EverydaySpy Podcast - UNVAILING CIA Recruitment: SKILL vs TALENT | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 19

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

It's amazing what you can learn spending one day on a horror movie set! And under all the masks, makeup and monster costumes was a powerful lesson we're excited to share with you today. For anyone frustrated or disappointed by education in America, this is a must-see! Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Learn more from Andy: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the SpyTribe: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverydaySpy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is something CIA taught us. The world thinks that talent is what's impressive. Everybody wants to be talented, like your most talented basketball players, your most talented dancers, or your most talented musicians. These people who become famous because of their incredible talent at the age of 13, right? You're Michael Jackson's, your Taylor Swift's. And the truth is that you don't actually have to be born with talent to be incredibly successful. Because all of the other people on the team, all of the other people in the band,

all of the backup dancers, all of the countless other musicians who are out there who are very, very successful. They may not have been born with the talent, but they developed the skill. So I just got back from a trip to L.A. And, you know, it's always kind of a, it's like a mix of joy and pain every time I go to L.A. because it's a four and a half hour flight. Yeah. And then on the way back, it's oftentimes five hours because we have to connect somewhere. But this trip was unlike any other because I actually got to do a podcast and a tour of a place called the Cinema Makeup School of Los Angeles. That's super awesome. So I didn't think it was going to be anywhere near as cool as it actually was.

Because like I heard cinema makeup. And I was like, oh, okay, well, that makes sense because everybody has hair and makeup on set. You're thinking like regular makeup. That's not what it was. It was like it was monster heads and alien bodies and full-sized suits. transforming people into wolf creatures and oh my gosh. I mean, yes, they were also doing, you know, beautification makeup, I think is what they call it, beautifying.

But they had the vast majority of that school was severed arms and facial wounds and bruises and aging and monsters and aliens. And it was amazing. Yeah, that is so amazing. Can you imagine like applying art to something like that? I mean, like those are the people who did the Michael Jackson thriller, right? Yeah. I mean, how incredible is that? It's a job. So one of the instructors there is actually the head of makeup for the series that Johnny Depp did with Disney, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Oh, yeah. So strewn throughout. And it's not like a, it's not like a clean white-walled school. Yeah. Like we all think of when we think of school or when you think of college or university. Because it's art. It's a giant warehouse with like, you know, stairs and whatever. else and everywhere is a total wreck because it's all art. We've talked about this.

Art is messy. Art is messy. So the whole school is like this discombobulated art studio on a gigantic scale. Yeah. But strewn throughout this warehouse art system are like all of these set pieces that were created for Pirates of the Caribbean. So there's, I think it was Pirates of the Caribbean three. There were these three dead dried up sirens that they found on the beach.

Oh, I don't think of them. Full-sized sirens, like mermaid slash demon-slash-creatures. Yeah. You walk in, you walk down a hallway, and there they are, just sitting there. That's awesome. Like full-sized giant, just they look like real creatures. Yeah. Laying there. I went up a set of stairs to go up to the upper level with my tour guide or my host.

And there was this, like, creature, like a demon, pig-like baddish kind of creature. Yeah. And it was leaning up against a wall, holding a cell phone. And I looked at it and I was like, that's the strangest statue I've ever seen. And then that shit looked at me. Super awesome. I wish I could have been there.

And I totally, it was like, what the? And I realized it was a student. It was a student in a class. And they walked into their classroom. And I walked into their classroom and there was like 15 students. 15 students sitting in chairs. getting their prosthetic faces applied, monster faces, demon faces, you know, whatever. And then there were another 15 students applying the prosthetics to the 15 students who were

receiving it, right? And one instructor kind of overseeing the whole thing. It was incredible. It was absolutely like a childhood dream come true that I never in a million years would have expected. That is so cool. What an amazing experience. So next time I get to go.

That's exactly. So my host's name was Benoit. Benoit Kim. And I told him the same thing. I was like, dude, I have got to send my wife out here. And what's funny is, people don't know this, but you don't travel well. You don't like to spend long on an airplane. But I had no kidding.

I saw that place and I was like, this is worth all the pain that Ghee would endure to come see this. Yeah, did they have like a short course? So this is what blew my mind the most. I was like, you know, how does this, how does the school work? And it's just like we would expect. know, students come in with no experience and they go through the course. Yeah. And then they graduate the course and they go on to doing cinematic makeup.

So sometimes it's for commercials, movies, horror films, you know, whatever it might be, right? Television. And I was like, oh, is it like a four-year degree? Is it like a two-year degree? It takes seven months. Seven months. It's a seven month. That's the longest, most comprehensive program they have.

