Fatima Bey: 0:04

This is MindShift Power Podcast, the number one critically acclaimed podcast where we have raw, unfiltered conversations that shape tomorrow. I'm your host, fatima Bey, the MindShifter, and welcome everyone. Today we have with us Lee Norwood. She is out of North Carolina and she is the founder of College Sharks. How are you today, Lee? I am doing great. Thank you Great. I'm looking forward to this conversation. So why don't you go ahead and tell us about yourself? Tell us your background.

Lee Norwood: 0:42

Well, I'm really excited to be here with you because I think I shift some minds myself all the time. I came from 23 years in the pharmaceutical world and didn't love it and didn't feel like I was doing anything to make a difference. So about eight years ago I bought a college consulting business to help teens find the right school for them, because it's a really expensive part of life if you choose to go to college, and I had two kids going in that direction. One did. We ended up with a Pell Grant and quite a bit of merit aid and I got her in and out of six years of school with grad school at a really good price and I thought I want to pass this knowledge on.

Lee Norwood: 1:23

And my other student, who may even be I hate she hates it when I say this. So I'm so sorry, carson, but he might be a little bit more emotionally intelligent, but hated school, hated holding a pencil, hated everything about it, and he's a US Marine now. So I don't think college is for everyone, but for people who want to go. I wanted to lower the barriers of that and I started, and I know it's very expensive to get a one-on-one coach because that's what I do. So I started a new business called College Sharks, which you get me on video guiding you through the entire process at a fraction of the cost and sometimes free. So I just want more kids to know that college is a place where they can go and it can be less expensive than they think, and they can come out and change the world. So that's what I do.

Fatima Bey: 2:12

Okay, so let's take a deeper dive. What exactly does College Sharks do?

Lee Norwood: 2:17

So College Sharks well, I'm laughing we take a bite out of college admissions. How do we do that? So there's a process. When you're looking at college and we're looking at which college do I want to go to, what fits for me financially, geographically, academically, you have to think of all of those things. But you also kind of need someone to guide you through that. Because here you are, you're 15, 16 years old, depending on the amount of help you have at home and how helpful your counselor is at school, because right now a lot of public schools are 465 kids to one counselor, so you might not be getting all that guidance you want.

Lee Norwood: 2:52

Hey, I'm looking for guidance. Well, someone like me is going to be expensive one-on-one. Chop this down into bite-sized chunks of digestible information that comes out monthly. So, if you're a member of College Sharks, each month whether you're a junior or a senior we're giving you three to four really short, digestible, cool, fun videos of me telling you what you need to do next, et cetera, with a workbook that will get you through junior and senior year and by the time you're done our two-year process, you will have your application pretty much completed, a list of schools that fits for you and a level of knowledge about what it costs to go to college. That will really be a great thing. It's priceless.

Lee Norwood: 3:38

So we just wanted to be able to reach more kids with the information. You can't duplicate yourself, right? I mean, how many one-on-ones could I actually do? I can't. So in order to reach hundreds of students and families, I had to duplicate myself. So I did so on video with a cool, thematic animated character who doesn't have a race, a gender, anything. He's just a shark. It's a shark. So I got through all of that by just being a shark as our main character.

Fatima Bey: 4:12

Well, you have a lot of personality, so I can only imagine what that's like.

Lee Norwood: 4:16

Yeah, Well, the shark was wearing New Balance for a while and then I got a call from a different tennis shoe company. They're like we want him to wear our shoes. I'm like, no, he's just. He's wearing New Balance right now because my teen said New Balance is cool, next year he'll be back in you know, jordans or something whatever.

Fatima Bey: 4:38

Right. So who do you focus on with College Sharks?

