College is expensive — but there’s money on the table that most families never touch.
Today’s guest walked away from college completely debt-free, not because she was a straight-A student or a star athlete, but because she treated scholarships like a system instead of a luck-based lottery.
In this episode I sat down with Jocelyn Pearson, founder of The Scholarship System. Her system has helped families across the US secure almost $17 million in scholarships. We get into the myths keeping families from even trying, why the small-dollar scholarships matter more than the $100K ones, how to build reusable application materials so you’re not starting from scratch every time, why AI can help you organize but will absolutely get you disqualified if you use it to write your essay, and what to do if you’re stuck in the “middle income gap” — making too much for need-based aid but nowhere near enough to pay full price.
Key takeaways:
Scholarships are a strategy problem, not a luck problem
Jocelyn didn’t win her $126,000 in one big check, she chipped away at it, one small win at a time, using a repeatable system. The biggest thing standing between families and scholarship money isn’t lack of qualifications. It’s belief. A Sallie Mae study found 40% of families don’t use scholarships, and the top reason wasn’t “we didn’t qualify” — it was “we didn’t think we’d win.” That’s a confidence problem, not an information problem.
There are four myths keeping people from even applying
Myth one: it’s too early or too late (it’s neither — Jocelyn cashed her last scholarship check on the way home from college graduation). Myth two: you won’t win the big-name scholarships, so why bother (true, but there are thousands of smaller ones with way less competition). Myth three: it’ll take too much time (only true until you build the system). Myth four: you have to be the “perfect” 4.0, superstar-athlete student (you don’t — you just have to know your own story).
Stop skipping the small-dollar scholarships
Students chase the $100,000 Coca-Cola scholarship and ignore the $500 one because it “doesn’t sound like a lot.” But that $500 might take 45 minutes to apply for, has way less competition, and it adds up. Jocelyn’s largest single win was only $4,000. The rest of her six figures came from small, unglamorous wins that most students never bother applying to.
Build reusable assets so you’re not starting from scratch every time
The system comes down to a handful of documents built once and reused: a core personal story that can answer almost any prompt (What’s a challenge you’ve overcome? What do you want to be and why? Why this university?), a standard “about me” document with your info and transcripts, an updated activities list, and recommendation letters on hand. Build it once, tweak it slightly for each application, and your effort drops dramatically while your win rate climbs.
Committees are looking for ROI — show them you’ll follow through
When scholarship committees choose between two qualified finalists, they’re asking one question: will this investment come back to the world in a fruitful way? That’s why they ask about challenges you’ve overcome and what you plan to study. They want to know you have a plan, even a rough one, and that you’ll actually use the money to get there. And when it comes down to two equally strong candidates, the deciding factor is usually as simple as who followed the instructions.
Ask about department-specific scholarships every single year
Both Jocelyn and I had the same experience: walking into our university’s department office and asking, “Do you have scholarships?” — and getting money nobody told us existed. These are often underused because students assume applying to a school means being automatically considered for all its available aid. It doesn’t. Ask every year, because the amount can increase and most students never ask at all.
If you’re in the “middle income gap,” you have more options than you think
This is the family that makes too much for need-based aid but doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars sitting around for tuition. FAFSA numbers are based on outdated tax information and often don’t reflect a family’s real financial picture — which means you can still ask for more, still apply anyway, and still shop around between schools. The same FAFSA number can produce wildly different offers at different universities, so it’s worth comparing before committing to “the sexy school.”
Notable quotes
“So many students think when they apply to a university, they’re automatically considered for as much money as they can get. And that’s not the truth.”
“I love AI for proofreading, not for rewriting. Use it as a mentor, but not to do the work for you — because they are spotting it.”
“If I’m giving out thousands of dollars each year, I want to know the student’s actually going to graduate, that this student’s going to take this money and pursue something… will it come back to the world in a fruitful way?”
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro
01:18 Jocelyn’s $126K Scholarship Story
03:41 Why Strategy Beats Luck
04:13 The 4 Biggest Scholarship Myths
07:18 The Real Reason Families Don’t Apply
10:51 The “All or Nothing” Mindset
13:43 Building a Reusable Essay System
16:32 Other Reusable Application Assets
17:13 What Committees Are Really Looking For
21:05 How to Talk About Your Major
21:59 Who Wins When Two Finalists Are Equal
23:31 How (and How Not) to Use AI
27:35 The Overlooked Small-Dollar Scholarships
33:28 Department Scholarships & Asking for More
33:30 When Your Financial Situation Changes
35:21 Navigating the Middle-Income Gap
47:47 The Student Loan Forgiveness Reality Check
49:52 The True Cost of Co-Signing
52:54 The #1 Trait of Successful Scholarship Families
54:53 Jocelyn’s Free Resources & Quiz
Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode!
Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode!
Jocelyn’s Links:
Free webinar: thescholarshipsystem.com/financialfeminist
Scholarship Superpower Quiz: thescholarshipsystem.com/financialfeministquiz
Not sure what to do with your money? Visit https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod and take our FREE Money Plan Quiz to get your personalized money plan, and find any resources mentioned on our show.
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Meet Jocelyn
Jocelyn believes college shouldn’t mean decades of student loan debt — and knows firsthand how confusing and overwhelming the scholarship process can be, having experienced it personally. Like many families, Jocelyn’s was middle-income. She wasn’t a straight-A student or a star athlete, yet still managed to graduate completely debt-free by securing $126,350 in scholarships. It didn’t happen by chance — Jocelyn developed a proven, repeatable strategy that transformed the daunting scholarship search into a clear, step-by-step system.
When friends and family saw what she accomplished and wanted to know how they could do the same, Jocelyn realized she could help families everywhere take control of their college costs. That’s how **The Scholarship System** was born — to empower students and families to graduate without debt by making scholarships simple, strategic, and successful.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
College is expensive, of course, but there are still ways to graduate debt-free. And turns out students are leaving millions of dollars on the table and they don’t even know it. Here’s how to find those scholarships, how to stand out, and how to make sure you have a scholarship system rather than working from scratch every single time. Today on the show, we are talking about scholarships. And while we’ve discussed this before, never this much in depth. We’re talking about finding scholarships that you don’t even know about, making sure that you have the application that stands out, and creating a system so you’re not creating a new application every single time and spending thousands of hours on scholarships when you could be doing anything else.