Yeah. Seven months, four days, five days a week, full regular school days. all materials and arts and everything included, $35,000. And so you can go on with zero experience? Zero artistic capability at all. Really? Didn't that incredible? Now, I'm pretty sure, because this is no kidding, what went through my head was,

I could take seven months off of work. Of course it was. I could do this. I could totally take seven months off at work to learn how to create a six-foot-tall wolf creature suit out of prosthetic that I then wear for her. Halloween. That just sounds too awesome. You know, I'm so curious because oftentimes art schools require you to have like a portfolio and to audition and be accepted that way. So I've always thought of art and maybe other field. I mean, I probably honestly all fields as, you know, a skill versus

talent, right? Like in theory, everybody can learn the skill, right? I guess I could learn the skill in seven months. I mean, they're obviously teaching people. But how much talent do you really need behind it to be successful? Like would I be as successful as somebody who has been, you know, our kids, our kids who make art every single day, right, who are clearly artistic? Yeah. It's, it's one of those things where I think technically in their trade, there's advanced courses, and to get into the advanced courses, you have to have a portfolio of work. I see. But to get into their foundation courses, you don't. And I'm pretty sure that there's a little bit of an assembly line kind of approach to doing large scale makeup. So like an apprentice or a junior level artist

would come in and do the first foundational layer of everything. But then an advanced skilled artist would come in and add the additional layers. So even with some of those incredible monster suits that I was telling you about, I mean, they looked scary and creepy in part because they weren't finished and polished. Right? So like the pig bat head that was checking its cell phone. Yeah. Part of the reason that was scary as shit is because it looked like a rotting face,

not because it was detailed, but just because it wasn't done yet, exactly. Yeah. And then inside the classroom, you could see the more finished polished faces. Like there was one lady who was done up like a demon. Yeah. And the artist was showing the students how you can apply different layers of, like translucent paint to create effects when the cinema lights hit the actual makeup. Right.

So they showed us with a black light and they showed us with like a regular yellow light. And you could see these different surfaces inside like the ears and inside the horns and across like the chest, the chest and breastplate where like the light would reflect in different ways with different lights. That's some advanced stuff. I think. I think that's advanced stuff. For us it's pretty advanced.

But you're exactly right with this idea of skill versus talent. And this is something CIA taught us as well. Right. Like the world thinks that talent is what's impressive. Right. Everybody wants to be talented. Like your most talented basketball players, your most talented dancers or your most talented musicians.

These people who become famous because of their incredible talent at the age of 13, right? You're Michael Jackson's, your Taylor Swift's, you know, your Shaquille O'Neils, your Larry Birds of the World. These people who are super famous and identified very young. you know, we're dating ourselves by listing off. I know I was just thinking that. Let's make it more modern. There's Justin Bieber.

You've been like Britney Spears dates us. Oh my gosh, right? Geez. There are also very famous people who are young now. Yes. Just think of current examples. Yeah. In your own mind.

But I don't know who those current examples are. But everybody wants to be them because of their talent. And the truth is that you don't actually. have to be born with talent to be incredibly successful because all of the other people on the team, all of the other people in the band, all of the backup dancers, all of the countless other musicians who are out there who are very, very successful, creating, you know, multiple millions of dollars in record sales every year. They may not have been born with the talent, but they developed the skill. And there's that concept of 10,000 hours where once you've put 10,000

hours of practice or experience into something, then you have basically mastered at them. And I think the example that comes to mind was the Beatles. You know, by the time the Beatles got famous, they had been playing out together as a unit so much that they had like 10,000 hours worth of practicing together, playing music together. So, you know, the argument is, were they really naturally talented or did they just put in the work? Right.

And it's the same thing that Michael Jordan always said about his own basketball. career is that it wasn't that he was born talented. It's that he put hours and hours and hours of practice into developing the skill so that when he was discovered, he looked like an overnight sensation. Whereas to him, he was like, no, I've been doing this for decades. I've been training for 15 years for the opportunity to make it look to you like this is easy. Yeah. And it, you know, it touches on something else where, you know, we talk about, I think when we homeschool our kids, it's a concept that you can spend 10,000 hours trying to get better at something that you're really not very good at. Or you can take those 10,000 hours and master something that you are

actually good at, right? So you can take those same practice hours and put them towards any skill you want. But when you're choosing between enhancing something that you're naturally not so, it does not come so easy for you or really mastering something that comes a little bit easier for you, your time is really best spent following the thing that comes a little bit easier to you than trying to get kind of mediocre at the thing that you're bad at. Right. And I feel like this is another area where CIA kind of gave us some clarity because they have this giant recruitment engine. And it recruits people from all walks of life. Like when they first recruited you to come in, it wasn't for the job you ended up doing.

