You're Not College Material - Wayne Pelletier

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the worst advice I ever got. Our guest today is Wayne Pelletier. Wayne came up working at world renowned digital agencies as a designer, art director, and creative director. He has helped with some of the world's best brands, such as at and T, Crate and Barrel, the Home Depot, Spanx, Trugreen, Verizon, and many, many others with award winning design and customer experiences. In 2020, however, Wayne went all in with his own agency, resident Pixel company, who rescues small businesses from WordPress. Wayne, thanks for joining us today. [00:00:43] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. [00:00:44] Speaker C: Tell us the worst advice you ever got. [00:00:47] Speaker B: The worst advice I ever got was, when I was a kid, I was told that I was not college material. Ouch. [00:00:56] Speaker C: Not college material. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Crazy, right? Like, what does that even mean? [00:01:00] Speaker D: Wow. [00:01:01] Speaker C: So let's dig there a little bit. When you're told that, how do you respond? [00:01:06] Speaker B: Well, I don't think I responded incredibly emotionally at the time. Of course, that was like, you know, middle school, high school, it was. It was something. This wasn't a one time thing. So I believe that the motivation was to not have to check my grades or. So I never did any schoolwork, really. I never took homework home, never took my books home once I would pass with D's and C's just because I could sit in class, because, it turns out, smart kid. [00:01:40] Speaker C: Oh, okay. So whoever gave you this sage advice had a predetermined notion of what a college student was supposed to do or supposed to be, and they didn't piece that into the puzzle. You didn't fit. [00:01:54] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:01:54] Speaker B: The reality is that, you know, it's a glass ceiling that was placed above me, or, you know, and this isn't unique to me. It happens to lots of people. Right. So you get a piece of advice or a piece of information as a kid, and you think, oh, this person is telling me this as an adult. It must be true, because adults are, like, super smart. Then you become an adult and you have kids, and you see the anxiety that you have as a parent, or you see other parents or people that are parents with their kids not know how to handle certain situations, and then you think back, oh, well, maybe not everything that you are told as a kid is factual by these really smart adults. And the reality is we carry the feelings with us even once we have disproven facts. [00:02:44] Speaker C: What did that mean for your next steps? You referenced a ceiling that it put over your head. So when you looked towards your future after having gotten that advice, did it make you feel limited? [00:02:54] Speaker E: It did. [00:02:55] Speaker B: It made my choices feel limited. So after school, I went into the army. [00:02:59] Speaker D: All right, so you didn't go to college? [00:03:00] Speaker B: I didn't go to college. I've never gone. I mean, I've taken some classes. After the army, I kind of got into the family business and started doing what I do now. And this was quite a while ago, but for the most part, I have always had a tremendous chip on my shoulder because I don't think deep down I believed it. I believed that when I was told that information as a kid, I was getting jobbed. I don't think that I ever actually believed it, but it always felt like something I needed to overcome. So I would work harder, pull all nighters, and just crush as much as I could to. To disprove everybody. [00:03:34] Speaker C: So it's interesting. You sought to disprove the advice, but you didn't actually go to college. [00:03:40] Speaker D: Right? [00:03:40] Speaker B: I know, right? Crazy. Well, once you start earning a pretty good living doing something magical like websites in the nineties, it's hard to go back and go through it. [00:03:55] Speaker D: Well, what do you think? [00:03:55] Speaker B: It hurts. [00:03:56] Speaker D: So, you know, you hear the advice, I'm not college material. You don't go to college. Do you think that affected your timeline? [00:04:02] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:04:02] Speaker B: College is amazing. I mean, it's incredibly condensed amount of information just basically fed to you in this pace that is designed. Right. Like, it's so amazing to get you as much information. Not just you get lots of life experience, but you also get lots of intellectual access to things that you're gonna learn anyway in life, but it's compressed into this little package that's really designed to be consumed in a period of time. [00:04:37] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:04:37] Speaker B: By the time I'm, like 30, I'm starting to figure out some of the things and learn some of the things that I think you learn in those environments. And I've always felt like because of all that, that if there is a latent issue, it's that I feel like I'm a bit of a late bloomer. [00:04:51] Speaker C: When I got out of college, I struggled to transition from the college world to the, quote, real world. [00:04:57] Speaker E: Right. [00:04:58] Speaker C: I've got all this education now. I've actually got to go put it to work. But for you, that got fast forwarded. How has this really driven who you are and what you do