Aba fam, It's time for the Baqa, and this week we're doing things a little bit different. I wanted to. We just had Chris Corinthians, the Finland guy, and now you're best friend as far as helping you figure out how to get your kids through college debt free, because I know we got parents of young kids on here and maybe college aged kids too, and y'all need to connect with Chris Corinthians asap. So I thought I would bring out my two favorite gems from this most recent
episode for today's show. So I've got Chris's incredible spiel and really enlightening conversation about the scholarship process and how you can get funding not the traditional way of getting funding, which is through the federal loan system. And I also have Mark's take on investing in the era of you know who. So I want to play those for you now, and I hope you enjoy.
You start off harassing me and you guys sticker, and you're talking about my logo.
First of all, it's my show, damn it. Second of all, this is not better wallet ambition. Okay, ambition like that all?
No, can't have it.
Oh here's our buddy, Chris save me Chris new Chris, Hey, Chris.
What is oh y'all doing? Family?
Ooh at the baritone come through.
I'm at my satellite office. My name is Chris Corinthian. I go by the Finlack guy and I worked in higher ed for almost twenty years. Most of that time was spent in the areas of the financial aid of financial literacy, and I'm coming up on a year actually doing this full time. So I was working at different universities for adult educators, at vacational technical schools and traditional
four years. And during that time I used to see students that would drop out for lack of finances or you know, going to massive amounts of debt and still drop out or finish, but then still had this burden on them when they graduated. But there were other students that I saw that would actually go to school debt free. And then I just started studying over the years what were the specific habits that they had which allowed all
of them from various backgrounds to graduate debt free. And so that was my focus that along with personal finance, you know, helping students and parents with the building blocks of personal finance, right just basic budgeting and how's credit
established and how is it built? Things like that. But my focus now is just working with parents of students that are going to college or planning to go to college and showing them how to go to school without taking out student loans, without debt altogether.
Oh damn, okay, Like what would tell us what's the secret?
I mean, especially at the time latest when you don't know if you're going to have federal aid at all for education?
Right, absolutely, So I'll give the the braw overview a strategy and then if we want so, we could dig deep into it. But there are certain there were several data out there saying that there's hundreds of millions of dollars over one hundred million dollars of unclaimed scholarships each year. So it's not that people are applying for scholarships and get denied, but it's just free money sitting out there for people to go to college and nobody's applying for it.
And so that's the main foundation. So now that we have that, now, what's keeping people from applying for these scholarships? And most of the time is they don't know what to write about when it comes to essays. They don't know where to find these scholarships right, and they don't have a real strategy on how to apply for it, because some will apply for maybe five, ten, fifteen scholarships, get burned out and they'll say, I didn't win anything.
It's not going to work for me, right, or some people think that I have to have little to no money or be of a certain demographic in order to get scholarships. But there are several types, and there are you know, merit based scholarships, which is a lot of the focus that we have when we work with our parents and students as well as other scholarships. But we don't even focus necessarily on the federal funding. So if it's here, if it's not, that's just a bonus when
it comes to the type of money. So we look at institutional funding. We look at local scholarships where your least competitive scholarships will lie so with the school district, with your school, with different organizations and businesses, rooting for the hometown heroes or rooting for those students that are in their local community. And then when you have those specific majors that are your tied to, then it just brings down that competition barrier much lower and increases the
chances of success. Now, the other thing is it's a numbers game and a law of averages game. Right, So if you apply for five scholarships and expect to go to schools that free, most likely you won't get any scholarships, right. And so one of the things I talk to students and parents about is applying for ten times the amount
you need. So if you need fiftyeah, right exactly, and when you think, let's say you need fifty thousand dollars to go to school, you need to apply for five hundred thousand dollars in order to get the odds in your favor. Right. So if ninety percent of the scholarships, which most of the scholarships you apply for, will reject you, you'll get denied for most of the scholarships you apply for.
And so we shoot for ten percent success rates. So if ninety percent of them say no, you're still good, and then apply for at least one hundred and so we do this thing where we do to today, and then that's the focus. If you have your.
Essays, Chris, that sounds cherable.
Yeah, I know, I know what the money that you're getting it back end.
Yeah, But if you're there, so you're like there to hold their hand and like, yeah, coach them through that process, right, absolutely.
But the hardest thing is just having your five essential essays because you usually use just the same five over and over again and just tweak a little bit of your story. And once you have that hardest part out of the way, then all you're doing is wash rents and repeating. You don't have to look for scholarships because you have them all there. Now you have your five essential essays, so all you have to do is copy paste and tweak, and so you might spend twenty thirty
minutes a day just click, click send. You have everything in the drive for you. So now you can spend twenty to thirty minutes a day and it's not overwhelming.
