He used to think that he wasn’t a good student. But the irony was, Jamaal Thomas had a thirst for knowledge that school could not quench.
He interned as a salesman right out of high school. And although Jamaal started college, he never went to class. Since he preferred his job in sales, he dropped out. He read as much as he could about becoming a better salesman and by the age of 19, he was making almost $100,000 per year. Today he’s the co-founder of Black on Black Education, a nonprofit that advocates for student-centered approaches to education, something he didn't have as a kid.
Support/Contact Jamaal:
Company Website:
* https://blackonblackeducation.com/
Social Media:
* https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamaalthomas3/
Books and resources mentioned in this podcast:
* Resume course: https://bit.ly/podcastpca
* 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: https://amzn.to/3XWoJpQ
* The 7 spiritual laws of success: https://amzn.to/3XQQXCj
* Success Principles: https://amzn.to/3XUQaAt
* Do you: https://amzn.to/3SmJ86f
* The Alchemist: https://amzn.to/3Zfddan
* The Game: https://amzn.to/3Sjm9cu
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Episode 142 Transcript: How an ADHD College Dropout Earned Six-Figures by Age 21 – Jamaal Thomas
[00:00:00] Intro
Jamaal: It was a badge of honor for me for a long time because I felt like look at what I accomplished In spite of – I guess I'm a rebel. If you tell me to turn right, I probably would want to turn left just to see what's over there. Everybody said you have to go to college. I'd rather show you that I don't. I never felt that at all.
[Episode start]
Jonaed: Welcome to another episode of the No Degree podcast. I want to personally thank you for tuning in and supporting our show. If you haven't yet, hit that follow or subscribe button. I encourage you. Don't keep this to yourself. Share these inspiring stories with your friends, invite them to subscribe and connect with us on social media. Today’s guest is Jamaal Thomas. Do you mind giving a brief intro of yourself?
Jamaal: Sure, Jamaal Thomas. I am co-founder and chairman of the board at Black on Black Education. We focus in on creating student centered approaches to education. We are a stand for all things, education transformation.
Jonaed: That's awesome. What were some of the jobs you've held?
Jamaal: Most of my career, I actually have been in the technology space. I spent a large portion of my career selling various different types of telecommunications or cloud services to a lot of really large companies. At first, it was just B2B but eventually I sold to some really large companies like Pearson and Philip Morris, Advanced Publications, a lot of different large companies over the years.
Jonaed: You don't have a degree. How much do people in sales make without degrees?
Jamaal: I'm 44 now. I started my sales career in, I guess, 1998. I sold women's shoes retail at the time. I probably made like, $15 an hour.
Jonaed: That was a lot back then.
Jamaal: It was.
Jonaed: That was a lot of money. I remember it was like $4 or $5 an hour like starting.
Jamaal: Yes. so I made way more than – I think $7 in New York was the minimum wage. That was a mission so I made $15 at the time. I sold windows, I sold vacuum cleaners at both of those places, I did not make a lot of money at all, they work commission only sales jobs and so I didn't stay in either one of those for particularly long. Then I found telecommunications, where I also work to commission only, but ultimately, it was something that I enjoyed, and I was good at. I had some really good years on commission only where I was at 19 years old making $80,000 or so a year so that was good. But there were lots of ups and downs, it could be $15,000 a month, and that could be a zero month. And at the time, I wasn't particularly financially responsible so things did – I decided to move into the more safe, secure kind of salary positions, worked at AT&T. I think my salary there was like $45-$50, I'm not positive, but it slowly but surely increased until I reached, where I was more senior level, a sales guy, where probably had 10 to 15 years. At that point, I would have $100,000 salary, at plan meaning when you are hitting your quota for the year, you know that the idea is to make about 200.
Jonaed: Okay, wow. That's crazy. A lot of people don't realize sales is a legitimate industry. All companies need salespeople. Who's going to sell the product? How are they going to make money? A lot of people don't realize it's a very viable career and you don't need a college degree. You need to show that you have a hustle. You can talk to people, you can grow, you can take feedback. So now, looking back, if you could create a blueprint of your success to pass on to someone without a college degree, what would it look like?