That's correct. It wasn't, I was the same way. That what they recruited me for wasn't the actual job I ended up doing. But they saw that there was this group of people that had skills and capabilities. Yes. And one of the skills and capabilities they specifically recruit for is teachability and trainability. So they find that you have this ability to learn. And they bring you in this huge like bucket of people come in.

And then they start challenging and refining your skills to direct you into the one career field that's best suited for you. And they teach us the same thing, right? Like, hey, I know that you like cyber stuff. And I know that you like coding. And I know that you like programming. But you are actually really very good at this. Yeah. This other thing, disguise or this other thing, field operations or paramilitary operations or mission planning or you name it.

They're targeting. So they bring you in and they have to do that because nobody knows what the CIA does. So when you say yes, you just start and you're like, okay, so what do you guys do now? Like now that I'm on the other side of the curtain. Oh, my gosh. I remember I remembered orientation the first day. There was an HR lady ahead of my small group that came in for headquarters base officers. And every day we would ask her, what is it exactly?

like what is life actually like once I get behind a desk? Because we had a long training program. And every day she was like, it just depends. Every, no day is the same. And by the third day, we cornered her. And we were like, literally, you walk in the door, you sit down at your desk. What do you do next? She was like, oh, well, I'll log onto my computer.

I check my emails. We're like, okay, we're getting somewhere. Like, I know, like, you've hired us already. You don't have to sound so exciting. We want to know what we're getting into. It's so true, though. It's so true, though. So that idea that, you know, you can develop a skill that is actually more valuable than any talent that's out there.

And you can choose what skill you develop. I think this was so interesting to me because not only did we develop some super interesting skills at CI, especially in human intelligence operations, right? You learn SDRs. You learn how to control a conversation. You learn how to use elicitation. And you learn how to do all sorts of things that are like things that I can talk about and things that we can't talk about. You learn how to do such an incredible set of skills.

And you kind of walk away thinking to yourself, like if I can learn this, I mean, I can learn anything. And I think that, you know, maybe one of the issues is that the way people think about talent, the word talent itself, you know, we are always thinking about the people who from the age of three, they were, you know, an amazing piano player. like they're talented, but maybe what talent is for most of us is like what you said, right? It's the, when you're learning a skill set and some things come easier for you than other things, oftentimes that's based on personality type, on temperament, on learning style.

Maybe that's what true talent is. Maybe that is, you know, that when it's driving the skill set that you should really be focusing on, those are your talents. Your talents are created by your personality type. your temperament, your learning style, right? Because that's how we ended up in different tracks. I came in on a track. I came in as a desk officer, Sue.

And then through, they have this, the CIA has this great training program where they give you all the space training. They put you, you know, like on the job training. They give you more training, more on the job training. And through those experiences, I realized that targeting was very natural for me. I'm very curious.

I can sit for eight hours and deep dive in a computer, which makes you nuts. I put me to sleep. That puts me to sleep. Which so for you, your personality type, your temperament, your learning style, it's not for you. You went to the farm, which for me, I could have done. I recognize that I could have done that, but my strengths aren't in those areas. I did really well in the initial trade craft training they gave me, but when it comes down to it, would I want to spend 10,000 hours, right?

Owning the skill of going to dinner with a stranger and trying to convince them to convince espionage. Like, it's not. It's not my stronger, I'm not strongly suited to that area. So, you know, I think the CIA training program is really fantastic that way. I love that they bring in people and are able to hone them within the agency into what they're good at where most jobs, hire you into a position and then you're in that position until maybe you get promoted somewhere else.

So why do you think it is that? society works so differently because in social settings, in public school, in community college, even in four-year universities, even in Ivy League universities, you're still kind of put through like everybody has to do the same thing. Yeah. Everybody has to do this. Everybody has to meet these requirements. Everybody has to be able to complete these five or seven or 12 or 18 core credit hours

before you even qualify to explore an interest that you might. want to develop a skill in. Why do you think it works so differently for them? So I think so I think part of it is efficiency. I think the government has a certain amount of space to be inefficient. They can bring on people who meet the basic traits that they're looking for just like you said, teachability, adaptability, and they know that they have the space, the time, the space, the money to mold them into what's going to work best for the agency. I think in society in general, the school system, the school system for the masses really started during the industrial era. And it was created to create a good worker base.

We needed a solid worker base who had basic education. And what you mean is cogs. Like the modern day school system was created during the Industrial Revolution to create predictable, repeatable, cog type workers. People who did the same task over and over again, with a certain level of consistency. Right. So you needed people to be able to read and write and do basic arithmetic

to be able to follow instructions, right? I mean, think about how the traditional school system is set up, right? To be able to take orders, follow instructions, recognize authority. Be graded on their output. Right. And meet a certain production criteria in order to advance to the next level. Exactly. Because at the same time, you still had wealthier people, you know,

people are in higher level society going to private school, having tutors. Their education did not look like the education for the masses. The original schoolhouses, you know, were painted red because red was the cheapest color paint you could buy, you know? It wasn't psychologically chosen because it was extremely motivating. I mean, so, you know. Red lead-based paint. That was, I bet that's exactly what it was.