Has how many of your clients are like, well, can I just get chat GPT to write this poet?
So what's interesting is that when because I look, when chat GBT first came out, you could just put that in say hey, I'm going for this scholarship and boom, boom boom. But now chat has this failsafet where if you put it in there, it'll say, no, we can't respond for scholarship things. So now because what some people used to do is they say, Okay, here's my information, here's a scholarship, prompt write me an essay so that
I can win this. Yeah. Right, But now most of the organizations are doing their AI check to see if you're using any type of AI to write your essays. So you do that, they'll catch you. And a lot of professors everybody's starting to see if you use any of those AI AI southward too.
Get it Ooh okay, all right, hmmm, I mean that sounds incredibly useful. But like, as a business, how are you making money off? Because you got to you said, you've been in this for like a year. How are you supporting yourself?
So glad you asked. So when I bring parents and students in, I assigned coaches to them. So one of my coaches, she went over a million dollars in scholarships, and so she helps them find the scholarship. She just uses a lot of the same procedures and spreadsheets and everything that she does, and then she's assigned to him. I have another guy, as a matter of fact, I met him in Fincon two. I have another guy who
actually created a course specifically for writing scholarship essays. He's an English teacher, and then he says, there's a difference writing an English paper than it is for telling a story. And then he tucks them through the hero's journey and all these other things. And then he's assigned to him too, right and so, and then they have the modules and
everything that they go through. But if they have questions, they meet with me weekly in a group coaching call, and then I answer any of their questions, find out update statuses along with the other two coaches. So that's how I get money.
And then oh, they pay for the group coaches.
They pay for the coaching and the individual coaches. They just pay for everything, and I'll walk them through and then I give them guarantees. So I said, if they don't go to school, that't free, and they get one hundred percent of their money back. Well yeah, because that's very generous, right, because up to a certain amount. So it's like they said, Okay, well my school's gonna be two hundred thousand dollars a year. I'm like, okay, well no.
Which is like not I mean maybe not per year, but certainly like four years. Absolutely, Yeah, that's not unheard.
Yeah, but no per year, per year, yeah, absolutely so. So so I take on all the risks, you know, as long as you do what you're supposed to do. And there are a number of things that they need to do to me, because it's not like, Okay, I don't do anything and I'm just going to go to school for free. But as long as they do the things they're supposed to do, then we take on all the risk.
Okay, I'm gonna have to keep your number for when I'm sending my kids off the car.
I got you, I got you.
So normally you're talking to the parents directly and then they basically tell their kid, hey do this.
Yes, So during the coach and call, is it with the parent or.
The it's with the parent and then and the students sometimes so sometimes the parent and the student are on but a lot of times it's the parent that's going to make the student do it right because if the students trying to pay for coach and they're like I ain't gonna money, they were like, I ain't really doing this, or but the parent is just like, oh no, you're doing this because I ain't got the money. I don't have the money to pay for all of this, and
you're gonna need to do it. And so far the students that have worked with us, that have done the work got to get scholarships.
Well that's just yeah. I mean, I think that's such important work. And I remember, like and I went to school, there was so much more state aid available, Like I mean in.
Georgia, I had the Hope scholarship.
Did you go to school in Georgia, Chris, Yes, yes, yes, okay, yeah, so we had. I had Hope. But then my brother who's five years younger than me, behind me, he had Hope too, but it wasn't as generous by then. They had like made it tougher to qualify for the full benefit and like so he graduated with like fifty K of student loans and I graduated with eight.
So I it was eighty percent of tuition, whereas Hope paid for everything. It's like, okay, we'll cover all of that for you versus eighty percent of just tuition and not the fees.
Exactly.
Yeah, And I mean I did things like work during college to pay for my housing. I didn't stay in the yard, I didn't pay for the food, the what do you call it the meal plan or like the
housing man. But that that and especially going into my field, I studied journalism and I graduated during the recession, and I studied print journalism at that, like on paper, and yeah, I wasn't giving like gainful employment after college, and but thank goodness, I did not have like that much debt, because it really is like you're starting off your life. And the way that they talk about student loans too,
it's almost as if, well, this isn't really debt. This is like they really do, and so you almost feel like, well, it's fine, it's totally fine, but no, it's it's real debt, right, be a family's take a quick break and be right back for Mark's investing tip of the week. You know, if you have any investing tips for this new era
when there is so much volatility. I talked a little bit about, like on a previous episode with Chris, about how the American stock market is just so like so emotional, so fickle, and yeah it's constantly swinging.