Lee Norwood: 4:43

That's a great question because right now, you know, we're letting the world know that College Sharks even exists. So we are looking at everything from going to schools for counselors who are overwhelmed to be able to say, hey, here's a resource for you, for a student, to going into the communities and sharing with libraries. You know, hey, you can join this and doing ads out to you know, when you do a Facebook ad, you can kind of target your audience. We're just targeting the families and students that may not be able to just pay cash out of their pocket for college and they need to understand how to get through the process. So it's kind of an unknown. So I want to thank you for having me on here because I want to be reaching out.

Lee Norwood: 5:28

You know your whole listening group is teens and families. Listen, do not get overwhelmed. It's an overwhelming process but I can chunk it down into step by step by step and you'll know exactly what everyone else knows, whether it's that rich kid from the private school who has everything they've ever wanted given to them, or the middle that often gets squeezed out because you make too much money to get any money towards college but you don't make enough to pay full price to kids that are brilliant and broke and help them just get the support they need so that they can go find the money out there and get that. College education because it's the way to the future is just educating ourselves and our youth. It doesn't always have to be through college, but that is kind of set up and that's my specialty, and is this available to students and families all around the country?

Lee Norwood: 6:18

Yes, so it's US-based right now, but with AI and technology, my partner is in Mexico. We're going to be coming out with a Spanish version very soon. My partner speaks oh, I love you now, but with AI and technology, my partner is in Mexico.

Lee Norwood: 6:27

We're going to be coming out with a Spanish version very soon. My partner speaks fluent French. Her name is Marcy Cowan. She lives in Mexico and we'll be going that way. You know, with the invention of AI I'd be able to download transcripts. We're going to be able to get this out in almost any language and again, because it's a shark, it's kind of a cool thing. You don't know where he's from. They swim in international waters, so let's go, but for right now it's mostly in English and will be in Spanish soon.

Fatima Bey: 6:53

Let me ask you this so you've really explained what College Sharks does. What would you consider to be some of the problems that College Sharks solves for people that they're not even thinking of?

Lee Norwood: 7:06

Well, I'm going to quiz you. Can I quiz you? Put you on the spot. Sure, no-transcript Potential. How would they look at? How would they find potential?

Fatima Bey: 7:20

Are they involved in extracurricular activities? Are they disciplined? Grades will show that to a certain extent, Some tests All right you're doing well, Well what I would look for if I was a college is a different answer than what I think they're looking for.

Lee Norwood: 7:36

Well, that's true, but you know they are a machine. Colleges are a machine and they're a business and you have to remember that all the time. So the number one thing that a college is going to look for is what is on your transcript. Did you take the classes that were available to you at your school? So they're not going to compare what you took to another student that maybe their school offered more or different or higher level classes. You'll never get dinged for that, but they're going to look at what was offered at your school and what did you take?

Lee Norwood: 8:02

Did you push the curriculum? So that's number one, the classes that you took. Number two is then how did you do in those classes? So, as much as we'd love to say that APs and honors give us that push in their GPA, colleges are going to recalculate. They're going to look at your basic GPA, your unweighted, and some schools let's take Georgia as an example, the state of Georgia they're going to recalculate and only use the five core classes English, math, science, social studies and foreign language to give you your new GPA. So they're going to look at what did you take? And then how did you do in that class? Those weighted grades and weighted GPAs? They just help you with your class rank in your own school.

Lee Norwood: 8:42

So don't get all braggy about your 4.6 because, Johnny down the road couldn't get one right Because his school didn't offer AP. So those two classes, gpa. Then the third thing and test optional is out there, but it does not mean test blind. Test optional just means that it grew a lot because of COVID, because it was test unavailable. But testing testing shows there's a correlation to future success with standardized test grades. So you want to have those scores. But none of those things tell me that you're creative, that you have potential or anything. They just tell me that you're good at school and you can nail a test. So the fourth thing is a small number of activities where you show leadership. Leadership can be shown in lots of ways. You don't have to be the captain of the team to show leadership. You might have turned your team dinners into a coat drive in the winter. So there's a lot of different ways to show leadership in your community and at your school. And then after that, what about volunteering? Love it, we love volunteering. Volunteering is huge because it's an indicator of what you're going to be like at my campus. But don't run around and just volunteer all over the place. If you think you like science and you're a STEM kid, let's try to focus our activities in that direction. So for us, fatima, they wanted us to be well-rounded. They want kids now to have an angular focus. I think that's really hard for somebody when they're 17. So you said what are we teaching people that they don't know? Well, mom and dad are telling you to be well-rounded. I'm telling you to be focused. So when you're doing your volunteer stuff, if you want to be a future doctor, let's try to do it at the local hospital or at a nursing home, and if you want to be an accountant, let's try to do volunteering another way, maybe you're helping a CPA in your community. Do some free tax help for other people in your community. So we want to be a little bit focused on those activities.

