Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Worst Advice I Ever Got. I'm your host, Sean Taylor, and with me, as always, is jb, my trusty producer. Today, our guest is someone special in my life. His name's Roy Keeley. Roy is the founder of Firm Studio, where for the past decade plus, he's been helping firms untangle their tech, reclaim their product strategy, and build digital tools from the inside out. Before Firm Studio, Roy had spent over 15 years working deeply in the accounting technology industry, solving complex problems, bridging the gap between business and engineering, and helping firms take back control of their own roadmaps. What I'm most curious about and what you'll hear about in this episode is the bad advice Roy once got that nearly derailed him. We'll talk about the decision points, the pushback, and how he turned that moment into the launch pad for everything he's doing now.
Roy, thanks for being here today.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Great to be here.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: I gotta know, what's the worst advice you ever got?
[00:00:56] Speaker B: The worst advice I ever got was go to college. It'll change your life.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Sounds like there's a story behind that. Maybe even. Let's find out who gave you the advice.
Maybe who didn't give you the advice, right?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: That's right. Most people get the pressure from their parents to go to college, but that really wasn't my story. My dad grew up with four Amish neighbors, went off and did some wild things, ended up as a tire salesman, then a truck driver. So skip the whole college thing. My mom was a preacher's kid and wound up moving to some Indian reservations. So she skipped college and ended up kind of as an administrative assistant.
So I was a latchkey kid, no college influence at the house. However, the school system I was in, the counselors, the principals, the message from on high was the only path, the only intelligent path is to go to college. And I subsequently, you know, I've gotten a lot of bad advice in my days, but thankfully, I haven't taken some of that advice. This advice I took, Hook, line and Seeker, signed on the dotted line, went to college. Like most of the folks probably listen to this podcast.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: So you. So you did go, obviously. What. What happened once you got there?
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Well, funny enough, me and my sister were talking the other day and I didn't actually go to my graduation ceremony. I have no way to currently prove that I went to college. I have no piece of paper. I don't know. I don't know if I actually graduated college, so.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: So I gotta believe there's more to this so what did you learn in you got your degree, or at least your pretend degree as you just mentioned to it. So what did you learn in college? What didn't you learn in college? And why is this the worst spot she ever got?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: I think I learned how to get by with the bare minimum to check some box that I didn't think would actually move the dial in my life. I was able to juggle a lot of things. So this was hanging out with friends, having to work full time jobs, wait tables or do random stuff, worked at the ymca, did some other stuff and you know, pass, pass my college degree. And so I think I learned how to learn on the fly in the moment and get by because I didn't, I didn't actually ever believe, quote unquote, that school would make a difference. I did it because what else was.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: I going to do?
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Well, that's what a lot of people are doing right now, right? They feel like that's the, you know, I'm 18 years old, this is what I go do. You know, every four years you got your little ceremonial things. You graduate from middle school, you go to high school, you graduate from high school, you go to college.
As people are doing this, what do you think they're doing wrong?
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I don't think people who go to college are doing anything wrong. But I, I think society as a large needs to rethink this concept of university and what it, what it stands for. Right. And so the, the analogy of a map to me is what always comes to mind when I'm thinking through this conversation.
You know, if I looked at a map of Scotland, I wouldn't ever confuse that with destination. I didn't go to Scotland, I looked a map of Scotland. But when I go to the destination, it helps to be kind of manage the terrain, get from A to B, navigate that bridge or get around that roundabout. We obviously have maps today that are real time updated.
But if I show up in Scotland with a bad map, especially 20 years ago, let's just say before I had a map on my phone, I'd be screwed if I was going off the wrong map. And I think college and university was the right map for most, I mean the last couple hundred years. But I think the terrain has changed. Most universities were started as religious institutions and the training of pastors. And then it started laborious degrees, what have you. But you hadn't go there to get access to the materials to, to, to the knowledge. There was an actual gate you had to get through to learn. Well, since the dawn of the Internet, that gate is wide open. You don't need to go to university.
And so I think given my personality and a lot of people's personality, especially people without maybe means or people have to go to debt to go to university. College is not basically the best math to navigate the terrain of life.
Going to grow up, you know, as you talked about JB, real quickly, like it's 18, you're learning a lot. Like is university about learning or is it just getting away from your parents? Is that the better education?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Let's, let's dig into that a little bit. What taught you the most in life? I mean if it wasn't, it doesn't sound like it was college. What are your learnings in life? Where did you get most of them?
[00:05:08] Speaker B: I mean, just like you and jb, we learn by doing. I mean we all have worked with recent grads or I remember being a recent grad and not having a clue at what I was doing. You know, you had to learn by doing.
