Barbell Shrugged - Redefining Education to Build Leaders w/ Matt Beaudreau, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #749

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Matt is a life long educator and has a reputation as a provocative thought leader in education and personal development practices. He is a two-time featured TEDx speaker and he was named Corporate Trainer of the Year at Stanford University, having spoken to over 250,000 people. He is Co Founder of Apogee Strong. Apogee is a specialized mentorship program designed specifically to shape young men into better providers and protectors. We emphasize the curation of men who value living a life with servant leadership and personal growth. It is both a physical and online education experience. Work with RAPID Health Optimization Matt Beaudreau on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, Matt Beaudreau is coming into the podcast and he is the founder of Apogee Strong, Apogee Schools, and this is another one of those that is very near and dear to my heart specifically when it comes to youth development, not just in the kind of physical side of things that we talk about a decent amount

of how do we like get our kids to eat better, train better, but how are we actually like building leadership schools? And Matt owns an affiliate network of schools called Apogee Kids, Apogee Schools, and there actually happens to be one that is starting very close to me. When I sat down, I actually had coffee with the owner of it, something that I was like, I'm actively pursuing on our side for education for our kids. And the entire thing is really built out of play, which is something that I absolutely

love. And one of the things that happened as soon as my daughter got to kindergarten and just absolutely just like ripped my heart out. And there's the obvious transitionary time where things just are kind of crazy going from daycare to kindergarten, et cetera, being around more kids, older kids, et cetera. But finding out about a month into it, when she started to say that she was struggling because there was such a lack of play and somebody that lives and dies on the ability to get out, play, train, have fun, run around, and kind of like the physical freedom side of things,

it absolutely crushed me. And this kind of like alternative side to education based in play, building leadership, having older kids around you, so your mentors and your leaders aren't just more adults talking at you, but actually having older kids, maybe one year, maybe two years, maybe four years,

a little bit older than you, so you have this progression of understanding what does an older kid, or how do you learn from kids that are slightly further ahead of you versus everybody in the same classroom being the same age and, you know, being forced or having some, some older adult telling you what is important. And I am beyond excited to kind of continue digging down this path as the school next to me starts to develop and grow and supporting them and what I can do. But this show

really hit home for a lot of things because I've been in search for something that's just more play-based, more instructional freedom, I guess you could call it, in that reading, writing, and arithmetic are probably the core, the essentials. But then how does that build into as you get older? How do we create a child that actually leaves high school and knows how to read a financial statement? Somebody that has an entrepreneurial brain, somebody that can develop a skill set and actually create a business around it and leadership skills around it to be able to help other people. These are the things that I think about, one, in the short term on how are we learning, what is the environment that our kids

are learning in, and then even further down the road, how are we developing the skill sets that actually allow our kids to create value in the world versus kind of that institutional model of just sitting in a seat, being told what to do. And this has nothing really to do with my kids' current teachers. I think they're fantastic. I have a decent relationship with them. I talk to them. The problem is, is that they actually echo the exact same sentiments that I'm talking about right now. When the teachers are saying there's something wrong with the system and the system's broken and I feel like the system is broken, but I'm just kind of hidden out of it. It creates this kind of full circle of really wanting something more. And I feel like Matt has absolutely nailed

it. And I can't wait to kind of continue working with our local community here to help build this thing out, really help just understand the process. And I think it's a great opportunity if you head over and look into Apogee Schools, A-P-O-G-E-E, and just see if there's an affiliate near you, a school near you. Because I think that the model that they're creating is very empowering to kids focused on play. They've got a company called Physiology First that is there not just to bring education, but actually every morning starting out with physical fitness, learning about your body, understanding nutrition. And that to me is at the absolute center of how we create adults that are free thinking, that are empowered by a strong body, they're healthy, they understand these things that

literally plague adults these days because they just don't have that basis in education. They're off learning social studies or something, things that we'd have a much healthier community if we spent a lot of time teaching our kids what proper nutrition, proper movement, how our body's supposed to move. And then taught them the basics for a very long time in a less rigorous structured place where they can just read, write, and do math. And I think that there's just a lot of good that can come from a system like this. I highly recommend getting over, checking out Matt's work, finding an affiliate near you. It's just, it's a very cool structure that I've been doing a ton of research into. It's super top of mind, almost on a daily basis. I'm having this conversation with my wife, other parents around me, just trying to figure out what really is like the most optimal way that

we can go about creating an environment that fosters play, fun, creativity, as well as building those skills about how to take care of your body. What does health mean? What does good movement look like? How do we have a healthy relationship with physical fitness? And I think that they're nailing it right now. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. And you can access that free report over at rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. And you can access that free report over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show.