Today’s guest, Jocelyn Pearson, graduated college completely debt-free, and it wasn’t because she was a straight A student, a star athlete, or from a low income family because she was a middle income kid who figured out that scholarships are not about luck, they’re a strategy problem. Today, the scholarship system that she created has helped families across the US secure almost $17 million in college scholarships. This episode is actionable, so helpful for anybody going through the college application process, whether that is families or students, and you’re going to want to share this with anybody going through it right now. Let’s get into it.
But first, a word from our sponsors.
Okay, Jocelyn, you got $126,000 in scholarships, but you weren’t a straight A student. You weren’t an athlete. You didn’t have any connections. So what did you actually have?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Oh my goodness. I don’t want to sound too cheesy, but I’m going to say a system. I was an entrepreneur without realizing it. I had an entrepreneurial mindset with this. I also had a big why. I think that you and I could definitely get on the page of we need a why behind doing anything that’s challenging. And I’m not saying that scholarships are push an easy button and boom, all this money shows up. I have to give a shout-out. I know that Dave Ramsey’s touchy here, and I know that you have your own episodes just on him. But I will say one pro that came out of him was he made me absolutely freaking terrified of debt.
Tori Dunlap:
Of debt?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Absolutely terrified. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
He’s great at that. He’s very effective at that.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah. Almost to a fault, right? Where it could be useful for some people.
Tori Dunlap:
Almost maybe too scary, but yes.
Jocelyn Pearson:
I guess I was 16 and I had a teacher that made us watch … We had that final week of school, there’s nothing to do. Made us watch Financial Peace University. Made me absolutely terrified of debt. And so student loans was just not even an option. So that why gave me that fire and that entrepreneurial approach then gave me, once I started seeing some wins, this, “Okay, that worked, that didn’t work,” and it created a system. And so the thing is, and I’m sure we’ll get into this, I didn’t get 126,000 in one big win. We hear about students that got $30 million from every top school in the nation. That was not me. I was what I like to call a mere mortal when it came to paying for college, an average student. And so I had to go at it and chip away at what I needed.
So I was chipping away at this dollar amount that I needed because I didn’t just get it in one big win. And so what it looked like was I got enough to cover freshman year. And then some of them rolled over and then I got enough to cover the gap for sophomore year and so on and so forth. So I actually slowly amassed my way to six figures in scholarships. And I know some people hear this and they say, “Okay, that sounds like a lot of work.” But actually, once I got that system in place and once I got some winning materials under my belt, I actually got to where I was winning almost every other scholarship I submitted. So it really was this rinse and repeat, and I just got better as I kept doing it. And so even though the dollars increased, my wins increased each year, my efforts decreased exponentially. And of course I always kept a part-time job. I definitely had one or two involvements that I could speak to. So I’m not saying I had nothing. You’ve got to have something to go off of. But by no means was I one of those students that had universities falling over their feet to offer me something.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and we found that Sallie Mae discovered that 40% of families didn’t use scholarships. And the top reason was they didn’t think they would win. It’s not that they don’t qualify, it’s that they don’t think they’re going to get chosen. So if that’s not an information problem, what is that problem?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah. Right there, that is a confidence problem. And actually anyone that’s attended any of my live trainings, free trainings, I often say my number one job is to give hope, to give you the belief that this is even possible because so many people remove the opportunity before they even begin. We have four myths that we can really break this down to. So a lot of people eliminate themselves because they say, “We’ve missed the boat. It’s too late.” Or I love the other one. It’s so funny. My senior families and later say, “We missed the boat.” My junior families say, “Oh, it’s too early. We’ll get there.” And there’s never this school year between where they say, “Now’s the time to do scholarships.” I always joke, I’m like, “Where did this school year go where you guys think we finally have time?”
And so one of the biggest ones is that myth. It’s as far as timing. It’s too late or it’s too early. And I will say that actually, let me get rid of the too early one quickly. There are scholarships out there for as young as four years old. They draw a picture. Obviously this is far and few between. But it’s still out there. And we’ve had siblings do this with their senior sibling and start bringing in money sophomore year in high school. So it’s never too early. I love early bird gets the worm here. But that said, it’s also never too late. Like I mentioned, I was winning all throughout college. I kept on applying and I got more and more money. I wanted to study abroad. I found scholarships for that. I got more money. And I actually cashed my final check on the way home from college graduation, not high school graduation. So that’s one of the first biggest myths where people just say, “Oh, we missed the boat. It’s too late. It’s too early.”
Another one is, “Well, we’re not going to win the Coca-Colas. We’re not going to win these big scholarships. So why us?” I didn’t either. I found small dollar ones that added up. That’s where I joke, the ones for us mere mortals. And so if we know where to look, it’s about finding what our student can win. It’s not about winning the ones that have 100,000 applicants. So if you have an exceptional student, go for it. The sky’s the limit. But for most students, we need to find those lower hanging fruit ones. And then the third one is, it’s going to take way too much time. We don’t have time. And again, that goes into the system. Even hearing me. Yeah. It was a lot of work maybe upfront, but once I got that system in place, I could rinse and repeat.
Tori Dunlap:
When we think about all of the things you just chatted about, you’re already acknowledging a lot of the misconceptions and I want people to not miss it. So you were saying first that it is never too early and it’s never too late. So anytime is the perfect time, but we have to get started. The second one, yeah, you can go after the big ones, but you’re probably better off spending your time thinking about how do I get $2,000 here or $4,000 here rather than $25,000 in all one go? And I think that comes back to a very similar thing that I hear generally in personal finance, which is, I didn’t start investing soon enough so I have millions of dollars when I retire. It’s not worth it at all.
