Robert Berk: Connecting Students & Entrepreneurs!

In this episode, Nikolay and Yuliya (Julia) are joined by Robert Berk, one of the founders of Apprentice (chooseapprentice.com) - a startup that connects college students with entrepreneurs and CEOs for work opportunities!

Tune in to hear Rob discuss how he had the idea to start Apprentice, how he has grown his business, and what he's learned as an entrepreneur - as well as some of the challenges he has overcome along the way!

As a bonus, listen to the end of the episode to learn about a SPECIAL GIVEAWAY OPPORTUNITY exclusively for our listeners!

And as always, DM or email us at info@nyglobalgroup.com if you have a story to share!

To learn more about Rob and Apprentice:

Email: rob@chooseapprentice.com
Webpage:  https://www.chooseapprentice.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chooseapprentice/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chooseapprentice/

To learn more about Nikolay & Yuliya:

Webpage: http://nyglobalgroup.com/
Instagram (Nikolay): @Nikolay.NYC
Instagram (Yuliya): @Julia.Afanasyev
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC44hOfGdvTB15Aa_xaW5t0w


Thank you for listening!

Transcript

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This is Success & Setbacks in NYC podcast with your hosts, Julia and Nikolay, coming to you from New York City with some of the most amazing life stories of how various people turn their challenges around! Tune in to get inspired, learn more, or simply enjoy. Hi, everyone. Good day, morning, evening, wherever this podcast finds you. Thank you for stopping by again, our guest today is Robert Berk. Robert is someone I met about six months ago. And Robert is a fellow entrepreneur. He has, I think you've had a couple of businesses already. And one of them that you're working on growing rapidly right now is a company called chooseapprentice.com. It's a company that matches students to employers, but you also have a certain niche of employers I imagine too, we'll have to talk about more about that. And Rob, welcome! Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me really excited to chat today and dive into everything. So yeah, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit more, I guess, about your business first, in general, what do you do? And how does it work? And then we'll bombard you with questions. Yeah, absolutely. I'll jump in occasionally. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So apprentice, we're a platform, we connect college students with entrepreneurs. So in terms of the students, we recruit, train, and screen all the students and coach them through everything. Our students mostly work on marketing, project management, business development, and then in terms of businesses that we work with, mostly entrepreneurs in any industry, and we learned about what businesses are looking for, whether it's a"Hey, we're looking for a student to help with social media who goes to this type of school, and is this type major". And then we go through our available students, set up interviews connected to and not only that, but then we meet with every student every week, and through the ongoing coaching support both sides, in terms of the students and the entrepreneurs. Amazing. How did you come to the idea of founding this business? Yeah, what why did you choose this? Yeah, absolutely. So it's all based on kind of my own journey. So during my freshman year at Hamilton College, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I saw a post in my High School's alumni Facebook group from Dave Kirpan. Dave is a serial entrepreneur and best selling author and my co-founder of apprentice at the time, he was working on like media, which is one of his companies. And he said he was looking for a project manager, executive assistant, I had no idea what either of those titles meant. Googled them, had some nice words didn't really know what it meant either. I replied had some interviews, and he's like, great. When can you start? I thought it was a summer internship. He's like, No, how about next week? I said, Sure. So through that experience, I immediately started working on really cool projects, with some big companies. And also some other things with other startups as a co author, like with social media, over the next three years, worked on everything he was working on. And then from there, at this realization, talk to some friends who are interested in entrepreneurship and didn't know what to do about it, or how to gain experience. And then also through talking to David, his entrepreneur, friends, they always say, Oh, I wish I had a college student that I could work with throughout the year. And I was like, Well, if there are millions of college students, millions of entrepreneurs, well, for me to platform to connect it to. And I'd mentioned it, Dave, and he was like, great. Let's get started. So June 2019, we launched and been growing since then. Nice. That's awesome. So the platform, does it just work on a desktop? Or is there an app? Or is there both versions? Yeah, yeah. So right now right now it's all more computer based. In the future, we see it being an app, we see it being the matching algorithm being fully developed. But that is where we want to go. And right now it's more in the process of getting there. Cool. And do like people select who they're interested in. And if there is a match, that's how they get connected? Or like, How can a potential connection happen between the student and between the intrapreneur? or employer? Yeah, absolutely. So it can go both ways. So in terms of entrepreneurs, we have some people that will go through the available profiles and say, Hey, this is who I want to work with. And we have other people who will describe what they're looking for. And then we'll go through our available students and say, here are some options for you to interview and decide. So it's kind of both waste that happens. And then after a couple of interviews, we'll get the feedback and have a conversation with the entrepreneur. Who do you want to work with? And why kind of go from there? So it goes on both sides there. Yeah. And did you guys do any funding or was it just kind of out of pocket by yourself? Yeah. Fully bootstrapped from the start. When we launched, we had a Squarespace website that I made, wasn't the best looking but it got the job done for the purpose. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And we made some Google Forms to reach out to entrepreneurs. And then I started reaching out to college students to get our first 10 on tours. 10 first clients and 10 students that since then have been growing and are lucky to be profitable and keep on growing that way. Nice. And are you like Are you still partners with the previous person? Or you guys like 50/50? Or is it a little bit different? Yeah, Dave and I are partners 50/50 on everything, which is really cool to go from being his apprentice, working with him in that role to now, fully partners, which has been awesome experience. Do you personally have a lot of employees? Or how does it work? Yeah, yes. That's a very interesting question. Because we have over 130 or so apprentices now. And a number of them do work internally with us. So out of the 130 apprentices most are working with the companies we're working with. But we have a lot that do some work with us. So in terms of how many exactly it depends, because some will do a little bit, some will do more. The one of the more fun things is getting to work with so many different students. And when we have so many great people, it's sometimes hard to we want the best students to work with our clients, but then it's also worth it. Sometimes, it'll be like, Hey, we have one small project, you're really great at data. Can you do this for us for you know, the next couple of weeks while you're continuing to work with your entrepreneur? So it's a range as we keep growing, working on figuring out full time team in the next couple of months to say, well, it's awesome that you mentioned that you guys are profitable. Who is responsible for the profits? Is it the entrepreneurs? Or is it the students? Yes. Or their parents? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So business model-wise companies pay us and we pay the students and keep part of the difference. And so we do not charge students, or schools last week, actually, school asked us if they if we were charging them, it gave an idea, maybe we should charge schools. So that could be something in the future. But we definitely don't want to charge students out of the idea of wanting to create opportunities for students, but charging schools, maybe it sounds really awesome. I just remember, in my college experience, I went to school here in New Jersey. And I was like new to the country, like no idea what's going on even. And they're like, oh, you should go to like this place. They have person who's going to help you with a resume. So I was like, still absolutely clueless after like all that stuff. I just knew that my resume had to look nice and figure it out. But how would somebody who was like in my position, but right now, how would they figure out that your platform exists? Do you guys advertise on Google? Are you in blogs? Are you on social media? Like how can we how can somebody find you? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In terms of on the student side, it's one of the interesting things about our platform, too, is like the different ways we market both sides. Because how different it is on students, one of the biggest things that we have our campus ambassadors, so word of mouth, growing on each campus, so that's been a ton of fun in terms of swag and stuff like that. Other things are social media is trying to grow. They're working with schools, through Career Centers, like you mentioned, I'm doing info sessions with clubs and student organizations. Those are kind of the main strategies. Soon, we'll have fliers up all around campuses, with stickers QR code, so you can just scan and go to join apprentice calm, then give your email, awesome, we'll send information about how to apply that on the entrepreneur side, our sales team is pretty big. And with that, it's all student led soon based on those are students. We do a lot of work in sort of like here, the emails, here's the templates, the scripts, but then reaching out to alumni of their schools or areas that they're interested in. So we have an apprentice who's working at a law firm that they'll reach out to other law firms to say, hey, here's work that I'm doing at a law firm with a student like this would meet pretty much of you. So that's kind of how we grow on both sides. And one of my main questions is, how much time do you spend in business per week? A lot? Yeah, how old is the company? Like how many? Just just over two, a little bit more than that? Okay. So that's the big growth. Yeah, it's still fairly early because, like, sometimes we're listening to podcasts and stuff. And it's these guys are like, oh, yeah, like we're profitable. We're doing great. We're like 10 hours a week in the business. I'm like, wow, like 10 hours a day? Yes. Usually in our business. Yeah, I think the biggest challenge and one of the things that I'm working through a lot right now is figuring out how to develop the systems and the teams to focus more on the bigger picture and less on okay, this is the immediate thing right now or today's Okay, one entrepreneur saying this and once you have this going on, so how to create that system and all of that, while still handling to create the system. Well, handling the day to day. Yep. So that can be a big a big one there. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, that's the goal to be a little bit less in business and work more on your business. It's the challenge for every business owner. Yeah, everyone, anyone in the world? I think so I know how hard rock works. I've seen you very tight and very relaxed. So it's a, you know, it's all the same challenges that any business in any industry has. So I'm just curious. I mean, you mentioned that you do have campus ambassadors. Is that? Do they get compensated? Is that how you incentivize? Yeah, yeah, Vision ambassadors, yeah, we've tried a ton of different models, I feel like every school year, we do something new. One of the things that's been most successful recently, and we're expanding on it now in the new year, is a point system in terms of the number of people that you refer, and also other events on campus. So if you do an info session with a club, that's seven points, for example, or if you create introduction with the Career Center, that's another number stuff like that. And the more points you get the different type of swag people get. And the more points, the better the swag, stuff like that. Um, we've also done kind of direct comp and terms of dollars for number of referrals, on things like that. What we've seen is that the swag, except people more, and then it's fine when we're on Zoom, because we're all virtual, but people being on Zoom, and everyone's wearing the same sweatshirt, or stuff like that. But you can change the book that you mentioned for sweatshirt, or a book. Stuff like that. It's a ton of fun. And then it also lets us be creative to have then students walk around campus and actually having our laptop sticker there. They're sitting in a classroom and someone's like, Oh, what's that logo there? And stuff like that. So that's been cool to see. So that's probably the where I see us going more and more than doing different things with maybe we do the art logo with the school's color, or something like that. Yeah, like more advanced with it and different ideas there. Sounds like that. A lot of moving parts. Yeah. Yeah. There's that's another thing is like I wish I did we focus on now? And which idea do we say like, what can we Yeah, okay, this is cool. But maybe in a month? Is there like, separation of the or division of labor between you and your partner? Do you guys work on different stuff? Or you kind of like overlap me? Yeah, absolutely. So kind of from the start at the plan has always been that Dave focuses more on the marketing sales side, and I'm on the operations students. Day to day, admin, training, all that side of things, that's pretty much how it works, and how we how we operate, we meet a lot, we go over everything. One of the biggest things for us has been the one page strategic plan from Vern Harnish and gazelles. And so we have our plan for the year for the quarter. And we work on that together, and kind of hold each other accountable to Hey, this is what we're going to do. And kind of think through things strategically, but on like a day to day execution. And what we're doing is more independent there. Makes sense. So it's not as your clients on the other side employers, yeah. How do you get those clients? I mean, do you constantly poach different companies, you just choose an interest industry and go after them? Or is it also a lot of word of mouth? How do you get them, that's a little bit of everything. Um, B, definitely, word of mouth is really big. And that's a ton of fun in terms of like, when one of our entrepreneurs is really happy entrepreneurs, though, other entrepreneurs. And so that's big, and we have a nice referral, kind of credit for clients there. Another thing is in terms of just ourselves in reaching out called to different industries or to companies, when we see success in a particular industry, we'll reach out and use those case studies, as kind of part of our intros and hear what our apprentices are doing with a similar business. Would this help you? And our biggest thing that we do on the sales side is find out kind of what their pain points are? And then what's taking up your time that you don't want to be doing? What could someone else do the same thing of like, that we're struggling with? And I struggle with it like, I'm doing this, but I know someone else could do it. Where can a college student help working an apprentice out? And so those are that's kind of arc the questions we ask. And we try to turn to different industries, different sized companies, and still try to figure out the right company to reach out of your current clients. What would you say is your typical, if you haven't identified your core client yet, that's completely understandable. But out of the 100 plus companies that you're servicing now, what is an average size of a company? That's yeah, that's a really good question. I think there are a couple of different core clients that we have, one of which is a company that's growing really quickly, just raise the round of investment, and they're hiring rapidly. They have a little bit more structure in place, but they also Setting up the structure at the same time. Usually that the bringing apprentice for a marketing role is kind of that size company. Still young, usually little tech involved is that type of company to other type of company is a smaller but older company that's been around 20 or 30 years more typical service industry where they aren't yet fully digital, whether it's a website, whether it's social media, and bringing in a college student can be really helpful. They're bringing an apprentice to help with that. That's another kind of core client of ours. So that's a those are the main two. And then, yeah, yeah. Would you say that you're competing with like, indeed, and ziprecruiter? Or do you think you're kind of like more niche than those are not like not to worry about? Um, we are and we are, and at the same time, I think we are in terms of hiring and bringing on talent. I think the reason we aren't is because apprentices aren't full time. So we're kind of in between that. I think we're also in some ways competing with like Fiverr and Upwork, in terms of outsourcing. But we're also not because our students are more, or there's more training involved. And there's more commitment involved than that. So I think we got kind of in between both a full time person and outsource terms of the hours in terms of quality. And do you see yourself like running this company for many years more? Would you ideally like to do something else down the line and sell this once it grows? Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good question. Something that whenever I think about it, I have no idea. I think definitely keep running this keep growing apprentice. At some point, I could see myself doing something else too. But definitely for now. Keep keep it growing, baby. Yeah, absolutely. I'm super passionate about the overall mission behind what we're doing in terms of creating opportunities for students to get involved in entrepreneurship and for entrepreneurs to work with great students. And to me, until there's another thing that I or another idea that I have that I'd want to pursue would want to keep growing apprentice. Yeah, makes sense. And I think the the motivation, I can see why you are so inspired to do what you what you do, and it's probably easier for you to sleep four or five hours a day knowing you know, how much you can change someone's life. As far as I know, a lot of things are online, and you do mostly zoom. So would you say your employer service companies? Are most of them based in New York City? tri state area? Are we are you all over the United States? Yeah, we're all over the US a lot are in the tri state area. I think that's because of Dave and I both being based in the New York area, and kind of networks where we started and then word of mouth ripple effects from there. But we have clients all over. So yes, and no, it kind of same with our students. A lot of our students in the schools, whoever have most of our students are a lot in the East Coast area, but some of our top schools or Berkeley, are you you see it, UCLA? Places like that, too. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Would you say it was challenging to just started to guys start on this idea, with no additional funding and just doing everything by yourself? Because we have so many companies now they're just like, a there's a million dollars figure that? Yeah, um, absolutely. I think I didn't know how challenging it would be. I also think that's great that I wasn't thinking about it like that. Because for me, it was kind of just like, okay, cool. I guess I'll just make a website on Squarespace and then create a Google form and send it out to people and get told no, a lot. And when people are applying, and I think I'm interviewing them, they're asking me questions about things that I can't answer, because I don't know who they're going to be working with yet. Or think like along those lines. Um, so I think, kind of my own, like, lack of knowledge and being a bit naive there helped. At the same time. If we had raised money with that, could that have been good? Probably, but then also giving up equity and things like that. So very happy. We did it the way we did. I'm a little bit jealous sometimes of other companies, but I'm proud of where we're doing it that were profitable. And have you ever considered going on like Shark Tank or something like that? I have friends who actually did it. So I was just curious to see if you guys ever considered anything like that? Yeah, just for exposure. Yeah, my grandma loves the idea of me. You have to make the grandma I know. I know. I cannot have any phone call or meal with her without it coming up. This one. She'll like the podcast. Yeah, absolutely. I think Yeah, I really do want to go on Shark Tank. I think not with apprentice. Okay, um, I want to create something that is different. I don't know what it is yet. I think the challenge with apprentice and sure, I think the exposure would be great. Um, I am a little bit concerned more so about like the fit and where where we are now. But I think it'd be a very cool experience. Yeah, I'm sure, yeah. So naturally, as you know, me, and because of the interest industry we're in, we have a lot of clients, friends, acquaintances who do own businesses, you know, from solopreneurs to larger companies. And, of course, many of them will be listening to the podcast. But if people have not heard Gartner information, who would be an ideal client? That we could introduce it to? You? I understand it's, you've already explained to have your describe to your clients. But other than that, would it be anyone who's growing? Could it be as your company? Yeah, absolutely. Any company that's looking to have someone great on their team that can work on a range of projects. And any company that's growing is really the key. At the end of the day, we've worked with and have had great success with people from solopreneurs that are trying something new to people that have companies that are more in the idea stage and doing more market research and creating a deck to pitch to people that have been in business for a really long time. One of the biggest things that we always focus on is having a wide range of students available that are trained on all sorts of great projects, kind of anything that can come up so that way, anything that any person or company is looking for, we're here to help with. So it really can be any company. And that's where even if it is as Project changing, oh, no, at first, I thought I needed someone to do more data analysis. Great. We have the data analysis, that's an awesome, now let's make it into a great looking slide deck. And maybe that's a different apprentice to come and do that. And that's where no, we work to, here's a new person to work on that part. So really can be any person, any company. And the biggest things is that people are open looking to grow. And really open to working with someone that is in college and will have different ideas and a new perspective on things. And in terms of the students that we work with. We want people that take initiative, and don't just need everything listed out. It's like here's step one, step two, step three, because then you just don't know right and bought and use that. Right, right. So today, we want people who are, here's my goal, I want you to do it. And we'll talk about it and coach you through it. But both people like that. I mean, from my experience, just like even after people graduate, the people who can figure out problems, so they could have good problem solving skills. They'll usually go pretty far. Yeah, like if they don't need to consistently ask questions. Yeah. Like, I feel like it's one of the determining factors. Even when we hire, it's like, can you like, critically think about things? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, we've gone we've went gone through some stages of hiring where you know, some of the more disappointment, and some of them turned out to be great. Yeah, I guess it all comes down to that. So let's say our company, I mean, we're a company of six people. Let's say we reach out to you, and we need somebody, for example, to help us with marketing. You make a match for us, who worked with the person for a few weeks, we realize it's not the best fit. What do we do? Yeah, so you also you give us feedback, and we check in with we'll be checking with you like every week to see how things are going. And then once you're like, hey, it's not the right fit, then we set up some interviews and kind of learn why so that way we can make the next fit a better, better person, whether it's, Hey, sometimes when we have we've had this happen sometimes it's scheduling because of timezone. Sometimes it's oh, you know, their class schedule didn't line up with when we're working and we need to work live, especially, you know, free time about content creation, a live work session, when we're both on zoom just to go over the posts can be really helpful. So next time is working someone new on our onboarding, purif call say, Okay, let's pull up your class schedule. And let's go through mine. Are you going to work on this every day to like, work on those specific issues if it's a skills based thing, okay, let's figure out who has certifications, or birth experience in Canva or on HubSpot or InDesign and then also send over some sample work from the new person to make sure that it's up to the sender that everyone's expecting. Okay. So the more communication the better with everything. Yeah. Is it is always in any, in any industry in situation. Have you filed claims? Yes. Yeah, um, I really didn't understand that concept. At first. And this is one of the things we're Dave as a partner is incredible because of how much I'm able to learn quickly is did he have like more experience originally than you? Yeah. Yeah. So Dave's, this is his fourth company. Okay. Um, and part of the fun in a lot of ways is that he's 20 20 or so years older than me, okay. Um, and so in terms of like our dynamic of me being his apprentice, first and now sorry, apprentice together, I feel like I've been able to learn a lot through him having gone through all this before. And I think that's been really key in our growth. So the idea of firing your client, we have the first time we fired a client, things were going well, their student, in terms of like being disrespectful, and just not how you should treat someone. Make no, yeah, and just that's the type person that we were in it beyond, like, lack of communication, like stuff like that, um, and he's like, Yeah, we have to fire with fire them and can't work with them anymore. And I was like, that's the thing. I didn't know that that can happen. And he's like, yeah, it's not gonna be a fun conversation. But we'll jump on Zoom and talk to them. And I'll lead the conversation and chime in and I kind of we walked it through, and he liked it. I understood. And now we, depending on who has the relationship, it's not a common thing, but But it happens, it happens. So what would you say is your biggest challenge now? Um, that's a really good question. Yeah. Going to the gym, I think the biggest challenge with the business right now, um, would be figuring out the dynamic between the importance of the relationship and individual apprentice and apprentice us overall as a company. Because one of the things that's interesting about apprentice is like the nature of students graduating of transitions with semesters of someone who's going to study abroad. So with that, how do we extend how long we're working with each client to be longer? So if someone works with an apprentice for six months, and then they graduate, what can we do to develop relationship with the client so that they continue with apprentice instead of saying, Oh, my apprentice was great. They graduated, I'm going to Berkeley someone else now. So the balance there, in terms of continuing to work with clients longer, broadly. In the last two years, and I know I mean, we all go through this, especially in the beginning stages of having a business. Many of us and I have experienced it, when you wake up in the middle of lead, and you're like, Oh, my God, I have to get up tomorrow morning, and deal with X, Y, and Z. Why am I even doing this? Is it even worth it? And then you have bet, I don't know, communication or something unpleasant with a client? And then you're like, I'm done. I don't want to have this business anymore. How often do you want to quit? Yeah, have you ever? Have you ever experienced it? Have you thought about quitting altogether? And staying? Yeah, yeah, that is a another really good kind of deep question. I'm definitely have had those thoughts. I think when I, the times where I have, or have had those thoughts the most are when I'm most disappointed about the work that we're doing mostly in myself for things that we haven't done, or mistakes that I made that I know, I could have done better. Um, and with that, whether it's something like, not communicating with an entrepreneur, when I no knew that I should have I felt like that or with students. When I think I'm doing a lot, or we're doing a lot