Welcome to Barbell Shock. I'm Anders Marner, Doug Larson. Hopefully, Coach Travis Mast shows up here in a little bit. But Matt Boudreaux, we were already waxing poetic. All the excitement about what you are building and and the school system what is so wrong with it and there couldn't be a single subject that i feel like i'm like most passionate about is figuring out the right path for my kids to learn everything and not be um maybe silenced is too much of a word but just stuck at a desk and staring underneath at a,

at a whiteboard under fluorescent lights. And I'd love to hear just kind of where this big idea came from at the highest level. And then I have endless questions on how you built the curriculum and. Oh man, no, I appreciate it. That's awesome. It's not just stuck under under uh the fluorescent lights right for forever it is stuck in a mindset forever that's the biggest issue right it's not just fluorescent lights for a certain amount of time it's the habits and mindset that are built for the rest of life that's the biggest problem right so i'm just giving you kind of a thousand

foot overview and then glad to go anywhere you want to go man i saw i saw the game as a student which many people do whether they realize or not i saw it as a student so i learned very early on how to get straight a's without learning a thing so i got straight a's i was the model student my hand is raised as well 100 so it was it was easy man it was easy because i understood the patterns and understood the game. And then I graduate and go, cool, man, who am I? Like, well, I know nothing about myself other than I know sports and I know girls and I'm like, cool. That does me no good. You know, right. A little good, but it doesn't, doesn't do me a lot of good. So go to college is the same story, man. And so I came out of there and turned down a job at the White House and then went, cool, man.

Who am I? Where do I go? A couple of jobs. I land at Stanford University. And as I'm working at Stanford, I'm meeting all these brilliant human beings, all these young, you know, young men and women far more intelligent than I am. But they're hurting and they're struggling and they're good at school. They're not great at life. And then I'm watching the trajectory, making relationships with some of them and seeing

the trajectory and seeing where they're going and seeing how they're coming out. And they're like, I haven't got a degree from Stanford. This didn't open all that. I thought everybody was going to be throwing a job at me and throwing money at like, this isn't working. This isn't happening. So I went from there naively to go, quote unquote, change things from the inside. I became a public school teacher. I was a public school teacher in California. I was a private school teacher. I was a public school administrator. I was a private school administrator. Ultimately seeing the game from the inside out and went, cool, man, my kids will never do this. This is not going to happen. We're either going to homeschool

or we are going to start something and invite other people. So is not going to happen. We're either going to homeschool or we are going to start something and invite other people. So that's what I did. Launched. That is the phase I'm at. And man, there was no other. And the thing is the teachers know. I literally talked to my daughter's kindergarten teacher two weeks ago and she knows she was like when the when the teachers start telling you about homework don't do it like just don't do it your kid does not need to be doing school and then coming home and then doing more school they need to be out running getting exhausted being tired and I when it's when she said that it validated like so many of the feelings that i've had over the last

year of trying to get more play built into it and more just kind of like how do we solve this problem so that's i mean my heart breaks you there are so many good human beings who are teachers in what i call the conveyor belt system right there really are there's some amazing humans man and there are some that that get that the system is not designed for young people. And that's the heart of the problem. That's the heart of the actual issue, which is why I'm fine being so vocal because It was a system that was designed to build mental slaves that become these obedient factory workers and everything for themselves. That's what it was designed for. Don't take my word for it. Go look it up. You go look. Go question everything I'm saying right here. You go look for yourself and make a decision. So once I figured that out, well, then I could not work within that system. I understand there are great human beings who are like, yep, I get it.

But cool. I actually want you to be there still. There are some young people who will never see a better human being than the teachers that they see on those campuses. And we still need good people there because it's not a system that's going away. But for me, I couldn't work there and I surely was not sending my own kids there. So then I had to go, cool, now what? I've got to create a solution. I don't like to do the pointing the fingers. Well, somebody should and somebody, I don't like that. If somebody should, then I should. And so that was where I started, man. So I started building campuses in California. Yeah. You mentioned one of the first places that, and you mentioned you guys are opening a place in San Diego and we had them on the show, but we read the, I read the book Spark. And when they talk in that book about the testing

scores and how they organize kind of like play into their curriculum, it blew my mind because it like aligned with my whole life of just all I want to do is just be outside playing, training, like doing the physical things. And I felt like I needed to move back to San Diego all of a sudden and like, just join that, that, that school. How do you kind of work those things in? I would imagine there's probably some, some parents or some educators that are like, there's just not enough school. There's no time. We, that's why they limit funding for PE and they're not doing it every day. Yeah. A hundred percent, man. So we don't, you know, that's part of it is we can't take, we can't take funding. The public, like we can't take funding publicly. People are like, why don't you go charter? I could write a charter and get us millions of dollars, but then we'd have to acquiesce to state design,

state standards, go to the test, go do, I got no, I got no room for that, man. So that's the downside of any kind of privatized, you know, system is that you got to pay for it. Now we're making it as accessible as we can in a number of fashions and we can get to how we're doing that at some point. But what that does is it allows us to create things of our own design. So two things come up to answer what you're saying. One, we've got to be able to educate the population on what real education looks like versus what school looks like. Even parents, good, phenomenal humans, well-meaning people that are like, man, the kids need more play. Yep, you bet. And then when you implement it on campus, and I'm speaking from experience of

launching multiple campuses, you implement it on campus and those same parents oftentimes, because they're listening to their friend down the street or they're listening to like, um, when did the academics released? When do they, and they acquiesce and they start to fold because they start to go, Ooh, did I make a mistake? Did I, so we have to educate the parents on this too and go, look, this is how brain development actually works. Guess what? Your kids can knock out all of K through 12 math curriculum in three years when they're developmentally ready. Three, not 12, three, three easily. And I've seen it over and over and over.