That’s the thing I hear all of the time is it’s like, “Oh, I’m starting too late. I’m 40 years old. Or I can only save $200 a paycheck rather than 2,000. So what’s the point?” And I say to those people, as well as any student or soon to be student listening, wouldn’t you like to have just $5,000 less of debt? You might not be able to pay for all of college on scholarships. I know I couldn’t, but I got a $2,500 scholarship I remember through a very specific organization. I’ll shout them out. BECU in Seattle. They’re a credit union here in Seattle. And I, along I think with like 30 other people of my year were able to win that scholarship. I got 2,500 bucks. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but that was $2,500. I didn’t have to worry about earning or my parents didn’t have to worry about contributing or I didn’t have to worry about getting from somewhere else. So that all or nothing mindset I think is really what we’re battling here is either, “Oh, I do it perfectly or I don’t do it at all. I do it at exactly the right time or I’ve missed the boat or it’s either $150,000 plus the scholarships all in one fell swoop or it’s not worth it at all.” And what you’re telling us so powerfully is it’s absolutely worth it.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Absolutely. It’s so funny, just yesterday … We did, we call our families rebel families, and we did a rebel family rally. And one of our families got an extra $5,000 a year already. So I said to them, I was like, “Okay, that’s incredible. Now let’s multiply that by four.” This was a recurring one. So $20,000. “Now let’s take that into what the loan payment would be.” That actually just removed roughly just a quick rough, $200 a month. Imagine-
Tori Dunlap:
And a couple of years. A couple of years.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah. And on average, it takes 21 years to pay off debt. So in reality, we’re talking about a lot longer than what they say it’s going to be. So when I broke that down, they were like, “Holy cow,” that is a difference. Maybe it’s not a free ride, but we just knocked off $200 a month. I also joked that is going to buy you like an 18 pack of eggs.
Tori Dunlap:
No. But that’s what we’re talking about here. Absolutely. So you have created this system. And we love systems here on this show because I think that’s the other misconception is that these scholarships are going to be really difficult to win. I know when I was a student, I remember … This wasn’t too, too long ago. Having to sit down and be like, oh my gosh, I have to fill out a whole new application and I have to figure out what’s the pitch and angle for this story. And I just remember it being … There was one, I don’t even know if it’s still around, the duct tape prom dress scholarship. Do you know the one I’m talking about? I’m sure you do. Oh my gosh, am I going to have to make my prom dress out of duct tape? Which is a real thing. Look it up. But how do we actually create and understand this system where this can just be plug and play for us?
Jocelyn Pearson:
I’m going to tie this back. So one of the other myths is around we have to be the perfect student. My student has to be this perfect 4.0 superstar athlete. And I know part of building the system is around figuring out what that angle is. But the beautiful thing is oftentimes we figure it out once and when we nail it’s a matter of reapplying rinse and repeating it to different prompts. For example, in our essay lessons in the scholarship system, we talk about, we run one story through three completely different prompts. But that story we really want to nail. That’s where we have something called scholarship superpowers. And I can share a link actually. It’s free. It’s a quiz. It’s so insightful for parents working with their student and for students trying to figure out what’s going for them when it comes to what committees look for. So it speeds up this process of like, “Well, what is my selling point?” But once we can nail that, once we realize, “Okay, fine, I’m not competing against those perfect Harvard students, but maybe I am passionate about agriculture and I am going to be stellar speaking to that because it is my passion.” And so when I’m going for scholarships and I’m competing against other agriculture students, I do stand out.
Figuring out what we do have going for us, that’s where a good chunk of the work is. But then creating a system around it. Okay. Now what materials can we create? Of course we need a standard essay. That’s going to be our basic story. I really love when families actually find a real scholarship that has a question and builds an essay to that. But if we want to just go ahead and get started, a common one that we could think of is what is a challenge that we’ve overcome?
That’s a very common question. But even if they don’t prompt for that, what if we asked it in a different way? Like what’s an experience that helped you grow and why? What do you want to be and why? Or why this university? So if I know this big challenge that I’ve overcome, I can probably use that to answer every other question I just mentioned. And this is where systems come into place. This is where the magic can happen and where that effort can really drastically decrease. But again, we’ve got to overcome that myth of, well, I’m not that perfect student and we’ve got to find what we do have going for us. So hopefully that answers your question around how we can start systemizing. But getting at that core story is one of the most solid, important steps to see success with scholarships.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and that sounds like what you refer to as the reusable assets that every student is building once. What other reusable assets are we talking about here? So we have our core story that’s so helpful. What else can we do to plug and play even if the application or the process is different every time?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yes. So of course the about us information. And this is where parents can really help. So I know that you’ve got a lot of younger audience as well, but for those that are parents that want to get involved in this, the systemizing is where I really love when parents can get involved. We do not want you writing essays. I’ve had so many committees tell me it is so obvious when a parent is doing the work for their child and they eliminate them. So systemizing, love it. What documents can we create? One of them is these general about me information. So what’s our address? What university? What is the transcripts? Who are our recommenders? We can create a Google Doc with all of this information. Or if you’re nerdy like me, I love Notion these days, whatever system, some electronic digital cloud-based system, please. We don’t want papers and then we find out a deadline’s due and we’re nowhere near our paper method. Or if it’s on a computer … This is personal experience. I dropped my computer freshman year. I lost a good chunk of my essays and had to find them. Luckily I had emailed them for reviews and could track them down, but that was a painful process. So creating some cloud-based system, saving any standard answers that you will often see in forms.
This might sound so minimal. However, when we’re doing a few dozen applications, saving a few minutes here and there can add up. But actually, I think one of the more important reasons we want to do this is accuracy. When we’re doing this for a while or where you just worked on an essay for an hour and now it’s time to submit it’s so easy to mistype something, to go cross-eyed. So I love having a standard doc. Another one that our family is that we walk them through … And we have templates, but you can just make anything work. And that is an activities list. And this is another conversation parents can have with their student. But students listening to this, when you get to the end of a semester, go in and document what did I do? What were my accomplishments? What awards or accolades did I earn? And if we have that winning essay, we can tweak it. We can improve it. So that was where I would say by sophomore year in college, my core essay, I used the same one 90% of the time. Truly. But every end of school year, every end of semester, I would update it with this. So again, these are in my standard documents.