You know, nowadays, you know, I live on some property, I have a well water system, my well pressure drops, the shower wasn't hot, my wife was screaming at me. I'm either faced with a $500 plumber show up call in the middle of the weekend or I can watch some YouTube channels and take a chance of getting electrocuted. And so I took, I took, I took plan B, but I damn water pressure just by it was a couple screws and a couple of dust and something off and my pressure returned to normal. And so I learned by doing, hopefully not dying. And YouTube was the best teacher. And once again back to the gateway of information. Like if it's about information, we all agree that the best information is online, whether it's YouTube or various searches. And now we have AI and that's a whole other conversation. Sure. But you know, university can't be about knowledge anymore. I, I, I think it's about something else. And maybe Sean, like you said, it's about this growing up or proving the fact that you could show up on time. Well, there's a lot of other ways to do that.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's, I mean you bring up a great point too with AI, is that it used to be like, you know, I could be the most knowledgeable person in the room about volcanoes and then you have to go to me to learn about volcanoes. Now I can just find out about volcanoes. And so even having knowledge and being an expert something is not even a valuable skill at this point in time. Because anybody can become an expert pretty quickly on something. So college, to your point, is going to have to start doing something else because AI is writing everybody's papers and they're doing all the things. So it's like, what are you spending $300,000 for if you're just letting a computer do you work for you? It has to be something else.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: I want to go back a little bit to the network or the system that was saying you must do this or you got to do this. Right. You had counselors and teachers. I mean, were they talking to you about all the positives of it or were they scaring the out of you about what would happen if you didn't go like. I think there's a whole nuance here to how we advise people in their youth. And I'm just curious as to how your story went.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not like I got, I didn't have many one on one conversations with my principal. If I did have a one on one conversation with my principal was for not good reasoning to. And so it was either at the assembly or mass, you know, mass teachings, right. Sitting in the gym and these people talking about it. And you bring in successful alumni who went to college and maybe they're a doctor now and they're talking to you. And so I would say there's this quote, the medium is the message. A guy named Marshall McLuhan said that. And the message of school is just more school. Like it, it junior high prepares you for high school, high school prepares you for college. So the only way that high school can justify itself is to prepare you for some other kind of education.
And so I think it's just this insular thinking. And you know, this other quick tangent is, you know, what do we call these colleges? They're universities. Well, we, we tend to want to value diversity in college, in university. But in a university is actually this, you know, there's this Latin universitas, but it's, it's this group of people on a singular mission. But I find that at universities and school in general, it's this singular widget factory.
And I think more and more people are realizing I'm not a widget, I might be something else. But nonetheless, this system doesn't work for me. And, but it's a system, it's just doing what it does. The bigger the company, we all know, it's just got, it's on the rails, it's an aircraft carrier, it's harder to move.
And for better or for worse, you know, maybe I'm a snowflake generation. I think I'm so special that that system didn't apply to me, but it sure as hell wasn't. I don't think I am made for, quote, unquote, learn.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: It's a it, it's a system and it's driving people forward.
Costs are going up. It's hard to get into colleges. So why do you think so many people still go to college despite the challenges, the costs? And what are now, I guess, more alternatives at their fingertips?
[00:09:14] Speaker B: I think anybody in the corporate world knows this phrase, you know, no one's ever gotten fired for hiring IBM. Well, I think that's because, you know, worse. You know, everybody does it, so let's just do that and we'll figure it out later. On the college side, I think parents are scared to let their kids not go to college because, you know, worst case, they, they don't really figure it out. They throw their education in the trash, but they still got the rest of their life to do it. But now, like you said, Sean, with rising costs, like they're actually going possibly net negative 200,000, $300,000, it's hard to make, make up that Delta, not only going in debt, like call it $200,000, but not making 200,000 during those four years or 400,000 during those four years, doing some side hustles for doing some grinding. And so it's really a $600,000 possible delta we're talking about. $600,000 is a lot of damn money, especially if it's accruing interest in a bad way.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: So, yeah, and that's where we are now, right, with this, with the money. And that's where I think institutionally there's, this is a big problem because if I were to be an 18 year old and say, hey, I would like to start a video production company, can I borrow 75,000 dol.
Every bank would laugh me out of the room. But if I'm like, hi, I'm 18 years old, I would like to go to Baylor to study sociology. Can I have $440,000? They're like, sure.
So like, the problem is this, the institution, the whole system on itself.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Well, it's not the banks that are giving you that 440, it's our government that's giving you that 400. Fair point in many cases. Right? But, but I think the point is a good one, right? It's like, you know, loaning money based upon this principled approach to things that you must take this path in order to be qualified. But are there times when a degree really does matter? We're getting a college degree, you know, something you have to do. Certain fields you might go into.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think if you're going into an accounting firm, possibly to get a license or this professional side, of course, I want my surgeon to probably have gone to college. That's probably useful.