Cheap, dangerous paint for the best. masses. Well, they didn't know. Wow. But, you know, it's, so I think that overall, it was a good step forward, but the intention behind it wasn't this benevolent like, we want us all to be equal and have equal education and all know the same things, because that wasn't it. They wanted to prepare a workforce that could lift up the economy. Yeah. Right. That's what school was about in the beginning. Yeah. And it's that, in many ways, it hasn't evolved past that, right? Like, you still see the same criteria now. And what's really interesting is as society overall has had more education, because if you think

about it, 1940s, 1950s era Americans were in the same kind of public school cycle, private school cycle, educational structure cycle, right? It's evolved, but not greatly. I think most teachers will tell you it hasn't evolved greatly. They were seeing the same thing in the 40s and 50s. But the difference is that now, 70 years later, everybody's been through that cycle. Every adult, every senior citizen who's walking through life right now

has seen that cycle to its full completion. And now we are asking ourselves the question, is that really the best for the next generation? Right. And I think what's interesting is the education system, as you and I know it, really started, you know, we went from everybody, you know, they had started education for the masses, K through 12.

But then, you know, I think it was in the 70s, 60s, they, the government started a push to have to broaden college education for people. So at first it was just for people in the scientific realm. They started giving people scholarships because we were in the space race against Russia. But then the president at the time wanted, you know, he came from a poor family and he had to take out loans to go to college. And so he wanted to make college accessible to everybody. And so the government couldn't pay for everybody to go to college. So they started a loan program, a guaranteed loan program, which over the past several decades has really broaden the ability of anybody who wants to to go to college. The problem is they're going to college on loans.

Right. And the more people that started attending college, the more liberal arts degrees you started seeing, the more special. seeing the more specialty colleges that were still also liberal arts colleges. You know, so you have all these people graduating with the promise that a college education would equal a better job and it is no longer happening. That promise never came to fruition. Right. And it's funny because you can now, as we talk about it, I see why, right?

I see how it probably happened. You go through high school, everything is strictly like regulated. Here's the, here are the courses you have to take. Here are the scores you have to get in order to get your diploma in order to graduate and qualify to apply for universities. Yeah. These are the things that the government deems as important for you to know. Right. That's what public school is.

And then, or private school is the same way because private school is still dictated, still regulated by a curriculum. That's true. That's got to be approved by a higher power, right? So then you go on to university and the first year and a half, two years of university, is the same way. You have to learn these things. You have to complete these credits. You have to take these courses in order to qualify to choose. for yourself. There's never a step where they teach you how to choose for yourself. Yeah. So then

everybody gets through those first few credit hours, right? And then they have the freedom to choose anything they want. And they're like, well, what do I choose? Yeah. I never thought of that before. That essentially you're finally granted the freedom to choose what you want to learn. But nobody ever teaches you how to choose what to learn. Exactly. And then oftentimes what people choose is something that they're just interested in without thinking about how are they going to make a living on the other side. And so the other day, actually, I was in the car listening to the radio and I heard a story about how many high schools now are beefing up their vocational programs. So technical education, career-focused education, that help students really focus on a hard scale.

So like carpentry, welding, mechanics, culinary arts, makeup. And what's the fancy word for makeup? Cosmetology. Yes. Yeah. You know, I remember I went to a rural school. I went to a rural high school when I was in Pennsylvania. Yeah.

And the two big pushes for all graduates, like, Like the guidance counselor had two rubber stamps, right? Yeah. You're either going to a vocational school, rubber stamp, or you're going to community college, rubber stamp, right? That was all that our guidance counselor had problems. My mom had, this is a great story of my mom chewing out the guidance counselor. Yeah. Because my mom had ambition and she wanted me to have ambition and she was pissed.

When I came home and as a junior or something, and I was like, well, mom, I'm either going to go to vocational school or community college. And she was like, stamped me on my forehead. Like, no, you're going somewhere else. I can just picture your mom doing it. But my point is, I mean, in rural parts of the world, of the country, vocational schools have always been something that they recommend to graduating students. Yeah. But I've heard the same thing, that there's like a push now, not just in rural schools,

but in suburban schools, in inner city schools, like this push towards the vocational arts. Yeah. And it makes sense because, you know, first, not everybody can go to college and study the same thing and then get a job that not just that pays the money, but that makes a difference to society. Yeah, that improves our economy overall. Right. So we need people with hard skills. We need people to graduate from these vocational schools. I mean, even the CIA employs mechanics, employees welders, employees graphic designers, employees cosmetologists. And pays them very, very well.

