Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Raising Elite Predators podcast. I'm Coach Brie, a mental performance coach for girl athletes. I am excited that you're here for today's episode. I had the pleasure of interviewing Shelly Howard of College Ready all about how to set your athlete up to graduate college with little to no debt. Her conversation with me was very enlightening. I'm going to get into the details in a second, but first I want to give a shout out to a mom inside our community. Her daughter is going through our program, the elite mental game. This is our self paced training program for girl athletes, proven to strengthen their mental game. In fact, we have a 14 day money back promise on that program because of how fast changes happen in athletes mindset and in their confidence and this mom texted us recently. She said this I see a huge improvement in my daughter. We've been struggling to get her sportsmanship up, so this athlete shows horses. She goes on to say creating a presence by keeping her head up and her shoulders back. It has finally started to happen. I can see it is easier for her now to show the confidence she has and this has helped her. In the latest competition she won. This qualified her for the national competition in July. Now, this is really cool because I know as a parent it's sometimes hard to watch your athlete If she doesn't have great body language when she's competing. You know that her body language is connected to her confidence and how she feels, and being able to get that message across is sometimes hard, and we talk about that in the program. We tell athletes how important body language is, what it looks like to have their head back, shoulders high and their chin up, and how that impacts how they show up. So I'm so happy that this was translating for this athlete and mom you noticed and then it paid off for her. So amazing all around.

Speaker 1: 1:42

All right, let's get into this episode today with Shelly Howard. Like I said, we're talking all about how to set your athlete up for success in college and how to help her graduate with little to no debt, and that sounds pretty enticing. One thing I love about Shelly's conversation is that she talks about how to use her athletics to get an academic scholarship. So it's very different than just hoping that your athlete is going to get an athletic scholarship A lot of athletes don't. So it's very different than just hoping that your athlete is going to get an athletic scholarship. A lot of athletes don't. There is a majority of athletes out there who actually maybe have a partial athletic scholarship, but the majority of athletes that go to college are not on full ride athletic scholarships and so we've got to talk about how we can help those athletes still use their sport and still use their athletics to gain scholarship, but maybe not athletic scholarship.

Speaker 1: 2:28

So Shelly dives into how to do that and gives very tangible tips that are so relatable, no matter where you are in the journey. If you've got a younger athlete and you're thinking ahead, or maybe your athlete is going away pretty soon to college and you're looking for opportunities to help offset that cost. So I think you're going to learn a lot. I hope you enjoy this episode with Shelly as much as I enjoyed interviewing her. We actually got to bring her into our community of sports moms and go even deeper with this. So moms of athletes going through the Elite Mental Game got a little deeper dive with Shelly and got some free discovery calls with her as well for being a part of our community because their athletes are going through the Elite Mental game. So enjoy this episode with Shelly and I will see you in the next episode. Welcome, shelly to the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.

Speaker 2: 3:09

I am really looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Yes, I'm excited to have you. So I had the honor of being on Shelly's podcast recently, which was great, and Shelly and I have a lot in common and come to find out that you know we're both like into athletics and former athletes and raising athletes and all the things. So Shelly is very well-versed in what she does and what you do at College Ready, but also in the world of athletics. So can you give us a little background on what you do and how you help families?

Speaker 2: 3:39

Absolutely so the college ready was started a little over 17 years ago and it was because my oldest wanted to go to college and I was the first gen to go to college and my parents were not helpful and I kind of muscled through it a little bit and I was a scholar athlete looking for an athletic scholarship because it sounded pretty cool. And what ended up happening is I navigated the process on my own and I applied to two schools, got into both and I remember going to my parents and saying what do I do now? Like I got into both of them, I applied to and they said let's talk about why you applied. And I said I want to go to Colorado to snow ski and I want to go to San Diego State to go to the beach. And they're like I know about college. And I'm like, yeah, exactly that's what I want to do. And now I can look back and giggle, but I still have students who have the same plan that I did. I want to go to UC Santa Barbara because the dorms are in a beautiful location.

Speaker 2: 4:47

And so college ready was started because I wanted my own, my firstborn, to not make all the mistakes I made. I, as a scholar athlete, I put all my eggs in a basket and then when I got to college and I played my freshman year, I didn't like it and I didn't like it controlling my social life and I felt like it was a job. And then all of a sudden I'm like now, what do I do? So I love that you get to talk to students at such an early age so they can navigate this, because for me, I just went into it and then figured wait, this is not what I want to do. So that's how college ready was started was just my firstborn having a need and wanting to go. Wow.

