How to get a free graduate degree

Stop wasting your time and money—this tip is free and so is the execution of it

December 31, 2022

I was not a great college student.

It wasn’t the party scenes, sorority girls or even the famed Kentucky basketball games (I attended the University of Kentucky through a dreadful period of Kentucky basketball— we had three separate coaches and missed the NCAA tournament for the first time in nearly two decades).

No, it was the student newspaper distracting me from my school work. 

All I cared about in college was becoming the best journalist possible. I became a photographer for the Kentucky Kernel, which, at the time, was one of the largest daily newspapers in the state. For four years I skipped class to cover breaking news and sporting events, and this nearly always meant being behind on the reading. I eventually quit even buying some of the books, knowing I was not going to read them. The one exception was philosophy, which I just enjoyed and still do.

It wasn’t until I took Jou 531: Media Law with Dr. Mike Farrell (RIP, Dr. Mike) that I started to really enjoy reading for education. I loved reading in high school, but this largely consisted of reading Chuck Palahniuk, J.D. Salinger, and every Kurt Cobain biography I could get my hands on. It was entertainment, not education. 

I took Dr. Mike’s graduate-level class in the summer four week session at the University of Kentucky, and it was an intense amount of reading. All of this piled on top of my full-time internship at the Lexington Herald-Leader as a videographer intern. The reading assignments were dense, but I found myself really enjoying it because I enjoyed the subject matter. 

My lessons in journalism—both formal with great professors like Dr. Mike, and informal through real experience with the Kernel—were great for becoming a lifelong storyteller, but they weren’t enough to keep me in journalism. Despite graduating with some accolade hardware, I failed to get much traction and pivoted my career within a few years of graduating. I attribute it partially to the Great Recession, and partially to me being just a decent photographer.

When I shifted into advertising, I was intimidated. My new boss had two degrees in advertising and let me know it—meanwhile, I hadn’t even watched Mad Men. I felt outmatched and underprepared. Going back to school wasn’t an option, and I was terrible at school the first time around anyways. Instead, I just started reading. I bought my first book on advertising, “Hey Whipple Squeeze This” by Luke Sullivan. It became my advertising bible, keeping it by my side for every new assignment. It stayed by myself through two agencies and as I worked my way up to Creative Director eventually. 

I plowed through book after book on advertising and marketing, and found that my real-time, real-life agency experience combined with my appetite for reading rapidly brought me up to speed. In fact, it made me so ambitious that I ended up getting fired over the marketing company I was trying to found as a side hustle (more coming on this in March).

Today, I’m an audiobook addict

I love reading a traditional paper book as much as anyone, but a few years ago, I realized that if I turned my podcast time into audiobook time, I could probably read a few books a month instead of a few a year. 

That switch has changed my life.

For two years prior to founding GoWild, I knew I wanted to start something myself. I carried a chip on my shoulder over getting fired for my side hustle, and I wanted a second shot at it. However, I once again found myself in a position of not having a degree that I felt I needed. I wanted to start a business, and I had no clue how to start a business. 

You probably could have guessed—I started reading. 

I was training for a marathon in this period, so I was logging a ton of hours a week with my earbuds. I turned my runs into educational sessions. I learned so much during these few years from reading and applying my learnings (then having my own experiences with failures). I’ve come to believe there is more value in real-world experience and self-assigned literature than most costly graduate degrees. 

My top books

Some people get weird when I say I do audiobooks, as if the content needs to be hard-earned through sitting and flipping pages. It’s silly. I don’t really care what anyone thinks—as a startup CEO with three kids and a host of other responsibilities, audiobooks ensure I’m always learning. I still read about 1-2 paperback books a year, but even finding that time is hard. With audiobooks, I’ve read between 20 and 40 books every year for the last three years. 

That is a ton of learning. 

For the last three years, I’ve tracked my reads on my Goodreads account. The platform’s UX is very 2005, but the functionality is great for keeping track of the books I read each year. Given I just started this newsletter in 2022, I didn’t have a top 10 list for 2021 or 2020. I went ahead and pulled those books in, too. For 2022’s reads, I am sharing a little blurb for what I love about each book.

You’ll notice I don’t just read business books. I do love a great startup story, but I jump around. This year has been heavy on the startup and corporate tales (which, this was just half of what I read this year), but I jump around. I find value in fiction and nonfiction alike. 

2022

  1. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and WinThis book is by far one of the best leadership books I’ve ever read. It’s now among my top recommendations for any founder or leader.

  2. Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony HsiehThis is a must-read for founders, and really, I think anyone working at a startup should read it. The pressure of being a founder is so great and too many people hold that pressure in. Tony Hsieh is a tragic story that needs to be shared so others can try to avoid his mistakes.

  3. Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or TwoA fun, raw book about building a business one dollar at a time. Recommend for anyone, not just leaders/founders.

  4. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American ImaginationThe ultimate take-down of a revisionist legacy. In many ways, I respect Walt and Roy Disney more now. I was also surprised to find out how much of a tyrant he was behind his family man image. This is a great leadership book and an interesting look behind the scenes of an American icon.

  5. Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick WintersI was familiar with Major Winters, but had not gone deeper than Band of Brothers, the show. Jocko talks about this book in Extreme Ownership, so I gave it a go. It’s a fantastic look at history and leadership.

  6. We Are The Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture LaboratoryReddit has one of the most interesting backstories of any startup I’ve learned about. Maybe I’m biased, since we modeled much of GoWild after Reddit, but I found this book to be fascinating, and my GoWild team members have all loved it when they read it.

  7. Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and BetrayalI find it funny that people think Twitter is a hot mess now that Elon has taken over. Twitter has always been a hot mess. Read this book to find out for yourself. It’s really well done, too.

  8. Like, Comment, Subscribe: How YouTube Drives Google's Dominance and Controls Our CultureYet another book proving Silicon Valley’s biases. I firmly believe Google has too much power. This book highlights well just how deep those claws go. It also highlights a fact I had never considered—YouTube would have likely never scaled without Google.

  9. Super Pumped: The Battle for UberThis story is insane—murder, corruption, lies, sexual assaults, and more. Travis Kalanick is the epitome of a horrible leader and there is much to learn from this one.

  10. American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk RoadOne of the more interesting books I’ve read over the last year about the guy who built Amazon for drugs.

  11. Bonus book: I Saw the ElephantThis year, I found out I had a war hero in my family. This book is by my great uncle about his service in three wars, his time as a POW, and how he helped the Army write its POW code of conduct.

2021

2020

Improving your intake for 2023

1) Review how many books you read in 2022

How much time have you dedicated to reading and further educating yourself? Think through how many books you’ve read this year and make a list. I recommend a Goodreads account to help. 

2) Change your behavior with a goal

I’m not a big fan of arbitrary quantitative goals for books. I did that one year and found it to be soul sucking (my goal was also 40 books, which is a lot). Let’s not go crazy, though. Small goals can help. If you’re not reading many or any books, I encourage you to set a small goal. Read one book per quarter next year and see if it doesn’t open you up to a world of knowledge and enlightenment. 

3) Try audiobooks

I listen to audiobooks while doing small tasks all of the time—washing dishes, mowing the lawn, driving my short commute, and even ironing a shirt. All of these monotonous tasks become hundreds of hours a year that I spend learning and expanding my mind. Stop hating on the audiobook and give it a try. I use a combination of Audible and Libby (free with a library card). 

My Hearst story (my greatest “accolade”) from college can be found here

Who I’m listening to: Benjamin Tod

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