And actually they'll be happier, more well-developed human beings by waiting a little bit, implementing more play like you originally knew that that's what you wanted. It's that. Implement that early on and wait till development takes place, right? So part of it is education for the parents and then laying out, yes, play all the way up through eight is the primary driver of learning. And then around eight, you start to have a little bit of a brain shift, a little bit of development. Play still matters more than anything else, but you need to have a bunch of physical education that is paired in with that. And then they can start to solve some problems and start to collaborate and start to work together. Then at

like 12, 13, there's another brain shift and they can start to think in a little bit more abstract fashion. They can take on bigger world problems, bigger responsibilities, right? So we actually work with the development of the young person, but play is always primary, especially for youngers and physical education. And I'm not talking fricking dodgeball. I'm talking exercise is a part of every day, all campuses, basic calisthenics movement and understanding physiology. They need to understand physiology, breathwork. How does breathwork impact my cognition? Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner

read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to

also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page.

Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com, and let's get back to the show. Breathwork. How does breathwork impact my cognition? These things right here, these cell phones, these are called dopamine draining machines. I'm not going to tell any parent what to do with their kids. As far as this goes, you're going to figure, but I want you to understand the physiology behind it. You're draining their dopamine, sending them into the world, literally clinically, scientifically depressed. You have depressed their dopamine levels. So they're on screens

three, four hours a day, and then you're going to send them off and want them to do something that matters. Well, no physiology says they're not going to do well with that. So we train, we're actually partnered with physiology first to make sure all families understand all of this kids on campus, parents off. We educate the parents too. Do you think there's a's an aversion to having more play time at school simply because it's fun? And if it's fun that it can't be good for you academically? Yeah. People don't understand. They value hard work and play. They're just like, they're just goofing around. You're just, you're not, you're not doing anything serious. Like go get back to work. That's a big part. They don't understand that play is learning,

right? Learning. We say learning. And that's part of the, one of the biggest issues in communication is assuming that it took place. Right? So if all three of us on this call right now say, Hey, is learning important? We're all go. Yeah. Is leadership important? Yeah, of course it is. Is communication important? You bet. But if all three of us have different definitions of what those words mean, we're not actually agreeing on the same thing. So that's part of the issue is that learning has been equated with academia and that's it. So we have to retrain people to say, no, no, learning is so much more than this. And by the way, if I, and you, everybody inherently knows this. If I was to say, Hey I ask, and you, everybody inherently knows this,

if I was to say, Hey, Doug, Andrews, what do you want for your kids, man? When they're 18, who do you want them to be? What do you want for them? I've asked that to thousands of parents over two decades at this point, you know what I've never gotten? I want them to be at a, you know, 18 year old reading level. And, and I want them to be really proficient at calculus. And I want them to, that's never been the case. What they say is I want them to be happy, healthy, productive human beings that can provide value. They can learn to learn on their own. They have good relationships. They have good learning. It's like that. and that description starts in part with play when they are younger, and that is the primary developmental portion of that young hero's life. I didn't make the design, man. That's just science.

It's the way it is. You can say God designed it. You can say science created it. I don't care what you say. It's the fact. I've had this conversation with many people in the real world, so to speak. Once you get out of academia, what do adults spend money on as far as education? It's the big three mega niches in the guru space.

It's health, wealth, and relationships. People want to be healthier, more energy, stronger, fitter. They want business, money, financial success. And they want to have better, deeper, more connected relationships with friends and family. And that's what people pay money for once they're choosing with their wallets what they want, the education that they want for themselves. You are correct, sir. So why? This is a crazy idea.

Why would we not kind of start there in the first place? Like, that's the whole thing. You're right. One thing I've, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, you're good. One thing I've noticed, so I also have a very soon to be three-year-old son. And when you only have one baby in your house,

the adult has to like teach all of the skills. And then the second one shows up and they start hitting these like milestones significantly quicker. Um, or just they, they, they, it seems to come easier. And my wife and I used to talk about it of like, why does he just like seem to just get these things? And at one day it just like dawned on me that he has significantly better teachers than my daughter had or my daughter had when she was a baby because she talks to him whether he can understand it or not, but she speaks to him like a kid. They play together like kids. She teaches the skills that she knows in a way that a kid would learn them. And then you send them to a

school where they sit at the desk and some adult is telling them what to do. And it may sound negative. I think they're all trying their hardest, but you've got a 40-year-old person telling a six-year-old, here's your letters. This is letter land or whatever it is. But they're all siloed into this classroom where everybody is five years old and there isn't like a seven-year-old mentor to say, yo, check it out. We can learn this a lot quicker. And whatever your teacher says, she's giving you the long route. This is addition, go. And I feel like there's so much more to learn from somebody that is just two years ahead of you instead of 30 years ahead of you in that learning process.

