The Nick Bare Podcast - 018: Building The Next Generation of Leaders with Matt Beaudreau

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

As a former administrator in the "conveyor belt" school system, Matt Beaudreau is now on a mission to transform what education looks like for the next generation. To develop young leaders with responsibility, resilience, and self-confidence through a world-class education that starts at home. In this conversation, Matt gives practical ways to create an environment for your children to flourish, homeschool correctly, and escape the conveyor belt schooling system altogether. Oh, and we tackle the ultra-sensitive topic of smartphone use for children. Enjoy the episode! Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Matt here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/mattbeaudreau/Website: https://apogeestrongprograms.com/ Topics: 00:00 Intro 1:56 Who is Matt Beaudreau? 5:03 Biggest lie we’re told as parents 13:57 Creating an environment for kids to flourish 19:03 Transitioning from teacher to educator 22:38 How our upbringing shapes our adult life 31:58 The problem with conveyor belt schooling 47:43 Homeschool the right way 1:02:28 Self-responsibility for parents 1:12:08 Courage to be disliked 1:14:44 Dangers of smartphones 1:20:59 Apogee Strong program

Good parents are environment creators. I use the example of gardening now that I have a garden. My wife and kids, because they take care of the garden, they put the seeds in. The seed is the seed is the seed. It's going to do what it's going to do. So whatever they're planting, they're planting it in there. And then the whole game is the environment. It's what we figured out.

It's like you've got to have the right kind of soil. You got to prep, prep the soil. You want them next to other plants that are going to help support their growth and not impede their growth. You want to make sure that you're taking care of weeds as proactively as you possibly can, picking them out if you do see them popping up. You want to make sure they're in the right spot, so they're getting the right sun at the right amount of time. You got to go by, okay, well, how much rain is coming down?

So do I need to give them more water? Do I need to make sure, like, we stay away from the water for a little bit because they've already got everything? You're not actually doing a damn thing to the seed. You're controlling the environment. And when you do it the right way, that seed, it flourishes. That's parenting.

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head over to bpnsups.com and use code Nick Bear 10 to save 10% off your order. Now let's jump right into this episode. Matt Boudreau. Yes, sir. Welcome back to the podcast. fun man. I was excited to come back out. As a returning guest, I would love it if you could just give some background briefly on your personal background, what you've done, where you come from, and what you're actively focusing on right now in your career. Yeah. Most people know me from

an educational space, whether that is education meaning launching schools or education, meaning they saw me standing on a stage. So it's really been a tale of those two things and kind of bringing everything together in this overarching educator career. So was at Stanford, was a public school teacher, public school administrator, private school teacher, private school administrator. So I decided to leave every single bit of that to go launch schools that I thought actually needed to exist. And simultaneously while I was launching these schools, I was working with Fortune 500 standing up on stage in front of thousands of people and talking about what they didn't see in the younger generations. They're bringing me in because they're saying, hey, we want to fire all of these well-schooled young people that we're hiring.

Help us not fire them. What does that relationship need to look like so we can thrive? So I got to take that back to the school. So I've been building schools now for almost a decade. And in the process of that, partnered with my business partner and good friend, Mr. Tim Kennedy, who most people know, and we helped him build out of school. We're still expanding here in Cedar Park. and we've got mentorship programs for young men and men,

and many of them are going to go forward and launch schools too. So all that's saying never hurting for something to do. Oh, and by the way, I operate a farm and have a beautiful wife and three children, and life is good, man. You're doing some fun stuff. That's really it. People are like, how do you, how do you, dude, this is fun. All of this is fun.

It really is. So, yeah, never, never a bad day. I mean, last time you were here, I wasn't a dad yet. That's right. And I guess it was two days ago, my daughter turned 10 months old. It's so cool. Which is crazy to think that in two months she's going to be a year old. Yes, sir.

And as I was explaining to you before we started recording, has completely changed my life. And it's one of those things everyone told me it would change your life. And I heard the cliche sayings and kind of expectations. But it shook my life. It flipped my life upside down. Yeah. And it was a really tough transition. it was difficult, it was challenging,

and I had to go through some mud to get to the other side. Yes, sir. But I'm now starting to see, like, man, everything I've done the last 10 plus years of my life and building my career and building my business and focusing on building me as an individual has put me in this position now for this next chapter of life to be a better husband, to be a better father.

And like my goal with this conversation today is I want to share with people who are listening, who are watching, having realistic expectations, how to focus on themselves, how to focus on their family, how to show up as a leader, and kind of what we're being told

based off what we should be kind of leading with. From your perspective, in your opinion, what is the greatest lie we are currently being told by society as new parents? I've got a few that immediately come to mind, but if I'm going to condense it, I really believe that the lie

is that you need to outsource almost everything. When the reality is, you need to look inward into the home for almost everything. And I think about it, so there's this poem by D.H. Lawrence. It's my favorite poem of all time

and says, I never saw a wild thing, sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bow without ever having felt sorry for itself. And I took that at face value as a youngster when I first read the poem and just went, okay, I like that. I like the idea of not feeling sorry, you know, for myself.

But then I started taking a look at the default, the factory settings for, you know, quote unquote wild things. What happens in nature? And one of the things you realize in nature is animals step into their roles immediately. Now that I'm out on a farm, I see this all the time. Right? We just have a bunch of goats that just had a bunch of baby goats. They just had them a couple months ago.

Right. And you watch, it does not take long. The moms know exactly what to do. They know exactly how to birth the goat. they know exactly what to do when the goat comes out. The goat itself kind of chills a little bit, gets up, starts walking around, starts figuring out, it's not too long before it walks over,

starts headbutting the mom, you know, and starts to go after the milk. Like, nobody is telling them what to do. I can't speak goat. I can't train them what to do. They just do it. The biggest lie we're told is that we've got to outsource everything to the experts versus going, okay, what feels right here?

What do we do? What do we do with this new baby that comes in? Like, where do I get the training? What does this look like? How do I train them to be a human being? They're already a human being. They're going to do their thing. You're going to figure out pretty quickly how to do your thing too.

And it's not always looking outside to the experts. A lot of times it's going back to that default. You're a wild thing too. Go back to that factory setting. So a lot of times when we're working with parents, I'm not working on giving them necessarily tools to add to the tool belt. It's more tools to strip away the extra garbage that they've layered in to get back to those factory settings while they're raising their kids. What are some of these things that we're outsourcing?

