Mark Bell's Power Project - Matt Beaudreau - Concepts for Raising a Child in the 21st Century || MBPP Ep. 768

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Matt Beaudreau is the host of the Essential11 Podcast, TedX speaker, as well as CEO and founder of Acton Academy. Acton is an education center that is centered around every child embarking on their own “Hero’s Journey”, and having the freedom to grow, enjoy, and experiment with their own learning. Follow Matt on IG: https://www.instagram.com/mattbeaudreau/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really does work): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

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well as the podcast show notes. It was worse. I'm down for fun no jake used to come home from school and like tell me like just some wacky stuff that you would do i have no doubt i was like he's doing that to like get you guys to loosen up a bit totally right man and i dude i couldn't tell i can't tell you i got so pumped when jake wanted to do he started writing the script for like a it was kind of like the office but for school right and so playing up all the different stereotypes having me be the you know

the vastly inappropriate you know school leader that's you know making comments to the girls and comments the boys do and doing like and it was brilliant always being a little weird just always being super weird and making everybody else way uncomfortable like it was it's brilliant. Just always being a little weird. Just always being super weird and making everybody else way uncomfortable. Like it was, it's brilliant, man. Jake, what are you seeing in me? What are you writing? Yeah. Why am I the first character you thought of with this whole project?

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's funny, man. It's great to have you on the show today. I had a chance to watch you speak at that event that you invited me to. I got you. It was amazing.

And getting to be around Bedros and some of those other guys is always a great opportunity. It's fun. Are you kind of starting up like a – well, maybe not starting up. It looks like you kind of already have a network of people that come and speak at some of these schools that you have been developing and working on for a while. Yeah, it's cool, man, seeing all of how these things come together. And before I even say that, I want to, like, you rocked it on the stage. Oh, thank you.

I appreciate it. Which was cool. So, I mean, I get, you know, my whole career outside of education has been speaking. And so I see a lot of people I got the, like,

the candy cane, like, hook. Like, dude. Because I was up there forever and I wasn't really scheduled. That's so funny. I wasn't really scheduled to go and it's like, like five minutes

and it's like blinking like five minutes and it's like blinking which i guess main's like you should get off the stage and then the next one came and it's like wrap it up wrap it up that's so funny but you did so well man thank you really did couldn't have had somebody kick it off better but yeah man we um so that whole group of guys um ryan mickler had been contacted by somebody in his iron council. And the gentleman was actually there at the event. His name is Bear Kingery. And so shout out to him.

And Bear was like, hey, I want to put together kind of this group of men that are speaking to different components of masculinity. And I really want to put a bunch of these speaking things together. And if we can go towards schools, if we can do these live events, you know, whatever that looks looks like who should be involved in that and so ryan was gracious enough to to ask me and we kind of said you know who else and so of course bedros made a whole lot of sense and um you know and ray and ryan and john level and all those guys stephen mansfield jack donovan tanner guzzi all those guys that were there um and so that was just kind of the first so we actually he sent all of us to mexico uh last december and we just kind ofwowed and said, where do we want to go with this? And so that was event one, and we got a lot more things coming.

So it was fun, man. One of the big reasons I invited you back on the show, and there's like a lot to get to because I think that so much of what you teach seems to always come back to or oftentimes comes back to personal responsibility. Yes, sir. And a lot of it comes back to parenting. But then we end up in these weird situations where there's a lot of children that just don't have parents that maybe care. There's some kids that like literally kind of don't have parents.

There's kids that need to be adopted. And there's like, I don't know, there's so many different factors in all of this. But I agree with a lot of the stuff that you say. So I'm like, man, I want to bring him back on the show and I'd love to have you, you know, communicate some of these like family values that you found to be super beneficial for you and have also extended out to be very beneficial to a lot of other folks. Yeah, man. No, it's a pleasure. You're right. And I wish I had the ability to fix all of that, you know, and I just, I don't know. I don't know the answers because

people, you know, and you know, in health and fitness, you'll get so many people that'll just come to you and go, Hey, and what do I do? You know, and it's like a nuanced kind of deal. And there's certain tenants though, right. That, you know, for physical health or certain tenants that look, I don't know your unique situation, but here's what I found to kind of work for most people most of the time. And I think from the parenting standpoint, it's that same thing. If we can get people to kind of start having those conversations and be intentional about it, you know? And, uh, you know, my, my son, this is so people have some context. My son went to act in academy and he really enjoyed it a lot, his time there. And he made a decision his senior year. He wanted to go back to Davis High School with his friends and stuff like that,

which made some sense. But he got to go to school at a time when a lot of other schools were shut down. And I think I've asked him recently if he thinks that's a transformative part of his life, but I asked him way too early. He was like, I don't know. Yeah, he's a kid, so he's like, I don't know. He kind of didn't care. But I think he'll look back on it, and I think it will be

a transformative part of his life. What is something that makes your school different? And also, when you were speaking, I was, I guess, not really surprised, but I thought it was interesting how you were, like like you were talking about like unconventional education but you were also mentioning like homeschooling yeah like almost like don't even come to my school yeah like do it at home sure and then parents have this knee-jerk reaction of like oh well I can't do that of course and it's like if you're not going to teach your

kids then whose responsibility you're going to shove that off to? And I was like, wow, that's really powerful. That sounds incredible. It's the primary deal. And so people confuse because I'm very, very passionate obviously about young people, about education in particular because that is your foundation. I'm very passionate. I talked in that speech about the fact that we spend a lot of time trying to fix so many broken human beings and we're trying to fix them as adults. Well, it only makes sense to

start at the beginning and create an ultra strong foundation that you just can't break in the first place. It just makes sense to me to do that. Obviously, it's nuanced. There's so many other factors. So if that's going to be the case, I want people to make informed decisions on what they're doing. And I really don't believe there's anybody that's going to be more impactful than the parents. And if the parents can keep the kids home and teach them, why would you not do that? Like, why would you not pour in all of that? You are the most qualified. You hear that a lot. I'm not qualified. I'm not qualified to teach my kids, right? And I always say the irony of that is people, parents feel like they're not qualified

and they went through a conveyor belt school system. And so then they turn around and put their kids back in the same system that left them feeling unqualified to teach their own kids, right? The irony of that statement. And I just think that's the toehold that the religion of conveyor belt schooling has on everybody. And I just think that's such a dangerous deal. So if

you can homeschool and you can make that work, man, do it. And I love Acton and I think Acton's got a phenomenal place and it's a phenomenal option. At the end of the day, I'm for sovereignty of parents to reclaim that sovereignty for themselves so that they're leading by example, but then sovereignty over the family and having those decisions and really just being intentional about it. School is an afterthought for people, and it's such a formative amount of time during the most formative years of their life. That should be so freaking intentional. So I want parents to realize there's options and then to choose what makes the most sense. I'm curious what, what, you know, would make school somewhat

or current normal schooling somewhat useless or behind what aspects of it are behind? Because when I look back to when I was in school, so many things I don't use, like so many things I don't use. And I'm, I think about it sometimes I'm like, well, even though I don't use it and I learned it, is it still beneficial that I did learn this at this point in time? Or would it, I feel like it probably would have been more beneficial for me to learn true life things because it took me in my adulthood years learning and reading personal development books and developing that side of being creative to do more creative things. So where is normal school failing people and where does acting and even homeschooling in the way you're talking about, where does it fill those gaps to allow kids to

work in modern society or actually work ahead in modern society? Yeah. Or actually be, you know, work on something that transfers into what modern society values, right? Modern society values competence. It values the ability to communicate, it values the ability to be resilient, it values mastery, you know, it values those things. The thought that we get that by everybody doing the same thing, same time on this very narrow scope of academia, and that that is transferable, it's, it's provably false, right? So it's not just the the curriculum side of that. Like you said, you kind of alluded to the fact that most of that curriculum is nonsense.

It's useless for most people. And I played the game. I got straight A's all through school. And a couple years ago, I took a test just to show some of the parents at Acton Academy. I went back and took a math test to see what my quote-unquote grade level was, right? And it was at sixth grade. Sixth grade. Confidence giving their kids to you. That's right. Yeah. So, so acting Academy, man, come to, yeah. So it's the worst sales pitch has ever happened, but it's just, I'm trying to prove a point. Cause I also make good money. I run multiple businesses that are doing,

doing a lot of money. I get paid a lot of money by big businesses that make a lot more money than I do to go in and speak to them about how to – so academia is not what's transferable, right? So we're wasting a lot of time teaching kids to outsource their thoughts, teaching them to outsource their thinking. And I think that is one of the things that kills me the most. A focus on academia and theory is a problem. In a recent TEDx, I talked about my son who wants to do jiu-jitsu, right? Six years old. And I gave the example of, well, school would say, cool, then here's this book. Here's this multiple choice test.

Here's this. You're going to watch this video. You're going to do a trifold board, and somebody's going to come by. And as long as you follow the rubric, you're going to do it. And you're going to do a trifold board, and somebody's going to come by and as long as you follow the rubric, you're gonna do it. And then they're going to tell you great, you know, jujitsu, whereas the real world says, go get on the mat, go get your ass kicked, go suck at it. And then keep going. And you'll learn and you learn, you know, from from mentors and master instructors, right? And then that's how you actually get better. And it's a simplified way to say, well, that's how everything works. You got to start

actually doing it, not talking about the academic theory. So school is all about academic theory and not necessarily anything that's transferable. Whereas in acting, we want to go, Hey, you've got, first of all, responsibility, and we're not going to outsource the responsibility. You've got the responsibility here to make decisions, to collaborate, to fight through some stuff, to fight through your own stuff of wanting to not do anything and actually push yourself to get something done. And you've got to do something that's transferable into the real world. So that's a big part of it. But what I don't like about conventional school even more are the habits that are built. It's the sneaky habits that are built, right?

It's not just that you're wasting time on academia. So what are you actually spending your time doing? Well, you're spending your time being trained to a bell. You're spending time being trained that anybody who claims authority is somebody you have to be blindly obedient to. And you've just got to kind of play their game. You're spending time being made this background actor in your own life rather than learning to write your own script. And you know, it's it's everything is about obedience. Everything is, you know, I got to raise my hand to ask if I can go to the bathroom, like there's all of those things. So by the time you come out of there 12, 13 years, those are the habits you've built. So when you go to a job or something where you've got to take

personal responsibility, you're like, well, shit, what do you want me to do? What's the rubric? And I'm not going to go any further. And I don't know, like, I don't actually have any idea if I like something, if I don't like it, if I'm good at something, if I'm not good, because I actually haven't really experienced anything. I've done the same narrow scope of academia that everybody else did. And I'm getting judged on how well I played that silly game. And that's a sneaky habit because it's a, it's a mindset and it sucks. The mindset sucks, the personal responsibility right out of the person. What happens at acting academy? If someone's not pulling their weight, they're not like doing their work. Yeah. Um, because you're trying to be like a little free with what the person can pick and choose, but maybe I have

some of what I'm aware of. like sometimes you guys do stuff as like a team. And what if someone's just like, how does that work out? Yeah. So it's contextual depends on what they're not pulling away around. If it's their own individual goals, you know, we really want to bring some sovereignty back to the parents too. So one of the things that is in there is the parents have access to see every single thing the young person is doing. Parents have access to what's called a journey tracker where they can see the goals that are being set and the goals that are either being met or not met. So we want the parents to be,

we don't want to be the hammers going, hey, you're not meeting your stuff. We want the parents to be able to see it and go, you guys have the conversation. If you're cool with them just kind of taking some time off and just kind of, then great. Otherwise they need to kind of get after it, right? But if it's a real world project,

it's going to be the same kind of thing as real world consequences of doing a presentation. Still closer to the mic. I'm so sorry. Yeah. So, you know, real world, if you had a real world project that you were, that you were doing, you had a presentation you had to make and somebody didn't pull their weight at a job. Well, there's going to be this internal strife. And when it comes for a time for a promotion or something like that, when everybody's going to say, Hey man, look, Andrew never really pulls his weight. Like the dude doesn't come in and he doesn't show up on time. He doesn't do this and that. Like he shouldn't be up for that promotion. Right? So at Acton, it'd be the same thing. We'll have these exhibitions

every six weeks. And what we'll end up seeing is if teams come together, if they're really holding each other accountable to, to the contracts that they sign saying, look, we're going to do this together. If they're really doing that, those exhibitions, I've had it to where they're like, Hey, we're not going to put your name on this project. And so then parents show up and they're like, okay, cool. What'd you do? You know what, Jake, what, what did you do? And Jake's got to talk to dad right there and go, you know, well, they didn't put, I'm not, none of my stuff is well, you know, he's got to have that conversation where it comes down to my team didn't put me in there cause I actually didn't do anything,

you know? And then there's all these other little systems of accountability where they can, um, you know, they can ultimately get to the point where they actually kick somebody out. I mean, that is, that is real. And we have fired students, you know, we fired a couple of high school students last year. And when I say we, high school students fired other high school students and they wrote letters to the parents saying, thank you, you know, for, for letting them be here in that time, but we're going to be letting them go. If there's any kind of tuition that needs to be, you know, given back to you, we're going to make sure that tuition comes back to you. I mean, they get fired for not holding their weight and there's all these performance reviews and performance contracts that'll go in place,

you know, for like, it's like a job, like you're not holding your weight. You can actually get let go. It's interesting because like, it makes me think of situations in normal school where if something does happen to a kid, if the teacher gives a kid a C minus or they get a little bit of a bad grade, mom or dad goes to the teacher it's like my son studied for this test i need you to do something about this what happens do you have parents come to you when like their student says something or whatever does that happen or do parents also do they get behind what's going on here uh yes and yes so we try to fit yes and yes so we try you know we've and we had to learn this the hard way. And I made, you know, especially just being so excited about what I'd seen within this network and the opportunity that I know the young people have versus traditional school. So excited. So I made the mistake of having some parents that, you know, I think almost believed more in me and my excitement around it versus believing in their young heroes.

me and my excitement around it versus believing in their young heroes. And that's what I'm always asking you to believe in me. I'm not asking you to believe in acting. I'm asking you to believe in your young human and put the, you know, raise the bar of expectation, right? So we learned that the hard way and had some transitions we had to make, but we've got to a point where there's a filtering system now to try to make sure parents are all on board. We're like, look, our ideal day is that we're completely out of the way, which means you've got to be okay with us being completely out of the way, which means they're going to make some mistakes. They're going to fail on some things. And you've got to be okay with that as a parent because that's real learning.

