline so that you could do that and continue to run your business properly?

Well, I had a kind of like an unfair advantage because I got back into my master's program the summer of 2019, May 2019. And, um, I was one year in, and when April— when March hit, COVID hit.

Mm-hmm.

So I had an opportunity to say, you know what? Nobody's really paying attention now. People are panicking. Let me dive heavier into my master's degree because it was all online classes anyway. So half of the time from pretty much May 2020, To about almost May 2021, it was like fighting. People don't know what was going on. The bubble was happening, COVID. When did that— when is the, the shot gonna come out? Like, it was a lot of uncertainty.

Yeah, yeah.

So during that uncertainty, I took advantage of that time to get my, get my second degree.

And wow.

So that's why I say I had kind of like an unorthodox advantage because who knows when the next pandemic is going to happen, which we hope no, never.

Never, hopefully.

But that was when I took the time out to really dial in and get that degree done.

But if you had to do it today, 2026, going back to get your degree, would you still kind of do the same thing that you did on your last run or do you feel like you would've had to apply a different set of kind of boundaries for you to do it properly?

Um, I do think there was going to be boundaries that you need and a certain level of discipline that you need. Um, depending on where you live at, sometimes going in person is a better experience because you can actually interact with people and get that, that college experience. Um, but then on the flip side of it, going online, you can kind of work during the day, get all your work done during the night, or work all your homework in the day and then get all your homework done and do all your professional work at night. Um, but I, but I do think that it is very, very, um, realistic to do it now. It's just the cost. That's why you have to be able to say, okay, I'm in the—

Okay.

I gotta go to the local state to try to get in-state tuition. You know, type of, type of things, because I was fortunate enough to be able to pay for my, um, my master's degree out of pocket. And so I was able to like make payments quarterly over, over a 2-year period. So from May '19 to May '21, I was able to pay as I went, right?

Yeah.

And so Um, you know, not everybody is fortunate to do that, uh, but, you know, that was one of the things I, I made my investment into that. I didn't really go, you know, and buy a Rolex or a lot, all of those different things. I spent about, I think it was either between the $20,000 or $20,000 or $25,000 to get a degree. Um, I can't remember because they was taking it in payments.

Got you.

I can't remember the exact number.

So your education was definitely an investment that you had to not just make with your time, but it was also a financial investment.

Absolutely. I mean, I have 3 NFL clients right now because I, I had to go and get that degree, you know what I'm saying? And it wasn't— no, it wasn't— it was a way around. The way around it was if you got 7 years of experience negotiating contracts and you haven't went to school, then they'll bypass the, the requirement of needing a secondary education. But when I was doing the math, I'm like, why would I spend 7 years when I just spent 2 years getting a degree, have my, have my, have my certification, you know? So when I read that, I was like, oh, it's 2019. I just finished the degree 2021, and then I had my certification by 2000 October 2023, right?

But 7 years of negotiating contracts in the NFL, not just negotiating contracts outside in other industries.

I didn't even— I didn't even try to dive in to try to figure it out because I was like, how am I going to prove it? You know what I'm saying? It hasn't been at a, at a big firm because, you know, you got firms that, you know, CAA and the Wassermans of the world and W.W. Williams and Morris, where you can work there, you know what I'm saying? You can have people apply, you can have people that's like saying, hey, this person been here for this amount of time. I didn't have all of that, so I was like, man, let me just go. I got these 2 years, bang it out. Boom.

Got you.

Agree.

And then you move. I mean, that makes a lot of sense, especially because that's what you wanted to do. You wanted to get your certification, you wanted to be an agent. But let's just say you want to go back to school to make more money, right? But at the same time, there's a lot of conversation that like AI sort of supplements the need to get further education and it's going to support you without needing to go back to school. How do you speak to someone that's considering going back to school but also thinking like, what if I could just get AI to help me? do what I need to do and not spend that time in that money?