So we don't do too much. Well, when we start with the baby, you know, the sleep training and all that kind of stuff, we're going to go, okay, let's go to the expert over here and see, do you take the baby into your bed? Do you make sure that the baby just cries it out? do you make like we start looking into the research on on both of those kinds of things um we start outsourcing i don't know how controversial we want to get to but we start outsourcing really right from the beginning of like as soon as that baby comes out you've got all these doctors that are like okay and here's what we need to do next and here's what we need to do to your kid next and here's how fast we need to do it and hey if we don't do this to your kid uh your child's going to die right you get all

of these conversations right from the get go and again i don't know how uh explicit we want to get on some of these things. But you start getting that direction from other people right away. And actually, I remember, so we have my boy in, and we had them with, and we had them in a hospital and with midwives. We might go back and change if we were to do that again.

We might even do a home birth kind of deal. But we had them there. And they said, hey, we want to, what's going on with the circumcision, you know, conversation? I said, I think we're actually going to do that on the eighth day. and it's a specific reason for us. I'm like, okay, why are you going to do that on the eighth?

We can do this here. What we got to do is we're going to give them this shot first. We're going to get, and then we're going to do it right here before you leave. And I'm like, no, we're not going to give them that. We're going to do this on the eighth day. Okay, is this like some sort of religious thing? I'm like, well, there's a religious aspect to it, but also on day eight, you've got the highest level of vitamin K that you're ever going to have as a human being.

So the clot factor is like at its all time high. it's kind of coincidental maybe, or maybe not, that there's a religious component to it, but that's what we're going to do. And so we're going to have that kind of take, like, what are you talking about on the, on the eighth day thing?

They're talking to you like you're crazy. They're talking to me like I'm crazy. I'm just telling you the way it is. I don't know what to tell you. So lady leaves, one of the nurses comes back in or one of the midwives comes back in. She's like, I want you to come take a look at something.

She's like, come look outside in the hallway. And I go look out in the hallway, and there's all these doctors that are gathered on. She's like, all of those doctors that went to school for a long time, They're all literally Googling what you just said. Like, that's fascinating, ma'am. That's interesting.

But we outsource, like, right away, what does the doctor say I need to do? How often do I need to come for well-baby visits? Come get checks up. Come get these checkups. Come get the, see what percentile, you know, whatever they're in on all these things, as if that's something that's going to make us change the way we parent. And then we start going through the different phases of the baby. So you start looking at the sleep train and stuff.

And what you slowly start to do. do is you start to figure out who your kid is and you start to watch these changes take place and then you have places that you don't outsource for so like walking you don't take anybody to Charlie's probably not walking yet she's 10 months right so she's not walking at my kids none of my kids walked until I think are 14 15 months she's crawling fast she's crawling there you go so you got the where did you guys take her to learn how to crawl man she went to crawl school she went to crawl school down the road right yeah exactly so she just it's part of it's part of it and you knew that was going to happen.

Yeah. You also know walking's going to happen. You're not taking her anywhere to freaking learn. She's going to just try it. And you're going to cheer on as she tries. You're going to cheer on as she falls on her ass and fails. You're going to cheer on those failures. And then she's going to get it. And you guys will be excited about it,

but you won't think anything of it. That is the natural progression. And so you'll stay in that natural state for a little bit, but then they're going to hit, you know, three, four, they're going to start talking, and then you're going to go back to outsourcing, okay, well, how often do they need to be around other children because socialization matters? So how often do I need to get them around other kids? And what does that mean? Do I need, shouldn't I get them into preschool? Shouldn't I get them into preschool now? Shouldn't I take them to

the park X amount of days? Shouldn't I? And we start to plan all of these things based on all of this bullshit that we've been fed. And then you get to school and it's freaking downhill from there because now you're outsourcing, you know, six to eight hours of every single day, five days a week for the next 13 freaking years unless they go to college, you're outsourcing it and you're listening to everybody else. You're still listening to the doctors too.

You're still trying to research over here on what age should I give them a phone and what age should I, you're still going outside here. And the last thing that you're doing is bringing your eyes back to the freaking child who's right there and paying attention and going,

okay, how do I set up an environment for this human being right there? So they keep those factory settings as long as they can. Good parents are environment creators. You're not teaching these young people how to be humans. They're humans. So you just need to keep the factory settings. I use the example of gardening now that I have a garden and out on our farm.

I use the example of gardening. My wife and kids, because they take care of the garden part of things, but I can see it from my office and I can watch them. It's cool, man. I'm watching them working outside a lot of times. Not that I don't do anything. I do a lot of things. I go lift things.

I go lumberjack things. I go kill things if we need to and process them. But they're doing the gardening part. They put the seeds in, but the whole game is the environment. The seed is the seed. It's going to do what it's going to do. So whatever they're planting, they're planting it in there. And then the whole game is the environment.

It's what we figured out. It's like you've got to have the right kind of soil. You got to prep, prep the soil prior to. You want the right kind of soil. You want them next to other plants that are going to help support their growth and not impede their growth. You want to make sure that you're taking care of weeds as proactively as you possibly can, picking them out if you do see them popping up.

You want to make sure they're in the right spot. So they're getting the right sun at the right amount of time. You got to go by, okay, well, how much rain is coming down? so do I need to give them more water? Do I need to make sure we stay away from the water for a little bit because they've already got everything? You're not actually doing a damn thing to the seed.

You're controlling the environment. And when you do it the right way, that seed turns into the plant, the flower, the whatever that needs to try, it does it to the best of its ability. It flourishes. That's parenting. It makes me think of just this instinctive nature.

Yes. And I think we've gotten to this point also where we don't trust ourselves enough with what we have been programmed to do and know. Right. And it makes me think of cooking. You know, you can take two different people who, you put them in the kitchen. Yeah. There is one person who will not touch anything until they had the recipe in front of them.

Yeah. And they're going to measure and weigh everything to the gram, to the ounce. And you have the other person, this is how I cook, where I had this general. idea of what I want to create and I'm testing and tasting, not weighing anything. I'm not measuring anything. It's just here's adding some cream here, adding butter here. I'm going to chop up some time and throw it in there. And I'm refining as I'm tasting as I go. So there's these two different people who are trying to outsource and perfect because they don't trust themselves to create the perfect recipe. And you're the other person who's just trial and error being guided by instinct.