That's a real learning scenario. But you'll also have the situations that happen and maybe a young person is not taking personal responsibility and then goes home and will spin their version of here's what it is and here's what's happened. Of course. Right? Of course. So that, to be honest, is one of the hardest situations because I also don't want to get into a battle with that young person and bring the parents in and have this, well, you were supposed to, and you, I don't want to play that. We want to, so when we have

that kind of scenario, you know, if the parents are upset and calling for a meeting, that's fine. The hero has to be there as well. We don't have parent meetings without that young hero ever. So the hero has got to be in there too. And he or she has to lead that meeting. They've got to say, Hey, this is a, this is what's going on because that way we can always point back to the contracts and go, okay, well, here's what you said you were going to do. What did you actually do? And it, and it, you know, it's a, it's a better way to put that mirror in front. And usually when we come out of those meetings, the parents are like, got it. We feel good. What the hell? Like, let's go get on it. You know what I mean? Because most of the time it's there. All of the

opportunities there, what they don't like, what adults don't like about acting is that they are tied so much that religious, you're going to learn by force and we won't do it. That's what they end up not liking. They like the idea, but if there's not personal responsibility is not being taken and they're getting whatever story about why I can't or why I'm not or why this is going, they want us to come in and be the hammer and we won't do it. We're opening doors. That's it. So I think we were in Atlanta the last time we spoke. We ran into you at the airport and I had asked you like how young can we we, you know, get students in? Because I'm fired up. The younger, the better. So I think you had said somewhere around five, we could actually start to get going. What do they learn? I mean, what's school look like for a five-year-old at

Acton? That's a good question. So the younger, the better because of that mindset you're developing, right? It's almost for us to take,'s really really hard and i kudos to jake man and that's honestly a lot of it goes back to to awesome parenting and the way you guys support him too because he came in and he was willing to try things and he was able to and it still it took him a while to kind of even get his groove and he was watching and he was like this is way freaking different and but it's so hard to get somebody to come in and take extreme ownership over there it's hard to get adults to do that right it's really hard to get a 14 15 in and take extreme ownership over their own. It's hard to get adults to do that, right? It's really hard to get a 14, 15 year old to do that when, especially when

they've come from conventional school, right? It was like, no, no, you've got to create your goals and you're responsible for going and getting those. And we're going to give you tools here and we're going to give you experiences here, but you've got to take something out of that. So the younger, the better, because then they never know any different. They're used to having hard conversations. They're used to all of those things, but at five play is how they learn, right? It's much more of like a Montessori type setup. So they're given options of jobs to do responsibilities to take on. And some of those responsibilities look like games, um, and they are games, but they're also games where they're, they're learning some of the, you know, some of the fundamental skills, but the social emotional is where they're learning some of the fundamental skills.

But the social-emotional is a big deal. Getting them to understand choices by giving them good choices. You're not sovereign at five years old. I know there's a lot of the unschooling advocates that are like, they'll always make great choices. And if they just want to eat Skittles for dinner, that's shitty parenting. Sorry. You're being a moron. But if you go, hey, you're five. I want you to learn how to make choices. Here's a good choice. A, B, C, D, E, and F.

What do you want to choose? You don't talk about G, H, I, J, K, L, because those are all bad choices, right? So you talk about the good ones and you give them that. That's how kind of the studio is set up. So they take on various responsibilities. Um, and then they start to learn rules of engagement on conversation. So social, emotional, and really that play based kind of mentality should go up through about seven or eight years old. We should not be hammering academics early for them. If they're interested in it and they self-direct and they start taking on some of the more academic challenges, great, roll with it. That's awesome. But we're not going to put specific metrics on it like in a conveyor belt school where it's like, no, no, you've got to be able to do this academically, this academically, this academically, or you're not going to first grade or you're not going to second grade. Developmentally, we're screwing kids up with that focus.

So very much play-based, social, emotional kind of stuff. And honestly, we don't hit that academic super super hard until really middle school and you can finish all 12 years of the you know full-on curriculum in middle school in three years three four years if you're focused and that's not a quote-unquote gifted child that's anybody we're just going developmentally so you know ridiculous with the way we do it and we elongate it and we drag it out we make it seem like it's this you know a 12-year process it's not what about uh when it comes to discipline like one of the things i really liked about your message is when you talk

about discipline you talk about uh how if you show kids that it's an opportunity to have discipline, then you don't have to necessarily discipline them. That's right. You just make it. You normalize what you normalize, right? So when you're young people, and that's why parents are so powerful, whatever is the normal status quo in your house, it's just what is always done. Humans adapt to that, right? Like this is just what normal looks like. Whether we're out in a village and we've got to walk five miles to get water and come back and that's just normal.

Or whether you just have chores around the farm or rather, you know, or mom and dad fight all the time and I go in my room and play video games and I just eat a bunch of garbage. Like you normalize what you make normal. So discipline is something that I think really needs a reframe, culturally speaking, you know, discipline. We, I have parents come at me usually from two angles and they go, you know, there's, there's the parent that doesn't want to, I don't want to discipline my kids because I don't want them to be scared of me or others that are like, no, I need to discipline them really, really hard so that they do the right thing. And they know, and I got spanked as a kid. So I'm going to start whacking them early and I'm going to discipline them. And I

think both are taking that wrong approach. The approach should be reframing discipline to being a disciplined individual. What are the habits that you have every single day? What are the non-negotiable virtues and characteristics that you exhibit, right? And that's where it goes back into like our family rules and stuff and kind of our family contract. Those are just non-negotiable values. We just have decided together, look, this is who we are as a family. We are, these 11 rules kind of define it. Like we're going to always make sure we're, we're doing, and we're going to hold each other accountable to that. And if we do that on a daily basis, we are learning to be disciplined. And so that's, that's what I always, you know, you alluded to that. Parents say, well, how do you discipline your kids? Like,

cause my kids are always, Hey, you know, Mr. Yang, nice to meet you. You know, look you in the eyes, shake your hands. My name is Morgan. My name is Brielle. My name is Loudon. They will introduce, you know, we sold some goats the other day and the guy comes up and my nine-year-old was like, hi, Mr. You know, whatever his name was. Nice to meet you. I'm Brielle. Here's the bill of sale for you. And so what we're going to ask you to do is sign here. I'll take a picture. You can keep the receipt. And then you can hand me the cash, right?

And he's going, what the hell? And I'm like, it's just normal for us. That's not weird for her. That's how it's always been. So if you teach your young people to be disciplined humans, then you don't have to worry about disciplining them. It's just who they are. I really am curious going a little bit deeper on this discipline aspect because we've talked about this on the podcast before. I was whooped as a kid, right?

I come from Nigerian culture and even back in Nigeria in school, teachers are, are teachers are hitting the kids with canes. It's normal. Right. And all the African kids I know it's normal, but then you're raised that way. I look back on it. I don't have trauma. I, my mom wasn't doing it out of like, out of anger. He was doing it because that's what discipline was. You, you talk back, you do some stupid shit here's the bell that's that's normal right and you know i had a talk with my girlfriend because she was never spanked she ended up great and we were talking back and forth or like i had a hard time thinking about like i don't want to ever discipline my kid when i have one or spank my kid when i have one but i feel like if that

kid's like me like but i need a i mean i I mean, I was a, I was an asshole, you know what I mean? Totally. So I'm really curious. Cause you probably have a lot of parents that come to you with those types of questions. What are your thoughts on that? Like, I don't think that kids have to be spanked. Yeah.

That's a very American sentiment, but I think it's true. But how can somebody who has gone through that? Yeah. They got to, how can they. They got to retrain the brain. Retrain the brain. Yeah, 100%, man. And again, I was whooped.

I was whooped too. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. My dad was a hardcore, I mean, getting stabbed at work and having some like, he was a rough, he was a rough dude. So we got whooped and that's a nice way to say it. But it transferred over

and I was kind of like, okay, well, you know, I'm not necessarily going to do that either, man, because I know that sometimes that was a little too much. But then I had my first and I found myself, I get mad and I pop her on the butt

and she's the one that kind of came to me and was just like, can you stop doing that? And it was, I mean, little, little. And I was just like, and this is my little girl, you know what I mean? was, I mean, little, little, and I was just like, and this is my little girl, you know what I mean? So, you know, first and foremost, you know, when we're talking about all these parenting things and I'm talking about from experience of first of all, being the most unperfect parent on the planet. Like I want

people to, there's no such thing as a perfect parent, but you should always strive to be the perfect parent. Always standard should always always remain in perfection. Right? And so she's the one that kind of came to me on that. And I just sit there and go, okay, all right. So what do we do instead? You know, and it was, so once we kind of switched over and it was just like, look, very calm correction and natural consequence and clear boundaries. And as much as we could get ahead of the game of, okay, we want to be proactive, not just reactive.

So we want to be proactive on those kind of family values of like, look, this is what we expect. And we didn't have the rules at that point, but it's like, okay, this is what we expect. This is the expectation of how you're going to behave. This is the expectation of what this looks like in this different situation, trying to give her as much information up front as possible. And if you miss the mark on that, well, the natural consequence is going to be this. And they understand that

if you're consistent with it. Every time she misses that mark, you have that natural calm correction. Every time she hits the mark, you praise them like a mother. You over exaggerate the qualities that you want to see. And that starts to build a consistent understanding at that young age of, Ooh, this is the way it's supposed to look. Yeah. Right. And so I use an example, I think at the, at that talk of my, of my six year old, you know, there's, uh, my little guys, he's fricking, You know, there's my little guys. He's freaking, he's an aggressive little guy too, right? For sure. But he's awesome, man.

He's perfect. And he was outside playing on the farm and he's outside doing his thing. And I walked by his room and his room looked like somebody had just gone in there and, you know, beat it to shit, right? And so there's stuff everywhere. And so I'm like, hey, man, but I've been so consistent with it. All I had to do was walk outside. I'm like, Loudon, come here. Like, hey, man, I walked've been so consistent with it. All I had to do was walk outside. I'm like, Loudon, come here.

I'm like, hey, man, I walked by your room. What do you think I saw? He's like, ooh, there's toys everywhere. I'm like, yep. I'm like, okay, so if you want freedom in this house, what do you have to have first? He says responsibility. Right, responsibility comes before freedom.

Right now you're outside playing, so you're exhibiting your freedom. But what should come first? It's that responsibility. Yep. You bet. So what do you need to do? I need to go clean up my stuff. Yep. Cool. And he goes and cleans up his stuff. Very calm. I didn't fight. He didn't fight. There's no bad blood. There's no, and he goes and does what needs to be done. The very next day he's out doing the same thing. I can get pissed and go out there and be like, what the, I can go, or I went back out and went loud. And we talked about this yesterday. Oh my gosh. Yep. And runs in a couple of days after that, it's kind of a gone. It's not even really a problem. Right. And so I didn't have to get the fights. I didn't have to get the emotions. He didn't have to get the spankings. Likewise, he was walking out, uh, you know, around the same

time we're walking out to the garden and he starts to go through this little gate and he stopped and he goes whoops and he holds the gate open and he goes ladies first and he lets his two older sisters and he lets my wife go through lets his mom go through right so i went and i grabbed him and i picked him up and i'm like hey i need you to listen to me right now that's what a good man does right there that was a gentlemanly thing to do you just let your sisters go first. You let your mom go first. Man, I'm so proud of you because you are. You're a good man.

And I put them down and let them go. I'm consistent on both of those now. And that makes all the difference, right? Praising, inspiration when they do that, like over the top, like that's the character right there. And then calmly correcting. her right that right there and then and then calmly correcting if you really want to put gasoline on on that fire you make sure they can hold you accountable when you mess up too then you are building respect like nothing else and everything just turns into this adult conversation so the other day when i had my socks and i'd taken them off because i had a bunch of stickers in them

from the farm and i was like i'm sitting on the couch for a second. I took them off and I set them on the floor and he comes in and he's like, dad, we don't just put our socks on the floor. And I can be, hey, I'm the father. You can, I can be that asshole. I can do that and create a, you know, a fricking barrier between myself and my kid. Or I can go, oh my gosh, man, thank you for holding me accountable. Cause that's exactly what I need. So I got my ass up and picked up my socks and went and put them in the dirty clothes. Then it's like, all right, cool. All they want is a little bit of respect. They want to know they don't, they want, they want boundaries. They crave those boundaries and they want to know that you respect them as an individual as well.