Um, I mean, I think that the money is always going to be a, a pain point, you know, because you can always be like, well, I can just put that money in the market, right? Or I can, you know— so I think that you really have to put a lot of thought into it not to go into debt. Um, if I would have went into debt, I don't think I'd have went back. It could have been one of the things where I had to get it a degree, like a loan or something, I don't think I would've went back because I'd have been like, man, I, I think I want to just get the best experience out of life today. And before I go into debt, uh, I was already in debt for my first degree, right?

Yeah.

I didn't— I wasn't able, blessed to get myself out of that debt until, you know, April of 2023, right? So I'd have had Oh, wow. Another loan of debt. I would've had that debt on top of it, and I was already in payments forbearance and stuff. I can't afford this. So it was one of them things where I was like, nah, I can pay this. Let me take my time. I was willing to do it for 3 years to just stretch it out from a financial perspective. So I would say that You just got to know where you're at in the world and in the market and what your potential role is, um, and what you're going to be learning about. If there's a new frontier happening called AI and going to school to be more informed about AI, it just puts you in a better position from a human asset, uh, perspective as a, as a somebody that's going to be able to come in and, and fill in some of those new roles that AI is going to create, because AI is going to create new jobs and new job functions and new job titles, you know what I'm saying? And if you don't believe that, then you didn't see the dot-com boom. The dot-com boom, internet came and it created social media marketer. Yeah, you know what I'm saying?

Did not exist. Didn't exist.

You know what I'm saying? Um, and so I think that there's gonna be, you know, like influencers that like, yeah, you can say that is it, but that didn't exist, you know, before the internet. Um, you know, uh, like the classes, right? People, people like these, these, these packages where they just can sell you a template, right? Before you had to go and get a consultant with somebody in person and kind of deal with it, right?

Yeah.

And so Um, radio shows existed but not podcasting, right?

Yeah.

So I think with AI, you're gonna have human specialists. That's going to be a different type of customer service. Now, I think that AI is still gonna be embedded in customer service, but I think there's gonna be a, I guess you would say, a separate Right. There's going to be a shepherd that understands how AI works that can actually fix things when AI malfunctions or AI starts hallucinating. Right.

Yes.

They're going to be able to fix those things. You're going to have— there's going to be managers. There's going to be AI managers. There's going to be human AI managers that are overseeing AI agents that's going to be able to say, hey, that AI agent is malfunctioning, right? You know, there's going to be humans that's going to be over the robots that the AIs are controlling, right? And so there's going to be an explosion of new jobs. We just don't know what all this really looks— we don't really know what all this is going to look like right now, you know what I'm saying?

Not quite. And I, I don't disagree. I guess what I'm saying is, what if your job, or what if your business has not implemented AI yet, but the, the future kind of says that AI is going to be a big component of your business in the future? Would you still go back to school and get certificates or get more knowledge about your business that does not have to do with AI just yet, right?

Oh, Yeah, absolutely. Because every business has something to do with AI, because every business needs operations. And AI can help you scale your operations in a different way. So no matter what you do, no matter if you're a bricklayer, no matter if you're a gamer, no matter if you shoot bow and arrows, no matter if you play tennis, you know what I'm saying? AI is going to insert, it's going to be inserted into your business.

Mm-hmm.

So you better, you got to, it's just like software. It is software. It is intelligent software.

The most intelligent. Yeah, yeah.

You know, AI is gonna go through— you're gonna— it ain't gonna be no more Auto-Tune. AI gonna come through there and just make it so that you just— yeah, as soon as you're perfect, like everybody pitch perfect. Yeah, it ain't gonna even tell until it's time for them to perform live. Yeah, by that time the technology been infused into plugins in your microphone.

It's in my Now that's gonna be scary, but I feel you. I feel you. Uh, I think it's— I read somewhere that, like, the era of reading is over, that people won't need to read anymore, right?

I think reading is gonna be so interesting. People that use AI to just read for them is gonna be next. Like, there's so many gems. Like, I'm reading this book right now called The, um, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, if I'm not mistaken. Okay, it's a small read, but I'm taking my time reading it, digesting all of it. But like, yeah, the AI gonna read it and give me synthesized notes, but it's not the same experience, not if I'm trying to learn.