Bingo. That's what I think cooking and parenting. As you were describing that, I was thinking about this whole cooking. That's where all the magic comes from. That's where you get these unique dishes. That's where you get a Michelin Star restaurant. That's where you get,

we had a business fair at one of my campuses and we brought in, if you ever seen Cousins' Maine lobsters, that's a food truck. And they crushed it on Shark Tank and they're nationwide now and they're crushing it. And it's lobster, but it's in like tacos too, right? nobody's ever going to think of putting, you know, some sea bug in a taco, right, unless they're doing that.

They're just going, let's try. Let's see. We're going to trial and error. We're going to, you know, see where we succeed, see where we fail. And here we go. And so that person's leaning into, you know, you have a general understanding of what can be right and wrong and a general starting point. But then you're able to lean into tuition. And the way you stay in that tuition is that in that intuition is by not allowing too much,

much of that outside stuff to come in. You want to, you want to be careful of where you're getting your, your sources from. A person over here who's continuously looking and goes, okay, I've got this recipe, but okay, this person has this recipe. I can only do this exact recipe or I can do this exact recipe. What happens? They drown out their intuition because they're actually living by fear. They're afraid. They're afraid of making any kind of mistake. And in doing so, the paradoxes, and they're going to make all of them and they're not going to course correct because they're not paying attention to the food itself. They're only paying attention to the recipe. Very unaware. Very unaware. And then at the end of 18 years, I like, shit, this still doesn't taste good. And it's like,

cool, man. It's because every time there was a woman in the red dress that you could get distracted by, you did. So you went to a brand new freaking recipe by somebody else. And then somebody else goes, no, the recipe's got to look like this. And you went over here. And you never stopped to actually taste the food. And we do the same thing with our kids. Pay attention, man, to an almost in the it sounds this is the only word i can think of to use this but like i almost have like an obsessive quality as far as how much i pay attention to them that's not obsessive in how i try to control them there's none of that i don't try to control them i am trying to solve the puzzle for what environment is going to make this flower grow as large as it possibly can what does that environment look like

because it is slightly different for Morgan as it is for Brielle, as it is for Loudoun. They need me to be me, my best version of me, but they each need a slightly different version of me. By the way, I do the exact same thing with my wife. It's the exact same thing, and she hates it. Like she hates it. We were in the car.

They were bringing me to the airport to come take this trip, you know, a few days ago. We're in the airport, or in the car, and I remember what? No, it was a song, a song came, on the radio and I could see who was singing the song. I had never heard the song before and I knew exactly at that moment what my wife was thinking because I pay attention to her so hard. She didn't even say anything and I went, yeah, it's the same guy that you're thinking of because you like that one song and she's like, I hate it that you know what I'm thinking when I'm thinking, but it's because I pay attention to her so hard that I know a little bit about

how her brain works, right? I do the same thing for all of my kids. I can look. And you'll do that too. You'll do it naturally right now too, but you'll lose it if you outsource them too many times. But you'll do it. You'll start to see it.

Like, you know, through all these different phases, you'll look at Charlie and you'll be like, okay, she's about to do this or ooh, she's thinking this, or she's not being honest there. Or she has to go to the bathroom. Or, like, because you'll pay attention so hard. And then as they get older, we stop paying attention that freaking hard, man.

And that's part of why we lose relationship with them as they get. older because we've outsourced that. That's what I'm trying to avoid. Bingo. And you're in a great freaking spot. I take this responsibility that I have right now and this opportunity, very, very serious. And, you know, as I was explaining to you, the transition into fatherhood was challenging for me. Yes, sir.

Because for the past decade and a half, I focused on myself, selfishly, building my business, building my brand, building my body and my mind. and my health. And then when Charlie was born, all of my priorities shifted. So I'm curious what that transition through life was like for you, because you were an educator prior to having kids, correct? Yes, sir.

So when you had kids, you know, was that transition difficult for you? Or were you primed because of your background in education? I wasn't primed as in like I was ready. But I was at least in the mindset of figuring things, working to figure things out and working to grow. So we had our first, you know, I was still a public school teacher and I was seeing the game of school for what it was. I didn't know the history of it, the intent behind it. I had no, you know, I was still really naive there.

But I was seeing what I was doing when I was teaching the kids, not that. not teaching in the system, right? You can be a teacher who, the system is designed to make you teach the system. I was intent on teaching the individuals. And I had no idea that that was preparing me for fatherhood too, right? It's preparing me for that, like, okay, I'm teaching this, this concept here. But Alejandro needs it this way.

Jasmine needs it this way. And it's a different, the same concept, but they needed a different. way, right? So I was, I was doing that and I was getting in trouble for it. So it was allowing me to see the game of school for what it was, but it was allowing me to see the power of paying attention and, you know, being an educator. And I always say being an educator is vastly different than being a teacher. I was transitioning from learning how to be, I was transitioning from being a teacher to really being an educator that cared about that individual and was concerned about that individual's total environment, not just the environment of when I was there, but okay, what happens next when they go

on to that next class and I'm not in there and I know who they're with and they're with that teacher. What happens when they go home and I know what's going on with the parents? How do I impact that? Right? Like I started seeing the importance of this cohesive unit, again, going back to the environment for that young person. And so that's really what got the wheels spinning almost subconsciously at that point to get me prepared to continue to be a better father. I still made all the mistakes everybody's going to make as a dad and you'll, you know, you'll blow it too and you'll look back a year from now and be like damn it i would have done that different you'll look back five years from now and you'll be embarrassed because that's the kind of guy you are because you'll continue to grow

and you know so i was setting the the stage for that and i was learning a whole lot about what goes into this this fatherhood game through that and you know and i know we'll get there eventually but it's part of why i'm so intentional about you know on the on the school side whether i'm helping you know whether i'm launching schools or helping somebody launch schools or you know the home education side. I'm so intentional about, yes, here's the environment that you're setting up for that young hero and also here's what your life needs to look like. And here's how, like, it's so multifaceted, man. I'm really curious what your environment was like growing up, what your childhood was like because what I found so interesting is there are a lot of these conversations

in the podcast or just meeting people. Yeah. And you hear people's stories. And then typically when we're done recording the episode, you know, we're off, off air. Yeah. We talk about like other parts of their life and their childhood and trauma and things they experienced. Yep. And then I start to kind of piece things together. Yeah.

Oh, this makes sense. The way you mention this and the way you act, the way you talk about yourself or your family or other people. Yeah. And then what you talk about growing up. Yeah. It all ties together. And I'm starting to realize how foundational.