And that you hold very high standards, but most most importantly they want to see that you're holding those high standards for yourself leading by you know the first and best thing a parent can do is to get their own shit together yeah i'm curious uh your take on because i had said something on on instagram about like how i will use every opportunity to tell my kids they're amazing you know just like how you're saying like you like went over the top like you praised them a lot but i think was it uh carol dweck's yeah about mindset mindset yeah like what i'm curious about your thoughts on like praising too much maybe you tie it to something right if you just because parents are in this whole thing and it's like it's like an affirmation right where you just stand in the mirror and you're like hey you, you're the best. Everybody likes you. That's horseshit.

Maybe you suck and maybe nobody likes you. You can't just say it. You can't just say it and have it be true. There's got to be tied to something, right? So I'm all for that, but I wouldn't just, you know, blanket you're amazing for everything starts to just kill what that even means. starts to just kill what that even means. But like when Loudon opened that gate, I praised that specific thing. You were a gentleman the way you did that, right? You know, he started doing Ninja Warrior.

There's a Ninja Warrior course thing out there and he started doing all that stuff. When he got done, I was just like, man, the way, and he was, dude, he's badass at it. He was great, but I'm not going to just blow smoke. You're a fuck. No, I said, dude, your effort and the way you just poured in the whole time, the way when you fell, that time that you fell off of that, you ran over, you got back up, right?

I'm tying it to a specific quality and characteristic. That never gets old. If you're just saying it to say it, you're not building anything. If anything, you're building entitlement. You're like, let me break it down for you. You're pretty good at that, but there's probably another kid who's a little bit better, a little bit faster. You bet.

A little bit stronger, who's practicing a little bit more. You bet. You bet. And you'll see that, though, too. You'll see it. They'll see that. And don't be afraid to throw that either, dude. Yeah, you're good at swinging on the monkey bars,

but did you see what that girl was doing dude you know upside down she's hanging us yeah for sure well you know one-handed for a lot longer than you so you know get your shit together so you know all those but they again um you know you've got that kind of relationship built we can have those kind of conversations and it's not emotionally driven yeah i think i'm not a parent so i think this is this is this is interesting but you know the the really i think the big thing and what i know is you're saying there's when it comes to my culture like number one uh african culture kids don't speak back to their parents there's a lot of respect let's just say one thing for sure african kids and teenagers like there's a huge amount of reverence and respect that children have for adults parents etc you bet but i do think that an aspect where i'm just like wow that's that's a very interesting

thing where it's maybe for some people it's going to be hard for them to get behind is like when your child has an opinion on what you do like loud and seeing your socks on the ground and be like uh dad like me i'd been like my mom would be like what yeah my socks yeah yeah so that's uh that's interesting it's interesting but it's not an opinion if you've already made it in your house a specific here's what we do and here's what we don't do. And when I say we, I actually mean we. Parents usually parent from a very hypocritical place. We are very willing to point the finger without holding ourselves to that same standard. And again, this is coming from me having made all of the mistakes you can make on that, especially with my first kid. That's why your first kid is always your therapy kid, right?

Because you're going to mess them up at some point. Real quick, a friend of mine that had his daughter told me in SEMA, you better get all your shit in line before you have kids because they will expose all of your flaws. Oh, they expose you. You bet. Quickly. Quickly.

So freaking true. So true, man. So wait, what were we saying on that? Oh, the opinion. Yeah, but that's not an opinion because we have established that this is what we do and this is what we don't do and we stay consistent. If you say this is what we do and this is what we don't do, but sometimes you kind of let it go.

They don't believe you. If you say this is what we do and this is what we don't do, but you're not a part of that. They don't believe you. That's what's different. If you're consistent about it, then it's just it is what it is. So it's not being disrespectful. And he was very, very respectful. It was just, Dad, we don't do this.

And it just allows me to have that exact same conversation. Dad, it wasn't too long ago I came in the kitchen and was complaining about something. And my girls, Dad, rule number six, man, it wasn't too long. I came, go came in the kitchen and was complaining about something. And my girls, dad, rule number six, man, it's no complaining. Fix it. Like, what's your solution on this? I needed the adult. They were very, they were just like, dad, you're complaining.

Like, what are you going to do about that? You don't want to complain. You don't want to be in that kind of emotional state. And that's a normal conversation for us. Focusing on that and touching on it every week, you know, checking on those rules. How is everybody doing around that? So when that's the case, it's just another, you kind of have these other adults in the room that are helping hold you accountable. They help me be on my game with everything, with the way I treat

my wife, with the way I treat them, with the way I treat myself, with the way I just talk about life in general, with the way I handle work. Like it's, we're all a team that way. I think hitting, you know, going back to that topic is an inability to communicate. I think maybe for some people, you know, I know like in my family history, both of my grandparents had a lot of children. Yeah. And so of course there's, well, not of course, but there was some hitting going on in both those households, probably just because, like, I don't know, we got 10 kids, and a lot of kids are flying around, and, you know,

this kid needs a swat in the butt because he can't hit the other kid with his Tonka truck or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I always think that any sort of violence, and even though hitting a child may not be looked at as violence, I view it as violence. I think that any form of hitting is an inability to communicate what it is that you're trying to really convey.

Because could you say it? Could you talk it out? Is there a way? And somebody might be like, well, the kid's three. How the hell am I going to communicate with a three-year-old? But is hitting them like a really, is that a good option? It's the lazy way to go. And the reality is, and I love the timing of this too.

And I love, Courtney, I love you. I love you very much. It's my sister. And she was over last night at my mom's and she's got a two-year-old you know my little nephew and he's freaking awesome but he was losing his stuff and it's a kind of a normal thing and she was getting super fired up and we talked about this last night she's like what do i do like your kids are never like this what do i do you know and i just kind of went and she's like no i'm seriously i'm asking you what do i do like what is going on get madder and see how that works and that's what, and I said, I said,

do you really want the honest answer? She's like, yeah. I'm like, well, this is your fault. This is you. This is you having two years to build a relationship with him and build consistency with him and you haven't built it. So now you can just get super pissed and go for, like you said, the quick, lazy answer is I'm going to beat you into submission and see how that works out for a long tail relationship and mindset. Or I can go, okay, I've been kind of missing the boat for two years. And you can start to put the time in now. It's never too late to change again, no perfect parents. But the sooner you can get your stuff figured out and start to be consistent and hold yourself to that higher standard too. And all those things we're talking about, the better I agree.

I think that hitting, it's the lazy way to, it's the lazy, quick way to go. And I get it when you got 10 kids, 15 kids, you know, 38 kids. It's like, I don't even know which one, you know, whatever I can do, man. But yeah, I think it's the lazy way to go. I think, you know, for me, you know, I was the baby of my family. I had two older brothers, and they both got hit quite a bit, and then when I came along, I just,

I saw that that didn't, that just didn't work well. My brother, oldest brother, got hit the most, and he turned out the worst, and then Chris got hit somewhere in the, I'm just talking about from a behavior standpoint. Right, right, right, right. And I was a pussy, and I was a good boy. I didn't get in trouble.

But like after kind of seeing that, you know, and going through that experience on my own and seeing my parents become better parents. My brother, like my oldest brother, broke my parents in. I think they were trying to break him to like get him to listen. For sure. He broke them of a bad habit. They weren't like, my parents weren't abusive by any means, but they were religious. And yeah, they were just trying to instill discipline the way that they learned.

That the way that they learned. And that's the thing, right? It's that, it's that those habits that we are passing down. I mean, it's that it's you, if you don't, if you're not intentional about everything from a parenting standpoint, you will just default to the way you were parented in many, many ways. If you're not thinking about it proactively, you'll just react the way that you were raised. I mean, that's it. And I use the example of kind of training elephants. We teach our kids very, very early the same kind of things that we are, you know, our minds are kind of engaged in.

I talk about, you know, the way they train elephants. They take them when they're a baby and they tie them up, tie that rope around, right? And they try to rip the rope and they just can't do it. And so then they have it in their mind like, oh shit. But then not too long after that, they're these huge, powerful, magnificent beasts. And they're just, you can still keep them right there

with a tiny little rope. And it's not because they can't physically pull it it's because they can't mentally they just they've been trained to believe you know so they got this mental cage around them a lot of us as adults have those same kind of mental cages where we can't get out of that whether it's from parenting or i got to send my kid to a regular you know conveyor belt school kind of environment or whatever that is it's just that's how i grew up. That's how I was raised. That's what I did. And so now I feel comfortable in that, even if I can intellectually see that this doesn't make sense, my emotions are really comfortable staying in that cage. And so, you know what, son, daughter, I'm going to go and put you in that cage with me. And we're just going to kind of, and the cycle just perpetuates,

you know, and I think that's a dangerous thing. We're not intentional enough, period. You know, the interesting thing about this is that like there's so many different types of parenting within cultures. And obviously there's also the way you were parented has an effect on how you parent your children. But then it's like you don't know who's going to come out of it unscathed. Like, you know, I know so many kids who, you know, they were spanked as kids and they ended up being perfectly OK. But I know on the other side, kids that were spanked, not even as bad as me. And that's trauma for them. Like it's quite literally they remember it as trauma.

And then they do the same thing, not just to potentially their children, but they do that. That's their reaction to other people. That's right. But they do that. That's their reaction to other people. That's right. I know people who have inflicted that type of damage upon people within their relationships because violence is something that in the back of their head when anger happens and annoyance happens. Well, let me and I got to give you a a sister, and we were all raised, you know, same roof. Very, very different reactions to the way we were raised. Very, very different reactions. We all can look back and remember the same things, but we all use those as very different, you know,

experiences to draw from. And I look at them as a net positive, and I'm like, I get what not to do, and I think this is great. And I get, you know, I mean, I get dad as a, as a human being, I understand what he was trying to do. I understand what he must've been going through. And I don't have any ill will towards him for that. I don't want anything but the best for him. And, and, you know, and then another sibling where it's like, I would kill him if I saw him today, you know, and it's, and we had the same stuff, you know, it's the same household. So yeah, you're right. That's the other thing to think about. There's and we had the same stuff you know it's the same household so yeah you're right that's the other thing to think about there's other people in the household yes sir you

know normally right so that's gonna it's gonna have a different impact you know one person getting hit versus another person getting hit um maybe even one like if it's an abusive situation i know my mother went through that and in her situation, she was always like, why, why, like, why am I getting hit? Because her brothers would get hit, right? She would feel bad for them. And she just, we felt guilty and had, I mean, what a complex, like, just a horrible way to grow up. That's right. And then how you never, like you said, you don't know where you transfer that over. So that guilt and that feeling of guilt, like, does that transfer over to other things too? And not just, not just just parenting but does it just transfer over to

life in general if you start seeing somebody that you know you have something and they they don't and you just you know like it plays out in so many different ways so many different ways and you see if you can bring up uh i've sent you over uh just a screen capture of the liver King. If you just type in liver King, Mark Bell, you on, was it on his or was it on? It's on, it's on ours. Okay.

He seemed like a cool dude. He is interesting. You know, a lot of interesting stuff, but like he has his kids do this kind of thing at the table. Yeah. And I wanted to show this to you and get some of your, um,

get a little bit of your thoughts on it. So was it like a timestamp? Is that what you mean? Yes. Okay. Got it. I also wanted to point out like some just massive changes with my son. Huge changes.

Yeah. I don't know if it was the school or if it was just a maturation that was going on, but I think, I think your school had a lot to do with it. I remember a particular day, I'm getting up, I'm getting ready to like, go to the gym on like Saturday morning. And it's like, I don't know, it's like 630 in the morning or something. And he's up and he's dressed and stuff. And I was like, Oh, like, where are you going? He's like, I'm going to school. And I was like, I was like, you probably go back to bed. It's Saturday. And he's like, no, I got classmates to help. He's like, we have like an event going on. And I was like, cool. I was like, when do

you got to be there? He's like, in about an hour. He was like, I'm gonna leave in like 10 minutes because we live kind of far away. I never before saw that from him in that particular way. So I thought that was awesome. He took this responsibility. He got up on time on the weekend and he was fired up and he was excited to go. And he told me all about the fair and all about the different things that people created to sell at this particular fair and how he was helping and stuff like that. But with a lot of other stuff just around the house, you know, I would say, hey, Jake, can you replace the water or can you you know take out the garbage or anything like that he's like yep and he would just go and he would just do it now he wasn't like

before that he wasn't a it wasn't a very difficult combative kid sure uh yeah he wasn't combative yeah he wouldn't talk back things like that but um you know i did have to have conversations with him hey uh it'd be helpful if he just did it the first time, because we're a family, we try to all work together. And I'm not asking you to do anything that I wouldn't do. I do those same responsibilities, but it's just helpful, you know, and just pointing out things like that to him. But I've noticed after he did go to Acton, when he definitely went through like a lot of really, really cool changes, I think. And even another thing that happened too was I just noticed him playing his guitar more and him like kind of, he was doing that a little bit before, but he like leaned into that side of things. Because you guys promote so much about really going after the things that you're interested in.

And he got so much support there, man. I mean, I remember him being in the studio and playing, you know, and everybody's kind of doing their stuff. It was during kind of their individual times where they were doing like individual academia or, you know, individual projects and things. And he was over kind of playing and he had had conversations and they were all like, no, man, like this is rad. Like, go get it. You know, they were all very supportive. Like, oh, you're really good. Like, this is awesome.