Jamaal: I think things that I would have done a little bit differently is I would have been just more intentional about my journey. I followed the salary and a number of times where I could choose between two jobs and I went for the one with the highest salary. Later on, lo and behold, the better opportunity was at the smaller organization where there probably was some more risk, but where people over there – I know some folks who had seven and eight and $900,000 years and selling telecommunications companies that I could have went to that gave me an offer letter, but I chose to go with the biggest salary at the time. So, one of the things is don't just always chase the salary, really dig in and make sure you fully understand the opportunity.
[00:05:01]
What's the lowest you're going to make and what's the highest kind of potential that you can make? Just from a sales perspective, I think that I think everybody's a salesperson.
Jonaed: You have to. If you're not, you have to be and if you're not, you're going to be sold too. So it's a useful skill to know.
Jamaal: It's a useful skill particularly so whether it's a telemarketer or anything, I know all of the tips and tricks. When somebody's trying to use FoMO, fear of missing out on me and things like that, like in my head, it's just like, Oh, come on, man.
Jonaed: Yes, I really know what you're doing.
Jamaal: But if somebody else got to talk to me like that, I've been in this game way longer than you. So I don't like when people are like scummy, sleazy kind of guy, like Jay Z said, “I could sell water to a whale.” And for me, I could probably sell water to a whale, but I don't want to sell water. I don't need my water. I only want to sell things to people who actually want it and needed and that is going to add some value to their life.
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I love that because salespeople have a reputation of you know, the car salesman like “Yo, I'm going to sell you this.” But the fact is, for long term, those salespeople don't succeed. They've run into issues, they don't build a clientele, they may get a customer once, they don't get referrals. A good salesperson who thinks about the long term, people remember you for years after they come to you, you’re a trusted advisor, and all that. So now, one thing that I really want to ask you, you mentioned that there were two opportunities, you went for the higher base, how would someone identify what's a better opportunity? Because it's not easy, but now, with your experience, what would you do to know what's a better opportunity?
Jamaal: I think I just would have done a little bit more research on the company and had more foresight around the industry. In telecommunications, specifically, I won't bore people with all the details. But there were times when people switched from copper to fiber, in times when people move from POTS lines to T ones. And if you would move to a T one and you did your long distance over a T one, your price would go way, way down. They would just sit commission opportunities associated with this transition that Verizon at the time used to pay and I didn't know what I didn't know, you know what I mean? So if I had been a little bit more – ask the more detailed questions, to better understand where things were going, as opposed to just where things were at the time, I probably would have saw it, “Oh, snap, wow, that's probably a better opportunity over there. Let me go and try my hand over there,” as opposed to chase in a larger, firm commitment from a salary perspective.
Jonaed: That makes sense. Industries that it's so easy, like, “Hey, this is a new thing. You got to get on train.” So, if someone's selling AI services, that's probably like the hot thing right now. If someone's selling blockchain services, where it's like, you're not trying to convince someone to switch their line, like, someone within spectrum came by, he's like, “Oh, you want to switch to their version of files,” versus the first time you get in files. It's like, you're getting me now. Do I really want to search? I'm not going to really get any benefit like that. Now, looking back, why didn't you go to college? Can you tell us a story around that?
Jamaal: I didn't have the best education journey. I used to say, I wasn't a good student. Recently, somebody who I admire a whole bunch, Chris Emdin. He is like, one of the goats when it comes to education transformation. He said that “No, don't say you're a terrible student. You know, what happened was you were just not in places that knew how to accentuate your genius.” And I was just like that it's actually the truth. I have ADHD, kind of neuro divergent thinker. I always got ideas and my brain don't shut down and things to that effect. If you sit me down in a classroom, and you start teaching me stuff that's boring that I don't want to have anything to do with them, I'm not going to do what you ask me to do.
