Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is fourth-generation educator, coach, and multiple-time best-selling author Chip Baker. Chip is the creator of The Success Chronicles, a YouTube channel and podcast where he interviews people from all walks of life about what it truly takes to be successful in life. Drawing from thousands of these conversations, Chip and host Dr. TJ Vari connect the dots between post-secondary success and the skills, mindsets, and experiences students need for college and career readiness worldwide.​

After years of interviewing high performers, Chip identifies a core throughline: the ability to overcome adversity and “grow through, not go through” tough times. He argues that on the other side of our hardest challenges is our maximum growth, and that educators play a pivotal role in helping students develop resilience and perseverance. For Chip, relevance is key—students engage and persist when learning is tied to real-world applications, pathways, projects, internships, and work-based learning that clearly connect to their futures.​

Chip highlights the quiet but powerful impact of educators, counselors, and support staff who consistently show up with care, presence, and high expectations. These adults build quality relationships, provide relevance, and communicate, “I really care about your success,” which Chip sees as the foundation for student growth and long-term achievement. He notes that many successful people attribute their progress to someone who poured into them when they doubted themselves, or to their own decision to “be the one” who changes the trajectory of their family through education, learning, and new environments.​

From The Success Chronicles, Chip distills recurring traits of successful people: resilience, self-belief (“you are enough”), strong support systems, core principles, lifelong learning, time management, self-awareness, reflection, and intentional goal setting. He emphasizes that learning is not optional, and that managing time—saying no to what doesn’t matter so you can say yes to what does—is essential for sustained success. These traits align directly with many districts’ portraits of a graduate and provide research-informed guidance for the skills schools can intentionally teach and assess.​

Chip shares powerful quotes and themes from his guests such as “failures are fuel for success,” “consistency is the truest measure of performance,” and “don’t let your life be driven by your to-do list—let it be driven by your to-be list.” He uses these ideas with students, helping them “conquer themselves” by understanding their triggers, interests, and values so they can eliminate distractions and build a life aligned with who they are.

Explaining why he started The Success Chronicles, Chip says he simply wanted to serve, give, and stop “keeping to himself” the powerful conversations that had expedited his own growth. He loves highlighting unsung heroes who do the work without seeking recognition and believes “success leaves clues” that students and educators can use in their own journeys. His closing message to educators is his personal tagline: “Live, learn, serve, inspire—go get it."

Listeners can find on YouTube and on all major podcast platforms, and explore his more than 30 books, merch, and resources through links in his social media bios or by searching his name on Amazon.

Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is best-selling author of Careers By the People, Mike Wysocki.

Mike Wysocki discusses how his own career path shaped his focus on career readiness. As a first-generation, low-income student, his early goal was simply to go to college and get a job in business. After graduating, he found the experience underwhelming and unfulfilling. Even when he later moved into well-paid tech sales in Los Angeles, the work felt unchallenging and disconnected from his interests. That realization led him to ask others about their careers, which ultimately inspired his book Careers by the People, featuring candid advice from more than 100 professionals.

Through his research and speaking with students, Wysocki has found that many young people remain confused about career paths, particularly outside elite universities. He believes the connection between education and the workforce is often weak, with students lacking awareness of industries, networking strategies, and professional tools like LinkedIn.

Wysocki pushes back on the idea that students should simply follow passion or talent alone. Instead, he encourages students to identify industries that genuinely interest them and then apply their strengths within those fields. Building a network within an industry makes it easier to move between roles such as sales, operations, or marketing while maintaining connections and credibility.

A key piece of his advice is for students to speak directly with experienced professionals. Conversations with people who have spent years in a field—and especially those who have left it—provide more realistic insight than relying on peers or family members alone. Hearing multiple perspectives helps students better understand the pros and cons of different careers.

Wysocki also emphasizes that many students only know careers within their family networks, which can limit awareness of other opportunities. Expanding exposure to different industries earlier in life can help students discover options that better match their interests.

Reflecting on his own experience, Wysocki says college was valuable because it helped him build writing skills, confidence, and broader knowledge. He believes higher education can be transformative, particularly for students from working-class backgrounds, but students must also use that time to actively explore careers and build professional connections.

His upcoming book examines how current college students prepare for the workforce, using detailed questionnaires with students from state universities across the United States. The goal is to better understand their career thinking, preparation strategies, and the gaps that still exist between college and the workplace.

Wysocki encourages educators to leverage alumni networks and retired professionals when helping students explore careers. Alumni can share practical experience, while retirees often feel freer to speak candidly about the realities of their industries.

This episode of College & Career Readiness Radio features our guest Patrick Jones, an experienced educator, business leader, and expert in career readiness.

Patrick argues that the “internship shortage” is really a systems problem rooted in how higher education and K-12 interface with employers, not a lack of student interest or talent. He explains the friction employers face—especially smaller organizations—when trying to work with colleges, and calls for more employer-friendly structures, incentives, and even intermediaries that can broker relationships at scale.

Patrick emphasizes that today’s students often arrive at college with less work experience and limited exposure to the full range of roles in industries they care about. He shares examples of helping students see beyond the obvious job titles (like “athlete”) to the many supporting careers in areas such as sports marketing, finance, operations, and analytics, and stresses the importance of discovery experiences that broaden their sense of what’s possible.

He also makes a compelling case that any internship is better than no internship, because the biggest barrier is access, not perfection. Even imperfect or loosely structured internships can teach punctuality, communication, hierarchy, feedback, and “managing up,” especially when paired with reflection and guidance from an advisor or faculty member.

Patrick introduces his Discover–Ready–Find framework, the focus of his forthcoming book. Discover helps students understand how the labor market really works and why relying only on degrees and GPAs is risky. Ready reframes college as a platform for building emotional maturity, durable skills, and early work experience, starting as early as the first year. Find helps students develop a career “taste palette,” so they can intentionally seek environments and roles that fit who they are, rather than taking the first offer by default.

Throughout the conversation, Patrick returns to one central theme: students don’t just need more programs—they need caring adults and well-designed systems of support that prepare them for the realities of work. His message to educators is clear: build real relationships, create more on-ramps to authentic work experiences, and help young people connect their education to opportunity with purpose.