And he's playing these tunes and I'm like, what? And I remember calling out across the auditorium because he's playing some like, he was playing Metallica. He played this really obscure, like Alice in Chains, you know, and some of my favorite bands from when I was growing up, you know, and I'm like, Jake, you know, I'm calling across. He's like, yeah. And I was like, dude, that's awesome. You know, I remember him just getting after that. He's like, yeah. And I was like, dude, that's awesome. You know, I remember him just, just getting after that. And you know, the, the young people are supportive of everybody going after their, you know, going after their passions and going after their stuff. And so again,

you normalize what you make normal, like what is the thing you just do every day? And so that's, you know, the, the talk about personal responsibility, the end of the day in those studios where they've got, they've got jobs, like they're responsible for cleaning up certain things and putting certain, especially the high school. And they're responsible for going in and helping some of the other younger students. And they're responsible for going out in the parking lot and taking care of stuff and moving barriers and doing – like they just – that becomes normal as well as the rules of engagement. They have hard conversations all the time, every day. every day. And whether it's a hard conversation around something that's happening, you know,

socially or culturally, and they're having to, you know, kind of debate on it, or whether somebody is bringing a topic they're passionate about, and they're debating on it, or whether it's just, hey, no, as a group, these guys want to do this and make this kind of the focus the next six weeks. And these guys are like, abso-frickin-lutely not. And that happens. But they have to have those hard conversations. And we focus on the they have to have those hard conversations. And we focus on the rules of engagement of a good conversation. Here's what a good conversation looks like. If you'll focus on the rules during any conversation, the content becomes irrelevant, you can talk about anything, because you're not going to get overly emotional about it, because you're going to present as much evidence as you have, because you're going to understand

that you're going to be able to learn from everybody there. And so I need to actually listen to what you say and what you say. And at the end of the day, if Mark presents something that he's got better evidence than I do, I need to also be, you know, I'm going to go, okay, I need to change my mind on this, right? And it's all of those things, you know, are hammered in on a daily basis. And so I think you're right talking about something you talked about earlier. What we've seen for a lot

of our graduates is they go into the quote unquote real world and they've got their jobs in various areas and they're the ones that come back and go, oh my gosh, I'm so thankful for this. I'm so thankful for those expectations. Sorry to interrupt. Here's another great one. Jake came home one day and he was like, I filled out an application at In-N-Out Burger. And he's like, I have an interview tomorrow or something.

So he goes in and does his interview. I'm not sure, like it didn't go well or whatever happened, you know? And so I asked him like a week later and he's like, I didn't get a call back, but my friend did. So he's like, I think he got the job. So then, um, I don't know, maybe three weeks go by and he comes back home and he's like, I got a job in In-N-Out. And I was like, oh, they finally called you. He goes, no, he goes, I was a little bummed, you know, after I didn't get the job and my friend got the job. He goes, but then I was just like, I could just drive to another In-N-Out.

And so he's like, I drove to another In-N-Out, filled out an application there. They called me. I did an interview and I got the job. Love it, dude. He didn't tell me like any of the backstory. He just went out and did it. Yeah, I thought that was really awesome. What a stud.

He is, I mean, he's a rad human. Yeah. I'm not telling you that you don't know, but he is a rad young man. I just thought that was very mature. He's, he is, I mean, he's a rad human. Yeah. He is. I'm not telling you that you don't know, but he is a rad young man. I just thought that was very mature. It's very mature. Absolutely. I know, I know 30 year olds that wouldn't do it. I've had mothers call me and go, hmm, I see your, uh, I see your building that you're, you know, that you're opening in Sacramento. My son is a teacher. He would love to work there. I'm like, you would love for him to work there or he would love to work there?

Oh, wow. He's like, oh, no, he would love to work there. And so I'm like, okay, why are you calling me, ma'am? Well, I just said I would call and just get some background information. How old's your son? I said, you know, he's 31. He's a teacher.

Okay, you obviously know nothing about what we do because that's automatically, I don't, you know, I want nothing bad for him. But my respect level for him don't, you know, I want nothing bad for him. But my respect level for him is not, you know, not starting out strong. All right, here's a liver king dinner table here. Nice. I put in the work and I was ready for this. But thank you for doing that.

You guys did good. Hopefully it rains again. More pressure since I'm in front of the camera. Yep. Yeah. All right. again. More pressure since I'm in front of the camera. Yep. Alright. Um. What up primals? This is the day

that we get prepared to get kicked in the chest, punched in the chest, or shot in the chest. So we start working on that Roman chestplate. We get ready for life. For the unexpected events we call life. To prepare to load to mechanically load up because one day you might need the strength to save somebody else's life to save your own life to save child's life or maybe even your own child's life what kind of man can

you call yourself if you can't pull your own weight or if you can't pull somebody else's weight so go get in the gym go do some push-ups go do some pull-ups go get ready for life go on that shit liver king out you can pause it there that's awesome that's so funny man that's just some of the that's rad things that he has the kids they share like they share a win for the day and both kids were just sharing that they were pumped because it rained that day and they were outside already like messing with the hose and they were they were doing stuff with that and they were they so that was their win for the day and then he has them like share like philosophy which is them mimicking the exact things that he says of course videos and

stuff like that but like what do you think of that kind of thing so we have those you know we have family meetings uh for ourselves too we do dinner every night that's non-negotiable if we can get other meals in great we do dinner every night no you know, we have family meetings for ourselves too. We do dinner every night. That's non-negotiable. If we can get other meals in, great. We do dinner every night. No, you know, absolutely. And each one's relatively casual. It's just, and we see each other all during the day. So we don't have to, you know, check in as much, but it's just more like, hey, you know,

what was, what was kind of the favorite thing you did today? And what kind of things are you working on? What are you planning for tomorrow? That's always a big thing for us is like, what is your goal for tomorrow? What is your plan? You know, kind of the Craig Ballantine, like do the brain dump, right? And so like tomorrow when you get up, what do you, what are you handling? What's on your checklist? And they all have checklists that they put together and it's got their chores on it, but it also has

whatever goals they want to accomplish for the day. And so what's on your, what's on your list for tomorrow and cool. Do you need any help? What do you need from us? You know, and just kind of have that support. So we'll have quick check-ins, but then once a week we'll have a more of a hardcore family meeting where we just dive in and go, okay, what, you know, if we've got our 11 rules, like which one, you know, are we, are we hitting all these as a family? Are we doing all these? Okay. Which one do I need to work on more right now? What do you think you need to work on more? And we'll just touch through. It doesn't take long. It's just five, six, seven minutes. But we touch on those things every single week

just to see like, hey, you know what? I felt like this week there was more complaining or there was whatever. We can just kind of address those things. We have family meetings every week. I love that he does it. And people will go, well, that's kind of silly. That's over the top.

It goes back to kind of what we started with as far as parents you know, parents and your influence. Everybody is being brainwashed, especially young people. It's just who's doing the washing. They're going to be brainwashed by culture or they're gonna be brainwashed by Netflix. They're gonna be brainwashed by their video games. They're going to be brainwashed by the school system. They're going to be brainwashed. So wouldn't you rather it be you? Shouldn't you be the primary one going, hey, this is us as a family unit. These are our goals.

These are our objectives. Shouldn't you be the one doing the majority of that? So I love that he does that. And we just, you know, that's him. I'm not like him. So I don't lead my family like that. And in that particular, like, oh, you know, that's just not my personality. But I've got more of an entrepreneurial personality and very much around personal development and, you know, and personal responsibility.

And like, that's just mine. So that's how I lead my family. So those are kind of the conversations we have, you know, daily. And we have our business meetings every Saturday. One thing I liked about that was just to get your kids to talk and to be able to, like, make a sale. Like, that's kind of what it sounded like to me. It's like a little bit of like a wrestling promo. Totally. To ask your kids to all of a sudden do it when they're like 11 or 12 out of nowhere would be really weird and probably not appropriate and probably wouldn't really make any sense. But I think if you start

your kids out with simple stuff, whatever you think is appropriate for your children, that's what he, that's his household. He does his own thing his own way. That's right. In my house, we just kind of naturally more have conversation. Yeah. And just knowing the things that I know and being around some of the people that I am around, we kind of do share wins and stuff, but I kind of secretly navigate that. Sure. We don't make it like as much of like a thing. Sure. But that's also because I didn't start out that way. If I started that way when the kids were young, I would just be like, hey, what was your win for today? Or something like that.

For sure. And that's what I like about our specific rules. We've got our, and I say rules and everybody hears it, it's our values or whatever you want to call them, right? But our 11 is they're hanging on the wall. They're right there. And what I like about that for young people specifically is they've got those tangible anchors to go back to.

Can you share what they are? I have a picture in my phone. Oh, yeah. I sent you a picture. I'm like, what are these photos? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. And I think, I mean, I should have memorized.

I got it on my phone, too. And I'll go. I'll tell you all 11. I mean, we got. I'll shoot it over to you, Andrew. You can pull it up on the screen there. Do you sometimes have the kids like... I mean, it sounds to me like you guys can kind of point to it.

You guys can be like, hey, rule four. That's exactly what it is. Like with the socks, right? That's exactly what it is. It's very, very tangible. So will this specific thing be something we address as specifically, you know, 10 years from now? Maybe not. Might not, might not even have to, but as they're, you know, 11, nine and six, it's just a very, very tangible thing for them to look at.

It's a very tangible roadmap for them to follow. You know, I think that's what I like. This is so cool because it's like, you know, my, my mom was a single parent, but she did an amazing job. Like I talked about how, like, you know, the book mindset by Carol Dweck, she talks about, don't tell your kid they're talented, et cetera. My mom never did that, but she always praised me on effort, which is why I find that valuable in other people. But when I also look back at my parenting, um, I think about things that I'm definitely going to do, but I also think about a lot of things that I want to advance upon because it wasn't a two-parent household. There was a little bit of lack there, obviously. But with the way you're setting things up for

your kids and these 11 rules that we're going to go over, it's almost like you're implanting a system for when your kids have kids, they'll be able to think clearly like our family does this. Our family had these rules. These rules are important. I can pass this on to my kids who can then pass that on to their kids. It's so systematized that it's dope. That's the way to do it, right? Is that I want them to have a clear system, clear thinking, clear actions to take, and then they'll do the same thing. Cause I don't know what the world's going to look like at that point. Right? So I'm going to trust them to do the same thing and go, how do I improve this for our situation, for our family? I'm not going to pretend like

we've got all the answers and it's like, you bet. Of course not. Like they need to take that and go, okay, well, this is what we liked. This is what we didn't like. This is what the world looks like now. This is what my family needs, but that's it. It's creating that system for them, especially when they are young. It's the blueprint. You're getting your kids to mature quickly. And what a huge difference that makes when you hear, yes, sir, yes, ma'am. You're like, who said that? Like that little eight-year-old kid over there said that?

Man. Holy smokes. And people look at that as a bad thing now where they look at like, oh, let them be a kid. And that's usually an excuse for let them be a little asshole. It's almost always that. The parents that say that most, everything in moderation, just means you don't hold a boundary for shit. That's what it means. Let's be honest about it.

Most of the people that say that stuff all the time, right? So, yeah, the whole like, let your kid be a kid and, you know, gosh. I tell you what, my kids are the most mature young people I know. And they're the happiest, happiest because they're purpose-driven. They're happy, happy. And I talk about teenager wasn't even a term until 1944. That wasn't even a thing. It wasn't even a term.

It was you're 13, congrats. You're a man. Take on some responsibility like a man would. You've got more things to do. You know, now it's just like, oh, you're 13. We're going to just, it's a delayed adulthood. You're a teenager. You know, we know your brain's not fully developed. So we use all of these excuses to just let people off the hook and just, why don't you just take 17 years off of your life now? And that's why you've got these 30 year old, you know, I say I got, I know 40 year old children and I know 15 year old adults and maturity is not a bad thing.

Taking on that responsibility early is not a bad thing. They actually like it and it opens up more doors and opportunities for them to, you know, I mean, it really does. Power Project family. I hope you guys are enjoying this episode. Now, Mark, Andrew and myself have been cold plunging for a while now. We actually use the Cold Plunge XL. But the reason why this has become part of our daily routine every single day is because of, honestly, how good it makes us feel coming out of that water. Now, if you want to take a cold shower, that is beneficial, and you need to be doing that if you don't have a cold plunge. But if you do get a cold plunge that goes all the way down to 39 degrees. It's crazy because Andrew Hurman actually talked about the benefits of dopamine post-cold plunging. Now, cocaine gives you a 2.5

rise in your dopamine release. Cold plunging gives you that also, but it also gives you a sustained higher level of dopamine throughout your day. That's just one of the benefits, as there are many. So if you guys want to get on it, Andrew, how can they? Oh, yes. You guys got to head over to thecoldplunge.com and check out Andrew's promo code POWERPROJECT to save $150 off. And before we drop off here, I do have to say that this has been the absolute best thing I have ever done for my mental health. Every single day I get in this cold plunge and I come out a happier, more positive, and more vibrant human. I can't recommend this enough. Again, again the coldplunge.com promo code power project to save 150 off links to them down in the description as well as the

podcast show notes you and your family are like in on a little secret right when you go around other families and you see kids acting appropriately this happens with uh me and quinn a lot of times quinn will see the way someone acts and she'll just like look at me like with her eyes holy yeah like sir holy shit like you're exactly right family's not you're exactly right and it works the other way too so when we all went down to mexico for that for that trip in december right and bedros and mickler and john and all those guys and everybody that had kids we all brought our kids too and tanner has like 30 kids himself you know and and so he's got sick i think he's got five he's got six on he's got six i think he's got five he's got six on he's got number six on the way but it's it's a lot so so uh he is a stud um and so we all had our kids too and what i love about

what bear said to me at that um we all went down there he's like look you know some of you guys i only know from from you know your media appearances or social media or whatever you can't you can fake it on tv or on your screens, but if we're all down here for a week and you've got your wife here and you've got your kids here, you can't fake it for that long because we're all going to be together this whole time. And he was spot on, right? You can't. And what was cool was we would all go out to these restaurants. We'd have all the adults over here. We'd have all the kids over here. And they were anywhere from like three to like 11 or 12. They had their own table. They were doing their own thing. They were all ordering their own food. They were all helping each other, right? Because everybody kind of comes

from the same sort of mindset and all the kids were doing, it didn't without fail. Every time we went out, all of the, you know, the, the people at the restaurant or people that were sitting there eating would come up and go, what, what have you guys, how did you guys do this? And so it's just like the kids will go out somewhere and they'll see some other kids going crazy and they'll be like, holy moly. They will also tell you, we come back and like, Hey, that family has their stuff together. You know, those kids are awesome. We would hang out with them all the time. You know, we get that all the time, man. It's funny. awesome we would hang out with them all the time you know we get that all the time man it's funny we went and hung out with a i don't want to hang out with a relatively uh well-known family um not that long ago and it was our first time meeting them and we all kind of you know hung out and we had a we had a great time and we left and asked my kids like how to go and

they're like it's fine what does that what does that mean um no it's fine they're nice it's just um i don't know just kind of childish there's same damn age same age but it's just like ah just a little childish you know and it's like okay man that's cool all good you know they'll tell you i'll be honest that's great let's go over these rules yes sir yeah so uh yeah number one being being honest and that we always say be honest, and it starts with yourself. So number one, we don't lie to our kids ever, period. End of story. Again, it goes back to that hypocrisy thing, right?