Yes. Because without them, we actually wouldn't have the technical tools that we need to execute our task. Exactly. The first time the term technical was ever used were for these technical trades, right? We all associate technology with like computers now. Right. And artificial intelligence and like typey, typey. Yeah.

The first true definition of technical was when you had to use a technique in order to complete your task. Right. Welders, plumbers, mechanics, chefs. They have to skillfully use. use techniques and tools in order to accomplish the task. You're right. CIA uses like the people who create our armored vehicles. There's no freaking factory out there that pumps out an armored vehicle. We buy a stock vehicle. And then there's a bunch of undercover friggin mechanics who make that thing into a tank. The same thing with our disguise. You don't buy a disguise. You don't order it off Amazon.

There's like these highly trained covert cosmetologists who turn you into a different person. Yeah. It's incredible. That's all technique. And without them, we would come to a grinding halt. Exactly. I mean, everybody thinks about, you know, CIA, James Bond. But it's, you know, there's an entire army of people skill, like people with hard skills

behind that James Bond, you know. And, you know, one of the boons for students who go through these programs is that, you know, it's a short course of study. It's less expensive. And then they come out and they are immediately. in high demand, right? Because we need these positions filled. And they're making a good wage.

Some of these you come out right away, you're, you know, you're making $25 an hour. Yeah. Which, you know, I know people who graduated from college and they... They're making 17. Yeah, at best. I mean, I was thinking 13. I know some people who like come out and, you know, their brista making $13 an hour. You know, I mean, this is a, this, these skills are needed.

These schools are needed, right? Like, we can't, you know, one of the... I think, in my opinion. You know, one of the downsides of the public education system is that we try to put everybody into the same mold. And you just can't. Society, that's not good for society. It's not good for our economy.

We need people at all levels of education and skill and a vast, you know, a variety of vocations. We need diversity. And the education system has been trying to, you know, I think. in the name of equality, in the name of equal opportunity, has been trying to make everybody the same. Make everybody the same. And you can't. You can't have a society where everybody is the same. We go nowhere. Yeah. You paint a whole house white. Yeah. And there's nothing special about the house anymore. Right. Nobody wants that house. Yeah. Right. Nobody maintains that house. I remember, I remember when we first moved to Florida. One of the first people we met

when we moved to Florida was the gentleman who owned the plumbing company. Trinity? Was it called Trinity Plumbing. Trinity something. Yeah, I think you're right. But he was one of the first guys. He was such a nice guy. And he was a master plumber, if I'm using the terminology, right? And, you know, it was the first time we'd ever owned a house.

And we bought a fairly sizable house, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two stories. We were expecting many more children to come. We were expecting a bigger family. Yeah. I was clearly expecting more practice making those children. Until you start having them and then you realize there's no time for that. too busy raising him to be making them. But yeah, I remember meeting him and he went on this diatribe about, you know,

vocational arts and vocational skills and how he has such a hard time finding new junior plumbers that he can train up as apprentices because like the ones that are going through the school don't care and whatever else. And at the time, I remember being like, dude, all I need you to do is just fix the plumbing in the house. And what ended up happening is he was so friggin' nice and he was so effing knowledgeable. Yeah, he was so knowledgeable. That I ended up being humbled by the end of the first day that he visited us because I was like, holy shit.

I had no idea how complex the plumbing was in my one house and how my one house connects to the city public sewage. And all of a sudden I was like scared out of my mind because I was like, I've got graduated. I have any toilets here and there and I've got, and based on the age of the house, they might only be buried four inches beneath the surface of the foundation. And if there's a leak, how do we even get there? We have to break a hole in the floor. I was like freaking out, right? And it was so nice to remain continually employ that company.

Because every time he came over, we got a master plumbers point of view on every problem. He even tell us how to solve our own problems, right? But it just gave me an intense respect for the fact that he didn't get that knowledge. in a four-year school. Yeah, he specialized. He got that knowledge in a technical school that took him, what, seven months, six months. And then on the job,

he just saw so many houses that he figured it out. Like he understood not just our house, but every house on our block, every house in the city, every house connected in that municipality, right? Yeah. And it's just so impressive

when you compare that against your four-year degree. Yeah. Because your four-year degree, I mean, I graduated with a 40 degree. Guess how much I knew when I graduated college? I'm thinking the same thing. Like, I took a lot of really fun classes.