to create opportunities, and then our students aren't always doing what we think would be the best thing or our clients are, like, the things that I feel aren't in my control. But I personally like to always take accountability for everything that is going on with apprentice. So how can I fix it? So I have that thought of like, oh, really, again? And then I take a deep breath, breathe a little bit, and then try to figure out how to, is it? Yeah, is it a one time thing? Is it a multiple times and we should change something systematically and stuff like that? Yeah, actually, I saw something recently. I'm gonna try to find it. I feel like it's pretty applicable. Let's see. So I was reading a book of this guy called Ray Dalio. Yeah. Have you heard of him? So he's like, Well, the first step is goals. The second one, like as you move on with your goals, his problems, then the third one is like you go to the AGAMOUS that stuff, then you got to come up with a new design, and then you just got to do it. So I feel like we all kind of go through that. Yeah. Like I don't people can see it, but that's pretty much how he described it. Yeah, absolutely. I always like to when I can, it's hard to do in the moment, but I always like to reframe things and just be grateful that I'm having that challenge because it's very awesome that even if it is Tough client are tough day. It's great that we're able to be there and be where we are now. Two years in, year ago year and next year, three years in. Because it's too easy, right? Yeah, you will not be where you are. Yeah. And you wouldn't appreciate it. I think what you mentioned about appreciation is what we forget often, and I partially blame social media for it, because a lot of people just post like, oh, like so successful. Everything is like going great. They're selling everything all around. But it's just literally not the case. I think a lot of people just forget to appreciate the fact that they have a roof above their head that they have a business to run already and the day even taken the leap of faith to do all this. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So in addition to all we know, you mentioned that you also wrote the book. Yeah. What is the Book about? Yes, it's called Why wait. And I talked through kind of my share my journey through college from starting to work with Dave during my freshman year, during my sophomore year, I started my first business, solve it, social media, digital branding company, and then launching apprentice during my summer after my junior year and then growing apprentice during my senior year. Um, the idea for why we and I talked about this in the introductions started as a class on entrepreneurship. I was texting one of my good friends, Adan. And I was bored, because there's a great book about it, because that's one of the jokes. He said, since elementary school, if you're a gorgeous, I could write a book about it. And I was like, Okay, I'll do it. And then he's like, oh, like, I'm you. You'll do it. I was like, Yeah, I'll publish it today graduate. So I did. And it was fine as a process, wrote it a lot during the beginning of the pandemic. So that was kind of, like reflective time and a lot of ways to, but just share kind of the journey of how I got started, and how I got to where I was in May of 2020, who should read your book. Anyone who wants to start something, especially people in the young people on the younger side, in terms of college students, or people that are on the fence about starting business, or jumping into something new doesn't have to be a business, it could be anything in terms of a major career change, major life goal change, or anything? The main theme of the book like title is, why wait, just I mean, belief is it's all about gaining experience. And I think the best way from my experience is to just try new things learn by doing. So just for anyone who is listening, I believe you mentioned it for the first person to inquire with either you or with us. And we will share all of our contact information, your contact information description as well. They can get a free copy of the book, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Happy to. Yeah, well, on that note, thank you again, for your time. Thank you for sharing your journey. Thank you for offering to share a free copy of your book. You said one more? Go ahead. And one more. So for like, again, I don't know your age, but I assume you're fairly young. And it's like, it's awesome to see how you think because I think a lot of people don't think that way. And it's really nice to see it. What would be one suggestion for anyone who is deciding to either start a business in college or looking to create a platform will be like your one word of advice to them. Start? Yeah, besides that, I think the other biggest thing would be to ask questions. And take advantage of learning from people around you. Yeah. And read would be the other piece, okay. All Connected there. But if anyone wants to learn more about, you know, anything we'll discuss today or just looking for ideas or inspiration. Would it be okay for them to reach out to email, you ask a question, even if they need, I mean, besides reading your book, even if they want suggestions for the books you've read? Yeah, that inspired you? Would that be okay? Yeah, absolutely. That'd be that'd be great. That'd be great. Okay, amazing. Well, Rob, thank you so much, Evan, your story's inspiring and I know you're going to have a great great, great success in this business and hopefully many more. Thanks for sharing everything with us. Again, this is Robert Burke from the Choose apprentice. Yeah, choose apprentice calm. Yeah, that's the website and the Rob's email is Rob at choose apprentice.com. It will be also in the description of this episode. And yeah, don't forget to you know us to get that free book that Rob is giving away to offer on that last day today. Thank you so much for having me. Of course. Our pleasure. Thank you.