Another conversation we just had are recommendation letters. So some recommenders will be willing to give a PDF copy. Now, sometimes they have to submit them themselves and that’s fine, but having a couple on hand for when you’re allowed to submit it on your own can also save time.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. I know it did for me. Absolutely. So when we look at committees, committees are deciding, or sometimes individuals even, are deciding who gets what scholarship. Walk me through how scholarships are actually awarded. What is that committee looking for when they’re picking one student over the other?
Jocelyn Pearson:
I love this topic and I could go on and on about it. If I was to boil it down to my most commonly used phrase, they want an ROI, a return on investment. And through the scholarship system, we’ve actually not only … We give scholarships as well. So I can personally attest to this. If I’m giving out thousands of dollars each year, I want to know the student’s actually going to graduate, that this student’s going to take this money and pursue something. And that is what they’re assessing. That’s why they’re asking, well, what challenges have you overcome? Because hint, hint, are you going to be able to overcome challenges when it gets tough in college? Are you going to be able to overcome challenges when it comes to getting an internship or a job? So they are using these prompts to see if we give you the money, maybe not necessarily will it come back to us, but will it come back to the world in a fruitful way?
So this is where actually going back to the myth of it’s never too late or it is too late and the truth is that it’s never too late. College students are already showing, “Hey, I’m here and I’m doing this.” This is where if college students are eligible, sometimes they have a leg up because they already show, “Hey, I’m one, two, three semesters in. Here’s my GPA. I’ve gotten involved. I’ve chosen this major.” So when it comes to communicating an ROI, they have a little bit of an advantage there. So that’s one of the biggest things. And how do we show that we are a good ROI on the scholarship spend? Again, what are we going to do with this money and why? Do we have a plan? Sometimes I get pushback where they’ll say, “Well, what if we don’t exactly know what we want to do?” I actually love even being honest and saying, “I’m in between these two things.” Try to say something. What are we interested in? Because it’ll just make the rest of it so much easier to answer. But committees are looking for, do you have a plan? Do you think you have a plan? We know it’ll change, but do you think you have a plan? Because you need a plan in order to get through the four years. And we want to make sure that if we give you the money, you’re going to do that.
Tori Dunlap:
So I had so many people I met in college who came in to the four years, totally understandably, undeclared with their major. Are we saying that you should give the major you think you’re going to pursue, even if it’s not the one you are, does that position you better in a scholarship application?
Jocelyn Pearson:
I do. And I don’t want anyone to lie. I don’t want anyone to lie. We can absolutely say I am considering this and this. This is probably a bigger discussion. If we are allowing our students to go to college and they’re completely clueless and they’re just there to party, this is a different conversation, right?
Tori Dunlap:
Sure.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Hopefully they’re going to college with the idea at least that they’re heading to something that requires a degree. And it can be I have no clue. So actually I was between biomedical engineering and business school. They were not related.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Very different.
Jocelyn Pearson:
At all. But I could, going back to my why, going back to my, what is my scholarship superpower, my story, I could show that actually it’s because I wanted to make an impact. Whether it was making mechanical hearts or whether it was creating a business that changed lives. And so this is where you can actually … I just basically crafted a story right in front of you. Hey, I don’t exactly know what I want to do, but I know the impact I want to make. And here’s a challenge that helped me figure that out. And that’s going to be memorable with committees.
Tori Dunlap:
If a committee is down to two finalists who are both qualified, who gets the scholarship?
Jocelyn Pearson:
One of the things that committees do … And this is myself included, I still remember stories that I read from … I can actually tell you one specifically is 2017. And the reason I remember is because I remember the apartment I was in when I was reading the essay. And it was this adorable essay about the Boy Scouts and they were hiking up a mountain and he became the bottleneck and he had this whole plan and it was so good. So he became, oh, the Boy Scout boy or the bottleneck boy because you hide identifiers. But what that actually showed was committees remember stories and they remember how you made them feel, right?
Tori Dunlap:
I was the vending machine girl.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Okay. There you go. So you’ve got your … There was a girl who was, she created costumes. She was the costume girl. I can tell you our winners years later, because I remember this story. So when we’re talking about winners, who actually wins? It’s going to be that person that left enough of an impact that when I’m negotiating, hey, I want this person to get the money they’re the bootcamp, or sorry, they’re the bottleneck student, or they’re the costume or the vending machine girl, that’s going to help. Now say they both have two good stories. We’re going to go to, did they follow the rules? Did they answer the prompts? You would be amazed at how many people, when it comes neck to neck, you’re like, “Well, they did miss this material or they didn’t quite do this.” You would be shocked at how many people don’t follow instructions. And it makes our jobs, unfortunately, a lot easier.
Tori Dunlap:
I think about it as … I have my own version of this as an employer who offers a really compelling, robust benefits package. We get a lot of applications to work for us every single year. And often when we’re not even hiring, I get cold pitched a couple of times a week. So when I have hundreds, if not thousands of people I’m looking through, the easiest way to say no is, “Oh, you missed something, or you didn’t follow the instructions, or you clearly didn’t read this thing that I asked you to do.” So if I’m looking for an easy way to say no to you, I’m going to take it. Absolutely. If you’ve made it easy for me to say no, I’m going to take that no.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Right. We have so many that are high quality we’ve got to find ways to simplify, and that’s definitely an easy one.
Tori Dunlap:
I have to ask you about AI because I do feel like this is one of those things that can be so helpful for this process, but I can also see kids using AI to write their whole essay, which is not what we want. So how do we use AI effectively for something like building a system? And when should we not be using AI to help our system?