And everyone's always like, everyone knows. was like childhood and growing up as a foundation for the life that you live for forever. But the older I get and the more people I meet, the more I realize, wow, your childhood is truly foundational for the person you become when you're older. So what was the environment? It is the gift. I'm so thankful that you're like, I'm not thankful. I mean, I'm thankful you're asking the question so we can talk about this and hopefully

it helps a lot of people. But I'm just thankful as somebody who is, you know, I just love, you know. as somebody who I consider a friend who sees this now when Charlie's 10 months old and you're doing it. Like, it is going to make more difference in a bigger ripple effect than you can imagine, period, end of story. Because you understand that what you're doing right now is a gift that keeps on giving to Charlie forever. And it gives to her kids. You're raising her kids right now. I feel that responsibility.

Yes, you do. Yes, you do. And that's not a bad thing to feel. I'm glad you feel that responsibility. That's what makes you go, all right, I'm going to go ahead and take the leap on this thing in shifting the priorities, and it does make it harder to continue to build the brand

and the company and all this. It makes those things more challenging, but it makes it a non-negotiable. It makes a decision easy. Right, right? So I'm thankful for that, for that reason. I analyze myself more than I analyze anybody else, as much as I'm obsessive about, you know,

my kids and getting the environment, and taking a look and then my wife and then all the men that we get to serve, the young men we get to serve, the entrepreneurs I get to serve. I'm obsessive about their journeys and kind of taking a look and going, okay, where can I make this the best possible thing for them? I do believe that the childhood component was a big part of that. You know, we grew up as the normal, I mean, middle class America, but I grew up in a unique part of California where I was literally going to school with,

I had friends that were, you know, their families were multi-millionaires. And then I had friends who, my first friend that went to prison for murder was when we were in eighth grade. Right. So I mean, that's real. And so I had both dynamics. And I had both sides of that. And I actually learned pretty quickly how to get along with both sides. And so I always want like, okay, is that a DNA thing that I knew I can just get along with everybody? Like I can get, you know, the first interview I ever had as a teacher, the principal,

people those interview in me, said, like, we want to hire you because we get this feeling you can get along with infants, in-laws, and inmates. And I went, yeah, I can. I know I can because I've done that. So I tried to go backwards too and go, okay, well, why was able to do that? And I think part of that is, it was the home, too. My mom is this, you know, amazing, hardworking woman always was, crazy work ethic, wants to serve everybody else, you know, extraordinarily brilliant, but also very, very much a rule follower. My father was a polar opposite on that outside of the brilliance part. Maybe still to this day might be the smartest man that I've ever met, but battling so many of his own demons that he wouldn't let himself go achieve anything. He was afraid of success.

So he found it, you know, in other avenues that were not healthy. And, you know, he had other relationships outside of my, outside of my mom, which caused the marriage to break. But he was also in law enforcement and was on the more. on the training day. If you've seen the movie training, he was more on the training day side of law enforcement. So he and his buddies always say, you know, they worked in prisons. It was a coin toss day to day on whether or not they should be living there versus working there, you know, with many of them, right? So he was a hard, he was a hard dude. And so, you know, for a long time I was trying to make sure I was a hard get. That was part of the reason I got into

martial arts as early as I did. It's part of the reason I got into fighting, you know, as part of it I wanted to prove to him like hey I'm a I'm a hard dude too I can be this hard guy you know but then that bled over to other areas where I also was following his lead and being the guy that could only be the hard guy when you don't you very rarely have to be the hard guy you need to be the leader that the community can look to that your wife can look to your kids can look to so I had to unpack all of that stuff and figure out okay well I actually don't want to be like him in the majority ways I'm very thankful for him. I have nothing but love for him. We don't talk, but I'm very thankful for him now, and I've got no resentment. He's battling his own stuff. So I had both of those, and it also caused me to be

really analytical of him in particular when he would come home. I was the oldest of four, and we all feared him. Now, I only grew up with two of those other three, because the other one is much younger. But we all feared him. We were all worried when he was. coming home. We heard he was working overtime. We were like, yes. So I knew I didn't want to be that guy, but as a young guy, I was judging his mood as he came in. I was looking at his face. I was trying to pick up the cues and I'm like, okay, do I need to step in somehow and try to make him feel good? Do I need to try to make them, I got to protect myself. I got to protect my other brother and sister, right? So it was a little bit of that. So I think I got some of my pattern recognition

and analytics that have served me well from that. And I also know exactly who I do not want to be. I need the good parts and the bad parts for both. And I've been very intentional about trying to draw the good. I'm not a rule follower. I'm not a blind obedience person at all. I'm quite the opposite. And I want to have the ability to be hard, but I'm not going to be a guy that's going to battle my own deal.

I'm going to fucking kill my demons so that I can go serve other people. So, yeah, I think both of those played into a lot of it. It's a cool question. I asked you the question. And as I was listening to your response, I was thinking about the dynamic that I grew up in. Yeah. where my mom's side of the family,

they were very family-oriented, very warm, very inviting. My mom never had to tell me how to live. She just showed me, how to live. And a lot of them were military. My dad's side of the family, dairy farmers, central Pennsylvania, the only way to describe that side of the family is extremely hardworking, almost emotionless.

uh yeah people because yeah it was like whatever had to get done doesn't matter what relationships are are fulfilled and happy or purposeful it's the cows have to get milked and we got to work the fields the job has to get done and by think about those two dynamics i think growing up kids try to make their their their parents proud yes sir you know they they want to do things that make them happy and proud. I think part of the reason I joined the military was because I wanted to make that side of the family proud. And if I think of the reason I've worked so hard of my life is I wanted to make the bare side,

my dad's side of the family proud of just work, put your head down. Never talk about how hard you're working. Just do it. Never look for a compliment. Never look for praise. You just work. And I can be really warm like my mom's side of the family, but I can also remove all emotion and just operate like my dad's out of the family.

And I've never thought about that until this conversation right now. And forever your battle, because both of those are not inherently good or bad, we'll subscribe emotions or ascribe emotions to those. Neither one of those are inherently good or bad. It's how you utilize those when they need to be utilized, right?

And so you'll forever get to play that infinite game where you'll go, okay, when is it okay? When do I actually need to go, and shut it down. Like when do I need that part? When do I need the full present, every bit of the emotion that Nick can bring to the table?

And how fast can I toggle back and forth? Because inevitably you're going to need a little bit of both in most days. Right? And it's learning how quickly you can toggle back and forth and how to do that. It's mastery. It's education.

