The show’s guest in this episode is Tameka L. Williamson. She is a passionate and dedicated motivational speaker, coach, and learning strategist. She is a multi-award-winning and bestselling author of Parents, Send Your Child to College for Free; Getting A Full Ride; and The College REBOOT, as well as a contributor to two influential faith-based and educational collaborations. Her gifts run the veritable gamut when it comes to teaching academic hopefuls and their parents how to “Kill The College Game” with her insightful, groundbreaking, and revolutionary approach.

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Revolutionizing Education: Unleashing the College Success Formula with Tameka L. Williamson

Hello, I’m Melanie Parish.

Hi, I’m Mel Rutherford.

And we are your hosts on the experimental leader podcast. I realized we don’t say anything about who we are in the interest. So I’m an executive coach. And I work with leaders and teams.

And that I’m an academic psychologist, and I’m McMaster University’s first transgender department chair.

Cool, I think we should start introducing ourselves, I like it. Well, in our family, I’ve been thinking about in my life and leadership and you know what I’m doing in the world this week, our son, one of our sons, we have twin 18 year old boys and one of our son’s only one is going away to university for the first time. And, and so what had me waking up in the middle of the night, with only a few tears was worrying about the system of our family, but also their system as twins, like who they are, and I’m, I’m really conscious of the fact that they’ve done everything together for their whole lives. You know, they’ve, they, they get in the car at the same time, every day, they come home at the same time, they went to the same school, they’re on the same swim team. And I think they don’t even know what that system like how, what it means for them. And I was thinking about, you know, sort of how we might honor that system. On Thursday night before my other my one son leaves. And, and, and I was thinking, you know, systems have strengths and challenges every system does. And every system has people coming and going. And September is really a time that people sometimes transition from workplaces. And, and I just was thinking that from a leadership perspective, honoring those comings and goings can be really important to a system about how they hold people and how they make people important, and how they make loss important in work systems, as well as family systems. What have you been thinking about?

Well, I’m in academia, as I said, and this is the time of year that there’s a lot of transitions in academia, which is related to your comment. And I’ve been experimenting and thinking about thank you. And right now we’ve got a lot of graduate students who are moving on to to new endeavors. And I’ve been really intentional about thanking them for their contributions to our department. And we also have a practice of thanking people throughout the year. So rather than waiting for holidays, or significant events like this, whenever I noticed somebody in the department has made a particular contribution. I go out of my way to thank them. I have a packet of thank you notes on my desk, and sometimes I have chocolates as well. So they might get a chocolate attached to their thank you note. And I’ve noticed over the past several months that those thank you notes, appear places there. I’ve seen them on on bulletin boards and on walls and on people’s fridges and people. I think people really appreciate being recognized and in particular record like a specific Thank you. Thank you that mentions something that they’ve done. Recently, I think that those are the kinds of thank you that are really appreciated.

It’s interesting both what I’m thinking about and what you’re thinking about are forms of acknowledgment. And in coaching, we actually learn this skill of acknowledgement. As opposed to like compliment So, acknowledgment is sort of the deeper skill of fully seeing someone or seeing something about them. And it sounds like that’s what you’re doing and your thank you notes. And I think it’s really important to acknowledge, you know, sort of, if I think about how I acknowledge someone, it’s, I see that you’re doing XYZ I, Mal, I see that you’re really taking the time to carefully consider on how you thank people for their service. And I see that it’s having a really positive impact. So it’s both the acknowledgment of what you’re seeing, and then what the impact is of that and you get powerful acknowledgement. That’s super cool.

Okay, well, I have to tell you, we have a very exciting guest. Today, we are being joined by Tameka L. Williamson, and she is a passionate and dedicated motivational speaker, coach and learning strategist. She’s a multi award winning and best selling author of parents, send your kids or parents send your child to college for free, getting a full ride and the college reboot, as well as a contributor to to influential, faith based and educational collaborations. Her gifts run the veritable Gambit when it comes to teaching academic hopefuls, and their parents how to kill the college game, and her insightful, groundbreaking and revolutionary approach.

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Welcome to our show.

Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here with Mel and Melanie.