Speaker 1: 5:35

That's awesome and how relatable. Even when I, like I had a partial scholarship but I had no idea the cost of college, how I was going to pay for it, I was actually like this sounds so silly. And also because my parents didn't know, like my mom didn't go to college, my dad did for a little bit, but they didn't know. When I graduated and then I got the like bill for how much debt I had accrued, I was like wait, what I have to pay this back. I know I was like so uneducated, like we just finished paying off my student loans like five years ago, and that was even with a partial athletic scholarship and being in state, you know, and I was. I just didn't know what I didn't know, and so what you're doing is so important. So I'm like I don't want my kids to go through that, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:21

I don't think any parent really wants their child to go through it. I think either you put your head in the sand and just go like I don't know how we're going to do it, but we'll figure it out, and that's probably what happened to you, or it was like me, where it was kind of like I asked a few questions, but not the right questions, and nobody told me they could pick my major because I was in an athletic scholarship. I'm like what do you mean? I don't want to do that major. And so they. It felt like they owned me and nobody talked about it at all. And there's the people who are like well, I'll just leave it to my 17 year old that it's time for them to figure it out. Well, as you know, most 17 year olds don't understand $300,000 worth of debt.

Speaker 1: 7:08

That's just content Uncomprehensible.

Speaker 2: 7:10

Yes, yeah, and so what I have found is if I can start students having these conversations with their parents at an early age seventh, eighth, ninth grade then they're going into it eyes wide open. They know exactly the plan, the process. They know how much it's going to cost before they apply where to get the big scholarships. Now they're armed and ready to go and making good choices and choosing which path they go. So I did it the wrong way and I wanted better for my own children. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:47

I love that. I love that you're paying it forward to all these other families. You told me on the last podcast that you helped families with how much money in debt? Scholarships, scholarships.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Yes, yes. So in 22, 23, our students there were 51 students earned 23 million in scholarships. So the money is there. Unfortunately, it's not all there in athletics, right? And so we say to students being a scholar, athlete is like double dipping you get the scholar and you get the athlete, and if you get injured you still have the scholar. So there's a lot of opportunities if you're working all the angles.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Okay, yeah, let's dive into this. So we'll talk scholar athletes. I think that there's moms and dads listening that are like, okay, my athlete maybe is good enough to get some sort of athletic scholarship, and some are like, yeah, that's what we're banking on. And some are like, no, that's maybe not in the cards. But let's talk to the parents who are maybe just getting started on this journey. So we have listeners who have athletes that are in middle school, high school, getting close to college, but let's just, where would they start? When we're talking about choosing colleges, how to find scholarships, how to pay for it, where do we start?

Speaker 2: 9:05

So, speaking to that athletic family, your student has a desire, right, let's start there to be, let's just say, soccer. It's easy enough. And that was my firstborn. He had talent, maybe at a D2 level, maybe D3 he could have started, but his hopes were on D1 because that's the only place money came from and he was not ever going to be a D1 player. He just didn't have that dedication or that gift right. Not every child comes with that gift Right and so what I hope families understand is, like most things in life, you don't want to lean all heavy on one thing. Because that my oldest he actually got injured, broke his nose and didn't want to play anymore. Gotten the academic to balance the athletic we would have been in big trouble. But that's the same young man who got a full ride to Harvard. So he used his athletics to get the coaches talking to him and looking at his resume and then he used his academic GPA and test scores to stand out because, as we know, athletes need to have a certain GPA on a team. The whole team rises or the whole team falls, based on that overall team GPA. So to start back to your question, the best thing you can do is to have balance.

Speaker 2: 10:42

I have so many families who and I was one of them my daughter was a competitive cheerleader and we spent probably $12,000 a year, since she was three, banking on. She was going to go full ride and all of that time and travel, all of that dedication, hours and hours and hours, all of that dedication, hours and hours and hours. And we didn't focus on her academics and it ended up backfiring on us. And so I learned as a parent to help that, even the gifted athlete, because one injury and I hate to keep going back to the injury, but it's just one that concussion stopped her from cheerleading.

Speaker 2: 11:24

She's fine, but we had to pivot quickly on her community service, her leadership, her extracurriculars, like we had everything in that one bucket banking on. That's how she was going to go to college. So I would say balance is key and you know just as well as I do that right now, you know back in the day, you can do multiple sports. Right Now they're having you choose so early for a single sport. It's hard to put all of that balance into life because kids are getting these private coaches and it just goes on and on and on. So, in summary, it's balance.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Okay, all right. So getting the balance and not putting all our eggs in one basket, even if we're like, I think they've got a future here. You know, I saw my six-year-old score a goal last weekend and I was like, here we go, soccer star, full ride. Okay, I'll reel myself in.