Lee Norwood: 10:39

Can you write? I know you've done some past episodes on your ability to write and express yourself as a 17-year-old student. I say that because there are ways to kind of try to cheat the system with all this new artificial intelligence. Don't do it. We know what a 17-year-old sounds like. So you want to be able to write a great essay about yourself and it doesn't need to be anything like what you write in school and then how your teachers feel about you. You know teacher recommendations and things like that. So we're letting kids know here's the top seven things. And guess what? Pick your classes right, because you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. You want to do this all through high school and have a plan and you need to start early because, again, that toothpaste in the tube thing much as I'd love to help everybody, if you roll in four months into senior year, I have less to work with because I can't guide you. So we really think looking at the junior and the senior year and making all of your decisions because of who you want to be in the future is a really great idea.

Lee Norwood: 11:40

Then our timeline and our workbook. Here's a problem we solve. We solve family fights, we preserve parent-student relationships, because there's just things you do. So it's not what you think you need to do now. There's a timeline, this is when you need to do it, and I think that pulls a lot of stress back from families.

Lee Norwood: 11:59

Like I was just on the phone with someone who she very wants her student to start studying, studying for the SAT. He's not even a junior yet. I'm like, okay, hold up, what's the rush? Like there isn't a rush. She hasn't even completed Algebra 2, yet that's what the math is. So you've got a parent thought process up here of trying to rush their kid through, and then you've got the reality of I don't even want you to think about the SAT until you're halfway through Algebra 2. So things like that just putting things in perspective and getting rid of the folklore that's out there, because you listened to two or three parents down the street or the three people sitting next to you in the dugout, like all of that, most of that information is not right. So we try to spread the truth so that you can really, you know, take a bite out of this.

Fatima Bey: 12:44

Can you? I was just going to ask you about it and you dove right into it Can you take a moment and just talk to the parents out there, because I do think, and I don't do what you do, but I can see it. You know our kids, their parents' generation. They were taught differently and things were set up differently than they're actually set up right now, and I think a lot of parents don't know that and they're just regurgitating what they've been taught. Everything's focused on worship, your SATs worship. Yes, thou art greatest. And you know a lot of them were taught that and that's just not the way it is anymore. And could you take a moment just to talk to those parents who just are disconnected from today's reality?

Lee Norwood: 13:22

Yes, this ain't your father's Oldsmobile. I don't remember if you remember that commercial, but it's not. It's not your father's Dodge. This is a new, faster, better looking, more electronic version of what we went through. Things are harder. The admit rates are plummeting because of test optional. More and more kids are applying to schools because there's less barriers of admissions, of applying entry. Now the admissions are still hard. To get in is still hard.

Lee Norwood: 13:53

If you've got a school that requires no test scores and no additional writing, everybody and their brother's going to apply because why not? There was no extra work to do. So you really need to have the facts. You need to know that. You really need to know the facts. When you're sitting on the sidelines, I will tell you right now. Sat and ACT scores grow up dramatically because the parents don't really remember and what they do remember is always way higher and way better.