[00:10:03]
That's how school worked for me. Going to college, which is another four years of that, in my mind just was not something that was attractive at all. Plus, one experience that was good in high school was in my senior year. I got to do a couple of internships and I interned at Penalty Recordings. I interned at Spoiled Rotten Recordings, and I interned at Mecca USA, The Spoiled Rotten and Mecca both turned into kind of jobs where I was making a little bit of money coming right out of high school. I transitioned from intern to working for them. My parents made me go to school, and now we're starting to hear a different story from people around the fact that college is not for everybody.
Everybody doesn't need to go and get ridiculous loans and things to that effect. But at that time, the story still was you graduate from high school, you go to college, so that you can get a good job. I actually did go to Westchester Community College for like, a year and a half, but I didn't go to class, I didn't go to class almost ever. And because I didn't go to class, I wound up with like, I think I got three credits or something like that in the only time. I sat in the commons and played speed. I wanted to stick with Mecca USA was one of the biggest fashion black fashion companies at the time, I wanted to stick there, I used to go hang out and do a lot of fun stuff or go to parties. I've met a lot of famous people that I got to outfit when they would come to the to the showroom. I'm going to keep doing that but my parents made me maybe go to college at the time.
Jonaed: A lot of times people just didn't know and back then it was like the neurodivergent things. It was just like, why can't you pay attention to this? This other kid pays attention. Now we're getting a lot of research into how people with ADHD, they have the hyper focus, if they're interested in something, they can do it. Whereas if they're, they're not interested, it's really hard. It's just your brain is not working. It's like telling a person in a wheelchair, “Oh, why don't you just walk, everybody walks. I can walk, why can't you?” but it's like, hey, it's an inability. And it takes a lot of time to understand how to even work with your form of ADHD. Everybody has their own processes and systems in place. But when you're young, you're confused, like, “Hey, my friend pays attention. Why can’t I?” I have all these thoughts in my head, and a lot of teachers are not helpful, but education is transforming. Thank you for being a part of that. So, what do you want to be in high school?
Jamaal: I don't think that I had anything specific. I always knew that I wanted to do something that was impactful to other people, like I've always had this, I want to help, I want to help I want to help. But I don't think I, in high school had a very specific, this is what I wanted to do yet. I didn't start to develop that until, I don't think I really knew for sure what I wanted to do until I got into my 30s and stuff. I mean, it was a point where motivational speaking and things to that effect were important and I do some of that in terms of youth development work. But I guess that I wanted to in my 20s, I wanted to do that with adults, really communicate to people around mindset. Because while I didn't do good in school, I picked up a ton of books that resonated with me, and I took courses and things to that effect that resonated with me. I built my own kind of curriculum to allow me to learn and I did read books on how to become a better salesperson, and how to build better relationships. I went to Toastmasters for how to become a good speaker. These were things that were interesting to me, so I could actually follow up with them and [AUDIO SKIPS 00:13:51].
Jonaed: So the thing is, you do value education and you do value learning. A lot of people have this idea that people who don't go to college, they don't value learning, they can't learn and all that. You just valued the things that you were actually interested in and they were they applicable to you. And then you did a good job at that.
Jamaal: Here's what school felt like for me and I know it feels this way for lots and lots of people. Babies born, every single one of them love learning. Like it's what's this, what's that? They want to touch them and put it in their mouth, it's you love learning. You're one, you’re two, three, you start to – why? Why? Why? You want to know, you want to know, you want to know, you want to learn and then you get to school and they put you in a chair. Obviously, you get to play and stuff like that, but they put you in a chair, they say sit there and do things the way that we tell you to do it. So, they create this artificial walls around the method with which you want to learn. Now, by the time people get to oftentimes second, third, fourth, fifth grade, people don't like school, it’s boring.