If we say we don't lie, and then we even talk. And again, parent, however the hell you want. People get pissed at me when I say this, but we don't do Santa Claus. We never have. And that's, to me, that's a lie because, hey, he's not real. So we just don't do it. And so being honest matters, but being honest starting with yourself too. What about holding information from the kids?

Let's say there's a – you come on some financial hard times or just have the difficult conversation with them. What do you do in your household? Sure. So it depends on what it is, right? So school shooting or shooting in Chicago a couple of days ago, that's not something I'm bringing to my kids. So I'm not lying about it, but if they heard about it and just went, Hey, we heard about this. Um, I'm not going to go deep dive into it, but I'll give them the information they need to know. And we'll have that. We'll have the conversation finances. I think parents should be intentional about talking to their kids about it. My kids know

where we stand. They know all of the business accounts look like they know what our trusts look like. They have kind of an idea of how the trusts work and the foundations work and all that kind of stuff. And so, I mean, we talk about that very, very intentionally. Um, so, you know, that's a, that's a different, that's a different sort of thing, you know? Um, but if they ask a question about something, um, you know, the very least we can say, you know what, you wouldn't necessarily understand the answers to that, so I'll give you kind of the surface level,

and as you get a little older and get some more understanding, we'll have that kind of conversation. What if a family member's real sick or something? You have that hard conversation, you say, hey, Aunt So-and-So, she has brain cancer and not looking good. I had that conversation around Aunt So-and-So last has brain cancer and like not looking had that conversation around aunt

so-and-so last week my mom's sister right now um yeah you bet i mean that's just hey this is what she's dealing with and so this is kind of what they're doing and it's like okay you know and it's like are you guys so if you feel like talking about it if anything comes up you know let us know and this is kind of how we're doing like yeah talk i always believe in those conversations yes sir and like i think kids are like really intuitive and they're really smart if you're harboring like a lot of stuff and not communicating with them i don't think i don't think it's great they know they pay attention man they're they're so much smarter and more intuitive right we haven't trained it out of them yet right and the world hasn't beat it out of them yet so they're more

in tune with that so absolutely man have man, have those conversations and they can handle, they can handle that. Um, so yeah, a hundred percent, um, being a copycat. And so that for us is we talk about the patterns of success, right? And so it's who is doing something you want to do. And if they're doing something, how did they get there? Because if they can get there, you can get there too. So what does that look like? And, and we know we take it a little step further and kind of do that whole, um, you know, kind of board of directors sort of thing from Napoleon Hill's thinking, grow rich, right? You got kind of a board of directors for all areas of your life sort of deal. So it's find those patterns of success and kind of have your board of directors. Who is that person that you kind of look up to there? Because if you look up to them, they either have something that,

that you want, or maybe you, there's something there that they exhibit a characteristic or something that is really a piece of you already. So we're not saying to be somebody else. But if you connect to something, I connected to William Wallace's, you know, every man, you know, dies, not every man really lives as a 14 year old. I remember watching that and just being like, that's right, dude, you know, just being super excited. Right. So do I want to be William Wallace? Absolutely not. But that concept, okay, cool. If he's in, if he's embodying that, what do I need to do to make sure I'm embodying that every day? Right. It's that same kind of concept. So being a copycat is that, um, quick. I, yeah, please.

I really do love how personal development concepts are cemented into these rules because like the, be a copycat thing, uh, all, all the adult friends that I know who ended up getting into personal development in their twenties and stuff, you come up through a school system where you're always asking questions about, uh, what, how do I do this? How do I do this? How do I do this? You, you're not taught to find resources, right? And then you start reading about personal development stuff and then you become a, like you learn how to find those answers for yourself. That's right. Rather than tell me what to do, it's like what did you read for that?

That's right. So these – learning this as a kid is so fucking useful and fundamental. Totally. I wish I learned all this as a kid. And that's part of what I like about acting too is we don't answer questions, right? If they've got a question, it's okay, where would we find that? You know, who's doing that? Who's doing that better than anybody?

Where can we go? And can we learn anything from them? Do they have a book? Do they have a podcast? Do they have like, can we go get that answer? Right. And, you know, and Jakey was talking about, you know, directing. It's like, okay, cool.

Well, I know. I mean, obviously you got Uncle Chris. He's phenomenal. But I also got, you know, what's that? I said, right. Yeah. No, we got Justin Folk too. You know, it was like using family members is a great example. Huge. Some phenomenal examples, you know? And so, um, yeah,

I mean, I absolutely a hundred percent. Um, yeah. Being in a, an emotional Ninja. And so, you know, feelings are, are feelings are not bad things. That is not, that is a part of the human condition. We have feelings, we can get angry, we can get upset, we can be happy, we can be all of those things are valuable. What's not valuable is is letting yourself be overly controlled by it and putting some of those feelings up on a pedestal where it's like, you know, you feel like you're entitled to something if you're angry or more often, or you're entitled to something if you're sad more often. And so many people, it's just like they want to tell everybody about how sad they are all the time for something because they want everybody to go, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry.

Or they want, you know, it's just feelings are valuable. But calm is a superpower. And that's one thing. And that's one of the things that I love the most about you guys in particular is I think you guys have really worked on that and harnessed that as humans. You know, I think you guys exhibit that, your ability to just stay relatively neutral. Yeah, I can acknowledge that feelings are there, but I'm going to go ahead and stay calm because it's going to allow me to make a better decision. I'm going to go ahead and detach if I need to detach so I can make a better decision, right? Calm, especially in the midst of chaos is an absolute superpower. And so again, I've got to exhibit that at home first. If I

exhibit that more, they exhibit it as well. I don't mean to stop at every rule, man, I've got to exhibit that at home first. If I exhibit that more, they exhibit it as well. I don't mean to stop at every rule, man, and I'm not going to. Oh, it's all good. But with this one specifically, I wonder, do you notice or do you notice a difference between men and women in terms of uptaking this specific rule? Because there's this stereotype. Trying to get my man in trouble. in trouble but there is this there is this idea that um you know well women tend to be more in tune with their emotions than men which also turns into they can exhibit their emotions more than men with it being okay like that's a normal thing now sure what what you have three daughters and one son i have two daughters one two daughters one. So what have you noticed about this rule when raising two daughters, having a wife? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I give more

leeway there because they will naturally be more emotional. Um, my biggest mistakes early on were, uh, were twofold one trying to fix it immediately and being like, Hey, hold on, fix it immediately and being like, Hey, hold on, calm down. First of all, worst thing you can say, right? Calm down. Here's your answer, right? You're going to get your dick kicked and you deserve it. So, so that's big. Or, um, I mean, well, that's, that's really, you got to give them some time or I wouldn't give them enough time to let them be emotional because if you, Yeah, that's really, you got to give them some time or I wouldn't give them enough time to let them be emotional because if you jump in and get emotional with them, that's going to just extend it too. And so, you know, just understand that that's there. Appreciate it.

Cool. Let me know how I can help and give them a little bit of time and space to get the emotions out. And then they'll calm down relatively quickly thereafter. So not jumping in too quickly is kind of a big thing because it does. It happens more. Whereas my son, I can just kind of, It's a little quicker. I think it's part of the reason why women are healthier. Like, why women live longer. I agree. Because they burn

through it all quicker, you know? They do. We're just like... We harbor it. I'm just going to stuff this in for 20 years and I'll get back to you. Yeah. And your fucking heart explodes out of your chest. So true. We're kind of stupid. Yeah. No, fucking heart explodes out of your chest. Oh, God. That's so true. We're kind of stupid.

Yeah. No, I think you're right. But yeah, just being emotionally intelligent and being able to figure out what to do with a particular feeling. You don't have to always act on it right away or be reactionary. That's right. And being able to identify it and understanding like, okay, I'm really pissed right now. And this is, so what is it, man? So then we can take a step back and just reflect.

So why do you get so mad when your brother does that? If that doesn't really impact you, like, what is it about that? And it's like, okay, well, let's be thoughtful about it. And again, that just allows you to be proactive the next time, you know, and, or not put yourself in situations where those emotions are going to come, you know, out of control. So just want them to have some emotional intelligence around that. And so that's kind of how we address it. Your son is raising some hells, what you're saying. That voice, that voice, yeah. He's got a you're saying. That boy gets at it, man. For sure. Well, he named it Vision Quest. You guys ever see Vision Quest? Yeah. Yeah. So that's where his name came from. So it's a movie about a

high school wrestler in the 80s. Matthew Modine played Loudon Swain. That's a great movie. So it's a great movie. I got Frank Jasper, the guy that played Shoot, that he wrestles. I got Frank coming on the podcast in a couple weeks, I think. But, yeah, so that's where Loudon's name came from, is from that movie. I played Lunatic Fringe the entire way home from the hospital, the whole way. Like, that's just his jam. Getting fired up. Yeah, man, he lived up to it.

So being the hardest worker in the room, you know, that one's relatively self-explanatory, but we don't get into too much of the comparison. That's where we have to make sure it's like, look, hardest worker in the room just means you are putting forth your best effort all the time. You're really comparing it to yourself. Because if you get stuck and like, okay, well, there's four of us in here right now. Am I out working? You know, Andrew and some other people. Just that gets to an unhealthy place too. and, you know, Andrew and some other,

like, just that gets to an unhealthy place too. It's just, are you putting, are you handling your stuff and really putting forth effort to get better? I know he's over, so I'm just like, all right, man, I gotta, so it's like, that gets silly. So it's more, you know, it's more of an introspection kind of thing.

And the same thing with the next one, right? Be the kindest person in the room. Be the nicest person in the room. Like be just conscientious about how you treat other people. The caveat that we talk about there um a little bit now but it doesn't play out too much i don't i don't harp on it a ton right now but it will need to later and i will especially for my for my young man is being nice is not the same thing as as getting walked all over and being a pushover

because that's very much you know i talked to him, I talked to the young men I get to serve through Apogee about being the savage and the gentleman, like having the ability to do both. And you're not going to get walked over. You should be at that in that gentleman mode, 99% of the time, right. But you should be capable to, to be the savage where you need to. And you need to be capable of cutting people off if they're, you know, uh, if they need to be cut off, whatever that looks like. But, um, but treat people well, if they're, if it's, if they're somebody that's going to be in your life, you want to have that relationship. No complaining, fix it.

It's not worth complaining about almost ever, but if it is, then it's worth finding a solution. You know, we talk about schools all the time with that. I was the public school and private school teacher and administrator that was complaining about all the ways that it could have been and should have been. Cool. So what are you going to do about it you know so build something build something else that one's a big one it's a freaking huge one uh you know we we tend to to use the words them and they you know they they made it this way that this is this well

that's right and it's like well you could probably. You can do something about that. You probably look in the mirror and probably find somebody that. You can probably find somebody that can handle that. That's right. But people don't do it because of the fear. You know, it's the normal fears, fears of other people's opinions about it and whatever. And same, we just moved to North Carolina, right? That pissed a lot of people off.

Made a lot of people upset, you know, and our family and friends and whatever. I'm like, look, man, I'm not doing it to get away from you. But there were some things that we said there were opportunities that were there. There were some things that we saw were, were issues. We had opportunities that, you know, for us as a family that made a whole lot of sense. Um, and I'm not going to complain about, Oh, well, California, this, or my taxes, this, or mine, whatever. I actually have a tangible way to fix it. So I need to put my money where my mouth is and pull the trigger. I like that one, especially too, because, uh, because like not like I complained a lot as a kid,

but I did remember when I was 21 years old, the first time I heard about just the complaining rules on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I remember him saying, I don't complain ever. That's just a rule for me. And I was like, it's a fucking good rule. I'm just not going to complain about it. It's a great rule. It's a great rule.