Lee Norwood: 14:17

That whole joke of oh, he had the same test scores and the same GPA as my child, but that one got in and mine didn't. Why? Well, because you don't know the whole story. What's the whole story? What classes did they take? I told you that was number one. You don't know what classes that other kid took? What major did they want to apply into? You don't know. Can they write? You have no idea. You have no idea what the truth is and the different layers of those seven things that colleges are looking for. So I'm going to tell you to close your eyes and go find the truth about your student.

Lee Norwood: 14:49

The details and the facts are all out there. It's called the common data set. Every school replies to it that you know what their middle 50% test scores are. You know what their average GPA is. Then they'll tell you the parameters of getting in. That's what you need to look at. Shut down the noise, because it's all BS. Parents are full of shit on the sidelines, especially if their kid's a better player or gets more playtime. Now, all of a sudden, everything in their life is elevated and it's not the truth. So I heard that when a parent leads into me with, I heard that I'm just like just don't even finish the sentence, because I'm pretty sure it's not right.

Fatima Bey: 15:24

That's true. I can hear a lot of things. Doesn't make it true, doesn't?

Lee Norwood: 15:27

make it true and that's why I say sometimes I'm a crusher of dreams. But if you come rolling in here and tell me you're going to go to Georgetown and you've already taken the SAT twice because you started too early and you weren't ready, and you've already taken the SAT twice because you started too early and you weren't ready, you just crushed your own dreams because that school looks at every single time you took the test, not just the super scores. So while you were pushing your kid through too fast, you screwed them up. Because you don't want to test too often. If you're going to Georgetown, you want to put your best foot forward the very first time, right? So who knew that? You don't always know that. And other schools keep on testing. If you get into Ole Miss, keep testing, man. The higher your test scores go, the more money they're going to give you. So you just really have to try to find out the truth and you can find it out there. You just have to get rid of a lot of false prophets.

Fatima Bey: 16:23

I think you hit on a very key topic in that the familial dynamics is something that you run into and you know I get that because, well, you wouldn't know this, but I'm a professional seamstress. I make and design wedding gowns, internationally awarded, et cetera. I've been doing it for a long time and when you're working in the bridal industry, something that you see constantly is you basically earn a PhD in psychology. I feel like I have that just from working with brides, because you get to see relational dynamics from the fiance, from the mother, the sister, the best friend, the daughter, whoever it is, and you get to see all these different dynamics. No-transcript.

Lee Norwood: 17:11

Well, gosh, that's a hard thing for me to answer. Like I said, it's not your college journey. You can't repeat and do something better than you thought you did with your student. It's their journey and it's who they are. There are over 3,000 four-year colleges out there.

Lee Norwood: 17:29

There are a lot that may be the best for them and you don't know because your circle of influence, your sphere of influence, might have been really small. You know we've got parents saying, oh, we're only going to go in-state, we'll only pay in-state tuition. Well, that's going to limit you. If you have a super smart kid who does well, they might be able to go to a private school out of state and pay way less than your in-state school. So you just don't know what you don't know. You don't know what Howard University is like right now. You haven't been there. So, whatever it was 35 years ago, it's not that anymore. So you've got to know that and you've got to know that fighting with your child through this or talking about it incessantly every day does nothing but hurt their mental health. It hurts, it stresses them out.

Fatima Bey: 18:12

They're going to feel unworthy.

Lee Norwood: 18:14

You pick one. I tell my kids your parents start getting on your nerves. You need to call me. I will be there to help. They can have one day a week at dinner as a family where everybody sits down and you can speak about college for 30 minutes. That's it. I give them talking points on Thanksgiving on how to shut down. I give them talking points on Thanksgiving on how to shut down the ant who won't stop digging and digging and digging. It's a very stressful process. You need to know what's going on and you need to be doing it the right way. Everything has changed. We don't have enough time for me to tell you how much everything has changed.

Fatima Bey: 18:49

Yeah, everything has changed. I totally believe that, and there are lots. Would you agree that there are a lot of students out there that don't have real genuine support?