Yeah, and it's a yes and. So there's so much to learn from people that are two years, three years, four years older. There's so much to learn by people who are two, three, four years younger. Because guess what? Your daughter's also learning by teaching your young man. She's also learning by leading him, right? There's a benefit to both. And then there's a co-inspiration and a co-motivation thing that takes off there too, that adults can't provide. Adults can still be inspirational and motivational, but there's a different level of young person, right? Young person to young person, the peer to peer kind

of thing. So what you're ultimately speaking to is you're speaking to an environment, right? That's it. I was on, this popped into my brain when I was on, do you guys know Nick Bear? Yeah. Remember Nick, right? So great, great guy, new dad, couple of youngsters, you know, and it's rats. We're all in the same brain space and how do we do this thing the right way? Man, a hundred percent. We're all talking, we're all dadding out around what this is so so what came up but this is really the this is really the crux of being a great educator being a great parent by the way those are one in the same um it's you're an environment creator. That is your main goal. You're an environment creator that is

imparting wisdom more so by what you are doing and what you are putting around the person than what you are directly saying to them, right? School is built on directly saying something to somebody and theoretically transmitting the knowledge. We don't like to talk about the fact that if the other person doesn't accept the knowledge given or just accepts it enough to go regurgitate it and then forgets it, that no learning actually took place, right? We like to gloss over that whole part, but we're environment creators. It's just like a garden. So I can look out here from my office and I can see a garden that's out here. My wife and my kids build that garden out and every single year. And so things start to grow. They don't have to yell at the plants to grow. They don't have to go direct step-by-step, tell the plants what to do.

They need to make sure the soil is good. They need to make sure that's enough water, not too much water. We've got to make sure the sunlight is right. You got to make sure the other plants next to those plants are the kind of plants that support growth, not plants that go choke out those plants, right? You've got to make sure no pests come in. You've got to make sure, like, you just have to worry about the environment. If you do that, the plants grow and they do what they're supposed to do. That's our role as dads. That's our role as educators. Let's create the best possible environment. Let's lead by example. And so many of these things, so many of these things take care of themselves if we do that. But we put, we put false environments in play. We put bad environments in play. We don't lead by example

as parents sometimes, you know, and when I say we, I'm putting the collective, like I've blown it too. There's no such thing as a perfect parent, but this is what we need to, you know, be cognizant of. Yeah. I feel like the, so in your schools, are all the kids together? Is there kind of like a first grade, second grade? Like how do you structure that? Yeah, that's a good question. So it's a, it's again, a yes. And so we build our campuses. There's a sociological component to communities where as soon as you get over about 200 people in a community, it becomes something where you can't really develop solid relationships with everybody. And you'll start to lose track of who's who on certain things, right? So we like to keep each individual campus around 200 or under.

If we're going to go higher than that, then what we do is we'll do a K-12 that's 200, another K-12 that's 200 on the same campus. Then they can collaborate on big things, but kind of stay in these individual communities. So there are certain things when it comes to like Socratic conversation um speech and debate logic rhetoric and working on specific projects where projects meaning they're working together to solve a problem a real world problem in those regards we'll have them broken up by developmental ranges not dates of manufacture. It's not year six, year six, year six together,

year five, year five. It's not that. Developmental ranges, five to eight-ish, nine to 12-ish, 12 to 16-ish, 16, 17, 18-ish, right? So they'll work together there. And then there are some projects where they all work together. And then older is always pouring in and have mentorship opportunities for the younger, younger, like, so we create very specific relationships, but everybody's seeing everybody. And by the way, the adults are not standing and lecturing. The adults are co-curious. The adults are in there as coaches, as project men. Think of it like a juju. I mean, I see the, you know, your ADCC shirt on there, right? They're jujitsu coaches. They're in there coaching right in the mix with them and then step back, let them roll, let them do it. Show a technique here or there, step back. They're

not standing there for 45 minutes lecturing you on the history of jujitsu. It's like, no, let's all get in there and do some juj-jitsu together and then i'll just kind of coach along the way and we just want to move everybody forward that's what learning should look like yeah um how do you kind of incorporate the the outside piece to this um you mentioned kind of like gardening and just like skills but yeah even at a higher level, like I feel like one hour in total a day is probably not enough like outdoor time. And the total benefits that you get for just breathing real air and sunshine and like what is like an actual academic day look like for kids going up to just where they spend their time? That's a great, that's a great question. So the where, so we can talk about the ideal and we can talk about getting to the ideal in terms of actual physical location.

So like we had one campus, we just had a, and I can't say where it is yet because we still got to sign some things, but we had a $5 million piece of property donated to us. Donated. Frickin' A. Yeah. Like, let's rock and roll. You know, so that's awesome. So, so what's that?

It said someone believes in you right now. Someone believes in you. 100%. Could not be more thankful. And that's fantastic. And that's part of when I said earlier, we're making things as accessible as possible. Our foundations are a big part of that, making things accessible, right? We have two foundations for that very thing. So you have these pieces. Some of our owners right there where you are,

Papagee Triangle, it's right near where you are. A lot to you triangle. It's right near where you are. A lot of the owners are having to look for their initial spaces. So they're out looking at churches. They're out looking at commercial buildings. They're out looking at gyms to partner with. They're out looking for spaces to partner with to start and ultimately get to the point where they can get some land and build the ideal space. Right. So that's the reality of it because it's there, this is their business. So they're not going to start necessarily in the ideal space, right. From a physical standpoint, that said day to day, um, when they get in there, one of the first things they're going to do,

again, we partner with physiology first. So they start the day off, everybody together as a tribe. And by the way, the tribe at Apogee Triangle is going to compete against the tribe at Apogee San Diego, which is going to compete the tribe Apogee League City in Texas and Apogee North Sound in Washington. They're going to be able to compete against each other, have relationships across the country with each other. And they're going to have a calisthenics based exercise program. Yes, weights and, you know, different equipment can be added later on, but that's how we're going to start just to make sure they understand how to move their bodies and the importance of it and being able to get actual physiological understanding. How does my body work? That's a meta skill that's always going to matter. Yeah. Right.