It is. Yeah. Words matter. You know, they very much do. And so you're training yourself, but I really believe you're training your subconscious when you just consistently in that frame of mind, you know, and you'll, you'll start to see all the things where you can always find something wrong, but man, you can always find something right too. You know, I think that's just so much more powerful. Um, you know, think because most

people won't, we talk a lot about the fact that people live reactively and people live out of fear and people will follow the status quo. We all heard the whole, you know, if your friends all jumped off a bridge, man, would you do it? And we're always like, no. 99% of people are an abso-fricking-lutely yes, they would for most things, you know. And so we just talk about, look, think and be very intentional about what you're doing and why you're doing it, because most people will not do that. They will just go with the flow. We give credit to Jocko for number eight, discipline equals freedom. And it's that same concept we talked about earlier is, you know, if we know responsibility comes before that freedom, if we have that order correct, we'll always take care of the priorities and the things

that need to be done. And that gives us freedom, the ultimate freedom being, you know, a peace of mind that most people don't have. I really think that's a big part of the reason my kids are happier than most kids. I think that's why I'm happier than most people. Because there's non-negotiables every day of the things that need to get done. And we're going to get those done. Memento Mori is the one I probably get the most pushback on because people go, well, you're teaching your kids to have a fascination with death. It's a fascination with life. Don't forget, man. You've got one day today.

That's it. And then this day is gone. It's done. And you're one day closer to death. So let's make the most of it. Be intentional. Everything's it. And then this day is gone, is done. And you're one day closer to death. So like, let's make the most of it. Kind of everything's be intentional. Everything's temporary. Everything's temporary. This ride ends, right? You know, um, you are personally responsible and that's just a reminder that if there's something that needs to be done, you're responsible for, for getting it done. Whether that's somebody's socks on the, on the

floor, you know, somebody's, something's got to get fed on the floor, you know, somebody's something's got to get fed on the farm or something's got to, you know, happen in business. You're always a leader. You're at very least you're a leader of one. So you are always personally responsible. And the last one is doing the right thing is always the right thing. You do not negotiate with your integrity ever. You know, and that's, that's a fun conversation with them. Because, you know, we talk, I'm not always going to be there. Mom's not always going to be there. Sometimes you are by yourself. Sometimes you are with some peers. Sometimes you are, the minute you let yourself negotiate with your integrity, you know, you open up the doors to some pretty slippery slopes that you don't want to go down. So, and every time you avoid sacrificing

your integrity, you put some money in the bank right there that you can count on later. So don't sacrifice your integrity. That handwriting was immaculate, by the way. That's one thing I noticed. So, man, that's a – yeah, shout out to – oh, God, I wish I could remember the name of the business that did it. Kelly Steele is her name. So, yeah, shout out to Kellylly man because i i sent her over those

rules and and uh she whipped it up and put it on our doorstep for us to come grab yeah yeah yep kelly steel that's cool man uh before the show started we were talking a little bit about uh some of these really unfortunate situations that have happened uh in the last well i guess it's been happening for years now, but the last several months there's been more school shootings and things like that. What are some of your thoughts on that? Like, where do you think, you know, some of these things are kind of coming from? Yeah, it is unfortunate, man. And I'll get the stuff out of the way that makes people mad the most. It's not a gun problem. We've always had guns.

We've always had access to guns. Those have always been here. I don't think it is a gun problem or an accessibility to gun problem. I think it is a person problem. I think it's a young man problem. I think our young men are being chopped off at the knees really, really early. They don't have, you know, there's a lot of fatherless homes, obviously, but they don't have good male mentors. Adulthood, kind of what we've talked about a little bit earlier, adulthood is now seen

as unattractive, right? Responsibility is now seen as unattractive. They don't aspire to be adults because that's just seen as something that's kind of a drag. And so, you know, they don't have those responsibilities to really look up to. And then we're also putting them in these, you know, they don't have those responsibilities to really look up to. And, and, and then we're also putting them in these, you know, they're coming from these broken homes and then they're going into, you know, the, obviously the systems that I don't love. That's another one of the side effects of schooling is that you don't have a voice there as a young person and you want a voice, like you want to be able to just voice your opinions. You want to be able to have some sort of power, some sort of respect, not in a bad way. And so the way you earn it at school is you create cliques on the outside.

And you have this group that can then look down on this group. And it's very much the same way as it happens in prison. They don't have any power. They're being told what to do all day long. It's this like system. They're walking your straight line. We'll tell you when you can do this. We'll tell you you can do that.

Like they're walking your straight line. We'll tell you when you can do this. We'll tell you you can do that. Like if you look at the systems, there's no other system in our country that looks as close to how we operate in schools as prison, period. And so you create all these weird social hierarchies and all these things that kind of take place, right? And so that's where you get a lot of the bullying comes in and you've got all of those things. Of course, it's more – it's multifaceted. So you have all that, but then we're taking our young men and we're medicating them, you know, really, really early as well. And we're telling them something's wrong with them. And that's one thing that doesn't get talked about enough. I think all of these mass shootings,

you know, these guys are usually on prescription medications, I would say in almost a hundred percent of the cases that I'm aware they're on some of these prescription meds and they have been for a long time, you know? And so I think it's, I think all of those things are, are, um, are playing into it. Yeah. Media culture, of course, there's a lot of negative influences there, but, um, we are failing, we are failing our young guys, uh, early. You think video games play a factor in there? Um, I, I don't think they play a factor the way a lot of people, so a lot of people will look at it and say, video games desensitize people to killing, right? Because you're used to doing all this and it's desensitized.

I don't know that there's really clear evidence for that necessarily being the case. What I don't love about video games is um that it desensitizes them to life especially our young guys i think it's a sneaky thing for our young guys because i think the dna of a young man is he wants to he wants to be strong he wants to be brave he wants to conquer he wants to achieve he wants to go wants to get the girl he wants to right and you guys know like you have that kind of innate desire right it's it's part of our dna and i think the sneaky thing about video games for our young guys is they can start to check off those boxes subconsciously without actually doing shit

they don't actually do anything. Whereas we had, you know, we like, oh, back in our day, whatever. But like where, I mean, we had to go actually, I had to go actually fight the fight and win or lose. I had to go actually ask the girl out and have her say yes or no. I had to actually go, I'm going to, you know, whatever. Like you actually had to do it and experience it and earn that victory it checks off that box because you're like yes i leveled up oh i went and saved this oh i beat that oh and then the rest of the world kind of gets toned down and you're like ah i've

already checked that off and so you're not as driven to actually go do those things i think that's a more dangerous spot for our young guys with video games. Yeah. As somebody who loves video games and still will play them, I've gotten a good grasp on it now. But you're absolutely right. And the point that I was going to make was, for myself, I loved sports growing up.

I watched them every freaking day. We didn't watch cartoons in the house. We watched SportsCenter. we watched every single sport yeah uh what happened was the kids got way bigger and stronger than me so that was really freaking hard what was really easy was i'll just create my guy on nba live like dude that guy's fucking dope so you're right i actually did get that i checked that box off yep and it sucked because like well i'm really really good over here and i'm terrible over here i'm gonna lean into what i'm good at um it kind of reminds me of like the thing that we talk about with porn addiction or just porn in general yeah like people

are getting that fix there and then when it comes to the real life thing there's like it's not that cool not that exciting i already got something better over here because like she doesn't say no or you know what i mean i don't even have to try you don't have to try you don't have to try and it just descends like you said it perfectly desensitizes life it's it's exactly it man all of a sudden this whole metaverse whatever just becomes far more attractive because i can get everything i want without any kind of effort and you can become that superhero avatar you know you don't just play the guy on the screen you become that person. Yep. So I think it simultaneously checks off those boxes, but then there's got to be something

there too, where you also know that it's bullshit and you're not actually doing something too, you know? And so I think that creates this, an internal conflict that I'm not smart enough to know what that looks like from a psychological standpoint, but you know, just anecdotally from working with thousands and thousands of young people, I think it's that, you know, it's like checks that off. Plus I know I'm not actually doing anything. And so it just kind of creates this cycle of not good, you know, it's not a good emotional state. You know, we diverted from the shooting thing, but this is very interesting because we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation with what I learned in school, the world is very different. You can do a lot of different things nowadays, right?

You can do a lot of things with video games. When I was younger, I played a lot, I gamed a lot, you know, I, I, and it was, it was a bad hole. Cause it's not like I wasn't making money with it. I spent like thousands of hours on certain games though. Um, and I had to stop playing multiplayer games at a certain point because i was like if i want to be good in life i have to quit so i quit right before college and deleted certain accounts and i was so sad but nowadays you have you have like hundreds of thousands of people or tens of thousands of people who are making money money like not just little bit amounts money it's just streaming a game that they like for people to

watch them play for sure so it makes me wonder you know with kids you know you you have all these kids that are like seeing all these different ways to do well in life yeah and there must be some of them who are like damn them youtubers are making twitch streamers are making some money on call of duty so how do you rectify that for those kids? You bet, man. And that is a tough thing because you're right. There are some people that are just ball. I mean, there are some people that are doing some things with that,

with the YouTube, with the video games, with all that stuff. And that's great. And if a young person thinks that that's where he or she wants to go, I want to see evidence of, cool, what are you doing to be intentional about growing there then?

What are you doing about being intentional about where do you make the money in these? Is it through sponsorships? Is it through subscribers? Is it through Twitch or whatever it is? Is it through, like where do you actually do that?

And then what goals are you setting for those specific metrics, the business side of it? I got to play for four hours a day to get good. Right. Right. Exactly.

I'm working right now. Exactly. Right? I'm researching. But it's, you you know to get good at fucking overwatch or one of these games you gotta practice uh-huh yeah yeah but i mean what is the i mean really so like if you're gonna do that i want specific goals around that don't let other responsibilities slide don't let the real world slide and then i want some intentional goals

around that as well and some some timeframes and go, man, I'm going to get to this part. I'm going to have, you know, I'm going to reach out, even if it's like, I'm going to reach out and I'm going to get conversations with these guys that are making money around this. And I'm going to sit down and have conversations. If I, I want to see some intentionality around actually moving that direction other than I'm just playing just to play. Cause you don't have the fit, you know, even if you're just playing basketball playing just to play. Because you don't have the fit. Even if you're just playing basketball just to play or doing jujitsu just to do it, there's the physicality that comes into that.

There's other benefits that are there too. You don't have that there. So I want to see those other goals without sacrificing other things too. Responsibilities still need to get checked off. But it's tough. It's a different opportunity if you could make some small changes to every school in the united states like what would they

be like do you think that school goes on for too many years do you think it's too structured like where do you think like what are maybe the two or three like main things where you're like yeah i would love for this because i thought the pandemic i, I thought, I was like, this is going to be great. When people go back to school, they'll start thinking of some different ways to run school. Because I thought a lot of it was like just. And that's because you're a nice person and you want to believe that, you know, the government has any desire to do anything other than what it's doing right now, because it doesn't, and it's only going to get more narrow on their requirements only get more

narrow on and lasered in on certain agendas to just rile people up. All of that is, is contentious. It's a systemic issue that is not going away. Government school is the way it is not going away, it'll not change, period, end of story. So if I could wave the magic wand, though, and get it, I'd get rid of subjects. Life doesn't work in subjects. I would get rid of subjects. I would make everything project-based versus academic-focused. I would do away with credentialing programs altogether. That's the first question you get asked all the time.

Are these credits going to count? Oh, my gosh, all of it. I would do away with all of that. I would do away with teacher training around getting your teaching credentials. I would do away with all of that. You would have to, you know, as far as the humans coming in, I want them to, it's more of a personal development kind of mindset. I'm looking for that kind of DNA, not somebody that can follow directions and perpetuate a system.

Get rid of subjects, get rid of all the whole credentialing platforms and the grades and all that kind of stuff. And then get rid of the, you can only work with your same data manufacturer, you know, as far as the people you deal with, right? Like the interage activity matters. Um, you know, everybody collaborating together. And if you're 15, great, you're going to sometimes be doing some things with some six-year-olds. And sometimes you're also gonna be doing some things with 25-year-old, you know, teachers, you guys are all working together kind of stuff. I would get rid of all of the, uh, the age segregation too. That age segregation thing's actually quite interesting. When I first heard you talk about it when you came on the podcast last year,

I was like, whoa, six-year-olds are working with 16-year-olds. But look at that dynamic right here. You're 45, right? That's right. You're 36? 37. 37? I'm 29.

You're right. If we rewind the clock, when I was six, you were fucking, what, 17? You were in your 20s. I'm helping to team the ties. Right? So that in and of itself, when you go into normal jobs and you have people in certain positions of power, sometimes they're not as intelligent as some of the younger individuals. Of course. And they will, because of the age gap, they will treat the younger person like shit because they're not used to working with

people that are younger with them. They automatically do that, but you're teaching people how to treat each other with respect despite age. Despite age. And to try to understand the background. So I, you know, when I work with, with companies in the fortune 500s, we talk a lot about the generational gap and we talk about the fact that every generation goes, well, my generation's got it figured out. We are doing things the way it should be, right? You older guys are freaking living in the past. You got great chest hair, and that's fantastic.