You took a lot of totally unnecessary classes. Oh, my gosh. But, you know, what's funny is I went to university because it was expected, right? I grew up with the knowledge that I would go to university. It's all I ever heard from my dad. So there was no question about what I was doing after high school. I was going to go to a university. But knowing myself, I'm one of those people that doesn't have, you know, if you give me too many options,

it's hard for me to make a decision because I like so many things. And that's exactly what happened to me in college. I changed my major five times. It was just too much. If I had had a vocational school where, you know, if my parents have been like, you can do whatever you want to, maybe I would have gone to an art school. Maybe I would have gone to a culinary academy, you know. Maybe you would have been really good at it too.

Yeah. And I would have specialized. right? And I would have picked one thing and I would have just gotten really good at that one thing. I mean, CIA showed us that we had teachability. Yeah. And we had the ability to learn a new skill. And in a sense, I mean, it's a little bit humbling to say, CIA taught us that we didn't really have a talent. Right? Like we weren't born talented unless you consider the ability to learn to be the talent. But if that's the case, then we really could have gone to any vocational school. Anything that we wanted to learn, I could have learned, oh my gosh, I remember meeting a guy on a flight to Asia, and he was an underwater welder.

Really? Yeah. So he was a military veteran. When he was in the military, he was in the Navy, and his job was underwater welding to repair, like, chains and anchors and, you know, steel objects underwater. Yeah. I think they're called divers or dive master, not dive masters. They're called something. Technical, technical divers, I think is what they're called.

Yeah. That's what he was trained to do in the military. So he went to a technical school in the military, which usually tech school in the military is like seven months. He learned and got certified to do this one thing. And then he left the military where he would have been enlisted making probably like $35,000 a year to do that job, left the military, joined an oil rig, an oil company. Yeah.

And became a technical diver for the rigging company. Then he started making like six figures a year, $115,000 to $130,000 a year. And he just flew. from oil rig to oil rig. Yeah. And whenever they had any kind of repair that needed to be done underwater, because you're not going to relocate the rig and bring it out and stop drilling, they would just send the technical divers down to dive.

Yeah. He was such an interesting dude. And it was like talking to a good old boy. Yeah. Like when I met him, he was just like a, he was a Kentucky-born dude. Yeah. And you talk to him and he doesn't sound particularly educated. He doesn't sound polished.

He doesn't sound any of that stuff. And then he tells you what he does because he carries this mask on the back of his backpack. So his carry-on on the airplane includes his dive mask, which is unlike any dive mask I've ever seen before because it's a welder's mask that also goes underwater. Yeah. So it looks like something from Halo hanging from the back of his backpack. That's so cool. So I asked him, I was like, what do you do for a living? And he's like, oh, I'm a technical diver for an oil rig.

And all of a sudden I was hooked. I was like, you got to tell me like, what the hell does that mean? Yeah. So just fascinating, fascinating stories, fascinating work. And the dude was like, I just stumbled into it. Yeah. Took a military test. It said that I wasn't good enough to do all of these things, but I was good enough to do this thing.

I love the military test. But his story just kind of, I think it underlines what we're seeing in the headlines today. When this push towards vocational schools are giving, yeah, they're giving real opportunities to real people. Yeah. And making a very real impact on our economy. I think the numbers that I was reading was saying that. technical school enrollment is up. And not by a little bit either.

It's up by like 12% in some categories and up to like 19 or 20% in other categories. Like that's a huge increase in people taking these schools, right? Mechanics, auto mechanics and auto body repair is up like 15% construction workers are up like 20% learning the technical skills to do these things, right? Culinary arts are up. I think paralegal falls under that too under the technical school where it's not a, not a full like two-year school or four-year school. So all the enrollment is up. Meanwhile, four-year education, four-year university enrollment is down and it's down like seven percent. I think the community college enrollment is down almost nine percent. So you're seeing young people

come to this conclusion on their own that there's an opportunity for them to make more money faster in an educational cycle where they learn something and then get to immediately apply. Yes, exactly. And that's the key, right? You're learning a hard skill that you can immediately apply in a field that's in demand. In demand means higher paying. Yes. In demand means you're not sitting around unemployed. In demand means you work when you want to. Or where you want to, right? You want to leave the city that you grew up in. Like, you can. Right. But these, so yeah, I think a lot of people are starting to understand that, you know, if you go, if you go the traditional college route, if you go the community college route, the promises aren't being fulfilled, right?

Which is unfortunate for people who, you know, all of the students who learn that the hard way, right? But their path has shown the students behind them to, you know, that there are other opportunities, right? That can be taken and that are better for the country, really. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting because one of the pieces of feedback that we get the most about our courses when people come and train with us or when we go to a corporate organization and train with them is that they love the fact that we teach them a skill and then make them

apply the skill. Yes. Right? Either in a simulation or in an exercise. And that's exactly how CIA taught us, right? I think it's called just in time learning. You learn something just in time to apply it. There's no traditional academic route where you learn something and then you take a quiz.