So that's what I'm saying, Ty. They're saying that folks won't need to read no more. And I feel like if you say that and you promote that and you push that, that also says that people won't need to be educated in the way that we kind of know education to be. You know, the new education might be a very quick summary version of a book. It won't be reading the whole book. You know.

You take, you take yourself out here and you stop reading books, I'm gonna run circles around you. Because I'm gonna still read the books while using AI. You know what I'm saying? I'm gonna still read the books while using AI because me reading the books, that means that my prompt's gonna be better than yours. Hey, my prompt's gonna be better than yours because I'm getting knowledge that AI can't provide me to develop prompts and ideas. So like, I've I'm fully invested into AI when it comes to like the true, the true multitasker. I have AI doing 5 different things.

Yeah.

While I'm reading the Bible, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Then when I finish, I look up, them 5 things have been done. Now I gotta judge it, right? But the AI is never gonna have better ideas than me. Never. My ideas come from the Lord, and they're never gonna have better ideas than me. They're gonna get trained off of the ideas that, that comes from a spiritual place, from a creative place. They're gonna get trained. They're gonna consistently get trained on these new fresh ideas that humans come up with.

I don't disagree with you, but tell me When it comes time for you to kind of judge what your AI has done based on your prompts, how do you decide what is proper and what's not?

What do you mean what's proper and what's not?

Like when you were judging your AI, right? Like it's giving you all this information based on what you prompted it to give you, but like what are you judging it based off of? Are you judging it based off the quality of the output? Are you judging it based off of like how successful it I guess conceptualize what you asked of it. Like, what is your way of critically thinking about what's been returned to you from your AI?

I just need it to be functional, right? So if I need to put together a template for a contract and I don't want to pay a lawyer $1,000, I need this contract to be functional.

Gotcha.

It needs to be simple. I need to be— I, I need AI to take things that are complex and simplify it. Complexity is designed to confuse people. It's designed to charge people more money. So if I can remove complexity out of my day-to-day operations, especially in the music space, I just feel a lot more comfortable with what I can produce. If a person said they need a contract for this and I have the framework for the contract, I can get them the contract in less than 30 minutes.

Got you, got you. I thought about, uh, An educator that I know, an English teacher, 9th grade English teacher, and he can tell when his students have done their homework with AI. But it's because the kids aren't editing the AI. They're just copying and pasting what the prompt was, whatever they asked AI to do, they copy and paste it. And he's like, I didn't teach you how to do em dashes. Like, why you got em dashes in your homework? But I guess that's the thing about like the judgment side of things. Because I think he's like upset that the kids are using AI, but he's more upset that they don't even know how to make it their homework. You don't even know how to do your homework.

Right, right, right. Yeah, like it's like for, for me, like when I think about AI and what it drives, it drives— for me, it drives freedom. Freedom from the nuances of these little things that just takes too much time. Right.

Yeah.

But when I think about like my creative work, like if I had— if I'm in school, I have to learn the information. It's going to bother me.

It will.

It's going to bother me. Like if I can't read the homework that I turn in and understand it, it's going to bother me. I'm not going to be able to just turn it in and be like, Even before AI, I got through college by just doing Cliff Notes, but I could understand it enough to pass the test. But for AI to just put together complex formulas and then I look at it and be like, I don't know what that means, but I'm gonna turn it in, that ain't gonna work for me. It's not gonna work for me.

I think that's what we gotta kind of encourage young students to understand that, like, All because it can do something for you does not mean you know what it is. Like, knowing what it is is education. Turning in your homework because someone else did it is not education.

That's just getting, you know, box checked, just checking the box.

But I guess that's why the concern about college is that one, students are going to college and not necessarily learning because they're taking whatever is being asked of them and they're putting it through. A computer and turning that in.

Who cares? They paying for this. If you go to college and you pay to go to college and then you, you pay for your AI subscription, you just let your AI do work. Do like— you're not gonna be able to survive in the real world if you're not learning these things, unless you're just trying to get a degree for vanity. Say, A Ben degree.