[00:15:00]
They're not on grade level, things to that effect. Most people will never catch up when they get to high school and things to that effect. I won't even fully go into the fact that, particularly for black and brown kids, so many of the teachers don't look like them. So they don't admire the teacher. The teacher doesn't have cultural competency to understand what the things that are going to turn this child's brain on. So, you take this person who loves to learn, and put them to a system where it's, I don't love learning anymore. And in college, again, being an extension of that, people do get to get a little bit more self-directed, in college, but you got to take all of these classes when you might just be interested in doing this component.
Maybe there are some additional things that you got to do, that you're not necessarily interested in. But the fact that you have to go through four years and all of those things, It's a business and a business that has told a really compelling story, that is a lie and not true for way too many people. Now, it's something where the veneer is falling down, and people are figuring it out. Companies are saying that, look, we're going to focus on skills, as opposed to degrees. Not only that, we're going to put to get – like Google has their Google certificate programs where, look, if you can go six months to a year through this program, you can do this job. One of my really good friends. He went to a, what do you call it?
Jonaed: Trade school?
Jamaal: It wasn't a trade school, he went for computer coding where he didn’t have to pay for it. He paid for it after because he started working, and they helped him get a job and things to that effect. In any area of computer science, he makes a ton of money that they wind up paying him back, they moved him out to Chicago. These type of opportunities are expanding everywhere. I appreciate this podcast because you're telling those kinds of stories, you're telling people that if this doesn't feel right to you, if this doesn't seem like the right way for you to go, there are other options out there. Even if your momma said, and your daddy said, and your grandma said, your grandpa said and the principal of the school said that you have to go to school, we just know now that that is an incomplete story. If I want to give the most grace to folks who want to follow the status quo, it's an incomplete story and it's not true for a lot of people.
Jonaed: The fact is, there's some people who do get to school, that's what works for them. The fact is learning is more accessible than there are way more books, way more online courses, way more bootcamp. There was a time that schools were one of the few places to learn. But now you have people on YouTube, you have podcasts, you have all these resources. You mentioned how it took you until you hit your 30s to really figure out what you wanted to do. What was that process like? How did you realize like, hey, this is what I want to do. And how could you have gotten there earlier?
Jamaal: A question. I'm not sure I was supposed to get here any earlier. One because the work that I do now I do with my daughter, she's the executive director of Black on Black Education. She's a teacher in the South Bronx and Black on Black Education was her idea. I probably wasn't even telling the truth and with 30s, I was kind of not to say, I was aimless, I got fired from my last two telecommunications jobs not because I couldn't sell, but because I did not do my paperwork. I didn't do – I would have expenses, I was just reckless, like operate the way in a corporate structure properly.
From there, I still didn't know what I wanted to do, I guess I still – I always just had a bunch of different ideas and there's always a bunch of things that I could do. So, the difficulty in figuring it out, just one is kind of that I don't want to do one, I want to do multiple things. Some of the challenges associated with ADHD still sit with me today. I still kind of all over the place. But what I have found is a passion for helping people or helping a system become more responsive for young people that go through the system, but that are like me, communicating that and making sure that their students get a say on what and how they learn, that's important to me. Ultimately, I got to a place in conjunction with my daughter where I felt like the skill sets that I that I have and that I've developed that I can you know kind of laser and channel them into doing the work that we do now and you know, things are going well.
Jonaed: Did you know you always had ADHD or when did you find that out?
[00:20:02]
Jamaal: I would always say it, as a joke, I did not get diagnosed until my late 20s, early 30s, like official diagnosis. I kind of hit a point where anybody who knows me, anybody who want to talk to Jamaal, he’s so smart, he doesn't live up to potential and it would just point where there were, again, that paperwork, stuff where I'm like, I want to do what I'm being asked to do. But I feel like I can't. So, I decided to seek professional help and they were like, oh, yeah, you are, you know. I actually I don't have a lot of the hyperactivity component but the attention component is real for me.
Jonaed: Now, how did you go about upskilling in your career?