But you guys are living way in the past. The younger people, younger than me, they're ruining the world, right? Every generation does that. What they should be doing is going, okay, well, we grew up in this certain time where this was what was normal. This is what was culturally expected. This is what people believed. And so that's part of the reason that I believe the way I believe. It's part of the reason that I, you know, it's part of the reason that I want somebody to come in and have the conversation face to face when you want to just text about it and you think that's okay. Well, who says either

one of them are wrong, but you each have a preference and you think that's okay. Well, who says either one of them are wrong, but you each have a preference and you automatically are pissed at the other one because they want to do something that you don't want to do. So let's have an understanding around that, you know, so those generational differences are, are strange. So if you're more used to working real time with people in those, you can have those conversations more readily without being automatically me versus you. Does that help prevent kids from like clicking up at Acton? Big time. Yeah. Big time. Of course you're gonna have people that you're closer with, but big time you see the, you know, you see the, the older kids to soften up a little bit, right. Because they're responsible for taking care of somebody younger or teaching them or

imparting something on them. You'll see them soften up and you'll see the youngers, you know, want to be more mature. They'll want to take on more responsibility because they want to, they want to, you know, earn, earn their stripes with, with the olders too, you know? And so, yeah, it's that, that social dynamic is, is cool to see. What about this idea of like, there's many children in the United States that would go hungry if it wasn't for school. I've heard people mention that before. Yeah. They get a, they get like a free lunch at school. Free lunches, man. Yeah. I mean, I think that's great. And again, you know, I'm all for the good people that are working in our, in our school systems. My problem is always

with the system. It is not with the people because the majority of teachers and administrators are phenomenal freaking humans, man. And I love them. And you're right. That's a huge part. I mean, I worked at those schools before where that's, that was, they were getting free breakfast and free lunch. You know, there was no, and, and sometimes they were getting stuff to take home over the weekends too, because otherwise they weren't going to have anything, you know? And I think that's, I think that's great. I don't think that we need school for, you know, take a look and go, okay, well, how much money are we spending on this? Can we do something else to still help those communities? Um, I don't think we need to put them in a prison-like situation to feed them.

But yeah, it is, I mean, that's a huge help. This is one thing I've been kind of curious about because like acting is amazing. But obviously, you know, good things come with a certain price. There's a reason why, you know, a lot of kids have to go to public school. Yes, sir. There are single family households. There are families that have two parents who, but they have certain economic issues where it's not an option. So I wonder, number one, I think there, I hear, and you've talked a lot about other act in school spreading. So if this becomes more popular, maybe it, I don't know if it does become less expensive.

becomes more popular. Maybe it, I don't know if it does become less expensive. I don't know about that, but how can parents impart some of these ideas if they have to put their kid through the typical system because maybe they don't have the other option? Yeah, that's a really good question, man. Um, and, and just to touch on that first part as a network, um, you know, I was just in Austin, uh, whatever last month maybe, and was meeting with owners from around the world. As a network, we're doing everything we can to really drive the cost for as a business owner, the cost per student, the cost per hero. We want to drive that down as far as we can. Because if we can drive that down, it just gives us more opportunities for things like scholarships it gives more opportunities for um you know being able to um you know talk to your various communities because we have parents even at ours that are like hey we'll pay somebody else's

tuition right now if we can if there's somebody that needs to come like we'll gladly do that we'll shoot if we can drive the cost per student you know down super far there's ways to do that there's companies you know um one of our actons just partnered with, I don't know if it's, I think it's Black Rifle Coffee, right? And Black Rifle's hooking them up and there's, you know, we've got Kind Foundation. Kind Foundation is taking in, you know, scholarships and donations and scholarship and kids. We've got the Apogee Strong Foundation now, right? So people donate through Apogee Strong, 501c3, tax write-off, and we'll pay for students either go through an Apogee program or go through an Acton Academy. So you do have more and more of those conversations happening to make it more accessible. We

understand the hardest part of any kind of privatized education is that there's a cost for privatized ed. We know that's always going to be a huge barrier. So we need to do our part to make sure it's accessible to everybody. So you're a hundred percent right on that. Um, but the next part, you know, is you've got to be into, and I actually had a good conversation with Seth Godin, you know, Seth Godin. Oh yeah. Right. So Seth is fricking phenomenal.

He's a huge supporter of acting, which is rad. Um, but I've had some conversations with, with him and we had a conversation around the fact that he is not, I mean, he wrote Stop Stealing Dreams, which was this manifesto that I read in the parking lot of a school that I was running that I literally read the entire thing before I went home, went through it in the parking lot. And then the next day I told him, hey, I got to go start my own thing. Right. Like it was like I was already there, you know, but I credit Seth's book or being like kind of that, that last, like, dude, get on, like, go do it, you know? Um, so, but he had his kids in, in a conveyor belt school and he's not for it at all. He had his kids who, yeah. And he's not for it. Like, he's not, he's not a believer in it, but he said, look,

it really came down for us. It came down to who are we going to be as a family? And it was kind of like going back to those rules. They had some very specific values that they are imparting and they had very specific game plan for going into those conveyor belt schools. Well, look, we know what's not right about it. So let's be intentional about understanding that this is a weird thing you're only going to experience here, but what can you learn from it? And how can you help other people while you're there? Right? So he's having those conversations with his kids. So they were going in going, I'm playing a game. I'm playing a game, right? And so some of this is not going to be useful, but I need to make sure I'm not getting

any bad habits out of this too. And how can I actually be, you know, helpful to other people and what kind of relationships can I, and I remember Patrick, but be, you know, helpful to other people? And what kind of relationships can I, and I remember Patrick, but David, you know, saying that to me too. He was like, Hey, my kid goes to college. Cool, man. Great. Go to college. Be intentional about who you're, who you're making relationships with.

I don't give a shit if you get D's throughout the whole thing. You just get it. You know, I don't care. Who can you make those relationships with? Who's those, who are those ninjas that are working really hard and really, really intelligent and they're well-connected. And how can you connect with them? Like make it your own game. Seth said that same thing. So that's what I would say to parents too, is you just have to be intentional about those conversations. You're holding all of those specific boundaries

at home and then be intentional about letting them know, look, you're playing a game and here's how to play it well. And let's make sure we can get the most out of it. I think an aspect to that too, I'm not a parent, but I think about like maybe what my mom was seeing when I started doing things that weren't so normal because I did go to college for a period of time. I left and didn't tell her for a little bit because I just wanted to start doing my own thing. And then she saw that it actually started doing well.

So then she was like, oh, you can be successful outside of not going to college. Sure, sure. So it took her a while to like maybe understand that. So for any parents that are listening to this podcast, there might be an aspect where like you went through a certain level of schooling and you saw how things were done. But nowadays there is a lot of other possibility that your kids are, they have a different level of ability in this world and the way they can navigate this world isn't necessarily taught in school. So that's right. Well, it's almost, it's almost inherently taught. They're almost pushed the other way, you know? And so, yeah, there are other options.

There are other opportunities to, to pay attention to, and you've got to just be careful because their parents, when they want their kids to go to college, they're just doing it out of love. They're doing it out of, they just want the best for their young person. What they've got to start to then go back in and start to, to really dive in and think about is, well, what does that mean? I want the best for my, for my young hero. What is the best? Is college the best? Because there's a lot of people that are coming out of college. I mean, what is it network 20? We're in July of 2022. It wasn't too long. I mean, a few months ago where I saw something where there were still like 30% of

2020 college grads that didn't have a job and they had a whole lot of debt, right? And you've got, so you have all of these other issues that are playing out. There's a massive ability to make money and get jobs in other ways. There's more six figure jobs available right now that don't require a degree than those that do. I mean, there's, you know, you've got college alternatives like Praxis where you can do a one year program versus a four year program. You automatically debt free versus usually a lot of debt and you 96% of them roll right into a job paying 50 grand or more, you know, a year out of school, right? You've got all of these different alternatives. So really being intentional about thinking through that. And again, not just right think because most people

won't most people just automatically everybody says go to college. So we just it's an emotional decision we make versus stepping back and going, wait a second, there's a lot of options here. And there's some good ones. I think school is just way too long, you know, five to 16 and then, or five to what, 18. And then you don't know what you're going to do at that age because school didn't really allow you to grow. To try anything. And to think about it and to think about exactly what you wanted to do and to maybe fail a couple of times and mess up an internship or a job. Right. Yep.

And then you go to four more years of school. Yep. Or you get like a master's degree. Yeah. And I think I think people should maybe just think a little bit outside the box. I mean, there's not much we can do in terms of the traditional schooling other than to pull our kids out and to teach them ourselves or to get them enrolled in a different kind of education. Those seem like really viable options. But in terms of college, like what's the minimum effective dosage of it?

Like how much do you need? Like what is it that you want to do? Well, what – so what – I asked a group of college professors that I was speaking to not very long ago. So I asked a group of college professors that I was speaking to not very long ago. I said, well, students that come to your class, what do they get from you that they can't get anywhere else? Like it's worth paying that money because they have to come to you. Otherwise, they're not going to get it anywhere else. They can't go to any other school or they can't go online and get it maybe even for free. They need the degree.

Some jobs want it. That was the overall consensus. So if that's true, and again, they've got individual experiences that they can impart, and that's great. I think those are valuable, but you can also get the individual experience. I learned from every time I talk to you,

every time I talk to you, every time I talk to you, I learn something, right? So if that's true, well, then what are we doing? If that's true, what are we doing? So what is the value of that? Do you really want an education or do you want to follow the status quo and get schooled? I ask parents, okay, how much are you going to spend on that tuition? That's going to be $100,000 for four years.

Cool. You can take that $100,000 and go buy that young person a business and have them run a business that's for sale right now for a hundred grand. And the kid could still go to school potentially. He could take some classes. You could always do that later if you wanted to do it. Talk about the education you'll get from running a business. So are you actually looking for education or are you looking for conformity? Because you're looking for school. So what's the minimum dose? Well, it depends. Is it, do you, what do you want to do? Who do you want to be? Because some of those classes are going to be useless. And even if you want to be, Oh, well, what about the doctors?

Great. Yes. You have to do it legally. You got to go and you got to go pre-med. First of all, that's a really small percentage of your college graduates. So using that as the, as the, why everybody should go to college is stupid, but yes, do they need it? You bet. Do they also need, if they know I'm going, man, that is where I'm going. They also need to take, you know, 1950s women's liberal, like they'd take all these extra courses for an extra 150 grand too that, so it's a game, you know, it really is. So what's the minimum dose? For most people, it's pretty close to zero if they want an education.

It really is. Yeah, one of our employees here, Owen, I think he's still like around 20, right? Yeah, I think he's 19. He's either 12 or 21. I'm not sure. He's somewhere there. That's awesome. He's either 12 or 21. I'm not sure. He's somewhere there. That's awesome. He's super young.

He went away to school and then the pandemic happened and his school shut down. And so he came back and he's a kid from a very young age, had a job. But while he was working here, I asked him, I was like, what do you think? Are you going to go back to school? Or what are your thoughts? He's like, no. He's like, this is pretty much exactly what I want to be doing for at least a while he's like i want to learn more stuff here man he's like and then i'll just kind of take it from there but he's learning so

much here he's one of our videographers it's awesome he's learning how to do stuff for youtube and for tiktok and all kinds of stuff and that trade now that he has he can go and utilize that anywhere he wants go anywhere he wants to go and that's so imagine if that's what high school looked like, right? It was more experiential. I mean, I'm talking about things when you get rid of in regular school, things that you should really implement is that's what, it should be experience-based. Internships and apprenticeships should be the status quo.

We had, you know, we have the Apogee Strong Mentorship Program. And so we've got these young men from all over the world and you got to chat with those guys and I got to bring you guys on too and have you guys have the conversations with these guys. But it was kind of cool seeing about six months ago, I had two of them reach out to me within the span of maybe about two weeks. One of them was a 19 year old young man at a pretty prominent university right now. The other one is a 15 year old young man. They both reach out to me. One of them, the 19

year olds like, Hey, I have a resume right now. Would you mind looking at my resume because I'm applying to a bunch of jobs in the financial services industry and I can't get anybody to call me back. I'm not getting anything as I want to see if there's something I can do on my resume to really spice it up. I'm getting good grades at this prominent university. I, you know, will you take a look at this for me? The 15 year old reaches out to me. One of the projects they take on is, is they learn, they do a series of interviews and then they learn to go get an apprenticeship, right? He actually went and did the interviews and went and got the apprenticeship. This guy skipped. He didn't do that part at all. The 15 year old did this apprenticeship and he ended up doing it for a guy that runs a

fact something factum financial you know some sort of financial services thing and as he continued to go through the program that guy reached back out to him and was like hey man i love what you're doing show me that portfolio of all the work and all the projects you're taking on he's taking on all these projects have nothing to do with finance just has everything to do with personal responsibility and learning all these skills and communicating and doing it. He's like, I'll tell you what, I will pay you under the table right now to come work for me. Here's the only caveat. If you will come work for me for the next two years, and I will pay you under the table because I can't legally pay you yet. When you're 18, I will also pay for you to get, you know, a certain

number of licenses. But if I'm going to do all that, I just want you to stay with me for three years. And you can take that and go wherever you want to go. I want you to do that. He's like, cool, awesome. This guy's 19 going the traditional route. I've got great grades at this university. I can't get a bite, you know? And I think that represents a lot of the opportunity that we're missing, especially for our young people. If somebody, I mean, if a 15 year old came from acting or anywhere else, but if a 15 year old reached out to you guys and was like, Hey, look, I love what you do here on the power project. I love this. I need to come work for you guys. I will come work for you guys for free. You

can just have me do anything you want. I just want to be around, learn by osmosis, take on as much responsibility as you'll give me. Um, and, And they come in and they know what you guys are about and they know the vibe of this whole place. That's a way different proposition than if a gray-haired, gray-bearded 42-year-old, 42-year-old came in and was like, said the same thing. You're like, ah, okay. Not as attractive.