Speaker 2: 12:23

Reel yourself in a little bit and go you know what I'll read to her about a soccer book and help her vocabulary expand and love on her passion. Okay, okay, yes.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Got it All right, great. Okay, where are all these scholarships that you speak of?

Speaker 2: 12:40

So the place to get the big scholarships. There's so much money out there and this is the sad part is, with social media being so forward facing, you hear a lot of my kid was perfect this and they didn't get anything. And there's so much negativity. I'm here to tell you there is a ton of money and how you go and get it is just like this Academic with rigor. The number one way to get a Fulbright scholarship is your academia, that GPA. So don't skip it, even if they're an athlete. That GPA is gonna matter for the team Number two test scores. You can earn a free education if you score well on the PSAT, your junior year. Again, it has nothing to do with their athletics, but that will get them a very nice large scholarship. And then you get into the extracurriculars and the community service and the leadership and that's building their standout strategy. So what College Ready focuses on is taking the student and making them the best they can be. So for people who live in the athletic world, think about it like this I remember a child, my son's soccer team at five he was scoring half the goals Like you could not keep him down, he was just truly gifted, kicking with both feet. It was amazing. So is that hard to continue him on that path? Probably not. But you may have that academic student who started reading very early on or finds a love of reading. Continue to put that into the daily plan. So it's just as much as you would support and provide for the athlete you want to do the same for the academia, because colleges will pay you for a resume.

Speaker 2: 14:42

Okay, just like a job. Think about this. Some people find this easier. If you own a company and I come to you and I have no resume, but I'm like Rhian, I love what you're doing, I really want to work for you, will you hire me? And you say, well, yes, shelly, I'll give you a shot, but it's minimum wage.

Speaker 2: 15:05

Now I, as another person, come to you and I'm like I've done your job. I can increase your sales. I've got this. All you have to do is go on vacation. I've got this. Would you pay me minimum wage? No, you would not. That's where the money comes from. So if you're this student who hasn't done anything but played games on the computer or hung out at the beach, colleges are not going to throw money at you, the student who's built the resume, who's really put time in community service and leadership and extracurriculars. They're going to pay them to come to their school. Why? Because college is a business. When you wear those letters across your chest and you're a winner of a Pulitzer Prize, nominee, whatever, and they're going to say, oh my gosh, you went to school X, I want my child to go to school X, so that's what it's all about. They're bringing in the best of the best and they're willing to pay for them because that's the future of their school.

Speaker 1: 16:10

And they're willing to pay for them because that's the future of their school. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Can you speak to so say they we have students. Okay, we're going to focus on academics. We're going to make sure that we have. We were doing the PSET junior year, like getting the tests that we're supposed to get. Do they just automatically qualify for some of these scholarships or do they have to go find them on certain websites?

Speaker 2: 16:37

Or is that? What College ready helps with is to find those things. Yeah, so it's all of the above. So there's merit scholarships, athletic scholarships, need-based scholarships, institutional scholarships and independent scholarships. Okay, well, it's a lot of scholarships, right? So the important thing is, if you don't know where to get them, they don't exist. After 17 years of doing this, we've seen when my son got a full ride to USC, I didn't even know that was a thing. They just told him hey, you won the presidential here, here's a full ride. And I'm like what does that even mean? And I'm like, what does that even mean? Well, now that I've been doing this for so long, we're able to let students know it's all about picking the right college, because colleges fight over the student. They'll do financial negotiations. Harvard knew that.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Usc you have two liberos right In volleyball and there's not a lot of room for liberos on a team. There's not a ton of them. So it's going to be competitive. How are they going to pick which libero? Well, they're going to do the one that has the overall stats, the overall strength, all state, all league. That's the one they're going to pick. It's building the resume. That student couldn't walk onto a volleyball court and say hey, I'm going to be a libero and I'm going to go and get a full ride at the college. That's what I'm talking about. So it's setting them up for success and then knowing where the money comes from. That's where College Ready is able to help.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Yeah, okay, wow, like there's so many. I didn't know there were that many scholarship opportunities. I yeah, that's amazing. I mean pair that with, like, like you said, the attention that you get from being an athlete or really using that, leveraging your athletic abilities and being on team, with all those opportunities. Like I could see how someone could go to college and graduate with little debt with this.