All education is. self-education at the end of the day. That's all it is. All education is self-education. All accountability is self-accountability. All learning goes back to figuring out yourself and how you can play that game better to then go serve other people. So you'll forever play that game in battle. I actually have that written down. I pulled that quote from you. All education is self-education. Yes, sir. Wildly personal. I do feel like I am pretty aware and I can control that switch. I know when to turn it on, when to turn it off. Yeah. And there's so many people. people that don't have that self-awareness and they're just battling that switch and it's just

constantly flipping. Charlie's only 10 months old at this point, but Steph and I are already having the conversations about school. Yeah. And this is one of these decisions that we don't take lightly. We're talking about it now because we want the next couple of years to start implementing some sort of plan and solution. And from my perspective, the options are public school, private school, and homeschool.

and I've had the conversation with Steph that I would love to take a lead in homeschooling the kids. I think I would get so much joy and passion out of that. And what scares me is outsourcing education like we were talking about. You know, as of right now, what is your opinion on the public school education system, private school education system, home school option?

And how should people start thinking about these three options? It's a really good question. And it's, I get, because I'm so involved in this world, I forget a lot of times that the majority of the world actually doesn't have this conversation as much. The majority of the world is just like, yeah, they get to be five and then go to school, whatever your local school. Like I forget that that's really kind of the default status quo. Like you just send them to wherever you're going to send them.

And that's the majority of the people's mindset. I forget about it sometimes. So I love the intentionality of taking a look at the office. because most people don't realize there are so many options, but then we gotta talk about what those options, what those options are, which I know is what you're asking. And so- I think a lot of people don't know what questions to ask too,

because- They have no idea. Say, well, what are you gonna do for school? They have no idea. We're gonna do public school. Yeah, we're gonna do- How are the schools? Yeah. I think they're fine. Right, I think they're good.

Or we're gonna move here because I've heard these are the best schools in the area, which means this is a good socioeconomic area. That's all it means. It means nothing to this. taught in gang lands i've taught in freaking disneyland the schools themselves the teachers the quality of the quote unquote education which is really the schooling process no different the demographics different yeah right your your your your population's different and so that can you know provide different and not saying one's better than the other either because i'll tell you what i saw kids that

were broken over here so our kids were broken over here they were just broken in different you know a little bit different ways and, and, you know, maybe a parent that was not present, maybe a parent that was too present. This kind of drugs over here, this kind of drugs over here, this kind of after-school activity over here, this kind of after-school activity or during-school activity over here. So, you know, we got issues on all sides. So it comes back to, Socrates says the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. So I always start with taking a look at, well, what is education? like what should it be for? What does that mean?

I always ask parents to start there. What does it mean to be educated? And it's a weird question for most people. What does it mean? What does it mean to be educated? So what does it look like for Charlie to be educated? Like if I ask you that, you're kind of like, it gives you, I don't know if you have a direct answer that,

but it probably makes you think a little bit. What does it mean to be educated? I think if I thought off the top of my head it'd be she'd become smarter. She would know more and she would move through the hierarchy of ranks society has kind of the blueprint that we've established for a successful quote unquote life. Yeah. And so whose blueprint is that? Is it your blueprint?

Is it her blueprint? Is it somebody else's blueprint? Is that the blueprint that you want? Right. So when we start talking about educate, that's why I say it's wildly personal because again, we go back to that outsourcing. We're looking for other people's blueprint of how to even define that. So we're literally going, okay, Charlie, we're partially going to define your life by putting you in other people's blueprint. And we don't stop to ask who made that blueprint.

What did they make it for? Which is one of the biggest problems with conveyor belt schools. And I say conveyor belt because I don't just separate it into public and private. I separate it into conveyor belt, non-conveyor belt. most private schools are the same as public schools people want to talk about um you know the agendas that are going on in a lot of the government schools right now and part of what we got to realize too is you know and i want everybody who's listening who's a parent realize that what we're talking about is we're talking about the truth as it is here mid-May in 23 right charlie's 10 months old

So the thought that we're going to know exactly what the world needs and what that blueprint's going to need to look like in 10 years when she's only 10 versus 20 years when she's 20, you have no freaking idea. How crazy different is the world in just the last five years? That's not stopping, right? So it's the old adage of we're not going to be able to prepare the road for the child. We need to prepare the child for any road. It's that, right? that. So we need to work on right here. So again, it brings the eyes, the focus right back here. So when you got your different options of, you have schooling or you have education, schooling says that there

is a specific system and it's a system you got to follow. The conveyor belt programs, people are really upset right now more about the agendas than anything. And I appreciate that. I'm from a parental standpoint. You know, they don't like to see some of the gender ideologies that are coming in. Some of the, you know, California just initiated a systemic racism curriculum that's going to implement in all other schools, right? So it's automatically teaching. If you're a certain race, you're, definitely racist. You, you know, you're taking advantage. Somebody else has been taking advantage of, hey, by the way, your enemies hate each other. Like, it's just teaching a separation, you know, more than anything else. You got your critical race theories. You've got your, so like parents are

standing up around the agendas that they're seeing play out. I appreciate that. What I always tell parents is you'll have just as much success going to your school board meetings, though, and going to protest all of these things or going to talk to the principal or going, you'll have just as much success as you would if you were to take a trip to Italy and go stand outside the Vatican and say, change your theology. Like it's not, there's so much money, power, tradition, politics that's there, you mean nothing to them. and the people that you're going to be able to complain to, even if they wanted to change. And by the way, I know so many teachers and administrators that do not agree with what they are doing in their job.

But they've just acquiesced because, well, that's the blueprint. Somebody else wrote the blueprint for me. I gave the pen away long ago. They're telling me what the narrative is for my story. Shit, they're making me a background, you know, character in my own story. But I got to go with it. Hopefully I get to retirement. Like there's so many people living that life.

life, but they really, they want to change it too, but it's such a systemic issue that those things aren't going to change. So people are upset about the agendas. What I want parents to really just consider, think, understand is the conveyor belt model itself. And without getting too far into it, I always tell people, go read John Taylor Godot, G-O-T-T-O, go read anything he ever wrote. The man is an unsung hero, an unsung legend in this country that most people don't know anything about but he was a historian he was also new york state teacher of the year and taught in the system for 30 years but he was a foremost historian on why we do school the way we do it why that can vary about model and ultimately without getting into all the nuances of it it came out of a prussian military

system they were mad they had lost to napoleon and part of their thought around why they had lost was that their soldiers started thinking for themselves. And they didn't want that. They wanted to make sure that the soldiers were just following orders. And then they went, man, what are we doing trying to get soldiers to follow orders once they come in? We haven't had a chance to really get them into that mindset yet. We need to take control of a publicized like a schooling system. So we make sure that we train obedient people that will listen to the authority no matter what it takes.