He's 15. You're like, dude, that's badass. Let's go. They need to take advantage of that. And we would do that as business owners too. I think that's a huge opportunity we're missing for these guys. Do you think we start school too early? Oh, God.

Like there's no reason to be at school when you're five, right? Yeah. If both parents are working and you want to go into an environment, it needs to be a play-based kind of environment where they can like, that's great. Go get it. But do we need to start that early no should we be starting academics that early big no giant no maybe a hell no eight or ten yeah i mean you go into some of those you know look at finland yeah they don't they don't start until they're around seven and even then it's more social emotional right than anything else it's like learning to play well

treat each other well tie your shoes manners um being kind you know it's it's more social emotional, right? Than anything else. It's like learning to play well, treat each other well, tie your shoes, manners, being kind, you know, it's, it's the social emotional stuff. They don't really start in on the academics until they're closer to 10 and then they're done at 16 and they kick our ass in every metric, you know, and of course it's more nuanced than that. There's more factors that go into that, but part of those factors are the fact that they are going developmentally correctly for what young people are ready for. That's really –

Do you think we should be able to enter the workplace much earlier as well? You bet. I think child labor gets a bad rap. Cheap child labor. Cheap child labor. Because we think sweatshops. We think all the bad circumstances and we think all of that kind of stuff. You bet.

I think we should be able to enter the workforce as early as we feel like entering the workforce. Entrepreneurs will do that anyways. My kids have businesses. My kids make good money. And I know a lot of young people that do as well. But I think we should be able to enter it much earlier if we can handle the responsibilities. You bet. I think we'd change as a society for the better.

Your kid's like, I helped contribute to pay the mortgage, so I'm going to leave my socks over here. So I'm going to put my socks right here. This is my corner of the house. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly it. What about trade schools?

We're missing a huge opportunity, man. Not promoting that. We're missing a huge... And when I Not promoting that. We're missing a huge, and when I say there's the six figure jobs, there's more available, you know, that don't require a degree than do. Many of those are in the trades and you know, my clients will tell, they can't get people. They can't find people. They are begging people. They are paying people to go through and get your, you know, you're getting paid to go through and get your licensing around this kind of stuff. You're not even're getting paid to go through and get your licensing around

this kind of stuff. You're not even having to pay to go to these trade schools. A lot of times they are paying you to, you know, to, to learn the skill. Um, I mean, it's, it's a huge opportunity. One of the most fun things, you know, we bring students into, uh, you know, to act in or bring, uh, bring people into acting and talk to the heroes or bring people in and talk to the, the Apogee Strong guys. One of my favorite things, I have my friend who works for SMUD. Over here, he's a lineman for SMUD. He doesn't even have a high school diploma.

Doesn't have a high school diploma. He makes $300,000 a year at SMUD as a lineman. Damn. Yeah. What the fuck? Yeah, go climb some poles. Go climb some poles. Yeah. Jeez. I mean mean it's a huge opportunity and we and we have just culturally been trained to go uh less than colleges that's

college is where it's at yeah what the i remember like when i was because like i feel like my i graduated in 2003 i feel like that was like the last I mean maybe we all feel this way but I feel like that was like the last graduating class that thought that college was the only answer because after that I feel like everyone was like well maybe not but the trade school so like um like back then um what's the the automotive one UTI yep okay that so that one had just barely opened up in Sacramento. That's funny. It is called UTI. We're children.

But I remember UTI was for the kids that didn't get into college. They're just like, well, we're just going to go over here and kind of work on like an assembly line or something. And in my head, I'm just like, well, you're probably going to be making more money faster than anybody that goes to school. But one of the things was it was pretty expensive to still go still like yeah like eighty thousand dollars or something for like an entire education from there so yeah that's interesting that they were also running things i don't think they're i don't know if they're even around anymore i don't think they were running

some sort of i don't think they were running things very well yeah because they were like guaranteeing like employment afterwards but they didn't like specify or they it was was kind of like there was like no timeframe on it is what I remember. But you're right, man. I mean, that's, we're missing out on those. And even if it is 80 grand, okay, 80 grand. I mean, I talked to somebody yesterday who just finished paying 250 grand for their kids that, you know, they went to USC and it was 200, you know, 250K on the tuition that they ended up paying for tuition room and board. Like what the, and the kid came out and was like, I think I want to be a firefighter because I don't have anything. It's like, cool, man.

That's awesome. What if you had found that out earlier and saved a quarter of a million dollars? $80,000, though, to learn to trade. You know, like you have a trade. You've got something that you can go. You've got something very tangible. You've got something very, very tangible. One of my favorite experiences from when I was traveling and speaking a lot was I was on a private jet.

It was a man's. I was on his jet. He owned a bunch of community banks in the Midwest, and his family had always owned those. And we were going back and forth, taking this jet all over the Midwest and doing multiple keynotes, and I was doing two a day for like an entire week. We were going to all these different branches. And the last trip back, he's crying in the jet because he doesn't like his life.

He's just, you know, not crying like he's some sort of baby. He was just breaking down. He didn't like, he wasn't happy. You know, he'd always had all of this stuff handed to him. He was told you're going to take over this bank and you're going to do this. He was a good guy and he was doing good things, but he was upset about his life. He wasn't fulfilled. We're on his jet, not fulfilled.

In his 50s, probably, we end up landing and he goes to go get cleaned up. I ended up getting into a conversation with this guy who was working in this little private airfield. He was 40 years old. He had come out of high school and immediately started, he learned to work on planes. And so he ended up working on all of these private planes. He was 40 and he was telling me this was his last week of work. And I was like, oh, you're moving on to something else?

Like, I'm retiring, man. I am done. He'd been working for 22 years. He'd just been very, very smart, made really good money working on these planes, you know, and use that to buy some real estate. And he was just going to go like fishing in Montana or something like he was done. He's like, yeah, I'm good, man. I've got enough cashflow right now. I don't ever need to work again. And I could not be happier. I've loved this entire thing. I'm just sitting here working on these planes and fixing problems.

And I've been able to do it since I was 18. I'm good to go, you know? So one guy had all of this and went to college and did all the degree route that he was supposed to do. You know, and again, it comes back to what your definition of success is, but if you don't have that freedom of the peace of peace of mind with what you're doing, then I don't envy you ever. You know, Oh, there's a, there's one thing that you're mentioning where like these kids, they'll have a maybe not debate, but they'll have conversations and bring about evidence and learn how to have respectful disagreement. Because if there's anything that I've noticed, I notice it that when typical education doesn't necessarily teach that, especially colleges. It's like they, you're taught what to think, right? You're not necessarily quite a few people I know don't analyze why they think what they think, right? You know, they'll, they'll have like

an idea of this is the truth. This is the truth. This is the truth. And even when evidence is brought that may show that that is not true, instead of coming at it with some logic and trying to understand the evidence, there's emotion-based thinking, especially when it comes to political things and world things. You see it in Instagram comments, but I've seen it so much with people. And it's very difficult to have conversations, difficult ones. And I think that's such a great thing that the kids within these schools are being taught because it'll teach them how to be critical thinking adults. Yeah. I'll actually be able to just think in general and not just like you said, it's the, now it's the, it's the battle of the most emotional, right? Who can, who can play the victim card the loudest and the longest and you win, you know, we know, we'll all bow down. Civil discourse is a need.

And part of that is a systemic issue because you learn to play a game where you're having to appease whoever the master is. And you understand what their point of view is. And you understand that failure, oh, my gosh, school teaches you failure is not an option. Do not fail. Don't fail. Whereas life rewards that if you figure out what you failed, you know, how you did it and you got resilient and you turn around and you do something better, life will reward that. You can learn from that. School says, don't fail at all costs. Do not fail. And the surefire way not to fail is if, okay, Andrew is my teacher and he is saying this, it doesn't matter if I

agree with him or not. That's what I have to write my paper on this. And I'm going to, because that's how I'm going to get my good grade. And that's how I'm going to, you know, so you're just, again, you're these habits that you start to build of where I'm going to acquiesce and just go down one train of thought. And, you know, it's a dangerous spot. So, yeah, civil discourse is a need. You know, that's why we did the No Safe Spaces film, you know, and kind of talked about the eradication of civil discourse at the college campuses.

And when we put that movie out and Dave Rubin flew out here and, and, um, we put on an event with the, with acting, um, you know, kids and Dave spoke and I spoke and, um, we had the acting heroes go up and show what that looked like. They actually went up and they did, you know, they had debates around gun control and they had debates around abortion and they had debates around mandatory vaccinations. And this was in like 2018. Um, and so they had debates around all of these things and they all decided they were going to go in and take the opposite position of what they really felt.

And they were going to argue from that side. Like what a great experience and thought exercise. And of course, social media wouldn't let us promote it, but we got shut down in all kinds of ways because Dave was coming and we were talking about these hot button topics. And so, but yeah, man, it's so important. There's a lot of parents I run into.

They don't know what their kid, like they don't know what their kid's going to do. Like their kid is between 18 and 25 or something like that. And their parents are real nervous and worried that the kid's not going to like find their thing. What are some of your suggestions when it comes to situations like that for me personally i always just think it's kind of silly because i'm like i i'm still trying to figure things out i'm still trying to figure out what i'm doing bingo that's the key right there is them for almost all of them i guarantee like if they look in themselves too what what are you doing? What are you going to be when you grow up? What problems are you solving?

Do you love what you're doing right now? Do you love your life right now? Because if you don't, you've got work to do as well. What did you guys learn today? I hate that freaking question. What did you learn today, adult? What were you intentional about growing in today? Right? It's like, we just feel like we got to this point where we stop as the adult and then just expect to,

you know, the young person. And again, that young person, if they've gone through that conveyor belt schools, they have no idea. They haven't had the experience to know, you know, and I use the example of kind of the buffet sort of thing. If they've only had for 12 years, five different foods and you're asking them, what's your favorite food? What's your favorite food? All they can tell you is one of those five because they don't know anything.

And you're like, ah, there's all the other foods out there. Okay, well, they haven't gotten to fricking try them, right? So that's why I get those experiences in it. And 18, if you've gone through those conveyor belt schools, a lot of times now, 18 to 25, that's when you should go out and start collecting those experiences. It just is, right? You're not at the, it's when you're, you should go out and start collecting those experiences.

It just is right. You're not at the, it's not culturally right now. 18 used to be like, Hey, it's time to get married and start knocking out some kids. And we've got, you know, because, but you've also, at that point, you were also an apprentice underneath the blacksmith for the last five or six years. And you were taking on that apprenticeship and you were providing value and you were doing those things. Well, if we're not doing that for them, then we've got to give a little leeway on that back, that back end to take the next six, seven years and just go try things. I mean, that's going to be the time now where they should go have multiple jobs, try that side gig, go have a job that, you know, you think you might be interested in and you're, you can make some cash and you can take some responsibility and then come home and let's see your goals around fricking playing your video game or whatever,

and building out your YouTube and great man, do them both. Um, and let's see your goals around freaking playing your video game or whatever and building out your YouTube. And great, man. Do them both. And that's what they should be doing at that age. I mean, collect as many experiences. Take on as much responsibility as you can. That's the only way you're going to gain self-awareness ever. How can people find out more about your schools?

Check out actonacademy.org. A-C-T-O-N. And you can do a search finder there. We have about 300 locations now, 41 states and 26 countries or something like that. You're a busy guy. So we're rocking, man. Yeah, we're rocking. So it's great, man.

So you can go there and see if there's one near you. If there's not one near you, then you can always reach out to me. Just reach out Matt at Apogee Strong or reach out to me through IG and I'll help you figure out how to launch one if you want to launch one. And then Apogee Strong is the mentorship program with Tim. And we've got a few more verticals launching on that too. So glad to help.

Thank you so much. Andrew, take us on out of here. Sure thing. And just before I forget, my son's one and a half right now. So he's going to, his first day of school is going to be at Acton. I can't wait. I mean, hopefully he's into it and half right now. So he's going to, yeah, his, his first day of school is going to be at acting. I can't wait. I mean, hopefully he's into it and stuff, but we'll see

how that goes. Hopefully I won't be one of those parents. That's like, no, you're going to go to this school and then he's just not into it. You have to have that conversation with me. Yeah. I'm excited. I was just texting my wife, like, dude, like this is going to be so cool for him. That's awesome. So I'm really looking forward to it. All right. But thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please hit that like button and drop us a comment down below on anything you found interesting about today's episode and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already. Please follow the podcast at MB Power Project on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where you at?

I'm Seema Yenning on Instagram and YouTube. I'm Seema Yenning on TikTok and Twitter. And check out the Discord. Links in the description. It's going strong. Where can people find you, Matt? Actually, I think you just told them, but where can they find you again? Yeah, that's the best place, man. IG is the best place, just at Matt Beaudreau. But you can check us out also at apogeestrong.com.

See the mentorship program and all the new verticals we're launching there. And we're on IG at apogeeprogram. A lot of E's and U's and X's in there. I know. I mess it up myself. I don't think I say any of it right. I barely ever spell it right. But again, hey, I'm the educator.

That's right. I know. When you were speaking, I just kept looking at your name over and over again. And I'm like, that's so interesting. There is a pattern, though. Yeah, there's a pattern. There is. Yeah.

So it's the E-A-U and the E-A-U. So that actually makes it pretty easy. That's not bad. Yeah. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.

Bye.