I got a big deal. Yeah. I want my plumber that I am going to eventually have to call when I can't YouTube my way out of it, to have gone to a trade school and getting a certificate there, possibly so they don't fry my system. But, you know, I think that's all agreed. College is probably the right path for a lot of folk, but not all the folk.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:29] Speaker C: I think there's so many colleges now and there's. I think your point of like the college is not for everyone, but there's now a college for everyone. I think that's part of the problem is like obviously going to medical school and going to an Ivy League and making these networks with these people, these big fancy people. Like there's a, there's obviously a lot of value in that, but. And outside of that, you know, going to just, you know, I don't know why this college popped in my head. So I apologize to anybody who went to Mercer, but Mercer College to get an English degree is not going to be like, oh, wow, now you're set for life for sure.
But as you're sort of thinking about your own kind of kids and your things, what are you telling them?
[00:12:06] Speaker B: It's hard. I'm going to have to, you know, drink my own Kool Aid and you know, I live in a glass house and I'm throwing rocks. Right. So how are we pivoting and changing? How am I setting up my kids for success? I personally think it's not putting them into the system, quote unquote. Like, my 10 year old is riding bikes around, dropping off flyers, offering barn and cleaning services. They offer $40 for a traditional barn, $100 for a bigger barn. Look, clean out your chicken coop. They've made a couple hundred bucks. And you know, I think that's a better. I'd rather her go do that on a Thursday afternoon to be in a math box.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Personally, doesn't, doesn't college teach us how to learn?
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah, no. I mean, I don't want to throw the baby out of the bathwater, so. I agree. And, and, and high school and junior high and elementary schools are needed in our Society because we have a lot of two working parents. Like, this wouldn't be possible if my wife home. So I can't like discount that. This is where some people just get their meals. Like during COVID these kids didn't have food, let alone knowledge. And, you know, there's all these repercussions from that. So I agree with you, Sean. Like, it's, it's a hard problem.
But I do think bucking the system somewhat would serve society well.
Because I just think trillions of dollars of debt is probably where we're at at this point, is not probably the right problem, right solution. And if, if we thought it was about knowledge, if we thought school was about knowledge. And why is there double the administrators than there are teachers?
Is there two, two paper pushers for every single person on the ground floor teaching our kids? Is it because they need all this hand holding and scheduling and whatever? I don't think that's the case. I think it's more so turned into an employment scheme for adults than it is that institution to educate children.
[00:13:52] Speaker C: Well, it helped too. Right. If there's another, I mean, competition breeds, you know, success everywhere. If, like, if people started, like, trade schools got really good and electricians started making a little bit more than YouTube stars and all these different things, like, then you would sort of even itself out and colleges would have to adapt. I think the problem is right now because of the way the system is set up, they're just like, well, just keep doing what we're doing and increasing our prices by 10% every single year and these dumb dumbs are going to keep paying it.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: So that's right.
[00:14:20] Speaker C: Well, how you fix it, why change?
[00:14:22] Speaker B: Yeah, people vote with their dollars and plenty of votes are coming their way. But like Sean said earlier, it's really government subsidized dollars that will come due at some point, I believe, and maybe that system will vote.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: So many of us spend the first half of our career building security and then we look for significance. Right. And I think part of that is a byproduct of the system we come through.
As you reflect on, you know, what you've done and, I don't know, the legacy you're trying to build for, you know, your kids, how does this all play into your story and how does this play into, you know, how you're raising your family and what you, what you're advising young people when they come to you for advice?
[00:14:59] Speaker B: I often like one of my taglines for my company is building software for doers and domain experts and I love the concept of a doer and it's basically just getting people out there to be able to do something. So I think if I'm a marketing grad like you can go build a portfolio without having gone to college for four years. Like to learn a drip campaign or 8N8 is a new AI tool that a lot of marketers are having to learn. Like a marketer graduating college has never built an email driven campaign. They've never done that, they've never done the work. Or you go to nursing school and they get into the hospital and they realize they hate it. Or education majors. I hear this all the time. My wife was one of those. She, she thought she wanted to be a teacher. The classroom killed her. And so all that to say it's go and do some things so you find out what you like and if you need to wrap that with the degree, go do that. And you can maybe get your degree when you're 24, but at least you know you're going to leave that degree when you're 24 with something you like as opposed to leaving it at 22 and not knowing what you're doing. Just jump into the real world faster.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: I can somewhat relate to what you're talking to because when I was in college I had to work, you know, multiple jobs to help pay for college, right. And I probably learned more in those jobs than I did in the classrooms. I mean, where did you find yourself learning the most?