today? [00:05:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's created an intense desire to prove to myself, it's so funny. [00:05:14] Speaker D: Cause you really didn't even internal. You didn't really think you were even listening to the advice when you heard it. [00:05:19] Speaker B: You don't think you are. Yeah. [00:05:20] Speaker D: But then you're like, well, why do I. But I keep being like, see, I am. I am college material. I am, you know. [00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, having any, like, issues with self awareness or self belief and those kinds of challenges and certainly not unique to me. Like, lots of people get told things as kids that you carry with you in adulthood that don't make any damn sense. Right? But for me, like, I was always working jobs as a teenager, like, mowing lawns, knocking on doors, riding my bike uphill both ways to bag groceries. I was shoe stores. It was all these things. I was always willing to work and learn, and I gained valuable experience because of that. But, you know, when I got out of the army, I had a similar issue to you, where the reassimilation into sort of job and civilian life is incredibly difficult. Transition. [00:06:13] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:06:14] Speaker B: In that I kind of realized that, well, let's just keep doing what I know how to do, which is work. Right? So it was ten bars. Sell cars. I still meat. [00:06:24] Speaker D: Oh, my God. [00:06:25] Speaker B: Terrible jobs. I could have gone back, gone to night school and got a degree. But at this point, why put myself through that when I can work all day and party all night, not a family. And then, like, you know, do the growing up that I need to do to just go on with life? [00:06:39] Speaker C: Well, college was study all day and party all night, so, yeah, you had at least half of it. I want to go back to something you just said a second ago. You're proving to yourself, delve into that a little bit. Why did you focus on you when you said just a second ago, prove it to myself? [00:06:57] Speaker B: Well, that's never ending. I don't see that cycle stopping. [00:07:01] Speaker E: I don't know. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Technically you ever overcome that type of thing? [00:07:04] Speaker E: Maybe. [00:07:04] Speaker B: Some people go to therapy and they have this aha. Epiphany, and they are able to walk past all those scars, and suddenly those scars aren't on their body anymore. I don't know. For me, it is constant work to make sure that I'm putting in the work. So I feel like I belong, that I feel like I deserve to be smart enough, to be strong enough, to be the person that I thought I could always be, regardless of what someone else said. Now, that isn't to say I wallow in it. I don't struggle with it day to day. I'm incredibly positive minded, and I work. I have done so much work on myself to shift my mindset over the years that it's not like an issue that is ever present. Yeah, it's there, and it's there as a residual issue of all the work that I've put in, because it's just become part of. Because these things become patterns. [00:08:02] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. I mean, when you work really hard every day to prove to yourself that you're good enough or you're smart enough, or that you warrant something that creates a pattern, when you advise young people about their future, how does that advice you got all those years ago impact the way that you give advice today? [00:08:24] Speaker B: That's a good question. And it is definitely the polar opposite of the environment I came up in. It is understand why something is important to you. [00:08:35] Speaker C: Understand why something is important to you. [00:08:38] Speaker B: I don't give advice. I give options. [00:08:39] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, well, that's very interesting today, because, you know, when people ask me for my opinion on something, I'm not afraid to give it. But I think you're right. If you give somebody an opinion or a piece of advice, you really only give them one option. [00:08:56] Speaker B: You do so often. And I can issue advice and opinions. I'm definitely opinionated, but it's issued in a way that this is my mindset, this is my thought, this is how I think about it. But you need to do what's right for you. Ultimately, anything I ask you to do or tell you to do, you're the one that has to work through the outcome. And this is going to be your reality, that you're carrying forward with you long after I'm not with you anymore. So I have an understanding of why something is important to you. So that you know how it fits into your passion and your goals. So that as you are maturing, if we're talking to a younger person or even an older person, as you're going through a transition that has created a lot of anxiety or fear in you, understanding why you want to do it will help you understand how you go through it. [00:09:49] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:09:49] Speaker B: Like, you don't struggle to get out of bed in the morning. You don't struggle to make coffee in the morning. These are routines that lots of people have on lucky. Right, right. But going into something that is difficult or challenging that you don't wanna do, why are you spending time doing something you don't wanna do? [00:10:05] Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:06] Speaker D: I think that comes from the advice that