But now it's just like woom boom bick. A ping pong machine. A ping pong machine doesn't exist like a pinball machine. There you go, can you talk about that.
I mean you must get that question from your investing community as well.
Yeah.
No, it's a it's a trying time, especially for anyone who's a long term investor.
If you're putting money in.
Your four to one K or your IRA, and you're investing for a long period of time, and you might see your value go up and go down by big percentages. I think what is most important is that you focus on what you can actually control, and that's make sure you're putting the money in, make sure you're putting as much money in, and then also controlling how much you're putting in.
The stocks and bonds and everything else.
Because what I see all too often is that people are putting the money into these individual stocks where you will see more volatility, or even sectors like technology or healthcare where you know Trump is directly attacking bull So you have to be careful on how you're alloying your money. And you want to own everything instead of just owning
one or two companies or even five or ten. Instead just buy the complete market, buy the SP five hundred, and then that way you could participate in the growth of the I want to call it the capitalism in the United States. But it's basically that the growth in the companies that we see and hear about every single day, and on average it goes up, it goes up. So
you will see that short term volatility. You get scared, but you kind of have to put your blinders on or you know, focus on the long term instead of focusing on the day to day because things are gonna happen, especially over the next four years. The news knows that if they put Trump in the headlines, people are going to click on it and it's gonna be whatever he did that day. So if you focus on hey, like, I'm gonna ignore that noise. I'm just going to focus
on what I can control. You'll be fine over the next four years. But if you become an emotional investor, if you are an emotional investor and you're making short term decisions for a long term portfolio, you will find yourself not all too happy with yourself in five to ten years when we see possibly less volatility.
Yeah, thinking about my Peloton stock from twenty twenty.
Some people don't jump into it.
They have the house. Listen, we were just in the house. I had money.
I was just like, I'm going to play with it, and I realized I don't even like to play with money, even if I have technically money to lose extra play money.
No, I don't like it. I should have just put it in the dam vtax V stacks.
What's it called VT stacks?
VT stacks? Yeah?
Well, thank you, Mark, I'm better wallet for that investing guidance. And where can people find out more about?
You have your course?
Yeah, so it's called financially a bulletproof investing program.
So we have that.
Basically, when you graduate from high school or even when you made your first dollar, you probably had no clue what to do with your money. And imagine if you had an actual program, they will tell you, from bu to paying off debt, to expense planning to all the way to estate planning, what you should be doing with their money, even tax management.
So when I spent so much.
Time in corporate finance, I said, I want to build a program that streamlines everything for everyone and makes a complete roadmap from A to Z on what you should be doing with your money.
It comes along with my help as well, so we have that.
We have a community of over two thousand at this point in their launch.
It a few years ago.
But if you're just saying, hey, that's great, but I want to just start with a bare minimum. I just want to learn how to invest. I've helped over one hundred thousand people invest in the stock market over the last three years. So I hold these monthly classes where we bring people in, we teach them, again from A to.
Z, how to go about investing.
And if you choose to want to partner with me down the road, you could do that as well.
All that is in link in violence.
Yeah, well link in our show notes, because again it's broad ambition podcasts amazing.
Yea.
I love you, Mark. I want your money. I mean I want you to get your money.
And I hope that whoever you know, whoever owes you that money like gives it to you. Now me my debts a Woodruff Santos always pays her debts and I have none to you, ahem, So you know you're welcome. Think about all the free airtime I gave you on this platform.
Do you know what I mean? Free advertising?
Free joking?
I'm joking, Chris, you would you would talk to me for an hour and a half regular, so might as well be on a you know what I mean.
I would don't be don't be, don't be cool, too cool for this? You know you know I'm your sis.
All right, guys, thank you so much for joining the Brown Table, for being for sharing with b a fan, for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I know y'all have you know all kinds of things going on, And thanks for being a part of my community.
I hope be a fan.
Listening to us talk it makes you want to reach out to that friend, that peer, that colleague who maybe you haven't heard from it in a while, and just check in on them, or better yet, tell them what's going on with you so that they.
Can support you. And thank y'all so much.
Thank you, thank you for having us. This is awesome.
Oh we didn't do Brown Boost, Brown Break. Do you guys know that segment of that?
That's what I was saving. I always forget show.
For Oh, let's do it really fast? Do you know Brown Booth, Brown Breakmark? Do you listen to the show?
I have listened.