Jocelyn Pearson:
I am so glad you asked this. We’re revamping our entire program and we are building software tools for this reason. When used in the right way, AI can be so powerful. However, I just got an email from a scholarship committee member.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m so scared.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Last week. We shared it with our members. Yeah. They said, “Hey, this sounded like AI. I went to ChatGPT, told it my name.” And I said, “Can you answer this for me?” It was the exact same text, almost verbatim with the name switched. He’s not even a real student. It was so terrible. And then this is even scarier. They did it with a recommendation letter. So I’m actually waiting. I’ve shot him back a message and I said, “Okay, do you think the student did this because they forgot to request one and they tried to just pull one together? Or do you think the recommender, which is even scarier in my opinion, went to ChatGPT and said, Write me a recommendation letter for the student. So again, he tested it. Same recommendation letter came out for Greg instead of the student. So where there’s great power comes great responsibility.
We are using AI tools to streamline the systemizing. Actually, we’ve got a cool tool where it takes our superpowers and you just say, tell me what to do based on what Jocelyn says for Sundays. And it just creates it. So we don’t have to become an expert in it. It can use what I’ve trained it on and it just tells us what to do. So I love for the systemizing piece of it. Maybe I would say as if … Because I know students are going to try it anyway, even though I’m going to tell them not to, please do not write an essay with it. If you’re going to try, if anything, ask it to ask you questions to uncover what story we can tell. That is a better way to do it.
I love AI for proofreading, not for rewriting. So use it as a mentor, but not to do the work for you because they are spotting it. We run all our winners through an AI checker. And if it comes up as AI, automatically eliminated. So actually I should have said one of the things of a winner or not, a quick way to get eliminated is by using AI to do the work. We’ve always been innovative. We are really trying to fine tune these software tools for our families to try and streamline some of the gritty work, even helping them find the scholarships that are not on the big search engines. That’s great. But for using it, for writing essays and recommendation letters, if anyone writes those, please don’t. Please don’t.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I wanted to ask you because I know students are out there. There’s so much conversation about students using AI for their school essays. So I wanted to acknowledge if we’re using AI, if that is a thing for you and your family, okay, how do you use it effectively and when should you not use it? So that was super helpful.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yes. And I will say, this is actually a little bit scarier for me, parents … So I have recently been polling during my live trainings. Parents, is your student using it? And you would be shocked at how many of them say no.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, because they just have no idea.
Jocelyn Pearson:
I’m sorry. I call bullshit. I call complete bullshit.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. It’s the same way, my students never drank. My students never done …
Jocelyn Pearson:
Come on.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s the same thing. It’s like, yeah, they have. And that’s okay, but they have.
Jocelyn Pearson:
In two seconds, they can have a full paper written for them. They are absolutely using AI. And so that is a whole nother conversation. But parents, you’ve got to address this when doing these scholarship applications. Absolutely do not use it to do the work for them. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
What scholarships are students commonly overlooking?
Jocelyn Pearson:
So when it comes to scholarships, when we’re talking about the myths, going back to the good scholarships, the big ones, a lot of students want to get that Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper. They want the $100,000 win. Unfortunately, everyone wants that. So you’re looking at 100,000 applicants as well. And so when students are looking at scholarships, they will see the $500 one and think, oh, 500 bucks. I need so many of those. I’m not going to waste my time on that. But we’ve had, oh my gosh, endless students where they spend an hour, 45 minutes on an application and they win 500, 1,000, even $2,000. That’s a pretty good hourly rate if we’re calculating it. So for sure, a lot of students overlook the small dollar ones.
And I would say actually, even I did this at first. I spent a whole year applying to the wrong ones. The enter to win $10,000 and put your favorite ice cream flavor in here. And not shockingly, I didn’t win a single penny that way. But even when I started tweaking again, trying to figure out this system, if it was under, I would say probably 5,000 at first, I was just moving on. But then I finally applied to a local $500 one and I won it. And that’s when I said, “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be overlooking these.” Actually, I could tell you, my largest win was a $4,000 scholarship. $4,000. So it was 4,000.
Tori Dunlap:
And you had $126,000 of scholarships. So we can do the math on that. If 4,000 was the highest, you still made up $122,000 somewhere, right?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah. Right. I And that 4,000 one was recurring, so multiply that by four years. So that knocked off-
Tori Dunlap:
But still … Yeah.
Jocelyn Pearson:
But still.
Tori Dunlap:
You had over $100,000 in small checks.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Right. Right. And it added up to where I actually got overage checks. So the biggest one is do not overlook these small dollar ones. The reason is not only can they add up, but your competition … I’ll never forget one of my favorite wins I had, they actually told us there were four winners and they were … I don’t remember the amount, but somewhere in the range of anywhere from a thousand to $2,000. And they said to us, “Believe it or not, actually, you guys were the only ones that applied.” And it was a 100% success rate. All of us got an award. I later found out that they actually were only planning to give two, got four applicants, reached out to the donors, “Would you match your donation so we could give all of them a win?” And they did. It was a local construction company and they had this cute little banquet and it was awesome. But that’s where also this just naturally increases our chances of winning because we’re going for ones that are less competitive. I think the other one that’s often overlooked … And this is helpful to students even already in college or especially already in college, are ones that are specific to departments later on.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m laughing because if you didn’t bring this up, I was bringing this up. Yeah. I dual degreed. So I have a degree in theater and I have a degree in organizational communication. And I auditioned to get a theater scholarship before I entered my program. And then I don’t remember what the first year was. I think it was maybe $1,500, but it increased every year. And I think by the time I was a senior, it was $4,000 a year. Same thing with communication. I had no idea there was even a comm specific scholarship. I think I discovered it my sophomore year. They told me it was mostly need-based, and we’ll talk about this in a second. My parents were making enough money where I didn’t qualify for financial aid, but in no way did we have $55,000 a year set up for me to go to college. So I applied anyway. And I was like, who knows? Also, the people who were deciding it were my professors and I was doing really good work and building good relationships with them. I didn’t get $2,000, which was the max, but I got 500 a year because nobody else applied. It was like me and a couple other people because nobody knew about it.