And then you come back and you review the thing. Yeah. And then you're told that in two days you have a test. and make sure that you study for the thing again. And then you spend three days academically studying for it to then come and take a large test where you get a grade that tells you how much you understand it and then you never use it.

Yeah, it's like the theory of the thing. The theory of the thing. I think I told you on my targeting training, you know, we would run, you know, our exercises inside the classroom, but it was a set database, right? It was a database that had been fed data for the course. So, of course, you know, they want us to find, very specific results, you know, and of course they're always like, oh, hooray, I like,

look at this perfect targeting package I was able to make. But in real life, that doesn't exist. That doesn't really happen that way. I mean, I'm going to be like, you know, one in a million times it happens that way. So to be able to have taken the course and then right away gone into the job and start to apply while it's fresh, right? And then running into those, you know, those hurdles that you're inevitably going to have on the job. And then you have a mentor that you can talk to immediately, right? Like all of these things, you know, you get the, you learn what you're going to apply. You apply it right away.

You make your mistakes right away. And then you grow on the job. So we had a question come in that I think is super relevant to this conversation. And we had a gentleman right in. He actually hit us up through LinkedIn. Okay. And he is a stay-at-home. He's a self-employed guy.

He has two children and his children have autism. So as a result of their autism, they found that the public school system didn't serve their kids the way that they needed their kids served. So they brought their kids home and they started homeschooling their kids. So his question to us was, how did you choose to homeschool? So how did we choose to homeschool our own children? And how do we navigate through what he calls some of the BS related to homeschooling, like the negative stigma that comes from people, the competing curriculum that comes from people,

the varying regulations about what a student is supposed to know and at what point they're supposed to know it. How do we navigate those complexities and why do we choose to do it to our own children? So homeschooling was never something I thought I would ever do. We came to it because you really like the idea. Well, we were living in Florida. Florida schools aren't the greatest. Florida schools are bad. They're not saying that they're not the greatest is you being nice.

Florida public schools have a horrible reputation. They do. We lived in the neighborhood. Statewide and nationwide, they have a horrible reputation. Yeah. So the neighborhood we lived in, the public school we were zoned for, was an F school. An F school. An F school.

Yeah. How does that even exist? I know. And then, you know, there were some charter schools that were available, but, you know, you're commuting an hour to drive your kid to a charter school. And, you know, so you brought up the idea of homeschooling, and I was really skeptical. But then we went to the Florida homeschool convention. I went to the Florida homeschool convention two years in a row, and it was there that I saw

how personal educating your child can be. It really is a personal decision for a family on how they educate their children, and it can be done in so many different ways. That's when I was sold because I'd always had the idea that homeschooling is just doing what you do in public school, but at home. So you can kind of pick what your kids learn, but you still, you know, they're at a desk, nine to three, whatever. And I was like, I just can't.

Like, I won't be able to get that done. But then I saw the variety of ways that you can school your children. I mean, like, you teach the kids math. The kids, the kids choose to learn math right before bedtime. Yeah. That's when they want to do flashcards. It's so amazing. It's the strangest thing.

To me, it's the strangest thing because it's so different than what happened for us. Right. And so, you know, it's definitely, for me personally, it's been a bumpy road because I grew up such a traditional family, but we do like an unschooling, child-led learning style of homeschooling. So we really, we are there for our kids. We give the kids opportunities and we follow their lead. So when they're interested in something, we help them dive into it, right? There are certain basics, reading, writing, you know, basic math that, you know, we feel is important. So we work with them when they want to work on it, right? You know, like we know, they know that math,

is important, so they're like, well, let's do it before bedtime. Okay, you know, let's feel strange, but sure. You don't want a storybook? No, we want multiplication cards. Yes. They want like, okay. Yeah, it's so funny. And, you know, it's funny because the first time I was exposed to homeschool was actually in college when I went to the Air Force Academy. Oh, yeah. When I was a public school kid in high school, I didn't even know homeschool existed because in 1998 when I graduated from high school, there was like a hard divide between people who learned at home and people who learned in school. So never did the two meet. So never did my world ever actually include a homeschooler. I never met a homeschool parent or a homeschool student. There was always the stigma that homeschoolers

were like weird Christian people. Right. That was always a stigma I grew up with. Right. And it was the same way for me in Pennsylvania. So the first time I actually came in contact with a homeschool student was when I was at the Air Force Academy. And I didn't meet one or two. I met many, many homeschool students who were at this elite university, the Air Force Academy, who had gotten there on their own and were just so insanely impressive. I mean, when I was a dick at 19 years old, I'm telling you, I was an idiot and a dick. And I would meet these other 19 year olds who were fucking impressive. Yeah. And it takes a lot to impress a 19 year old dickhead like me.