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Find myself in my senior year of college. I had never been on an airplane at this point. And somehow I get the idea that I should get a passport and go to Europe with a plane. I'm broke, of course, but we somehow got a ticket on British Airways for a few hundred bucks. I had fifteen hundred dollars to my name, but I needed, the goal was to go to Europe for a month. And so we got over there for 500 bucks. I had another thousand dollars to last 30 days. Call it five of those days are going to be free with my Scottish friends and family. But I ran out of Money probably day 10. And so at this point, you know, you're in Italy, you might be hanging out a tourist zone and some, you know, 40 year old people have been successful, might get up from a table with two pieces of pizza uneaten and half, half a half a jug of beer on drink. Well, I'm not beyond that. And to this day all my friends know that I say once a poor kid, always a poor kid. And I will eat everybody's leftovers. I'VE actually figured that out in life where I don't order anymore at restaurants, I eat my wife and my kids leftovers. It's a great move. I learned that in college, but I just learned how to survive. Honestly, that was a. That was an MBA or a whirlwind education all wrapped up into a mile. And I look back at that with crazy fondness and taught me a lot about life and how just aging.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I think with. Yeah, with all that. I mean, you learn a lot through. I mean, the whole thing. Experience over other people telling you what an experience is like. I think that's everything.
Even on this podcast as we do. You know, me and Sean could just sit here by ourselves and talk about. Although here's some bad advice that we heard on the Internet, and then just say what we think about it. But the whole point is other people talking about their experience with the thing and living that experience is a big part of that.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: And once again, knowledge doesn't replace act of doing or going somewhere. And so this knowledge is power. No, doing is power. Figuring it out is the power. Like, that's where. That's where I think you have a system is Just jump in and don't think. I had a buddy that always used to tell me, like, you know, all the people that you read about in history books that, like, changed the course of life didn't ever, like, go get a degree in that thing. They just went and did the thing.
And so all of us were like, you know, well, we don't have an MBA or we don't have a master's in divinity. I can't go be a pastor or I can't go be a business leader. It's like, no, just everybody you've ever read about and you actually probably look up to probably doesn't have a degree in the thing they're doing.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Good friend of mine was the CEO of Goodwill Industries of North Georgia for years, and his major in college was Asian Studies. So.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Put that to great use, didn't he? You know, as I reflect on our relationship, Roy, you know, I didn't know this was the worst advice you ever got. And I think what I hope this podcast sets up, and thankfully your episode today helps me think of, is we should have these type of conversations with our networks to talk to friends and family about these types of examples because it does help you personally reflect. So thanks for coming on the show today and doing that personal reflection out loud with us and sharing the worst advice you ever got. I think it was great for our.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Listeners, I appreciate you letting our riffing on the subject that I am pretty passionate about. If you can't tell, I'm pretty dug in. And we'll see. Time will tell.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Jb, what stood out for me and Roy's story is how often we confuse a system for solution. Right. Yeah, college. College was supposed to be the map, but for Roy it was more of a detour. I guess the real education came from doing, from working odd jobs, from failing, from figuring out things in real time. Right. And that's the theme I think our listeners are going to recognize today for sure.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: That's definitely something that as college gets more and more expensive, we're going to probably start hearing more and more of. And I love how he admitted he might not even know if he technically graduated.
You know, that's relatable. I'm pretty sure a lot of people out there are still waiting for the diploma to show up in the mail or who knows where they even put it. At least Roy turned it into a life philosophy instead of just a late fee from the registrar's office.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Exactly. I think what makes his perspective powerful is that it challenges the assumption that there's only one right path. Right. He's not anti college, he's pro experience, he's pro doing. And that is a message worth pausing and thinking on.
[00:20:26] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny too. You know, we live in a world where you can't get a loan to start a small business at 18, but you can get into six figures of debt to sit in a lecture hall. So, you know, I mean, I do really kind of get what he's saying. He's just reminding us to think twice before signing up for the. What he said, the most expensive four year nap of your life.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Underneath that humor is really a serious point. Right. It's the best leaders, the best entrepreneurs are the ones who are willing to step into the unknown and learn by doing. And Roy is the complete embodiment of that.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So if you're listening to this while staring at your student loan payment, you know you're not alone. And if you're listening while shoveling out a chicken coop like Roy's kids, congratulations. You might already be ahead of the game.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's great. Thank you again to Roy Keeley for joining us and thank you all for giving us a part of your day. We truly appreciate it. We'll be back next week with another great episode of the Worst Advice I Ever Got.