They will always say yes and bow down to the state. That was essentially the start of the conveyor belt model that we have now. It was a Prussian model. It was brought over here to our country. You had people who could benefit like John Rockefeller, who put in the equivalent of what would be like $1.3 billion today into the school system right now. He says, I want a nation of workers, not a nation of thinkers. People said, what are you going to teach them for 12 years?

He said, we'll teach them a whole lot about nothing. There's the start of the conveyor belt system that you are religiously tied to because you grew up in this country. And I don't say religiously accidental either because it's a religion. It's a religion of, okay, but here's what education is. Yeah, I know, but what about the five?

Don't they need to know this specific? Don't they need to? You're tied to that. You don't even realize it. And you have, because you're so familiar with that, you see it as truth. And that's what we've done to an entire population with school. We have made what is familiar true.

when the default factory setting of a human being is that is not true. But now that's unfamiliar. So you got conveyor belt programs. Then you have non-conveyor belt privatized programs. And there's a lot of really good programs out there. And not just ours, man. I'm in this for the kids. So yes, we've built out a number of things in the Acton Academy model,

the Apogee Schools. We're building more Apogee schools. you know right now but there are there's prenda there's Waldorf if they do it right which i like up to a point there's Montessori if they do it right many of them have bastardized the name too but there's there's there's some options that are that are non-convary about model that really go back more towards the educational default for a young human and then you have home education or home schooling again definition of terms if you leave the religion of conveyor belt school and then you bring it right back home,

you're doing, you're doing, you know, it's better than if you were in that environment, but it's not the ideal. I'd rather go for the ideal. I'd rather go for optimization, right? So home education, looking at the young person, figuring out what do they want their roadmap to look like,

what does our family roadmap to look like that? That's a more fun game to play rather than just bringing that home. If you've ever tried to bring somebody out of a cult and they grew up in a cult, You know, you can take them out. You can show them all this other stuff, but they're still going to try to do cult stuff.

Don't bring schooling into your house. I guess it comes down to the parent as the teacher and what that curriculum is. You're already there. You are already the primary educator in Charlie's life. You and Steph, 50-50. Already, you are the primary educator. Again, did you teach her how to crawl? Of course not.

She's going to start to do those things, right? She's going to start to do the natural things. but then as she starts to be more aware of what's going on in the world, her inner voice, as she starts to develop her own inner voice and her own curiosities, that inner voice for a good chunk of development, really hardcore zero to five, still pretty much that five to eight. You start to lose a little bit of it eight to twelve,

but it's still there at 12. It starts to get outsourced a whole lot, so you've got to be really intentional. These are blanket ages, blanket statements, but that's roughly the developmental, you know, these big transitions for them. you and Steph, especially for those first five years, you are the inner voice.

That's a combination of your voice. So she is learning how to look at the world based on watching you. This is what a man does. Period. End of story. I see other men and they've got things a little off because this is what a man does. Right here, Daddy.

I see other women. But this is what a woman looks like. Right here, mommy. And this is how they interact. This is how a man treats a woman. This is how a woman treats a man. This is how they act when they go out in public. Here's the way they talk to each other.

Here's the way they work. Here's the way they don't work. Here's the way they talk about God. Here's the way they talk about money. Here's the way they talk. You are implanting all of the truths in those years based on who you are. That, even if you send them to preschool,

even if you send them, that is the biggest influence on them. You are the primary educator. The hardest part for parents is they go from being this primary educator and paying attention to again, now I need to be the teacher. So who's the expert that's got the right curriculum so that I can go follow this

and I'm going to step into this teacher role and your kids like, I thought we were just growing together and you're like, nope, this sucks. I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to teach myself how to do it again so that I can make you do it too, and we're going to go ahead

and throw a wrench in our relationship. Like, that's the last place to go. My mom was, she was a public educator. Yes. And she taught special education and life skills. I mean, I watched my mom love her career. For sure. She loved her job.

Yep. And she had a little bit of freedom, more freedom with the curriculum. For sure she did. Teaching special education and life skills, I don't know if there even was a curriculum because she was thinking outside of the box all the time. She may not have even had to mess with it

because there was more intellectual freedom for teachers in the past too. And this is one of the hardest conversations I have with teachers who are maybe now retired or because they had more intellectual freedom. The impact of the why behind it didn't, you know, that was never talked about. Nobody ever reads John Taylor Godot

as you're going to become a teacher. Like otherwise you wouldn't do it. and they were allowed that intellectual freedom and they were allowed that relationship and then again you had less issues from the home side as well there were still issues there's always been issues but you had less you had less of the public division you had less of that kind of stuff going on right we're talking about the environment yeah a little bit less of that but then they did have more intellectual freedom in there too um to be able to build to build relationships and do what they needed to do which is great and i'm the biggest freaking support i'm the biggest even even now i want good people in those conveyor

belt systems. There are some young people. Those are the best human beings they are going to see in their totality of their environment is when they go to those schools. I want nothing but good human beings there who want the right thing for the kids. So please don't ever hear that I hate the teachers. I hate the administrators. It's nothing to be further from the truth. I know the importance of you guys more than anybody on this freaking planet. We need good people there. Also, I hate the system that you're in. And anybody that can get outside of it needs to do it. Because I'm sure there's people...

I'm sure there's people in this episode right now thinking, I can't homeschool because I have to work full-time jobs. I can't afford private school or some of these non-traditional schools. You know, the conveyor belt public school system is all I got. Yep. So they might feel stuck.

For sure. Understood. One of my questions, you know, you said something that made me really think about this homeschooling. option. Yes, sir.

Because as Steph and I have talked about the homeschooling option, I've thought about it, I've never really thought about the curriculum that comes with that. And I'm curious how you do homeschooling right and how you do homeschooling wrong, because I'm assuming there are some sort of test you still have to do. I'm assuming there's some sort of curriculum you probably have to follow to some sort of extent, but like how does it work? How do you do it right? How do you do it wrong?

