Scott Schimmel (00:02.286)
Your kids will look to you for career advice. Don't make the mistake of passing down your biases to them. Your role is to broaden their thinking and guide them through a process that will help them make better, more informed and wise choices for themselves that will help them set them up for their future. I'm Scott Schimmel. I'm the chief guide at the YouSchool. And with two decades of experience guiding young adults into adulthood, I've learned the essential steps that every parent must take in order to guide their kids.
to be happy and successful adults. Yeah, I remember one time having a conversation with one of my parents when I was a little kid saying, I can't wait till I get older when I'm gonna become an elementary school teacher. And they said, oh, well, geez, that's not gonna make enough money for supporting a family. And it just instantly turned off the whole idea of going into education, which ironically 30 years later, I was fully in the field of education and providing for a family.
I remember a mom coming up to me, I had shared this idea that I want to help their kids find their unique path in life. And she was so upset with me, so upset with that idea that I might encourage her kid to be a quote, starving artist, because that's what happens if you encourage your kids to follow their passions and become creative professionals. And thank God another mom jumped up and said, Hey, I'm actually one of those starving artists. My parents gave me the same warning.
And I decided to not listen to them anyways, not listen to their bias. And I went into the creative profession. And now I run a creative agency that hires 12 other people, that supports 12 other employees. And I was so thankful for that because I wanted to say the same thing, but it was helpful coming from the others. And by the way, that mom that was upset with me, her daughter, a decade later, is in the creative industry. She's a product designer. So ha ha. Your kids are going to look to you for career advice.
And we have these, I don't want to use the word unconscious bias, that phrase, because that might trigger you to thinking this is a conversation that it's not. But we all do have these unconscious hidden biases when it comes to career professions. And we are, as our kids look to us for advice, for affirmation, for any sort of feedback, I think weigh our advice very heavy, not when it comes to cleaning the rims, not when it comes to putting on a jacket.
Scott Schimmel (02:28.43)
when it's gonna be cold outside, not in terms of like what time they should be doing their homework or when they should be getting off Snapchat. They don't want our advice for any of that, but they do want our advice for the future because they feel the weight of not only making life work so that they can pay their own bills, which is stressful enough, but they've also heard the message, whether it's explicitly from you or implicitly from around them, that you not only have to have a job, you also should be and have to be happy.
with your choices. And that just is like a really overwhelming burden for almost every kid. So they look to us for advice. It's like my son recently asking, hey, dad, what do you think about me going into finance? He's asking me for my input and my advice and my bias towards finance, which was the very career I escaped from and really felt like I escaped from. And I knew it was a dangerous conversation that we're in.
Am I going to allow him to become wiser and more autonomous and self driven or am I going to taint his entire thought process with my bias? Plot thickens. There's a guy that recently passed away. Here's a picture of him in the Wall Street Journal. Daniel Kahneman was the guy that kind of was one of the pioneers of behavioral economics and was really the guy that popularized the idea.
that we don't all think rationally and logically like we assume that we do, particularly applied to the investment kind of industry. Most people, if you told them that you act irrationally and emotionally when it comes to your investing, they would say, of course I don't. I look at data, look at trends, look at hard fact numbers. But he ran hundreds of research studies with his partner, research partner, and they kind of blasted that out of the.
And not only is it relevant for how people make decisions related to their investments, but it's incredibly relevant for how we consider our careers, which is why I think it's so helpful to share this with you. There's two particular biases that he talked about in this field of decision, decision making, decision economics. One is the availability bias. It's this idea that what you've heard most recently or most often is
Scott Schimmel (04:50.574)
the truth, it must be true. For example, you read a report in the Wall Street Journal or watch it on 16 minutes that AI is taking over all the jobs, particularly in the tech industry. And there's gonna be tons of layoffs. And so you have a kid that comes to you and says, geez, mom, dad, I'm kind of interested in going into the tech industry. And you have this implicit bias, response, availability bias is what it's called.
where you say, no, no, no, that's a really risky place. You don't wanna go there. And what you're actually doing is not only taking the availability of the most recent news report, but also mixing that up with your own anxiety and fear about your kid not making it and becoming self -sufficient and experiencing rejection, and then giving them advice that sounds to a kid like wise sage warning. Oh, geez, yeah, I don't wanna do that, of course.
because I'm supposed to be happy and gainfully employed. So cross that off the list, whether or not it's true. So the availability bias is present. The second one is called the anchoring bias. And it's the idea that what comes to your mind first must be true. The idea of this would be, for example, you had a neighbor who was into real estate.
And sometimes it's a foggy memory, but when you're grown up, you know that that neighbor who is into real estate went bankrupt. And so when your kid mentions, gee whiz, I'm interested in real estate. I've watched some shows on Bravo. I took a class in college and I think I could be good at that. I think I'd be interested in that. You say, no, no, no, no, that's, uh, that's really risky to go into real estate. You don't want that. You want to be, and then you give your advice and it's again,
It's what comes first to mind must be true. Availability bias is what you kind of heard most recently or heard most often. That must be true. And there may be truth embedded in those. You know, tech, AI might be taking jobs. There might be a lot of layoffs. Real estate might be risky, especially if you follow that guy's path and what he did and leverage everything. But what you're doing is short circuiting.
Scott Schimmel (07:15.182)
the discernment process, which is not right, it's unfair. And it's not what adults do. It's not what we ultimately want our kids to do. So we want them to make quality, conscious, rational, logical choices about their future. And it has to start with us. We have to model that. That's what I'm doing with my son. I tried to escape finance. I felt like it was kind of a sentence into a story that I didn't want to play a part in.
And when he asked me recently, dad, do you think I should do it? I'm like, oh, and what I'm doing instead is laying down my bias, my gut instinct, my fear, my irrational kind of gut reaction. And instead, we're very intentionally going to meet him and I with people that I know who are in finance so that he can be exposed and he can make a logical, rational decision. And one piece of that is me, how I guide him.
I wanna encourage you to do a couple things. One, there's another, there's an episode we have about this message of telling our kids to be happy. We're gonna link that episode here and also an article as well. And if you want, subscribe to the YouTube channel so you could hear and receive more of these guided conversations for your kids. After doing this for the last 23 years, Guiding Young Adults, I really have found,
that there are essential steps that every good parent wants to make but doesn't know that they can or should. So we're laying it out there through the YouSchool. So hope you subscribe and watch that other episode. Don't tell your kids to be happy. That's it. We'll be back soon with another guided conversation with your kids.
