Jerry Puffer KSEN 1150 AM Radio Interviews
Gene W. Kelly, author of “The College Myth”

Jerry: Good as Gold KSEN and Gene W Kelly is joining me this afternoon. Gene you're not the Actor Gene Kelly are you? 

Gene: Well you know when it rains; I do get happy feet and like to dance a little bit.

Jerry: We'll that's what I was picturing. Gene W. Kelly is a successful businessman, he actually own a Winery out in the Napa Valley in California, right?

Gene: That's correct, but that's only one of my ventures.

Jerry: What else have you done?

Gene: Well, I've owned a Security Company, a Manufacturing Firm and I'm CEO of the Accelerated Technical Training Institute.

Jerry: Alright, the reason I brought Gene on this afternoon is that he has a book out; it's called 'The College Myth, why you shouldn't go to college if you want to be successful'. You're successful Gene; you did not go to college.

Gene: Not at the traditional college instead I went to a Trade School actually and today there's a large number of opportunities in the trade. The reason I wrote the book- ’The College Myth, why you shouldn't go to college if you want to be successful' is I’m not against education in any shape or form. We all need to be invested in education but do it smartly. I mean right now the idea's been you know, if you have a college education you're going to get a great job and that isn't true. For the most part you're going to end up with a lot of debt in many cases and I want to educate people on the opportunities in the trade and share with the book. To help them get started, your listeners can go to thecollegemyth.com and download a free e-book.

Jerry: Well, you know let me ask you this; because you address this in the book , Why is there so much College Debt now compared to say ten, fifteen, twenty years ago and what is the average debt the average college student is carrying around these days?

Gene: Well I've heard everything from $30, 000 to $100, 0000 and more and a lot of it depends on the individual.  It's a reason college has possibly escalated so much is very similar to the Housing Bubble. Remember the housing bubble started a lie. The Government said everybody needs to have a home, everybody needs to own a home so if you've got a pulse you can get a loan and nothing down and so on so people got all this debt and houses, housing even went up and it's hugely in value more and more money chasing them. So prior to buying it, it all fell apart. And the same thing is happening in college right now. If you can sign the paper, you are welcome to take a whole pile of debt drag that ball of chain around with you for the rest of your life. It's taken people years to pay this stuff off. They're delaying getting married, buying cars, buying houses and it's going to affect the entire economy.

Jerry: Well Gene in your book ’The College Myth, why you shouldn't go to college if you want to be successful’ you talk about the 'Onshoring Movement'. What is the 'Onshoring Movement' that's occurring right now in manufacturing in this country?

Gene: Right, there is a new revolution on made tax in the United States because with lower energy costs right here in the US and better quality workers, better control, greener industries because we don't have to ship products around the worlds. We got a resurgence in manufacturing and yet there aren't enough skilled workers. There's an estimated 300, 000 unfilled jobs right now around the United States and wages, there was just recently an article in the Wall Street Journal about a person who didn't go to college who's making 125, 000 plus a year 3:47 I mean there's huge opportunities in the trade. Now I want everybody to get this message a d so I'm offering my book for free on thecollegemyth.com they can download it for free or they can buy it on Amazon

Jerry: Well how are you going to make any money on the book then?

Gene: Well I don't care about making money on the book. I want the message out there. This is a fundamental need in this country. This is going to rebuild our country, this going to rebuild the infrastructure, you know they tell us this silver tsunami all the Baby Boomers that are retiring and those job openings are going to be there plus they're going to expand the economy again. But we're going to be bringing in foreign workers. We're already bringing in foreign workers to do this work. Why not let Americans do it? So get the message out there. Now if they want to learn trade skills quickly I recommend they go check out instanttradeskills.com, www.instanttradeskills.com, it will tell them how to get an education in trades quickly. 

Jerry: Pretty heavy stuff, ’The College Myth, why you shouldn't go to college if you want to be successful'. One other thing I wanted to cover this afternoon, you talk about older, retired people or Veterans how they can benefit from this remote E-Teaching course?

Gene: Absolutely. Now if someone has worked their whole life in a cubicle or a different career and they just don’t want to go back to that yet they're worried about running out of money before you run out of life being picking up trade skills there is huge need for Handymen, Maintenance Technicians, General Repair people and they can work pretty much as much or as little as they want be able to continue to get an income and that's going to be critical going forward because frankly all those safety blankets I don't think they're going to be out there. People are going to need to take responsibilities for themselves and I covered a lot of that in the book.

Jerry: I often thought that probably the best thing a person could do, young person starting out was to become a Plumber because I don't see any way they'll ever replace that with a machine. 

Gene: Right and you're not going to be outsourcing plumbing to India anytime soon are you?

Jerry: No, no not at all

Gene: So you know, all of these trades needs to be Plumbing, Electrical, Carpentry, Welding. You know we've got bridges that need to be rebuilt, that's both welding and Masonry work, we teach all of these skills. We also teach Locksmithing and as I said Plumbing and Electrical, Carpentry, Masonry, all of these things are covered through our courses and they ca find out about that at instanttradeskills.com

Jerry: instanttradeskills.com alright and get the book 'The College Myth, why you shouldn't go to college if you want to be successful’ again and you can download it for free. Where do you go Gene?

Gene: Go to thecollegemyth.com or you can buy it on Amazon if you want a hard copy.

Jerry: Alright, sounds good. Thanks for joining us this afternoon on The Kaufman Show

Gene: Thank you very much sir.