Seriously. I mean, for anybody who can relate to what it was like to be a dumb shit at 19, you know. It takes a lot for a peer to impress you. And I was impressed constantly by these homeschool students. I was like, how are you so well spoken? How are you able to focus on studies? How are you not constantly trying to get laid? How are you not like going to parties?

How are you sleeping eight hours a day and exercising and everybody's your friend? Like, how do you do this? Yeah. I was so impressed and I just watched those people over the four years that I was at the Air Force Academy. I watched them have such incredible success every single year. it absolutely transformed my point of view. I also never thought we would end up homeschooling our own kids.

Oh, yeah. So when I graduated the Air Force Academy at 22 or whatever, I never thought that I was going to homeschool kids. Yeah. So then here we are. We were 33, right? 33 years old. And living in Florida and you went to that homeschool convention.

Yeah. And you came back and you were like, I met the most amazing kids. Because that's what really struck you was the kids. Oh, yeah. The kids were polite and adult. and friendly and they like... They just interact with people in a very different way. So what I find is that maybe that's what you're seeing too is that homeschooled kids,

because they interact so much with adults and with children of varying ages, instead of being shoved into a class with only their peers of their own age and, you know, with an adult authority figure, right? That's what they're used to. So homeschooled kids, because they don't have that experience, everybody's equal when they speak to them, right? It's very organic. There's no hierarchy of authority.

Correct. So you talk to a 10-year-old or a 6-year-old or a 19-year-old, and they all speak to you like you're an equal to them. Right. Not like they're better than you, which is funny because you talk to a typical 7-year-old and you get attitude. You talk to a homeschool 7-year-old and you get 7-year-old behavior. But essentially, they still talk to you like they're a grown-up.

It's amazing. Right. But that was what, so when you had that positive experience at the homeschool convention, it brought back all that flood of memories from me for the academy. And I was like, oh shit, like we can make our kids be the kids that were so impressive just by giving them the opportunity of never stepping foot in a public school or private school environment where there's this artificial hierarchy between adults and a group of 12-year-olds or a group of 10-year-olds or a group of 6-year-olds. And that's exactly what we've seen. Yeah. And the homeschooling experiment for us, I think, has been largely successful.

It's not easy. No, it's not easy. I don't think we are ever confident that we're doing the right thing, but you look at our kids. I look at our kids and I am so insanely proud of them, which any parent is, but I can also objectively see the difference between my six-year-old daughter and other six-year-olds in how they interact with each other, how they interact with adults, how they interact with their own personal awareness and safety. Yeah, and I would say, you know, part of what's really difficult is that it takes so long to see the fruits of your labor essentially. So, you know, you have people from the outside, you know, my mom's a person who, you know, still has a very traditional mindset about schooling and she's always asking me all of these questions. And it's very difficult to explain to her that, you know, I trust that my children will learn what they need to learn when they need to learn it. Right.

They love learning. And so anything that comes up, they have the capacity to do it. And I'm always going to be there to help them. So it's definitely challenging to be questioned all the time because it's for you personally, like, especially for us, like we were raised in traditional school systems. So for us, this is all kind of a new experiment for our family. And the only way we're able to see the result is by waiting months and years, which is so challenging. but the results that we've seen so far have been so amazing that, you know, I can't doubt it.

You know, it's interesting because the way that you kind of just ended that question is the same way that we started the conversation where you were talking about how our kids have a passion for learning. Yeah. And really, that's the thing I have found among so many of our homeschool peers and our homeschool friends, even the homeschool people that we don't like, because there are some weird Christian homeschoolers out there. Yeah.

Or a weird secular homeschool. I mean, there's just all kinds. All kinds of people. There's all kinds of weird people everywhere. We're weird in our own way, too. True. But essentially, all of those children are being encouraged and being helped and being taught to develop the skill of learning.

Right. And the skill of curiosity, right? And the skill of being able to increase their capacity for any subject that they choose to pursue, which is exactly what we were talking about in the beginning with this conversation of the difference between skills and talent. If I have to choose, if I had the right or the right. the option to choose, which are the two things I would give my kids, I would give them skills instead of talent. That's just what I would choose. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you.

Folks, thank you so much for joining us. And that was an awesome question to the person who sent that question. I know if you're watching, you know exactly who you are. So thank you so much for sending that awesome question that gave us a chance to unlock some of our feelings about homeschooling and some of what we have seen with our own kids, because you can see it's very important to both of us. If you want to learn more about what we're doing and how we do it, make sure that you open up the description and click on one of the links down there. It'll take you to our homepage. It'll take you to our spy quiz where you get a chance to see exactly what kind of spy you

would have been chosen to be for CIA. We really appreciate you checking in. We love it when you give us your comments. Give us your feedback. Drop us more questions. And we will see you next time. Thanks, folks.