Lee Norwood: 19:01

So my group of students that I work with one-on-one typically do have parents that are supporting them. So that's a hard question for me to answer. So my one-on-one kids, the parents are there and supporting. They're just sometimes supporting incorrectly or saying we're only going to go to these schools because they're highly selective schools. And then when I tell them, well, you're going to pay $90,000. Oh, but no, john is such an incredible kid and he's so ahead of his class. I don't care, he looks like everybody else standing in line for that school. So you're not getting scholarships and you need a reality check. So there's that piece of that kind of middle the kids who are being supported, but they're being supported by a parent who thinks they know too much.

Lee Norwood: 19:44

The kids who aren't being supported, that's who I want to reach with College Sharks. I need teachers and mentors to say here, we don't know, we don't know everything that's going on, but here is a set of videos that's going to drop monthly so you're never overwhelmed. You can't go forward, you can only go backwards. We're going to drop them each month so you know what to do, when to do it. You can't work ahead. But here it is.

Lee Norwood: 20:09

Here, chill out, this is the support you need, here's the workbook and everything. And if you go through and you do all of this, you're going to have a lot of options, and that's the goal at the end of the day to have options and choices that fit for you, based on who you are and what you need to do. So, yeah, I think there's probably tons of kids out there that don't have support, and in the industry that I'm in and I go to a lot of conferences there are tons of people that do what I do, that do work with underprivileged or under-resourced students, who work with CBOs, community-based organizations. That's not my ballywick, I'm more the middle class that can't quite afford it, but that's why I made Sharks so that people could use that tool.

Fatima Bey: 20:52

Okay, how does what you do affect mental health?

Lee Norwood: 21:11

That is so much stress on a young person they're trying to. Things have changed. They've got screens. I was just at my 40th high school reunion. We had to really do quite a bit of research to find pictures of us outside of what was in the yearbook. Now these kids have a record of their life on screens and that diminishes mental health. Right there Kids are comparing themselves to each other.

Lee Norwood: 21:36

If you know what colleges are looking for and know who you are, you can bring down that stress because you're level-headed.

Lee Norwood: 21:45

You're quieting out the noise.

Lee Norwood: 21:47

You know, this is my journey and this is what needs to be done for me the parental pressure that kids are sometimes put under, the pressure from the other kids at your school that are telling you where they're going, the pressure from the sidelines of other parents full of crap with the details of what they know, or one parent who put two kids through college already who now all of a sudden knows more than everybody else.

Lee Norwood: 22:11

It's just quieting the noise because we live in a very noisy world and we do a music event every year to raise money for mental health awareness that then we give away to high school students so that they can affect change in their school because it happens. We're watching more and more things happen and we know that sometimes high schools don't have the resources to either have extra counselors if there is an event that needs to be addressed or that they need to do a walk, or they just want to be able to talk about it. It has come out of the darkness a lot. We can talk about mental health a lot more now, but just look at the amount of things that are affecting our kids. That didn't affect us.

Lee Norwood: 22:56

There were less food allergies there was less mental health strain, there was less ADD, there were way fewer IEPs All those things we're trying to get our hands around but I think it boils down to the bullshit of social media that just casts the wrong information out to people. So how do we fix mental health, or how does it affect mental health? We want to lead with the truth and with facts so the kids can feel like they're on solid ground.

Fatima Bey: 23:24

So you cut down on the bullshit.

Lee Norwood: 23:25

Cut down on the bullshit. Yep Cut down on the bullshit.

Fatima Bey: 23:30

Yep, Clear the noise. I love that. I love that. I do agree that that was my first thought when I was looking at what you do how stressful the whole college process really is and how having the right information and the right guidance can relieve some of that at least some of it. But yeah, I think you hit a nail on the head when you said some of the biggest problems is the parents who think they know because they're still stuck in 1993, not realizing that things are different now.