Well, it’s great to have you here. And I’d love to know what you’re thinking about in your life and leadership. Right now.

What I’m thinking about right now, as it relates to leadership, I’m actually reflecting on how to become a better leader. I know that sounds so simple, and so bland in some eyes. But really, when I think about just some of the challenges or transitions we’ve had recently, it caused me to reflect Is there something I could have done differently? What can I do better? How can I better equip my team so that they can be stronger leaders so they can accomplish more? So that’s actually the place where I’m at in this leadership journey?

Well, I know this is a thing leaders grapple with all the time. In fact, we actually have a leadership Essentials program for exactly that. So I will share with you later. But I think it’s it’s true that leaders often don’t know exactly what to do to be better leaders. What am I new that you help people with the college game? What should people be thinking about? If they have a kid who wants to go off to college? Or is in Canada, we say University colleges or more trade schools here. So I’m always when I have college university conversations, it’s one of the words that I’m most aware of the difference between the US and Canada? Yes.

Yes. Besides the fact that you I think you have a better education system, but neither here nor there. But when I think about college as a whole, especially in the United States, it is a game. And unfortunately, it’s a game guys designed where for families to fail if they don’t know it, understand how to play it. So understanding how schools fund picking a school based on what your funding needs are versus Hey, I see that school on TV, that school is part of the big 10 as part of the SEC, I want to go to those division type schools or whatever, what I call emotional reasons. And the the backdrop to how the student loan system is funded, how is how that trap is set up, and they’re set up behind the scenes that families constantly fall into, and how it leads to a lifestyle of debt. And that’s not what we want for our kids or what we want for ourselves as as adults.

What’s the number one thing that students don’t know that would make the biggest impact in their lives about about college funding?

One of the things they don’t the biggest thing I would say is as a couple. The first thing that comes to mind is I’m gonna go and start looking for scholarships in middle school. Our elementary school start looking for solace job sooner, that’s really the biggest thing, because that’s going to help them have options.

Where do they where I’m like, Okay, I hear this, I kind of get what you’re saying. But I don’t even know where I would look, I’ve got three kids in college right now. Or, you know, to in college this year and one outside, where do they look?

So there’s, there’s a, there’s a variety of places you can go to you have many scholarship repositories like capex, you have the scaly app, especially when kids start early. Like in ninth grade, you have the res dot NEA, which is a crowdsourcing website, which is pretty cool. Because I tell kids is like you’re getting paid on the allowance to do the things you shouldn’t be doing yourself. You’re getting scholarship dollars to do the things you shouldn’t be doing earning A’s going into college events. utilizing those sites like that, bold that or, and thinking outside the box, when it comes to scholarships, competitions, utilize your gifts and your talents, whether it’s drawing competitions, musical competitions, gaming competitions, all of those competitions, translates into scholarship dollars that they can earn over time, and they can apply towards college.

Is there such thing as a scholarship that’s too small to bother with?

Yes, I used to say no, but no, yes, I’ve seen scholarships, they may be awarding $250, but they want you to write a 500 word essay, is I believe in making good use of our time, I don’t think that’s a good use of time, I think you’re asking for too much for $250. So I definitely believe in reading the requirements and make sure it translates into the dollar amount they’re asking for, but a $250 scholarship. And you may have to give maybe 100 Words or Less essay about yourself, I say do it because that $250 can cover it can cover your housing, laundry, basically to clothes washed or whatever every little bit adds up.

Who, in a family it should lead the application journey? Like? How would this I know how it worked in our household? But how should it work? What’s the best practices like? What do you know that we could learn from?

So for me, when I think about it as a best practice, I’m going to apply this from a leadership standpoint, because colleges are looking for leaders, hints for students should be leading this process. Parents, you are there to guide and coach them along the way. But the students should be leading it because they need to know and experience how to become a leader, they need to know how to manage because for me, it’s a project, they need to know how to manage it from beginning to end, how to manage getting the applications in creating that timeline, really the deadlines, when you think about the skills that you get from such a project, because that’s what it is. These are transferable skills, that’s going to help them be more valuable once they get into the workforce or military. Or if they want to run their own business. These are still transferable skills, that’s going to set them up for success in the long run. So the scholars, I tell all the scholars, we got ours, this is your journey, you should be leading it.