And then every semester I would be like, “Hey, is there still a communication department scholarship available?” So I don’t remember what I ended up getting, but total, it was probably a couple of thousand dollars per department. So that saved me probably $8,000 over the four years I was at university. And they were scholarships I did not know about. I had to ask. I had to ask about them.
Jocelyn Pearson:
I have the exact same story. I went into the business school and I said, “Do you guys have any scholarships?” It was this paper method. I’m like, “We’re the business school. We’re supposed to be innovative here.” No. And each year the amount increased. It was literally your story verbatim. And so many students think when they apply to a university, they’re automatically considered for as much money as they can get. And that’s not the truth. It never hurts to ask, but specifically those departments. And to explain why, they want to know you’re actually going to stick around in their major. They don’t want to give you money and then you transfer. And so this is why, again, those students who are already in college showing, Hey, I’m here, I’m doing this. And proving like you, I’m doing good work. I’m into this major and interested. They want to give the money there. So absolutely, these are so overlooked. And I would not say, choose a school that has a $100,000 gap for you because of this. This is not something that we sacrifice our financial future banking on. It’s going to be a few thousand dollars max a year, but this is definitely low hanging fruit.
Tori Dunlap:
I will also say this is a really sneaky thing, but it’s what happened. My sophomore year roommate, basically her funds dried up. I think her parents had a hard time. She had a really tricky family situation. And she went into the financial aid office and she was like, “I will not be able to finish at this school. I might not even be able to finish this year.” And they found money for her. So I think that we are often so scared to talk about money, period. That’s why this show exists. But also, “Oh, we don’t want to ask for too much.” And it’s like, again, do you know how much university costs? College now at this point … My college that I graduated from only 10 years ago costs I think $20,000 more than when I went to school. That’s an insane jump. So I am okay taking money from my university. I am okay making sure that I can graduate either debt-free or less in debt, even if I have to go in and be like, “Hey, this is the real reality. Help me make sure I can stay at this school.”
Jocelyn Pearson:
This is more the financial aid side of this. This is where FAFSA … Families submit FAFSA every year while our child is in college because our situation changes each year, which also opens up the doors for negotiating for more money. So I love this, going back and asking for money every single year, just in case. And especially because FAFSA uses prior, prior tax information. Two years ago, a lot of us were sitting in a very different economy and our numbers are very different these days. And so the story being told on FAFSA is just not accurate. So it’s also from a numbers standpoint on FAFSA, you can absolutely ask for more. But no matter what, I would always just walk into the office and ask them anyway.
Tori Dunlap:
Let’s talk about that middle income gap because full disclosure, that was my experience. There is a specific group of families that’s almost invisible in these conversations where you do not qualify for need-based aid. And this was me. I did not qualify. My parents did not qualify because frankly, my parents made a lot of really smart financial choices. They did not upgrade their house when they could. We were still driving 10-year-old cars. On paper, yes, my parents did not qualify for need aid, but in no possible circumstance did they have a bunch of money just sitting around waiting to send me to college. I’m also an only child, so that was part of it too. So I imagine that’s a big chunk of listeners is that middle where it’s college is so expensive, but I’m not qualifying for the need aid that I might actually need to go to the university I want to go to. So what are the actual options for these type of families?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah. And I love this. And I have to say actually, this was me too. So I had this big gap to close. It was not something where we just got this free ride. And I will say that actually nearly a third of families that make six figures do receive some kind of institutional grants. So that can still eliminate a lot of families, but this is where a lot of people will be told, “Oh, you make too much. Just don’t even bother with FAFSA.” We’ve had families come to us, they missed a deadline for FAFSA. Someone told them don’t bother doing it. And now they’re realizing, “Oh my gosh, we just missed out on so much money.” Because even if FAFSA says you can afford this, what’s great is that a lot of universities and scholarship committees understand that FAFSA is no longer an accurate picture. I don’t know if it ever has, but especially now, it is just so unrealistic. Like you said, the increases have just been exponential.
And so I actually have committee members that I speak to from other scholarships and I get their scoop on this. And this is where they do ask for FAFSA information because they want to get a full picture because they know so many families are told this by the universities, “Oh, you make too much. We don’t have money for you.” And that’s just ridiculous. So I’m just on the little got me on my train here on how unrealistic FAFSA results are and how many families are put into this middle income gap is what we call it. So I was there as well. And I will say, of course, for me, these private external scholarship dollars is where I was able to chip away at the bill.
But I will say that this is also where if we have not chosen a university, casting that net wide and being open to finding a financial fit is a quick way to possibly save tens of thousands of dollars. So choosing the school … We got a message today from a family that they … It is so strange, actually. I have had two stories that specifically were NYU, they missed the FAFSA deadline and NYU will absolutely not budge. This family has a very low FAFSA number, which means that they would’ve gotten a ton of money from NYU. They won’t budge. And to me, my answer to that is, you’re not going to NYU. I’m sorry. For undergraduate to take on all this debt, for me, I don’t think the name on the degree matters that much to bury yourself in.
Tori Dunlap:
Not anymore.
Jocelyn Pearson:
No, it’s not. Maybe master’s, that’s different when we’re talking about an MBA and you’re accessing their network and stuff like that. But for undergraduate, follow the money. And one family can have very different offers at different schools with the same FAFSA number, can have very different offers. So for sure, if we can, shop around. And I know students don’t like to hear that. I know. I know that student wants to go to NYU. But again, when we’re talking about potentially 21 years of student loan payments … I know as a mother of two daughters, I would give up my left foot for whatever. I would do everything I can for them. But at the same time, our job as parents is to help them make mature decisions. If they told us, “I’m never eating again,” we’re going to say, “No, that’s not good for you.” If they’re going to tell us, “Hey, I missed a deadline and now I have to borrow $200,000, but this other school’s way more affordable.” It’s a tough conversation. And this is where we support a lot of parents.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. So this is such a good thing to pause on because this is the reality. And you’re exactly right where no 17-year-old kid wants to hear you can’t go to X sexy school. Yeah. Whether that’s NYU or … I don’t know what other sexy schools are. I’m too old now. But how do we actually start to think about the thing that feels like the in moment decision of I want to go to the school in New York or I want to go where my friends are going or my boyfriend is going versus getting them to understand. How do I convince a 17-year-old to think like a 30-year-old who has had crippled student debt? Do we show them Dave Ramsey? I don’t think that’s the right solution, but how do we-
Jocelyn Pearson:
It worked.