Speaker 2: 18:39

I have a student right now at Stanford and she was a coxswain.

Speaker 2: 18:44

A coxswain in rowing yeah, in rowing, and there's one in a boat right. There's a whole bunch of them and Stanford picked her up because of her GPA. So here she's a great athlete, but she's a scholar athlete, which means Harvard. I'm sorry, stanford, just one double right. That's what we're talking about. That the coach walked in to admissions and said I need this student and the admission said she's brilliant, we need her too, and we're going to throw a bunch of money at her because we don't want school B, c or D to get her. You starting to see how all that plays together.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Okay, there's two things that are popping up in my mind. I'm trying to think which order to ask them. Okay, we'll go with this. What if we've got a student who is not as academically gifted or strong? Is there any opportunity there? How can we help them?

Speaker 2: 20:10

So with that student who maybe is athletics thinking, oh you know, they're a 2.5 student, no, they're not valuable like a 3.0, 4.0 student would be so number one is get them help and bring up their grade for sure.

Speaker 2: 20:27

The second thing is get them in front of a lot of eyes athletically, so they start competing over that student and they become the hot commodity, right? If everybody's fighting over this gifted athlete, then it's going to be a lot easier for the coach to say, hey, if we don't score on this student, so-and-so school's going to take them and they're just going to fight that much harder. I had a kicker for Penn and again, one position on the field is I don't know how I get these students, but he ended up getting in not because of his academics, it was because of his athletics and that was because other schools were fighting over this one kicker. So you have to create that urgency, that need for the coach to recognize, and that's going to be going to the combines. That's going to be the club. That's going to be something other than just regular high school.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Okay, yeah, that's good. Okay, on the flip side of that, say that we do have an athlete who you know is enjoying their sport, doing well, but doesn't want to play that sport in college or maybe can't. Can they still somehow use their athletic experience to bolster them to get a scholarship or help them out with admissions?

Speaker 2: 21:54

Yeah, so I mean there's many different forms of that, but, to speak to kind of that person you're speaking about, you can use it in many ways. You can use it depending on how good they are. If they are just, you know, freshmen, fresh off JV, junior, fresh sophomore, and then varsity senior year, like just the standard student, then you want to go with longevity and hopefully they can be a team captain to show leadership and they will then probably play some type of intramural or maybe a JV some type at the university. So you can use that commitment and that leadership to build the resume and it will help show that the student's been able to be a good student while holding all of this athletic commitment.

Speaker 1: 22:52

Okay, yeah, okay, that makes sense. So there's still merit and that still demonstrates a lot like being on that team and being a leader For sure, and colleges love athletes because they have really good core values.

Speaker 2: 23:09

Athletes come with right. They don't give up easily, they're more tenacious, they're more determined, they're more focused not all, but these are the qualities that you often see in a competitive athlete, which is exactly what you need in college.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Yeah, exactly Okay. The other thought that was popping in my head is kind of it's kind of backing up a little bit. It was when you were talking about you know, I want to go here because I want to go skiing and I want to be here because I'm near the beach. So let's say that I mean that's also what I hear from the athletes that I coach. They're like well, I just really love the beach. In that decision of where to go to college, I know that's a big question, but where should they start?

Speaker 2: 23:59

Yeah, so it depends on maturity of the student, right? They all mature at a different time. We start working with students in seventh and eighth grade. Some of them are ready to have these conversations, Some are not. Some of them are ready to have these conversations, some are not. So first thing I would say parent, even if you have multiple kids, meet them where they're at right, Because every one of them is going to be different when to have that conversation.

Speaker 2: 24:24

You know, when we go on vacation, we go to museums, we go to amusement parks, we go and we talk to our children about our past, about special things in our life, about aunt Susie was actually my college roommate. She's not really your aunt and we confuse them and so then they start asking more questions. So it's important when you're talking about this that you help the child understand. If you want to be a botanist and you just want to plant plants for a living, you don't need to go to an Ivy League school to do that. That's not a good return on investment. So when you're sitting around the dinner table, what we used to play at my house was called be the millionaire and I would ask at different times in my kid's life. I would say to them if I gave you a million dollars cash and you had to spend it all in 24 hours or you had to give it back to me, what would you do with it? And you will quickly find out. Their financial literacy is terrifying, because they would take all their friends to Hawaii on their private jet and then they would buy a yacht. And so first you have to fix that before you can really help them understand the cost of college. So helping them understand, you know, at some point do you want to buy a car? This is how much cars cost, and they're like whoa, they're shocked. And then this is how much it costs to live on your own electricity and rent. And dah, dah, dah, dah. No, families are having these kinds of conversations not none, but not a lot. And so if you just out of the blue, go, either we can't afford college, you can't go, I've heard that. Or my parents think college is stupid. Because we can't afford college, you can't go, I've heard that. Or my parents think college is stupid because we can't afford it. So you have to be careful of if you make it all about the money, some students will just say, well, then fine, I won't go, but they won't tell you what their backup plan is. Right. They're going to be an influencer. Now what did you just do, right? So you're like, oh my gosh, now I have to really figure out how to help that.