And what if they don’t?

If they don’t, this is why I encourage the parents to still get involved in helping. Some of them take a little bit longer to get there. And it doesn’t mean you just do it all for them. You kind of ease them into it. So maybe you start and you kind of see out the framework, but you explain to them how it’s done. And then you assign them a couple of tasks, let them work those tasks. Once they get through that thing, you assign them some more so then you take an iterative approach to where in the end, they would have taken all a lot more of the responsibility. You just have to ease them into it.

Yeah, we I mean with our guys, one totally took care of everything. We did hire a consultant to help with essays. Because we are because we’re in Canada and they were applying to US schools. We felt like that was a really useful thing because they don’t get anything from their school. They don’t have anyone talking to them about it. So one took care of everything and applied to eight schools, I think and one applied to one school with a lot of health. So it’s so we have the diversity of both approaches in our house. They both got into their favorite school, they both got into their first choice school, which.

That’s remarkable right there. That doesn’t always happen. But the example you gave us is typical. I’ve seen it happen where especially in the same household, one, take it and run with it. The other one, the parent is begging them, can you at least sign your name. And that’s why I tell parents, you know, your child, you know them better than anybody else. So this is where you may have to get creative, and how to engage them and influenced their will to take advantage of the process.

I think our low moment was when we were trying, we were near deadline on a college essay. And I was said, I just need you to put down your dream. What’s your big dream? And my kids said, I want to be a soccer player.

He’s never played soccer. Yeah.

Soccer. He was like, just leave me alone.

Leave me alone. And I was like, he’s a competitive swimmer. So it was just a bizarre It was so bizarre.

It was a big low. I was like, wow. Okay, I guess we’re done.

I have a question from you. From a different perspective. Each of my parents has a has a little scholarship fund that they award annually, or they try to award annually. Sometimes they don’t get applications this year, neither of them got an application for their little scholarship. What’s how do you how do we explain that?

Unfortunately, that’s that’s common. I literally just, I have some students I was we was talking about scholarships last week, and I have this scholarship formula that we call we teach. Well, I’m sorry, how we’re teaching kids to to learn how to apply for scholarships effectively, is we create the scholarship snap system, so become a snob, and be in SNAP is backyard. And they’re like What the What do you mean by backyard, your local scholarships, that is the lowest hanging fruit, and it’s the least applied to area is the greatest opportunity for you to win because you have less competition. Because to your point, many students do not apply. And so I’m encouraging and pushing more students stop going after the big name brand scholarships, I’m not saying don’t apply to them, the competition is so steep, I mean, the probability of you getting it is very low, let’s just be very real about that. Go increase your chances by going after those that’s more realistic. So when you start talking about trading time, for dollars, spend most of your time going after those local scholarships, because your your earning potential is a lot higher. And then you can still do the big ones here and there. I just tell them to keep keeps keep sharing it partner with schools, local organizations, but unfortunately, that’s common.

We, my parents actually have a scholarship fund as well, my my mother is deceased, but my father is also on it. And we partnered with PEO which is a philanthropic education organization that is all about scholarships, and I’m my hope is that they will be administering it and finding people to give it to you. I don’t know if it’s true, but they give lots of scholarships. And so I we set it up through them hoping that they would manage this problem. So I’ll give them a pitch to that they have lots of scholarships that people are listening, their scholarships are worth looking into, because they’re quite good. And they have a lot of the values I have around underserved communities and making sure that people can go to school.

That’s really a good avenue. You have a lot more organizations that is becoming that vehicle for even other big larger organizations. I guess people might look and I outsource this, can you manage it? So even like your sites that use just only privately post their own scholarships? There, they’re hosting other scholarships as well. And I don’t know the cost factor associated with it, but I think that’s a great idea because if they already have the traffic, then it’s going to it’s definitely going to get seen.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that there’s some kind of administration fee through PEO for, you know, administering it keep but they take it out of pro Seeds of, you know, having the the, the dollars there. So it’s not a fee that we would we would see it’s an it’s invisible.