So I mean, there's no way around that. That always matters. You know, and what you said earlier, Doug, people pay for that later. We want to start health care now. That's a meta skill. Right. And so we have that to kick off our day. They've got another bucket.

So when I say bucket, think of it like a summer camp or a martial arts school, right? It's going to be like, hey, we're running jujitsu around this time. Then we're going to go, you know, a little kickboxing here. We're going to do a little MMA conditioning over here. And then it's going to be no gi and we're going to do gi. Right? You kind of have that mix and match. Same sort of deal.

You got these buckets. So we got the physical education part, the exercise, the physiology part. Then you have the bucket of Socratic conversation with rhetoric and logic and speech and debate. So they learn how to think. We will never tell them what to think. It's how to think, how to question, how to question yourself, how to engage in civil discourse. What does it look like to be able to hold your own in a conversation? What does it look like to be brave enough to change your mind when you have better evidence? How does all that work? So that in and of itself is its own bucket. Reading and writing at a developmentally appropriate area is its own bucket. Math skill acquisition is its own bucket. Again, development matters. Five-year-olds should not be doing word problems.

Five-year-olds should be doing manipulatives. And then by the time they get to be seven or eight ish, you start doing some basic math facts memorization, very small amount. You don't get into abstract word problems with people until they're 12, 13, 14 because that's when their brain's ready for it and they knock it out like that, right? So that's its own bucket.

Problem solving in a real world project-based environment is one of those buckets in the afternoon. So they will this first session, they're creating a renaissance every campus. They're going to create a renaissance fair for the families to come visit. And the whole thing is in the context of what does it mean to live by a code? What is the history of different civilizations? What codes do they live by? What does it mean to live by a code? How do you design your own code? Like that's one, we have a survival and, and, um, you know, like a, a self-reliance, um, project they're going to do. They're going to do a mock food truck,

shark tanks pitch to actual investors in the community project. They're going to have an entrepreneurial project where they're starting a business. So they have all of these projects that they do over the course of the year. That stuff takes place in the afternoon as it's in bucket. They have an economy that runs inside on campus. You have different jobs. You get paid for those jobs. You take on responsibility inside the campus as they get older. Later afternoons are geared towards apprenticeships, internships, actually getting out and doing the work that matters. That's how the buckets are set up, man. It's those things that actually matter to real life. I love it.

My wife and I just went and actually probably a month ago went and looked at a property. It was like 10 acres, beautiful house and all this. But we pull into the driveway and there's like a blueberry farm that's already set multiplication. And then we're going to learn how to market by getting people to the blueberry farm. And now we've got this. I've got high school laid out already. It took me like six seconds to see the whole thing. It doesn't take long, but here's the deal. It doesn't take long to see it, but it takes long to implement it. And both of those are OK. Right. Because what we'll do. Idea guy. Right. A hundred. Doug's got to fill the rest of the holes.

That's what Doug's here for. But that's where it starts. And then we have to remember it's like, Ooh, cause what we'll tend to do as adults and partially because of school is go, okay, well then I need to create this lesson. And oh my, I created the blueberry thing. You counted blueberries last weekend. You're not multiplying them this week. Dude, you're six. You're going to be seven. Your life is going to be a wreck. You're going to prison if you don't count these blueberries, right? Like we panic versus just going along with them for the long

tail game, realizing that if we're intentional about it, they're going to catch all of this and so much dang more over the course of time. Right. And all go back to your original question all of these projects all these things we're doing doesn't matter what the space is we can do all of this outside you don't have to be sitting in a freaking desk inside you go outside spend the entire day outside yo one one more additional point that um that i've thought about many times as i transitioned out of academia and i feel like people have this when they transition out of the military as well. When you're in school, you're told exactly what to do and exactly when that thing needs to be done by. And you don't learn to figure out what needs to be done. What is actually the most important thing that needs to be done right now? And then

set your own due dates with your own self-discipline to get it done when you think it needs to get done by. You're very good at doing the work that other people give to you. You're good at being an employee. But then when you're the CEO of your own life, when you exit school and you're trying to figure out things for you and your family, or you're an entrepreneur and you got to build a company and tell other people what to do, you haven't practiced those skills while you were developing throughout junior high, high school, college, graduate school. You get out and you're like, oh, wow, I'm 25, maybe even later, depending on your occupation. And I've never had to make my own choices about what's important and what I need

to do for myself. And not so like, so not only have you never had to do it, that's a part of the problem. You've never had to do it. You've actually spent a whole lot of time building up a lot of habits that life always works out with somebody is going to tell you. And that is a hard habit to break because instead of now acquiring the skills to be the CEO of my own life, I start going, where are the people that will tell me exactly what to do and when to do it? You start looking for that because that's what feels familiar, right? And we start to confuse familiar with truth. So that starts to become what's true for you is you need somebody else. Hey man, I handed over the pen to write the story of my life long ago. And now that pen is being handed back to me. Somebody take this thing,

