“Travel is the best form of education.”
That’s what Kamal said to me at a gas station in Benchley, TX.
Kamal was the cashier. It was Day 4 – the morning after our first tour stop at Texas A&M.
I remember this like it was yesterday. As I walked in to pay, his gaze was immediately filled with curiosity. It wasn’t long before he asked me about our behemoth of a vehicle which was taking up the entire parking lot. I began to tell him our story, but before I could finish, his own concerns with the college system seemed to pour out of him involuntarily. The passion in his voice grew by the second. He was clearly moved by our message and our journey.
As I was walking out, I realized I just missed a sales opportunity! I grabbed one of my books and ran back inside.
“Hey man, I can tell our movement means a lot to you – would you like to buy my book? It’s only $10 and it’ll help us get to the next town.”
He gave some push back, and it took about 3 ‘no’s before he caved, popped open the cash register and handed me a $10 bill.
Asking for a sale is uncomfortable by nature, but we were running off of the high from the previous night’s tour stop – I felt unstoppable.
So what happened at Texas A&M?
It was Day 3. We had just rolled into College Station, and did a victory cruise around campus, blasting music and pulling the eyes of college students on their way to class.
Our first pop up concert was tonight. The business plan was pretty solid, but there were a few logistics we still had to figure out:
Where do we set up?
This was a big hurdle. We had a 23’ RV with a 12’ trailer; finding an effective and legal spot to park it was no easy task. Plus, every town was different, so we had to start this process over at each school.
For this, we literally spent hours searching on google maps, and visiting the spots in person to check them out. We eventually found a park that looked like it might work called Wolf Pen Creek Park. Luckily this park had outlets, so we could go all-out with our PA system and DJ equipment. However, it was a mile off campus. It looked like there was some student housing nearby, but we had to do something to bridge the gap and get more people around campus to see us.
Which leads to our second logistical problem:
How do we get people to show up if it’s not a high-traffic area?
For this one, we reverted to marketing 101 – canvassing. We put together a flyer, printed out thousands of them, and spent a few hours that day dropping them on car windshields in student parking lots on campus. This method had been effective in hiring employees in the past, so it was worth a try.
I pictured a college student sulking back to his car after begrudgingly taking an exam for which he was utterly under prepared, only to notice this on his windshield:
During the day, we added to our Snapchat story with goofy moments on campus, at the park, and around our RV so students could see we were approachable, and know where to meet us for a free concert later.
If it worked, everyone who was intrigued enough from the flyer to check out our Snapchat story would be entertained with a little sneak peak of the Xploration Station.
Before we knew it, it was go time. We set up the drum set, PA system, and book booth and we got started.
For 2 hours, nobody came. We tried different stage formats, wrote different enticing messages on our whiteboard sign, called out to people with our mic instead of playing music, and we kept adding new content to our Snapchat story and our social media profiles. Instead of getting discouraged, we decided to have fun regardless of what happened. We adopted the Kevin Costner mindset, put our heads down, and kept doing our thing.
Two hours later, we found our groove. People of all ages started filing in. It was working.
Some of them told us they saw us across the park and couldn’t not check out what was going on. Some of them said they saw our Snapchat story. We issued about 15 dropout degrees that day, and sold 4 books. We didn’t sell any t-shirts.
A big part of our philosophy on education involves learning through childlike curiosity. Kids naturally want to explore, touch things and play, and this is the most valuable part of the learning process. School fights this.
During the day, this group of little girls stopped by with their babysitter to check out what was going on. They were intrigued by the drums and the music equipment, and they couldn’t help but touch and explore them. It was really fascinating watching their curiosity run wild.
In that moment, I had a profound realization.
These kids were wandering around touching instruments, driven by pure childlike curiosity. They had never experienced anything like it, and this fueled them. They each tried different instruments and sounded awful at first, but they got the hang of it after a few minutes.
All day, we had wandered around trying to find a place to set up, driven by pure childlike curiosity. We had never experienced anything like it, and it fueled us. We tried different setups and at first nobody came, but we got the hang of it after a few hours.
Sound familiar?
By putting on this tour, we were exploring and learning in the same exact way the little girls were exploring and learning about instruments – unhindered by the structure of a classroom and driven by natural curiosity and passion. It was fun. We didn’t have to teach anyone what we thought education would be, because we were living it.
We issued them each a Dropout Degree. We may have gotten that babysitter fired… Oops.
Every single person we saw agreed that college wasn’t that valuable anymore – even the ones who were currently in college. But they didn’t see themselves quitting because there wasn’t a better alternative, and although they didn’t admit it, social pressure.
This experience was AWESOME. This day remains one of the coolest memories of my life. For months, we had been planning, thinking, whiteboarding, and talking about what we were gonna do. Finally, we did it. We took action and made something happen. It was a small start, but it was a start.
We learned that putting an idea into reality is hard. It’s a lot of work, and usually it doesn’t end up how you imagine it. Which is the very reason creating something new is such a valuable learning experience.
There is no better feeling than putting yourself on the spot in real life and seeing what happens.
Later that night, after we packed up, the three of us were debriefing the day in the camper. We heard a knock on the door.
A man in his 40s was standing there. He began praising us for the message we were spreading, somewhat incoherently. It seemed like he was speechless and didn’t quite know how to communicate the reverence he had for our journey. He left us with a package of glow sticks, and stuck a few on our front door handle out of courtesy as a gift of his gratitude.
After this wild experience, the possibilities seemed endless. It was hard to fall asleep that night. I felt like I was glowing, and it had nothing to do with the glow sticks.
We spent the night in College Station, then headed to Waco, TX to hit up Baylor the next day.
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This is Part 3 of a series I’m doing on my experience touring the country in an RV trying to convince people to drop out of college.