But that's a good point. Like, why are you getting educated for, right? What are you there for if you're going to—

if you're going to pay for your tuition to go and just use AI every day to do your homework, bro? What are you—

Hey man, listen, there's been a lot of articles, a lot of essays have came out about the students, modern-day students And how they've been participating in their education, and they've been participating with artificial intelligence, you know.

Listen, I, I mean, I get it. It's a quicker way to get the work done without having to hold accountability on it. But you're gonna get a job, you're gonna get a job off of that faulty degree, and there's going to be somebody else that got that same— that's going to be in the run for that same job, and their degree is not going to be faulty, and they're going to be able to recall The things that they have learned in school, they're going to be able to like outpace you, outsmart you, because you did not develop a work ethic because AI did all your homework.

But also, that's like the benefit side of going back to school because it does help you kind of fine-tune and develop those skills that you need outside the classroom, outside those calls, outside those Zooms, outside those, you know, whatever the online programs are, you're still building skills, you know, even if it's not building it at the job.

Right, right.

So I think this is a great conversation for our students, for our teachers, for our educators, and just for the benefits of education, because you pretty much said that education can be very transformative. Uh, depending on where you're trying to go, even in the age of artificial intelligence.

Absolutely, I believe it. Um, and I think some of these teachers gonna be using AI to, to, to, to grade their papers, you know what I'm saying?

Absolutely, absolutely. But I think obviously—

It's not old, bro. They do machine grading for the SATs and ACTs, um, uh, Standardized tests with the— what's the name of the, the things you just, uh, Scantrons?

Um, yeah, Scantron. Yeah, you just, uh, answer multiple choice questions. Yeah, yeah.

Machine grading, bro. This, uh, teachers ain't gonna do it but keep using AI to grade their pages so they don't have to work as hard. Everybody's using AI so they don't have to work as hard, but you gotta remember that you gotta still not get yourself priced out. You gotta get the information.

Mm-hmm.

Like, you don't wanna work as hard. Like, I don't wanna work as hard doing stuff that's nuances, but I still wanna grow. You know what I'm saying? I don't want AI just doing everything for me. Now I don't have no excitement of things that I look forward to. You know what I'm saying? Like, I look forward to writing, you know, ideas, but I'll use AI to grammar check for me because I don't always be best at my grammatic errors. So I'll say, hey, can you grammar check this for me? But not, can you just do all the work and then I like take credit for it? Like, it doesn't make sense. Well, it makes sense, it's just something that, that I can do, you know what I'm saying?

But you know, I do think when you understand how you're trying to grow, it puts you on a completely different pace than someone who's just trying to get out the classroom. Yeah, you know, not everybody trying to be in the classroom. Maybe they have other talents, they have other skills, but I do think if you are enrolled, it's to grow, and this is how you can grow properly with the use of artificial intelligence. So I ain't mad at you, Ty. Um, anything, anything else you want to add before we get up out of here?

Uh, nah, man. I mean, you know, transform yourself, stay getting educated. Um, you don't have to go to no— you don't have to go sit in no classroom to get educated. There are sites like EducationX— they call it edX— where you can go, you can take classes from Harvard, you take classes from Oxford, you can take classes from University of Maryland, you take classes from all these institutions through this platform. And it's not the only platform. And you pay $500 a class or $1,000 a class, and you're able to learn from institutions that very, very, very, um, uh, uh, significant and important and valid, you know.

Yeah.

And I think that, you know, when it's all said and done, you got to know what you want to do and how you want to do it. But you can't pimp yourself out of like real growth and real education because you're using a bunch of shortcuts. AI is a shortcut. Shortcuts have always been around and they don't always work out the best for you.

Straight like that. Well, that's another episode of the FYM Show with Ty and Yo. Please share, like, subscribe, do all the things you're supposed to do on YouTube, but also give this to someone directly that might need, uh, encouragement to go back to school, or encouragement because they're currently being educated in a program, and just the reason why that they're exactly where they're supposed We'll see y'all next time.

Peace.