right? And write it. That's your mindset now. So what you just talked about on our campuses every year, the projects are different. You know, we have different themes, different projects that are in there, obviously continue to roll with the different Socratic conversations and all that. The first two sessions of every year, while different, the themes remain the same. One, the first session, five or six weeks in length is around building the tribe, building the community, building the code of your campus. How are we going to operate together? What does a good human do? What does a good functioning family look like? What does a good functioning business look like? Building that tribe. And that second session is around

what we have titled being the CEO of your own life. Exactly what you just said right there. How do you take ownership of all of this? How do you take ownership of yourself, personal responsibility in the context of the whole? It's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. I think you might think that think this is interesting. This is still even to this day, something that's like, that's always static in the background for me growing up. I actually associated trying to do my own thing. If I had a project that I wanted to work on that I came up with, I actually associated that with getting in trouble. If I was going to do my own thing, then I was, I was almost in my mind.

Again, this is like my belief system at the time that I've had to like slowly kind of like grind my way out of over time is that if I was going to do my own thing that someone didn't tell me to do or didn't assign to me, then I was going to get in trouble. Once somebody found out that I was doing something that was like off script or that someone else didn't impose upon me, then I would get in trouble for that. And now as an adult, especially as an entrepreneur, I've had to like consciously like, like wiggle, wiggle my way around that belief system and try to try to hack that belief system down over time. But it's still kind of just in there from, you know, so many years of, of, you know, just going through that system and, you know, family life and whatever else. So I've had to develop my way through it

and out of it. Good for you for pushing through it. Most men don't ever push out of that, right? Because it's, and it's again, systems are what I speak against. It's never, I don't speak against teachers and people. It's the system, right? So you're, and if you think about it from the get-go, you're born usually into this medical system. As soon as you come out, nurses and doctors are coming in going, this is what we need to do to this person. We need to do it this too. So you get thrown into this system and then you take you home. And as soon as possible, we need to get you into a daycare or a schooling system. And when you get out of that, you've got to go into this other corporate system and maybe you go to church, but church is usually like this specific system. And my system's better than your system. And don't you leave this system? Because if you leave this system and do something like for yourself, thinking for yourself, then you are, the devil's got a hold of you get out. So we live in this world. We've created so many systems around us to prevent us

from ever thinking. Yeah. I'm not saying that spirituality is like, please hear what I'm saying on this. I'm just saying, we have so many things going against us thinking through all of this. Another similar one that I'd like your perspective on is that I also grew up with the, the association and perspective that working meant being quiet and doing something on your own. And so I also associated, if I ever talked to another person to get their ideas on it, that was cheating. If I was like, I don't know how to do this. Will you tell me how to do it?

Then I was going to get in trouble for asking somebody else for the answers. But then now as an adult, collaborating, getting other people's perspectives who know more about a topic than I do is like the fast track to getting things done quickly and getting them done well. I'm an entrepreneur. I find out who can do it well. I make a deal with them. I pay them money to do the thing for me, which in school is cheating. Pay someone to do your homework. You're going to get kicked out. I had to like wiggle my way around that one too. That's correct. That's what I mean by these long tail habits that start to get ingrained. And again, people have a hard time with it. And the best thing I've seen to get people to break free of at least whether they can break free from themselves is one thing. But breaking free from the emotional attachment to schools designed for their own kids is to understand the design in the first place. Understand the intent of the designers was to have a blindly obedient population that could work in a factory line.

That's as simple as I can put it. So in that regard, yeah, because you just head down, I got to go by the bell like Pavlov's dog and I got to go on this task and it's just this task. I'm not collaborating with my partner to go, hey, how do we do this more efficiently? Because that creates competition, right? We don't want that. That's also part of the reason we got kids out of the working space so early. We talk about child labor laws like it was there to protect children that were in these. No, it was there to protect the industrialists who didn't want creativity and more efficiency. And like, that's what it was initially there for.

So once you understand the design of all of it all together, this was never for humans to become educated. It starts to be easier to break out at least how we parent around that. But yeah, you're not. Do you guys track kind of the percentage of graduates that go on to be entrepreneurs? That's a good question. So our campuses in particular are we got 50 launching this year and another probably hundred and twenty twenty five. Right. So we don't have any. Now I have graduates from the other campuses that I've built underneath, technically underneath a different umbrella. But I've never gone to do any of the metrics of which, you know, what percentage of grads going to be entrepreneurs, what percentage go on to decide to go on to college. I haven't

done it. And I don't, I don't ever feel, and maybe this will change right now. I don't ever feel compelled around that because what ends up happening is like, we'd get parents that would come in and they would meet a high schooler at one of my campuses and the high schooler would take them around and maybe give them the tour. And they'd be like, Oh my gosh, you know, what's that kid's amazing. What's going on? I'm like, yeah, speaking of amazing, like he's fantastic. He's already got, you know, what's that kid's amazing. What's going on? I'm like, yeah, speaking of amazing, like he's fantastic. He's already got, you know, scholarship offers to every university over here, this high school over here. Well, he's 17. He makes about a hundred thousand dollars a year right now working a job that by the way, is degree required, even though he's still in high school, because this is how life actually works, right? He's doing this. And he, and what happens is

parents go, oh, okay. Well, if I send my kid here, even if I'm a shitty parent, they're just automatically going to do this. And it's like, no, it's more nuanced than that. There's a lot of work. There's a lot. So schools will often use that same. Hey, everybody, this percentage got into college.