Speaker 2: 26:41

So the conversation that we have with students is really easy because we're not their parent and we have no judgment. So when we find out that Johnny wants to be an engineer and and we start to talk about why, and he says because I was good at Legos. And then we talk about what does that mean? What kind of career would that be, how much money that career makes, how much college it needs to get that career, we're just educating, we're just having knowledgeable conversation where the student doesn't feel judged. They feel like, oh, I didn't even know that and we can help that student. See that, why botany? Well, I like to save my environment. Well, that's environmentalism, yeah, and they're like, oh, that's a thing. So a lot of times it's really just having those conversations to say you know why? I tell parents remember when they were three and all they said was but why? Why? Without judgment of why would you want to do that?

Speaker 1: 27:49

Yeah, that's not going to pay off.

Speaker 2: 27:52

Yeah, so it happens a lot with my artists, right, where parents are like, please don't let them go into art, and I'm like, why do they want to go into art? I don't know, I've never asked them, right? Yeah, that's the first question. It's just a very easy gentle why I'm interested, I'm curious.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Yeah, yeah, okay, that's good. Okay, I love that you mentioned like you're the one that's like asking the student these questions. Can you tell us how you work with families, how you work with students themselves? Do you educate parents? I'm assuming you do a mixture of things, but how do you? What do you have for us?

Speaker 2: 28:29

Yeah. So we have several different programs. We have do it yourself, where we just give you the knowledge and then let you lead it. We have where you say they're too much for me, shelly, they're all yours, you handle it. And so we have those two extremes and everything in between. We support our families by helping them understand what's on the FAFSA, the CSS profile, their student aid index to get the big scholarships, because they do understand the financial consequences. And then we also work with the student on building their standout strategy, their positioning. How are they going to combine athleticism and academics and have one super strong profile?

Speaker 2: 29:18

So it really comes down to what does the student need? Where do they want to go? If they want to go to a local state school very different plan than if they want to go to a top tier Ivy school. So helping them navigate what it takes. It's nothing like it used to be, even five years ago, more competitive and more expensive. So we need to help educate parents. You can't do what you did because your child will not get into college and they won't get scholarships. It's a whole nother tier of what families need to navigate and that is what we do. So it's really everything from setting the student up for success, helping them to grow to figure out what major, what career can I afford it? To getting scholarships, picking the right colleges, preparing essays, applications, test strategy. It's a lot and that's a lot for a parent to handle on top of their career. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:24

Oh, but I mean such great resources. My kids are still young and we should just set up like a 529 for them, but I'm like that'd be amazing if we didn't have to use that Like they could use it, I guess, into their Roth IRA you know, like different ways that they could actually like utilize that money.

Speaker 2: 30:39

Oh yeah, there's a lot better ways. I use my son's college fund to help buy him a new home. Hey, yeah, exactly that's the way to launch a kid into a successful adulthood. So there's a lot of better ways that we can spend our money. But most people just get frustrated because they just don't know how.

Speaker 1: 30:59

Right, wow, well, amazing. Where can our families find you and find more information about all of the things that you offer?

Speaker 2: 31:06

Yes, absolutely so. I'd like to offer your listeners a 30-minute complimentary discovery call to ask their questions, and you just go to collegereadyplaninfo, and then you can always go to our website, which is collegereadyplancom.

Speaker 1: 31:24

Okay, great, I will link those in the show notes. How generous that you're offering your time like that. Thank you. And then Shelly also is coming into our community in a couple of weeks, so into our community of sports. Moms who are whose athletes are inside our programs, and so we're going to go a little bit deeper with all of this. So if you are one of our moms of athletes in our programs, you'll be seeing Shelly pretty soon. All right, shelly, thank you again. This has really opened up my eyes and I hope that it's been just as valuable for our families and just really appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2: 31:56

It's my pleasure. Thank you so much.