Yeah, no, I would definitely say find some partners and even schools, you have more and more colleges, allowing people who have their own foundation their own funds to put it on their website, if it’s if it’s tied to a school, if your alumnus of that school or some type of organization who has a large following, I will look for those type of partners as well. But those are all qualified vehicles, you can definitely check out to help get the word out to more people.

I’m also curious how, where you’re where you fall on things like a CT, LSAT, you know, things that are test optional, not test optional. How should people be thinking about all of that right now?

Test optional is great in theory, if everybody had the same standard, because that doesn’t happen. I still advocate for kids to take the test. And here in and here’s, my main reason is this, why create limitations of opportunities if you don’t have to, because when you talk, start talking about test optional, I call it the big gray blob, because it’s a whole bunch of gray matter. It means one thing at this school, it means another thing at this school, don’t look at this, the system’s already confusing enough, we don’t have time to try to decipher, am I gonna get money here and not not get as much money because your test optional. So go after the test, as if is not an option and is submitted your best bet when you start talking about test optional versus not doing the test is if you’re gonna go after a test blind school, because they are truly basing it off your merit. And whatever those other qualifiers are in their funding is not tied to the testing at all. But when you start talking about test optional, I just believe in students go ahead and have a test.

I’m also curious how you think the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action changes the landscape and how people should think about that.

So it definitely, it definitely changes the landscape. In some regards, I think that on one hand, is gone, it’s kind of pushing us back to have where we’re kind of gonna have those segregated schools, because some schools are going to continue to recruit using those factors, whereas a lot of schools, some schools aren’t, and the competition is going to shift accordingly. And you you really are not going to know and understand whether or not it’s in your favor or not until you apply. So I think I think some schools are going to still try to figure out which way they’re going to go, what’s doing the right thing looks like, while other schools are probably going to get pressure by their board. So depending on what their board makeup is, I think that’s going to influence a lot of the decisions. And then you’re seeing for HPC news, they’re seeing an increase. But the challenge still lies with the inequity of funding. So they get the increase of students, but the funding is still not there for them to really support the students the way they need to support the students. So I think it’s, I think is on one hand is good for HBCUs. But then on the other hand, I don’t think it’s good for the whole educational system, because it’s just a band aid to a bigger problem that still exists. There’s still a lot of inequity across the board from funding to just education period, our education system needs a total overhaul. Let’s start there. So talking about the Supreme Court decision and the impact on education. That’s all he is only tackling one small but major part of this, this this whole ecosystem that’s messed up. We got to get back to the root of just the pure essence of how kids are being educated in general. A lot of kids are not being educated. So that’s the problem. That’s I think that’s bigger than anything that we’re that we’re looking at.

Yeah, and I think that’s I think it’s really interesting that the the more segregated segregated piece is really interesting. I was also wondering if it might be important for by pack students To mention hardship in their essays in a different way, because I apparently that’s something that could be considered. So I was wondering if you were counseling that I, I’ve been trying to understand, you know, also sort of impact and it’s hard to know right now.

I think, but I, it is this is more gray matter?

I think it’s really interesting that you your comment that you can’t understand. So you kind of have to just apply, you know, like, you kind of have to see what’s the impact is gonna be. I think that’s really interesting, too.

I think is more, it increases the need now for students to have more options. So really diversifying your schools and being that much more intentional about the schools you’re applying to, even down to the politics of the state. Because now we have that dynamic happening, you know, when I’m talking to my kids, my students, I’m like, there’s things you got to consider that we didn’t have to consider, two, four, or five or even 1015 years ago that you have to look at the politics of the state, you know, that may be a state that’s not friendly, based on what your sexual orientation is, that state may not be friendly for you based on what your religious background is, or the color of your skin. So now, you can’t just look at the name of a school, you got to look at, where’s that school house, because it may be a good school, but the outer perimeter of that school is still a factor, that school is not an incubator, where you’re going to be safe, you got to leave the campus at some time. And that’s where you could face some challenges. And you got to factor all those things. And when selecting school, so I think it’s, it’s so much more important for families to have this conversation, be realistic, and really cast a wider net now in terms of school options, and not be so married to a dream school or one school, because that dream school just may not be the right fit for you.