Okay. So what? Like college is actually really easy to get into if you know how to play the game. So what? Like college is actually really easy to get into if you know how to play the game. So what? So I don't want to use metrics as a, as a thing to, to skew anything. But I think over time, it'd be an interesting thing to track. I can see your, your going off to college numbers being very low too. If you're creating free thinking human beings that with skill sets that they can just go use that doesn't seem like you need to go to college at the end. The whole thing with our kids, and I say this from all the other campuses I've built even prior to the Apogee campuses,

is they have, it's intentional. They don't just go to college because everybody says go to college, right? If they choose to go, it is because they go, okay, this is a means to an end and I can be intentional about it. And I don't, I don't buy into the myth of the elite school. So this small little school over here where I'm not going to have any debt and there's some professors that are in this field.

Great. Like they're intentional about it. Just like the ones who are intentionally going, I'm already making six figures. I don't need to go right now. It's not a need for me already. You know, it's just there's thought around it. I'm not anti-college. I'm anti-doing something just because somebody said you should, going into debt for it, being

inefficient with your time. Like I'm anti those things. Yeah. Going kind of back to what Doug was talking about, how do you view punishment on kids for being out of line? Or like, what is a, what's a better approach or just the approach that you guys kind of use in the schools? So what does being out of line mean usually? Yeah. I don't know if it's a great question, but.

It is a great question but it is a great question when um you know when kids are talking back uh when they're not staying uh with the group and a lot of these things could come down to free thinking like is that what we want to be actually looking for so and that's why i asked you to elaborate because it's a great question. And so that's why I asked you to elaborate. So talking back, when does talking back usually happens? It usually happens when you've got an authority over here

who is saying, this is how things have to look. You're going to do this at this time. And somebody goes, I don't want to do, right? So we're talking about a school environment. What we're building is an educational environment. So there's a couple of things to unpack here because there's both sides. Now, one, as an organization, we are very clear that we live by a code. It is the Bushido code. It's not anything that we made up, but integrity and loyalty and compassion and politeness. And those are things that are sacred to us as an organization. We tell the parents first and foremost, this is the code we live by. We use that as a filtering mechanism. People hear that we're a different kind of school and they're like, okay, alternative when Doug and Anders and Matt, when they grew up, alternative campus meant these kids are one step away from juvenile hall. Well,

my kid's an asshole. So I'm going to send them here too, because this place won't kick them out. No, you still have to be a nice person. You still have to be a kind human. You go into a jujitsu school that's worth its salt. They're not going to let somebody come in and just start throwing punches on other kids because they want to. No, there are standards to live by. There is a shared code. So we create an environment of a sacred space. We actually have that code building ceremony where everybody comes together and is like, we want to be different. We're going to be different together. We're going to be better together. Young men, like we're going to actually get excited about holding the doors open for the ladies. We're going to get excited about even being five, six years old saying,

yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. No, sir. No, ma'am. Even to each other, not just to the adults. And the adults are saying it to them too, right? It's this mutual code of respect that takes place. And then it's a co-collaboration on everything. It is not this person going, you need to do this here. It's all of us having this summer camp environment where again, there's boundaries. You're not going to go smack somebody and do all these things, but there's ways to disagree too. Cool. Let's teach you how to disagree with us, with each other. Disagreement's actually not a bad thing. Let's teach you to do without the emotion around it. Right? So it's, it's literally creating a completely different environment. Yeah. Yeah. I see, I see on your website here that there's, it's literally creating a completely different environment.

Yeah. Yeah. I see, I say on your website here that there's, I live in Memphis, Tennessee. There's no Apogee, Apogee school. Is that technically what you call it? You call it an Apogee school? Yes, sir. Yeah. There's no Apogee school in Memphis, Tennessee, but I see on here that there's Apogee home education and Apogee parenting, which both of those things I would personally be interested in. I haven't dug into it, but you're right here. What are those things? Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate that. So the parenting course is a standalone. That is literally the lowest price point of anything we have. It's a standalone parenting. Like, here's how to set up. We're talking about being an environment maker.

This is after a couple of decades and working with some of the best people on the planet. This is not, Matt thought this was cool. No, this is like working with the, here's how to create that environment at home or a household to be able to function efficiently, not just be peaceful, not just to be not, how do you actually make an efficient household where everybody is coming together and we're all on this joint mission together. The home education piece, we have about 300-ish families right now from around the world. And so that is like a three-hour video series. It's a bunch of resources on how to create projects as a family at home. And then we've got a private workplace platform where all the families interact together.

We've got a couple of years worth of family oriented project based challenges, everything from, I mean, physiology to behavioral economics to, I mean, anything you can think of. And then every other weekend I get on and do a two hour Q and A with everybody who wants to make it and we record it and send it out to the entire tribe. So it's just helping families understand how to educate efficiently. And then as far as the physical campuses, you know, we don't, we don't ever pick locations. We partner with people who want to bring it to their community. So like the 50 that are launching in 2024, these are people that we filtered through. We had about 400 people year one that applied to potentially open one,

went through an entire filtering process back and forth, extended the offer to those 50 to partner. This is their business, but we're giving them all the tools. We say it's affiliate level entry, but it's franchise level support. We build out everything, plug and play. Here's how to do it.