Because you made the comment, if you just take it. what you were doing in this conveyor belt school when you bring it to the home, nothing changes. So how do you change it? Yeah, it's really good. Isn't that crazy though? Because listen to what you said, I'm assuming there's a specific curriculum

you have to follow. I'm assuming there's a specific test you have to take. I'm assuming that's the cult. Right. That's the cult training, right? Do you know Steve Eckert, who works with Bezos? Shout out to the Eckerts, man.

Rad, Rad crew. Steve and I had been talking for for a long time and the first that we had known each other for a couple of years and had conversations and he'd been on the show and been on with the young men and obviously no Badros and Ray pretty well and Maddie and those that whole crew over there the first time Steve and I were together physically

we were at a we were at dinner and we're sitting right across from each other and he's like man we're ready to pull the plug like we're ready to just home edge of like we're ready to just get after it. The one thing I need to wrap my head around, though, is, okay, but what do we do as far as the reporting side? Like, what do we need to?

Like, what does the curriculum need to look like? Who do we need to send the results to? Who do we need to test? I'm like, where do you answer to other people all throughout? Like, where do you look? You, Steve Eckert, if anybody knows Steve, Steve's the ultimate, like, FU kind of mentality. Like, where else in your life do you actively look to obey

some other authority for no reason at all other than, like, I just want to make sure I'm obeying you the right way. He's like absolutely nowhere. I'm like, right. And it's the same here. Yes. So each state has their own requirements on what they would like you to submit testing-wise. And every state's a little different.

Some states don't ask you to test at all. You literally sign something in California for all the hot mess that it is. They do home education, right? Like you can literally sign up. It takes five minutes to fill out this form saying, look, this is what we're going to do. we're going to be home educating our kids. And you won't hear from them again until the next year. They're like, are you doing it again?

You're like, yep, submit, go. And they're not asking you to do anything. Certain states ask you to take tests. More often than not, what you'll find is that you'll take the test. And then they're like, oh, there's not actually anybody turn it into. We just want you to hold it under the results

in case we need to come get the results, right? You're just tied to this non-existent master forever. So the first step is, is figuring out, just get freaking, get out of your head. Like that, you don't have to obey anybody else and go with anybody else. You can start to go, okay, what does education need to look like for our family for my young hero? So when you get into that, when you say, how do you do it right? The first place most people go is, okay, well, there's academics,

and you got to make sure you're doing the right academics at the right time, at the right age. That's one of the hardest things for people to get over. Academics in our house is like the maybe fifth or sixth priority, and we barely ever do them. like barely ever. And if it's something that gets missed, then it gets missed because that's not education. Did you do well in school, academia? I do, yes.

Yeah, I figured you didn't. You're a really smart guy. I don't think I'm as smart as you as a natural person. I got straight A's all through school. I got straight A's all through college. Because I, again, saw the patterns, saw the game. I know how to play the game right. I know how to take the test.

I knew how to cram something, barf it out. I knew to barf it out. I knew how to read the teacher. and go, Mm, all right, Mr. Bear, all I got to do is say this. If I say this, he'll think I know everything because he keeps hammering this one freaking point. So if I just go in there and hammer this one point, he's going to be like, oh, my God,

this guy's good and has nothing do with me knowing anything. I just know what he wants to hear, right? I knew how to play that game really well. So I got all my straight A's. I went back and took a standardized test for a bunch of my parents at one of my campuses a couple years ago, a standardized math test. And I got a quote unquote, grade level is not a real thing, but I got a quote unquote sixth grade level in terms of my math.

How can that be? I passed everything. I got an A on everything. How do I not know any of it? Well, it's pretty freaking simple. I don't use it. If I won't, I make a lot of money. I've learned to keep a lot of money.

I've learned to give a lot of money. Companies pay me a lot of money to stand on stage for an hour. I understand how the tax system works that most people play. I also understand that there's a separate tax system that is completely legal, that almost nobody plays that you can play. That allows me to keep my money and give my money where I would like to give my money. And it's not to the government, right? I know how to read a P&L. I can look at the trust structure of our house.

And hey, guess what? While I do all of that, my heroes look at all of it with me. They're being educated. They're not being schooled. the best way to perpetuate your child's education is to continuously increase your own and bring them along with you because again they're watching everything you do

and again it's wildly personal too do you have electric fencing at your house we do not okay I never did either until we move to this farm so how much did I know about electric fences zero how much do I know about electric fences now a lot because I have to make sure it's always functioning because I live on a property that has thousands of trees and sometimes those trees fall and sometimes they take out your electric fence. And so now I've got to learn how to be a lumberjack. I've got to learn how to take fencing and

splice it back together. I've got to learn how to put the posts back in. I've got to learn how to do all of those things now because it's relevant now. So because I know how to do that now, I am more educated in that particular area. And hey, by the way, my kids got an education and electric fencing too, because it's relevant to us. If you never live on a property of the electric fence, it may never be relevant to you. So we always assume there are these certain boxes.

It's a ladder that we climb. It's these boxes that we check. And then, uh, shit, check the last box. I'm educated. It's not how it works. This is a continuous, infinite game. Education is just, growth all the time. So for my kids, as far as how we look at doing it right, well, first and

foremost, I better make sure I'm continuing my own education. I better make sure I'm continuing to grow. I'm growing the business. I'm growing in how I develop relationships, growing in my relationship with my wife, with my mom who's nearby, with the community. How do I show up and serve? And I'm very intentional about making sure they get to see as much of that as humanly possible. so they know what I do and why I do it. And we have great conversations around them. My wife is doing the same thing. She really runs the farm.

And they go along with her. They see this. We are educating them through us first and foremost. And then we want to tap into the next level for us, which is taking a look at heroic stories outside of us. And what I mean by heroic stories are, who are other models? mom and dad aren't perfect shocker right no such thing is perfect no such thing is a perfect

perfect fricking it a perfect spouse you should be pursuing it Mike Glover you know one of things he said to me one time he says uh the standard should always remain perfection I've always stuck with me since then like that's it for us too like the standards remain will never hit it but we'll always pursue that then we have to go okay that next level of influence what else is around them. So when it comes to music, movies, books, other people, we want them to be exposed to heroic thinking. So I'm going to be very intentional about what are the books that they are reading and what great conversations can we have there because we're setting the standard for their baseline of what's normal. Right. We're just an elevated normal. So we have intentional conversations

around, oh, okay, we're going to read this book. Let's have a conversation around. What did that person do right there. What was the ripple effect of what they did? What if they had chosen something different? What would have happened? What would have been the patterns that took place? Okay, let's put you in those shoes. What would you have done? How would you have thought through that? Right? We're giving them reps on how to think heroically to serve others to live the way that we think we should be able to live. We're giving them those reps through stories as much as possible. Again, music, radio, books, through pointing out other people in lives. Again, we're establishing a high baseline of normal because people say we're home educating you're going to shelter them no i'm going to expose them to greatness as

much as i can during these foundational years of their life that's not sheltering we've got to go to school so that you can get socialized so you can see there's bad people out there and you're going to have to work with them that's the dumbest shit i've ever heard in my life you and i don't go you know what in order to take this next step in our life you know as nick's growing as matt's growing let's go hang out in prison let's go hang out in prison for a little while because we've got to see that there's shitty people out there. And so we've got to know that that's just part of life. That's the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard.