Well, I know in our family, you know, our kids identify as queer spawn, because they grew up in a queer household, and they have all the same chat, like they have their own challenges about coming out and, and lots of things. And so we encouraged them to, you know, be aware of that identity. And they’re applying because they live that identity. And so the it’s interesting how families have these conversations. We had all sorts of conversations about our family, as we were applying as we were coming up with essay topics, some of which they followed, some of which, you know, we talked about wanting to be soccer players, but you know, all of that. So I think these are there, there’s a depth to what your work like there’s a depth and families there’s a depth to you know, working together to partnership in in this journey.

Yeah, I mean, we want our kids to be safe. We want them to live their best lives. We want them to be safe doing it. So when they leave the home, we want them to come back. Better than how they live but safe and hold. Not broken. And just I mean, yeah, it’s it’s a stressful it’s a stressful it’s a stressful, it’s a stressful time is stressful.

Well, where can people find you Tameka?

Where people can find me on all social media outlets. So I am @IAmCoachTwill on Twitter, IG, FB.

I’m noticing our little Twitter up in the corner.

But I am coasting. Well, in worst case scenario, just collegeprepboss.com. It’ll connect you to all our social media platforms.

That’s great. Thank you so much for being on our show. It’s been delightful to talk with you today.

I appreciate you having me and I just My heart goes out to you with those twins. Leaving. I have twin. My twin niece and nephew started this fall too, but they went to the same school.

They are not going to the same school. They’re not going the same year. It’s all sorts of all sorts of interesting in our house.

Thanks for being here. Tameka.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Wow, that was pretty fun, huh?

Yeah, as you know, as an academic, the idea of really helping kids become the best they can be is really exciting to me. And the thing that one of the things that really stood out to me about this conversation was this idea of looking for the scholarships in the backyard, find it, you know, if a kid can find a scholarship that’s really specific, that’s really local, that not a lot of other people are competing for, then that that might be their scholarship.

Yeah, I think that’s true. And I think also just the, the idea that the skills that you’re they’re learning to apply to universities, is transferable like, for sure that I see how that’s true. I think our kids learn to write better when they were doing their applications. I think there was huge gain in that process for.

Yeah, and there was this process of self reflection that I hadn’t seen our kids go through before.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. There was there was some big gains in that, and also us telling stories to helping them contextualize some of what they were doing with their essays and things like that. I actually, you know, we’re in Canada, don’t do essays in the same way in Canada that they do in the US. And I think it’s a missed opportunity. I think a lot of that learning came from those personal essays. I don’t know where you get that in Canada. So I’m glad that our kids had that experience. Yeah. It was a really cool experience to have them do those essays. Well, that’s, I think that’s a wrap on this week’s episode of the experimental leader podcast. It’s been great being here with you today. Go experiment.

Important Links: 

• Tameka L. Williamson – Website
• Tameka L. Williamson – LinkedIn

Tameka L. Williamson

Tameka L. Williamson is a passionate and dedicated motivational speaker, coach, and learning strategist. She is a multi-award-winning and bestselling author of Parents, Send Your Child to College for Free; Getting A Full Ride; and The College REBOOT, as well as a contributor to two influential faith-based and educational collaborations. Her gifts run the veritable gamut when it comes to teaching academic hopefuls and their parents how to “Kill The College Game” with her insightful, groundbreaking, and revolutionary approach.

Known as The College Prep Boss®, Tameka has impacted over 1000 families across the globe, helped students earn over $75 million in scholarships and has trained more than 1000 leaders internationally in the areas of leadership, efficiency, and project management. She has served as the resident college coach, an expert for Urban League of Atlanta, Usher’s New Look Foundation, Atlanta CARES, and others.

Tameka has been featured in Forbes, Black Enterprise, Huffington Post, The Examiner, and Lifetime Moms, among many other respected publications. She has also been on ABC, CBS, Fox, CW and NBC, sharing her expertise. Her life’s passion is focused on improving the lives of students and leaders by connecting them to pathways of upward mobility so they can live their best lives personally and professionally. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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