Jamaal: If I am interested in it, I lean into it. Like I said before, I have a personal curriculum at almost all times, there's something that I'm learning. I probably haven't been as intentional about it as I would like, if I could do it all over, like, I would say, “Okay, let's learn this person in this and build off it.” And I think it would be nice if the education system again shows people how to do that. I had to kind of figure a lot of that out myself. But again, tons of books, tons of workshops, tons of programs, I've always been an avid learner. I love to write, I love to discuss, and while some people might be debating, I'm discussing, because I'm trying to add color to the understanding of whatever it is that's in front of me.
And because I just have the spirit of just wanting to know more, not just for me, but wanting to know more so that I can deliver that thing to other people. I can turn on a light for as many people as possible so that they go from I'm just watching TV all the time. That's just what I do. I go to work, and I come home and I watch TV. Listen, it's a simple life, I hadn’t met anybody who has it. But a lot of people also have this desire inside and I want to help pull that out a little bit more. So, that learning process that you asked about has always been, how do I learn these things so that I can apply it in my own life and help other people to do the same in this?
Jonaed: Are there any specific books you would recommend?
Jamaal: One of my favorite when I started was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That's a great, great one for me. Because everything shouldn't necessarily be strategy and kind of science that life is an art and a science and the spiritual part of life is more of that art. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success was a fantastic book for me. A lot of people also love The Alchemist. That was a great one. The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. Russell Simmons’ Do You! There's lots and lots of books that have had powerful impact on me. The Game by Sarano Kelly. I often talk and think about things in a gamified manner, in order to kind of set myself in a particular direction. So those are some of the ones that come top of mind, but I'm sure there's plenty of it.
Jonaed: Those are some very good recommendations. Now, looking back at your career, what were some of the mistakes you've made?
Jamaal: Some of the mistakes that I made were one, as I mentioned before, not being more curious and finding out a little bit more about some of the opportunities where people will give us stock options, but a lower salary, like that kind of situation. I'll use the word intentionally again, in that, I think it's important for people to dig inside, know who you are as much as possible, so that you can make sure that who you are matches with the organization that you wind up in. I think I wound up in some organizations where it was just like, oh, hell no, like, this is not –you’re not going to talk to me like that. This is just whatever method you think you're doing to inspire me, that's not going to work. So understanding where you're going and whether it's a fit for who, when and how you are, I don't need anybody to be on top of me all the time. I need to have a relative amount of self-direction with assistance, not with the command. I think the biggest things is just knowing yourself. You asked me about the mistakes –
Jonaed: Mistakes, yes.
Jamaal: I don't know if I call this a mistake. After I got fired once from a job, and I was out of work for 18 months.
[00:25:00]
I was working in business, but I wasn't doing a lot on a day to day basis. I went through my – I had amassed a nice retirement package and funds and I started going through that in a not healthy and smart way. I didn't move from that job to what I was doing next. That was definitely a mistake that kind of set me back. Then I did the same thing again, that first job I got fired on my daughter's 16th birthday, which was crazy. A whole party going on and I waited until after the party to tell her. That second job, I got fired. I started on October 3rd the following year so it was like a year to the day. Those types of things just kind of spoke to me and that's what I decided I'm never ever, ever, ever going back. But once again after that, I went a year kind of work in a business, but not like daily grind intention, making it happen. I was kind of all over the place. There was some depression in there and stuff. So I'm not sure whether I call it a mistake because I arrived at now a place that I'm beyond excited to be. But certainly, I’d be better off financially now had I not have taken that time out of the workforce for lack of a better term.
Jonaed: So now looking back, how would you prevent something like that from happening again, because a lot of times, it's like, you learn a lot about yourself, you learn about a lot of habits. How did you get out of that?
Jamaal: I was kind of forced out. The first time, as that 18 months was approaching, I was running out of my runway and we had – I don't remember exactly how much left, but it was under $5,000 and I got $2,500 a month rent. You know what I mean? That's just not going to last long. So, in terms of getting out of it, I don't know that I got out of the mindset at that point. But I did get a call from somebody that I used to work with about a position that they had opening and I just took the first job that was available, I didn't even do an interview process or anything to that effect. I got interviewed but I didn't interview at a lot of different positions. So probably going to get help earlier, in terms of – because I'd stopped taking ADHD medicine or any and I wasn't seeing a therapist or anything to that effect.