Tori Dunlap:
It worked for you. Who knows? I don’t know. John Mulaney has this great bit where he’s like, “I went into $120,000 of debt to get an English major for a language I already spoke.” Yeah. He’s like, “I was asleep and in sweatpants and had to sign away my life to be an English major.” So what conversation do we need to be having with the reality check of student debt is a trillion dollar issue?
Jocelyn Pearson:
I love this. And we are in the middle. I am completely updating our whole program around these superpowers. We’re going to give a link to that quiz because it is so important for this because each student is going to react to information differently. So for some people, numbers speak right to them. For me, just tell me, well, the alternative is borrowing $100,000. And I was like, “Okay, I will do it.” For other students, they’re like, “Well, everyone does that. Who cares?” They’re not putting themselves in that future situation. And I will tell you that we actually bring in a teen psychologist for this reason. She speaks to how their brains are actually not even developed fully in the way of thinking in long-term consequences. So to ask them to think of how this is going to impact their life in 15 years, for many of them, their brain is not even capable.
So this is where we have to break down the consequences in a way that our student can understand. And for anyone that’s in this, understanding what motivates you is helpful too. So if you’re trying to muster up the energy to do a scholarship application and it’s just not coming, again, we’re going to find your superpower completely free and try to find a way that motivates you. So for example, maybe hearing $100,000 is not going to work for you. However, maybe if we can convert that into, again, going back to what’s that monthly loan payment going to be? And what would you do with that instead? So if we’re freeing up $1,000 a month, let’s have fun with this. If we’re a parent, where could we travel to? $1,000 a month, one year of those payments, $12,000. That is actually a pretty decent vacation even today. Or maybe they like fancy cars and they know they want to lease something, or maybe they are into investments. We need to find ways that speak to that student. Or again, ourselves. We need to understand how we are motivated.
So we have something, our college cost calculator where it puts all the schools side by side so that you can see apples to apples. So do that with your student and say, okay, this is the borrowing amount that we are seeing. And we take it a step further and then we have them put in what career path they’re looking at and we pull what their disposable income would be. That is eye-opening. So again, if money speaks to them, you can say, “Hey, your take home’s going to be 4,000 a month and 25% of that is going to go to this bill.” So it really is about figuring out what speaks to our students and have the conversation in that way. If we just try to go in it, I know best, I know better, you just have to do this whether you like it or not, they are probably going to double down. I had a mom email me once panicking because her daughter was doing this. And I said, “Hey, pull up that cost calculator. Show her the difference and paint the picture in the future.” I got a follow-up email like a week later. She chose the debt free ride. And it had to be converted into words that actually spoke to them.
Tori Dunlap:
I remember being 18, 19 years old and truly having no concept of money. What I mean is how much $50,000 or $100,000 actually was. And I remember looking up the average salary I was going to make when I graduated versus what it costs for one year of college. That was the thing that really started cementing because yeah, my college without any scholarships or without aid, all in was $55,000 a year. And that didn’t mean anything to me because I wasn’t making any sort of like salary. I had jobs, but I wasn’t making a salary that required a degree. And so the first time I actually sat down and considered, what is the value of $55,000? And that was my exact salary the first year out of school. I made 55K. And it is wild to think about, I was working 40 plus hours a week for an entire year, five days a week to earn the same amount of money that it costs me to go to one year of school. Again, I got scholarships, I got other things, but that was the only connection that really clicked for me. At the time, it was just like, “Yep, we’re going to college. I know it’s expensive. I’ll figure it out later.”
Jocelyn Pearson:
Exactly. And that conversation, again, going back to not to lecture parents, but this is our role. And this is what’s so incredible about the work you do, especially for women. They don’t like to talk about money regardless.
Tori Dunlap:
Period.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Nevermind having … A lot of parents, they are still paying on their student loans. So how can they tell their kid you’re not allowed to borrow money when they did? Or maybe their parents didn’t give them the school of their dreams and so they want to change generational patterns. There’s a lot going on here. So I just have the utmost empathy for parents that are in this situation that have to say to their child, “Honey, this is not practical.” So breaking it down in a way that does speak to them so that hopefully they can start getting to that decision on their own. But still, no matter what, going back to the debt figures, if we’re talking about borrowing that money, that parent is going to have to co-sign if they’re capable, if their credit allows it. And that means if their child doesn’t pay those loans, they’re on the hook for it just as if they borrowed it.
I met a mom. She had a falling out with her daughter. Her daughter disappeared. She is paying $1,200 a month on student loans because otherwise it will completely destroy her own credit. So this is where we’re not just talking about them being buried in debt. We’re talking about parents, even grandparents these days. So this really is a family conversation and decision. And if you have a hard time having that conversation, that’s where experts like us can help with that because I do know money is such a sticky topic.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. With that conversation, Sallie Mae says that 42% of families with federal student loans expect them to be forgiven. So that’s part of it too, is I think there is this belief of, “Oh, but student loan forgiveness.” And of course, I think you and I both would say we support student loan forgiveness absolutely. But is an administration, is the people we elect going to support student loan forgiveness? And not just for the two, four, eight years they’re in office, but to actually get things passed. So what is the actual reality of student loan forgiveness at this moment? Because I have a feeling it’s pretty bleak.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yes, I would say so. People joked back in the Bernie Sanders days, “What are you going to do if he …” I’m like, “I’m not concerned because these kind of …” First off-
Tori Dunlap:
Live my best life. Yeah. That’s what I’m going to do.