To a lot of your faith, man, but never till the end, never to the end, never till the end. So normally it's like at first, like ten to fifteen minutes especially if you send one.
I don't got time to be individually promoting my show to you. All right, Well, brown booths break is either something that you are, like a resource or a tool, or something you're excited about, or something in the situation, like something in the world that you're really annoyed by. It could be tariffs, it could be a new It could be some guy who like sideswiped your car, you know in the parking lot.
M so annoyed. And what was the first one?
Brown boost is good? Brown break is something bad? We want to like get off our chest.
M Okay, Chris is prepared, so start.
Okay, all right, bron boost Brown break time, Chris, go what's your bron boost?
So I guess it's one of the same, right, So the brown break is that you know they're potentially federal funds to pay for college could go away, right, which will be a lot to make happen. But it was put out there, right, so who knows what the powers that be are doing behind the scenes to make that a reality. But the boost is that you don't have
to rely on that. There are things that you can do if you plan accordingly to put yourself in the best position to still go to school without debt, without student loans, and even if you don't get those federal grants, you could get stuff otherwise. So that's my brown boost brown break.
Okay, so you're boosting yourself because we need to put the link to your book and to your program because you actually and there's not like a one size fits all approach to like getting scholarships. It depends on like all your persons, like your personality, your focus, your education, whatever, whatever you're looking for where you live. So we got to get people into your coaching coach so they can get that help so they cannot.
Absolutely if you go to your debt Free degree dot com, it'll you can just it's a free video that walks you through all of the stuff in detail. I give this speech at Economy conference and there's information from that in there, and if you want to pdf then I can send that to you. So there's a link to get on a free call with me and we'll actually
walk through a strategy. A lot of people just call for that individual last strategy, you know, even if they don't necessarily want to go to the next step and work with me. Like it's a free call so there's there's no loss to them. It's a free call. I walk through how to do what they want to do on their own and if they want help and they want support, Like I said, I have a team of people that will focus on your child if they're preparing to go to college. And that's what we do.
Yeah, amazing, All right, Mark, what you got?
Uh? So I would say two things I'm really excited about. The one that's top of mind for me is Philadelphia Eagles go into Super Bowl.
Yeah.
Are you one of those fans. You don't seem like you're an obnoxious Eagles fan.
I am, but.
You well I do.
It's only really when I'm watching it on TV.
But I'm not.
I'm not.
You hear the horror stories of Eagles fans. I'm not that bad.
Don't climb a pole and die about that.
But I do.
Yes, that's why they grease the polls anytime that Philly has a they win anything.
Oh they didn't in grease that one, good enough, they did.
They also didn't know that.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I'm really excited about that. I am a passionate fan where I expect the best from the players. But but I'm not the type to do crazy things to people because they are from the opposing team. But I'm excited for that going back home, back to Philly and get to see my my parentals, biological parentals, So that's going to be happening. And the other thing I'm really excited about is that there are a lot of people this year that are looking again
to invest and get their finance together. A lot of people are saying twenty twenty five is their year, and they are actually not only talking about it, but they're actually going and putting pen to paper and putting things into action. So we've seen the boost and a lot of people signing up for my free investing class, which
has been great. And I have the opportunity to teach people how to invest the right way so they can invest from themselves or their family members and then make sure that they don't have to get out the mud like we had to.
And maybe you know, when your.
Kid turns eighteen or twenty one, whatever it might be, they have some money put away so they don't have to struggle. So I'm really excited for that. And then the other one was not so excited about.
The brown You don't have to do both, but you can. Oh, and it's not that hard. It's boost or break or break.
I am a little fearful of what what might be rolling out with the administration. I feel like every day there's something. And I remember I was talking to my friend this weekend about the new administration, saying, oh my god, it's been a month. Oh my god, like, we have so many years left, and they were like, Mark, it's only.
In twenty days.
Like I was like, oh my goodness.
So just managing that and the emotions.
That come along with that.
And I come from an area where people rely on pharoh funds to eat and you know, I was a free lunch kid and things like that, so, you know, working with them and just making sure that they know that they're okay and donating or helping them whatever whatever they might need to be able to eat or put their kids through school. I'm going to be there for them. But I'm just a little fearful what could happen down the road.
Thank y'all so much for listening. Be a fam We are going to see you next week. My boy Chris b o G. Chris is back with Yan Nelly Live with Yan Nelly fresh off the plane from Switzerland Dolling where she was there for Davos, which is incredible. I can't wait to be back at the Brown Table with them. In the meantime, bea fam Sending you so much luck and warmth and virtual hugs. I'll see y'all soon. Bye,