you got. You say it doesn't affect your day to day, it doesn't resonate. You don't think about, oh, I'm not college material every day. But you have this even when you wanna give advice now, you're like, please listen to yourself. [00:10:23] Speaker B: I think it's important because to your point, if you're doing something for someone else, you will burn out because there's no long term benefit for you to do that, no question ever, right? So it's critically important that we all understand why we want to do something and how it dovetails into what is we're trying to accomplish. Otherwise, that's how people find burnouts. They feel like they're doing a lot of stuff for other people and they're not making time for themselves. And I am character one and not making time for myself. My wife will tell you, when you. [00:10:57] Speaker C: First said you're not college material, I thought to myself, well, what kind of jerk would say something like that to somebody? But now that we've got more context, it really wasn't meant that way. [00:11:09] Speaker B: It doesn't sound like both things can be true. It could not have malicious intent and that person could be a jerk for sure. [00:11:17] Speaker D: And honestly, I think that you've sort of explained the crux of this podcast, and that's what it is, is that sometimes maybe you don't know it and you're doing both. Even a nice person can say a nice piece of advice and it can really hurt you. [00:11:32] Speaker C: Well, by its nature, when someone says, let me give you a piece of advice, they're not really trying to mislead you. They're trying to guide you in a way that they think will help you avoid damage or negativity or whatever the nature of giving advice is, to be helpful, malicious or not, jerk or not, intent or not, it had an impact. Obviously, you didn't go to school. You have a work ethic. What positives came from really not pursuing college, I guess taking the advice in a sense, and not pursuing college and doing the things that you've done well. [00:12:11] Speaker B: You know, in today's environment, a lot of the things that we do, and certainly in my career choice of digital marketing and creating websites, you don't have to have gone to college. When I started, there were no college programs. In fact, I was being asked by local schools to come and give a class or talk to a class about digital marketing and website design because they didn't have curriculum. And I was like, how ironic is this? [00:12:40] Speaker D: Yeah, maybe you go to college and you're like, well, I guess I'm a accounting major now because they don't. [00:12:47] Speaker B: Yeah, well, they don't teach you how to run a business. You actually have to run a business to know how to run a business. You can have an MBA. That is not how to run a business. So in every aspect of it. [00:12:58] Speaker C: There's no question. I have met several college graduates, several certified people with their designations after their name. And I'm like, how did you get in front of me today? Like, I don't understand. You don't learn everything you need to know in college. Part of being able to become who you are today and the value driver that you have in your business and for the people you work with wouldn't be there had you not gotten this advice. [00:13:30] Speaker B: I hadn't thought of that. I don't know, maybe. Yeah, that. It's possible. Yeah, it's possible. You know, life is like patterns, right? You learn patterns in college and you're able to take those patterns and execute on those in. Once you start working and you get a job and you're in career life, right? I learned a lot of patterns, and everyone's patterns are different, everyone's recognition of patterns. But until the patterns lead to your recognition of yourself, then that's the real slingshot to speeding up life and speeding up your ability to be successful and execute on those patterns. So I believe that regardless of whether or not I went to school, my pattern recognition was strong and I recognized in myself not just the feelings I have around what I was told and how I. How I ingested it and made it real, but also how I was able to overcome it. [00:14:30] Speaker E: Right. [00:14:31] Speaker B: As a father who didn't know what to do. And then you start thinking about the things you've been told and you're like, what kind of hogwash is that? So self recognition and doing things for yourself, I understand why it's important to me is the whole reason why I was able to leverage patterns in order to speed things up. [00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's great to have the ability to understand yourself, to feel comfortable in your own shoes, and to really pursue that and to live within that. [00:15:00] Speaker D: So, all that being said, do you think you would give the same advice to somebody who maybe is thinking about going to college? Would you think you would say you're not college material? Because it does seem like it's like, well, maybe you don't need college. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Well, I think you should assess whether or not you need college. But I'm not going to look a teenager in the face and say, you shouldn't go to college. Terrible idea. I think it's such a valuable experience, it's proven over time to be an incredibly valuable experience to the vast majority of people. So while it can be confining and it can be damaging to some people, it's incredible because it's such an compressed amount of information, such a short amount of time that that value has. I mean, it's expensive, there's monetary value on it, but there's network value. A lot of people leverage their alma mater to create future success, and they're able to network into other areas of their life and leverage that for their entire lifetime. And that. That's way more valuable than what you learned. [00:16:02] Speaker C: Well, I've got two kids in college right now, and both of them are learning a ton from their schools. But what they're learning that will really make a difference in their life is really not happening in the classroom. [00:16:15] Speaker B: That's absolutely true. [00:16:16] Speaker C: And those are all pieces of your development, but a major part of your development you won't learn in the classroom. So, I mean. [00:16:23] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:16:24] Speaker B: And my advice to young career people is always go to lunch. [00:16:28] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:16:28] Speaker B: That's the most important thing you can do. [00:16:30] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:16:31] Speaker B: When you're in your twenties, go to lunch with people, go to happy hour, go to breakfast, because those people are all going to be director of this, vp of that, CEO of something or other, and they're going to know you like you and trust you. They're going to refer you out. That network in the future will make you far more income than whatever measly amount of money you're making as a 20 year old at some company. [00:16:56] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:16:56] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. [00:16:57] Speaker D: That's great. And it's always good to give. Like, Sean usually ends the podcast with what advice do you want to leave? So, yeah, that actually worked great. [00:17:04] Speaker C: It really did. I mean, for someone who doesn't give advice, gives options. You just gave a great piece of advice. Always go to lunch. [00:17:11] Speaker B: Always go to lunch. [00:17:12] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:17:13] Speaker B: You got some advice out of me. [00:17:15] Speaker C: That's right, Wayne, absolutely. Well, I'm glad someone told you years ago that you weren't college material because it led you here to today's podcast. And I can't thank you enough, Wayne, for being here and sharing that advice with our listening audience. I'm sure there's many people out there who will greatly benefit from today's podcast. So thank you. [00:17:34] Speaker D: I hope so. [00:17:35] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. [00:17:36] Speaker C: Really appreciate it, Wayne. [00:17:37] Speaker B: Got it. [00:17:38] Speaker A: Well, JB, Wayne was a great guest, and what I thought about was he was our first guest who really got his worst advice at a very, very young age. [00:17:49] Speaker D: Yeah, I like that. A lot of people so far have been talking about advice that they got maybe in their careers or, you know, they're just starting out or they're switching careers or maybe in the middle, and it was, it's interesting to hear somebody come on the worst advice I ever got and talk about something they got when they were 1415 years old. [00:18:06] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:18:06] Speaker A: And, and he, he made very clear in talking to us that even though he proved himself to be smart and smart enough to actually have gone to college and been successful, he still carries that feeling with him, even though he's disproven it. [00:18:23] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:18:24] Speaker D: He used the advice as, like, a motivator, and he's like, I don't even know if I really believed it. But again, here he is on a podcast talking about, this is the worst advice I ever got. So it obviously stayed with him, maybe even more than he realized. [00:18:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. [00:18:37] Speaker A: And another thing I loved about his time with us is he. He's not in the business of giving advices. He's in the business, I think he said, of giving choices, and then he turned around and said, you should go to lunch with it all the time. [00:18:50] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:18:50] Speaker D: Right. We always end up getting a little bit of good advice on the, on the worst advice ever got show. [00:18:56] Speaker A: It's interesting. [00:18:57] Speaker C: I actually had a friend of my. [00:18:58] Speaker A: Wife'S tell me that her son is listening to our podcast a lot, and. [00:19:02] Speaker C: He'S getting a lot out of it. He's in college right now. [00:19:04] Speaker A: And I guess what I liked about Wayne's time with us is he knows that this advice isn't unique to him, and he knows a lot of people are probably getting this advice, and that's really kind of what's so harmful about it is this is pretty prevalent. [00:19:20] Speaker D: Any kind of advice you get at that age, 15 to 18, you know, kind of, kind of goes back to our Chris Cleveland episode. If you haven't listened to it, you know where do what makes you happy. This is such an important time in your life where you're really shaping and becoming who you are and getting any kind of advice there can just be magnified. [00:19:36] Speaker A: Well, that about wraps up our time for today. Thanks for joining us today. Tune in next week for another episode of the worst advice I ever got.