Jocelyn Pearson:
If the scholarship system is no longer necessary, that means we solved a pretty big problem for our nation. I am ecstatic, please. But I’m not that concerned about it because like you said, each administration changes their opinions on this. And there are forgiveness programs. They’re absolutely under attack right now, the ones that have existed. But even then, they’re narrow. They have very strict rules and often do still require decades of on-time payments. This is not like you can just not pay your bill and hopefully one day it’ll disappear. Maybe we’ll get lucky. But for me, the most important line of defense is minimizing what we borrow from the beginning.
For me, I’m not an expert on student debt because I avoided it. I am an expert on helping families stay out of debt. So for me, the most important piece is just trying to not even borrow versus banking on them being forgiven. Because yeah, we saw. A lot of people got their hopes up just for it to be ripped away. And even the ones that have been well established for public service, even those are under attack. So this is not a smart strategy.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And a really harsh stat we found is that there is a number of Social Security beneficiaries having their checks garnished for student loan debt that’s grown 3000% between 2001 and 2019. So we have half a million seniors in default who are at risk of losing part of their retirement income because of student debt. That’s a whole other conversation, but this is why your work is so important of if we can prevent or significantly lower student debt in the first place, this doesn’t have to be the reality for students.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Absolutely. And that goes back to what I was saying with the co-signing. It is not just the student’s problem. We are seeing it’s now parents’ problems and grandparent problems. And during COVID, they paused a lot of this, but it is starting back up. We’re going to start seeing this happen again where IRS checks are being intercepted or social security checks. So yeah, hit the nail on the head. And a lot of people … Actually, I think there’s a stat over half, over 51% of people who have co-signed already know they’re going to have to delay retirement because of it. And I have told families, they can always find strategies for paying for college, but you cannot find strategies to pay for retirement.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Right?
Tori Dunlap:
It’s one of the things Dave Ramsey and I agree about. It’s one of the only things. But it’s true. There is no loan for your retirement. Student loans are not ideal, but they exist. Retirement loans do not. And if you are trying to get your child financially ahead and you’re like, “Okay, well, I’ll help contribute for their college,” you might be moving back in with them and becoming a financial burden later because you could not afford your own retirement.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Truly. And this is where, again, we have families that have said, “I cannot pay for college for my child, but I can do this work with them. And this is where parents helping them create a system, helping them find the scholarships, helping motivate them, learning their superpower and having these conversations to speak to that superpower profile.” This is where parents … I actually have an interview with a mom. She said, “I knew I couldn’t pay for her college, but I could pay for this. And we gave up eating out at X amount on our dates. And instead we flipped it for Scholarship Sunday time.” That girl ended up going to college for free. So I told her, I said, “You did pay for her college. You did, with the attention and the time and the focus on the process.” And I would love to tell parents, “Hey, just send this podcast to your child and they’ll just go and do it.” But they are still kids. The families that get the big wins … We’ve had families get more money than I have now. And they do treat it like a partner effort. But again, with these stats of co-signing affecting parents and grandparents, it behooves them too.
Tori Dunlap:
When we look at students or families that have a successful scholarship system in place versus those who don’t, what is the number one difference somebody listening could make?
Jocelyn Pearson:
I think consistency. So a lot of families … We talk about, we’ve got three personas of families. We’ve got the freezes where they try to apply for scholarships. They do a few Googles and they get so overwhelmed. And then we end up applying to absolutely nothing. And then we’ve got the hustlers where they are doing the opposite, where they’re applying to everything under the sun, the sweepstake scholarships, the scams, and they burn out. And then we have what we of course call our rebel families, those savvy strategic families that no, these are the ones that align to our student. They’re not going to beat the Harvard kids for that Coca-Cola scholarship. But again, we’re great at agriculture. And so we’re going to go for that one and narrow it down to something that our child can win. So the more strategic approach, this is what a system brings, right? Going at it in a strategic way so that we can be consistent so that we don’t either freeze or hustle and burnout because that’s where I find families. They tend to go on opposite ends of the spectrum. And so by the end of senior year in high school, they are so done. They don’t want to even hear the word scholarship.
But if we can be strategic, have a clear plan, have tunnel vision with clear steps to follow, that is when they can bring in money because this is a long game. Like I said, for me, some students, they’ll get millions of dollars in offers upfront. If that’s your child, fantastic. That’s amazing. But for a lot of us, we had to chip away at it. And so we need to plan for the long game.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for being on the show. I will tell listeners that you and I met in 2018 when her first 100K was still a side hustle. And you gave me some great business advice around building my email funnel. And I literally remember meeting you and being so impressed by you. And I went home and did my homework and it worked. And I was just so thankful for you. So this is, I think, maybe the first time we’ve talked since then, or at least face-to-face through Zoom. And so I just appreciate you being on the show and sharing all of your guidance. So plug away, my friend, where can we learn more about everything that you teach?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yes. And I was so in love with you back then, and I knew that you were just going to blow up. I’m like, “You just need to collect these emails because you are already going to make such an impact.” So I’m so happy to hear that. So if they go to thescholarshipsystem.com, we have so many incredible free resources, but we do have a free webinar. And if you go to thescholarshipsystem.com/financialfeminist, then you can go ahead and it’ll just beeline you right there. We also do have that scholarship superpower quiz, and I do want to give that again. It’s free. And at the end, the report will give you insight on the best ways to have these tough conversations, the best motivators, and even how to tackle the process so that we can have that consistency and build that system. So we also created an easy link. It’s Financial Feminist Quiz. So we go to the scholarshipsystem.com/financialfeministquiz for that. But start with those two free resources and get your feet wet. And we’ve got tons of stuff on YouTube, Instagram, follow us in all the places. But also, if you just want to say, give me tunnel vision, just tell me what to do. You can learn more about our course at those links too.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. Thank you for being here.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Thanks for having me.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