Fatima Bey: 24:07

Very, very different for our youth and it's something I'm constantly saying on the show is that adults have to stop comparing their youth to these youth, because they're growing up on a completely different planet than we did Completely different, you know, completely different. And what they have available to them that is a blessing is also a curse, and that's where we differ greatly. And there's, you know, our brains are actually, their brains are actually being wired differently because of what's being put in front of them on a regular basis that we didn't have, and you know that totally matters a regular basis that we didn't have, and you know that totally matters. So I'm going to ask you this what advice do you have for the youth of the world today. It could be anything you want.

Lee Norwood: 24:45

I want you to live now, today, breathe and enjoy what's going on right now and lead with kindness. What's going on right now and lead with kindness. I know that sounds so cliche, but think of the fights you have with your friends and you end up really still wanting to be friends with them. Whatever happens for one minute is not going to be there for a lifetime. If you just try to be present, be present. I would love to tell you to get the heck off the screens, but I know you're not going to do it. So be present. Oh, sideline. Check the flipping email. Check your email. Check your email. That's really my number one. Forget it. Don't be kind, don't live now. Check your damn email. That's my, that is my, thank you, took me a minute to get there. That's my advice to the youth of today. Check the email. Oh, good Lord, have mercy. That's it. Check your email.

Fatima Bey: 25:41

Okay, so how can people find you?

Lee Norwood: 25:45

You can find us on social media and I highly recommend this. You know what Free advice is only good if it's good advice. And we give great advice because it's sourced, because we are members of both the Higher Education H-E Higher Education Consultants Association and Independent Educators Association, so we have all our street cred right. So you can find us at College Sharks. That's on Instagram, that's on TikTok and that's on Facebook and on YouTube. Lots of free stuff on YouTube from us.

Lee Norwood: 26:18

You want to make sure you get good information from the source, so we'd love to be your source and you can go to wwwcollegesharkscom and you can check out our memberships. If you check out our memberships, you can use Summer 75 75 and we'll give you $75 off If you do the annual and you can put in Sharks 10 and you can get 10% off the monthly or the essay clinic that's out there now. So, depending on where you are in your journey, we'd love to help you and we also give away free 30-minute. I wanted to say family planning sessions, but that just sounds like birth control and we're really talking about college planning sessions.

Lee Norwood: 27:03

If you want to get on and just chat with us for a minute and have us guide you in a certain way, have your stuff together, have your transcript, have everything ready for you to tell us a little bit about who you are and we'll talk to you for 30 minutes and give you some guidance. But lots of free, great information out there.

Fatima Bey: 27:20

Well, thank you, Lee, for coming on. I really, really appreciate it. I love your no bullshit approach to things. I absolutely love it. I really appreciate you coming on to the show and thank you.

Lee Norwood: 27:33

Thank you so much. I love what you do. I love the shifting of the mindset, because we need more of that in today's world. Thank, you for everything that you do too. I think you're awesome and I'll send my daughter you when she gets married, for her wedding dress.

Fatima Bey: 27:46

All right.

Lee Norwood: 27:47

Thank you, see you later.

Fatima Bey: 27:51

And now for a mind shifting moment. And now for a mind-shifting moment. I want to pull from one of the principles that Lee talked about today. She talked about how a lot of parents are stuck with old ideas of what it was like for them in the 90s or maybe even the early 2000s, and want to give that advice to their children, and that becomes a point of contention. Let's move over to the principle behind that.

Fatima Bey: 28:19

Are you stuck in the way something used to be and you try to give advice based on 1984? Are you stuck in the past? Are you stuck in your past experience and you're trying to pass that advice on to someone else? I want you to take a moment to reassess your experiences, and we all give advice based on our experiences. That's normal. But are they relevant in 2025, in 2026? Because sometimes it is relevant, Sometimes it's not. I want you to think about that, because it is a trap that many people often get caught up in. 

You've been listening to MindShift Power Podcast. For complete show notes on this episode and to join our global movement, find us at FatimaBaycom Until next time. Always remember there's power in shifting your thinking.