I probably would have spent some time with professionals to help on a week to week basis to allow me to calm my mind and take a 30,000 foot view of my life and do a better job of then deciding what one foot in front of the other is going to look like with assistance, where I would have taken a 30,000 foot view every day by myself. Then I was like, “Hey, why don't we take a 50,000 foot view,” and it was sporadic and all over the place. So I would have been again, much more intentional about what do I need to get out of this situation and get out of it soon and fill my days with answering that question. Whereas I wanted to fill in my days with Food Network and movies and I became a pretty fantastic cook. Who knows, I may use that one day and in a more effective fashion. So, I would have liked to not kind of go through all of that money without having additional money coming in.
Jonaed: What would you say is your biggest accomplishment?
Jamaal: Hands down my I have an amazing child that I raised. I didn’t find out about my daughter until she was six. I immediately jumped into her life, we developed a really strong relationship so early. Her mother had drug and alcohol issues that was something that it was a challenge for custody and things to that effect. It was a whole crazy time. But ultimately, my daughter came to live with me, raised her she is – people say these type of things about the children all the time and I know that they will believe it. she's one of the strongest people that I know. The fact that some of this – me rubbed off on her to allow her to be as powerful as she is. She just turned 25 last week, sky's the limit, she's going to be on somebody's – well, she’s already been on a 30 under 30. But she's going to be on more 30 under 30s and 40s under 40s. She's a powerful voice in the education space and she's going to remain so and just watching where she's going to go is joy in my life.
Jonaed: I know she's going to go many places and she's going to teach you, you're going to teach her. Now looking back, sales is an industry that has changed.
[00:30:00]
There are some principles that have not changed, but the industry itself has changed. Selling in 2000 is very different from 2020. Email, all these other technologies and stuff. So how has the industry changed from your perspective?
Jamaal: I'm not a “salesperson” now. Even though I say everybody's a salesperson, I mean, that's not my role. I'm more of leading a nonprofit as a co-founder. It's two different things. I guess, if I have to speak to some of the sales skills that I have to utilize on a day to day basis like for funding and things to that effect, when we're reaching out to get funds, you got to sell that company, whether or not they believe that you can do the things that you say you're going to do by way of your mission and your vision. The CRM systems today are much easier to deal with than they were back then, they're less cumbersome so that helps differences today.
People have just a much more larger onslaught of information coming at them that they're only going to be peaked in terms of their interests by a certain thing. There's only certain ways that you're going to get people's attention nowadays where you might have been free to get more a long time ago. Being more niche in your messaging and how you communicate to people is important today. It's when I would walk around New York City, and I would walk into buildings, and I would go up to the top floor, and I would talk to everybody, because everybody needed what I sold. One, that wouldn't cut it today, because you can't just do that in terms of buildings, most of them. But two, if I became a salesperson, again, I would sell likely to schools and educational environments and things because now I know what the superintendent is thinking, I know what the principals are thinking, I know what their day is, I know what their pain points are like.
So, it's hard to know that for all industries, so niching down and thinking about, particularly people who have never thought about being in sales or don't think about themselves as a salesperson, think about what it is you're passionate about, think about what it is that you want to change in the world. Then potentially there'll be coherence between you and the person sitting across from you. People buy from people. I sold a lot of stuff, I was a pretty good technical salesperson. But mostly, I'm a good person, that anybody who sits in front of me recognizes that and I can emote and make people feel good and they're making me feel good. That part is as important today as it ever was, particularly if you're doing sales where you're going in, you're sitting down with people.