I'm doing training with them for years and continuously. And so this year, we had 700 people that have reached out for a 2025 launch. And we're in that filtering process right now. So I don't know if there's anybody in Memphis right now. I'll have to take a look when we get a little further down the road. And we're about halfway through the filtering process right now. Yeah, 100% of you. Doug's in. He needs more kids around him. That's what he tells me all the time.

I'm bored. I would love if I had not just my kids to look after, but lots of other people's kids too. That would be great. That's awesome. Like his perfect utopia. So the reality, I mean, here's what's cool though. The people that are coming in who are deciding to launch these affiliate campuses, part of that process is going through and getting an understanding. Do I wanna be the owner operator?

Like, do I wanna be the one in with the kids? Do I wanna be the owner and just kind of be the administrator on campus and sort of make sure, or do I want to be the one in with the kids? Do I want to be the owner and just kind of be the administrator on campus and sort of make sure, or do I just want to be the owner and I want to hire it because I'm going to do this for my kids and I'm going to hire somebody to kind of run all that. I don't need to, I can take the money that would be made and give it to employees. Like all of those are fine. We don't care. You know, we just want to make sure we have good people who are doing this for the right reasons in their community. Yeah. If people are interested in like me,

learning more about the schools, where can people find out all the info? ApogeeStrong.com is the place to go. You can follow us on IG. We're pretty busy there at Apogee Program. But ApogeeStrong.com, the documentary is there. A little bit about our foundations are there. All the different verticals are there. All the verticals are designed to stand alone, but they also come together on campuses. You know, mom and dad, when their kids go to a campus, mom and dad get education too. They get Apogee Man and Apogee Woman as a part of paying tuition. Mom and dad get education too. We want to educate the entire family. Yeah. How, I guess one last question that just popped in on that. What does nutrition look like at the schools? Oh God, I love that question, man.

Right. I love that question. So this is something that's been part of our training, part of our conversations with all of our affiliates. And again, partnering with Physiology First, we we're very vocal and upfront real food matters. We will not, we can't be the people ever. We're about sovereignty and freedom, meaning we're not going to say if your kid brings Doritos, you're out of here, but we kind of imply if your kid brings Doritos, this is probably not the right place for you. Right. So having those conversations and again, mom and dad go through Apogee man, Apogee woman,

that's a huge part of the last night. Our guest with Apogee woman was Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. So we're talking all, I mean, that was what we were talking about, you know? And so, and the coming to Ben Greenfield's coming up and Mike Dolce is a dear friend comes in all the time. And Jason Khalifa comes in all the time. It is a huge part of what we do. So we want to not just say, Hey, don't do this. We want to go, Hey, here's how to do this at home too. Here's the kind of lunches to bring. And as each campus gets bigger, and I did this in some of my campuses in California, we partner with Weston A. Price. They have a school lunch program where they will actually teach the older high school kids how to run a Weston A. Price approved lunch program, real food. So I had, you know, 16 and 17 year olds that were real chefs on campus hiring 12 and 13 year old sous chefs making real food lunches as an option every single day for our families. And so we want all of our campuses to be able to build up to that as well.

But yeah, real food matters, as you know. Well done. Doug Larson. You bet. I'm on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. Dude, this has been phenomenal. Me and Anders are both personally incredibly interested in all of this. So I'm going to be digging through your website. Now that I know you got the Apogee man and parenting courses, home education, I'm digging through all this stuff. I'd seen you loosely on Instagram a few times and thought you were doing some cool stuff. So I was excited to talk to you today. So you're doing good things in the world. I'm very happy for you. And I'm stoked to learn more. Brother, honor is all my, and you, you know, we have this, this, this contact and um i mean just whatever i

can do ask that's what i'm here for seven days a week man we do it i'm excited 2025 my kids are gonna be there doug give me your instagram handle oh cool oh yeah douglas on instagram i know i'm barely on instagram these days i've successfully exited instagram from our from my own mental health which actually has the real thing i really do feel better day to day without looking at Instagram. Um, it's an important thing, so to speak for business, but fuck man, when I'm not on there, I do actually feel better. There's physiology behind that too, right? Like a hundred percent, man. Yep. Yeah. Now I'm on there. I'm choosing to be on there. I found my old phone and then I log in, I do my thing. I signed back out and I put my old phone away. I got my new phone and I'm on there I'm choosing to be on there I find my old phone and then I log in I do my thing I sign back out

and I put my old phone away I grab my new phone and I'm back to my day probably four or five hours before we hopped on here I wrote an email to the person that runs the one down in the triangle here and I said whatever I can do to help and I definitely want to be

a part of whatever you're building so hopefully I'm able to actually see everything that we talked about here and in real life here coming up. I will shoot him a message as we speak. It's a husband and wife that is over there. They are awesome. Nominal humans. I'll shoot him a message right now and tell him to look out for it. I love it. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore shrugged to make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. That's where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. And you can access that free report over at RapidHealthReport.com.

Friends, we will see you guys next week.