I think some of the biggest things would be niching down, and believing that you actually can be in sales, a lot of people just have it, I can never do that. The reality is, there's some natural inclination but for the most part, it's a skill that you develop, and talk to enough people enough times, A lot of my sales, I was able to do. I'm somebody who, I used to go on a subway and I could just kick it to girls, any girl, I could point it out, I could do that. And so when you're in sales, you're going to get a lot of NOs, I got a lot of NOs from a lot of girls, like they just weren't interested. But it didn't stop me. Developing that skill, that grit is every bit as important now as it was then. There were a couple of differences and that grit is something that'll remain because you're never going to sell everybody who you talk to, it just don't work that way.
Jonaed: That makes sense. So, if you're walking across the street, and you see an 18-year old Jamaal, what would you tell him?
Jamaal: I would say, everything's going to be alright, Have a powerful, powerful presence and a powerful individual. Figure out how to focus that power. Find the people, tools and resources that will allow you to focus that power and make that the number one thing that you do on a day to day basis, and then, opportunity is going to abound. Then you can make choices around what direction you want to go in by way of opportunity. But find a way to focus your attention with the assistance of people, tools and resources.
Jonaed: Have you ever felt insecure about not having a degree?
Jamaal: I wear it as a badge of honor for a long time to be honest. Because the reality is, I've made more money in my life than a lot of people who graduated with a degree like buy ’18-’19, $80,000-$90,000, 2021, you know what I mean, $110,000, you know what I mean? They went and spent $30,000, $40,000 $50,000 on college.
[00:35:02]
So, they're all way over here, I'm all the way over here, how the heck they ever going to catch up. Most people never caught up. Now some people have and needed to go to college because obviously there's certain jobs that you have to go to college for. But it was a badge of honor for me for a long time because I felt like, look at what I accomplished, in spite of, I guess I'm a rebel, I want to if you tell me to turn right, I probably want to turn left, just to see what's over there. Everybody said, you have to go to college. I'd rather show you that I don't.
Jonaed: I love that. So, what are your future goals?
Jamaal: I am dedicating the rest of my life to being a part of transforming education. I tell anybody who is willing to listen that civil society is not promised. We live in really, really tough times, we live in the best of times. It's the best time to ever be alive, hands down, and it is the worst time to ever be alive, hands down. It's both, and it's sitting here and those things are going, at speed faster than ever, in opposite directions. The more people who can operate in this environment, human beings are not designed to change as fast as change is happening. So, what happens when change is the only constant and people don't want to do it.
When are we going to say that we have to change the place that is designed to show people what the world looks like and show them what they need? We have to give people the ability to be way more self-directed to learn how to understand themselves and other people how to communicate with one another. I believe that the education space is the only chance that we have of making things shift so I've given people an experience, an educational experience where creativity and collaboration and community are at the foundation of what they do. I'm going to be trying to figure out the best ways to do that for the rest of my life.
Jonaed: Thank you so much for your work, and the educational transformations that you're having in a lot of children. Thank you for impacting space. How would people support you and get in contact with you?
Jamaal: Black on Black Education is a 501 (c)(3). So, we accept donations, we are at www.blackonblackeducation.com. For anybody who feel compelled to help support our work again, we are focusing on student centered approaches to education so just about all of the funds that come. Again, www.blackonblackeducation.com. You can go get yourself some merch there as well. Then we have blackonblacked @ Instagram. If you want to kind of be involved in the conversation, that's where we do most of it. We're also @BlackonBlackEd on Twitter. Those are the ways that that folks can support.
Jonaed: I'll be supporting your mission and looking forward to future collaborations. Thank you for being a wonderful guest and sharing your story on the No Degree podcast.
Jamaal: Thanks for having me, man. Peace to everybody.
Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this information was valuable, and you learned a lot. Stay tuned for the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. No Degree wants to remain free from influence so that we can talk about the topics without bias. If you think the show's worth a dollar or two, please check out our Patreon page. Any amount is appreciated and will go towards making future episodes even better. Follow us on Instagram or Snapchat at No Degree podcast, on facebook@facebook.com/nodegreeinc. If you want to personally reach out to me, connect or follow me on LinkedIn @JonaedIqbal spelled J-O-N-A-E-D last name I-Q-B-A-L. Until next time, no degree, no problem. No degree.com
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