We go, who is doing what we want to do? And they're doing it at even higher level. And they're serving even more. They're helping even more humans. They're having a greater impact. Let's go get around them a little bit. So we can see how we can move up the chain a little bit to serve other human beings. So we're setting that foundation of normal for our kids through the intentionality of the

stories and the movies and the people. So that's another layer for us. Responsibilities is another layer. You notice we haven't gotten to academics yet. Right? So chores and responsibilities. You're going to find very soon, Charlie's going to, you know,

she'll be walking around. She's going to come up to you guys in the kitchen and she's going to go, can I help? Can I help you cook dinner? Depending on what your day looks like, depending on what it has looked like, depending on what you have going on, you're going to be tempted to go,

no thanks honey let me do this because we have to get here then we've got to do this we've got to do that so let dad that is just got to get dinner made i've just got to get it out here every time you get that opportunity you say yes and you go absolutely you can help you bet let me give you a job let me give you a chore let me give you a responsibility here in what we're doing let's be a part of this together you give them those responsibilities they crave those responsibilities and it also lets them know that you trust them as part of the family you trust them as part of the crew they are part of your tribe. Every time you go, nah, no, no, no, no, no.

It's like, ooh, okay, am I a little different than everybody else? They're not consciously thinking it, but subconsciously you give a little bit of that push away. So you give them those responsibilities. And as they continue to get older, we like to look at every age as like a leveling up. It's like, cool, man, we're going to celebrate this leveling up for you. There's extra freedoms that you get now because you're six. There's extra freedoms that you get now because you're seven. Oh, but there's extra responsibilities that come before those freedoms.

So the more chores responsibilities, they can earn their way so they start to make that connection, that responsibility comes first, and then the freedoms come after. You're layering in all of those things. Then you can start to take a look at outside experiences, right? I can talk all day about the academia and the science and the stories behind running a marathon. I can talk all day. I've never run a marathon. You ever run a marathon?

Multiple. Multiple. People should listen to you. not me when it comes to that topic. The practice over the theory. My God. And what do we do? We go to school and we're going to freaking listen to the MBAs that have never run a business in their life.

Most MBAs, MBA professors, God bless them, probably good people. I won't listen to them. I wouldn't listen to anything because most of them have never run a business. I would listen to you 10 times out of nine over those guys because of what you've built. And our mutual friends that have built like those are the guys I'm going to go to. I'm not going to go to these guys. Right. So same thing for your young heroes.

Give them the experiences, man. What are they interested in? What are they fascinated by? What kind of things can we go experience together as a family? What kind of things can we give them to challenge them as experiences, you know, individually? What does that look like? Who are the other people around?

How can I be intentional about those people pouring in? And then at some point you can get down to the, you know, academia of it all. But what have you missed at that point? Like math, when they're watching me go through the, P&Ls when we're playing cards together and they're having to keep score when we're going out and I'm like, hey, you've got here's this amount of money and now you got to go try, you can go buy some stuff, but you've got to figure out how much money you got and you're going to have to figure out with tax like what that's going to look like and then, you know, come home. We're going to take a look

at the P&Ls of my business, even if you don't understand all of that kind of stuff yet. You don't have to. You're going to take a look at the, you're going to know exactly how much money daddy made today. You know exactly what that is and exactly where all of that money went and how it was funneled and exactly what I've done to get that. We're going to have those conversations, that's going to become baseline normal. That's why my nine-year-old, 10 now, but she was nine and walks up to me and is like, if the Fed can just print all the money they want, why do people pay taxes? And I put that on on Twitter and somebody is like, you know, not somebody. A ton of people are like, I call bullshit, something that never happened.

That's baseline normal conversation for us. Our conversations are, in our house look like that. It's baseline normal. It's not astounding that a nine-year-old asked it. It's astounding that most people aren't having those kinds of intentional conversations in their home with their kids. Right.

Everything is surface level. Give them a screen. What are you playing? What are you watching? What do you listen to? Like, it's surface level garbage. And then you wonder why the world is able to tell them who to be. That was all really good stuff.

I kind of want to flip the conversation a little bit. Sure. This is all my favorite stuff, dude, so I'll just barf. Yeah, that was really good stuff. I mean, so far up until this point, we've talked about the parent's obligation to the child as a parent. And I'm only 10 months in, but based off my observation with other parents, a lot of parents or people put their energy into taking care of the child and they lose that self-responsibility of taking care of themselves. That's the first level. and I pulled a few

quotes that you had on some of your social platforms One of those is Who you are and who you are becoming Are the biggest keys to a strong foundation For your children And then you had this which I loved Getting physically shredded Or get physically shredded

It shows discipline Build that business and make money A great tool for good But if you have the money In the body of your dreams Yet your wife and kids aren't stoked to see you each day You've done nothing it's not either or it's yes and beautiful i think a lot of people think it's either or and they think

that getting in shape building a business making money focusing on their career is selfish and it's a distraction from their family you know i've i've seen people make comments towards me of oh you know it must be nice to go run in the morning and not take care of your kids yeah it must be nice or it must be nice to build this business yeah over the last decade of your life and make some money. Like, you should be home with your kids. Well, it's like you can do both. So I'd love to really dive into that.

What is the self-responsibility of a parent so that the children see that discipline growing up? So good. Similar to what you were talking about earlier when you're talking about the two sides of your family, right? And now your game for you individually is, when do I bring the emotion out? When do I bring that and just kind of cut it off?

And the reality is most days, it's not going to be in either or it's going to be a yes and you're going to have times where you need to emote. You need to go in and love and you need to love really, really hard and really, really intentionally. And then you've got other times during that day where you may have to take a phone call or talk to an employee or make a decision in business where you've got to shut the emotions off and just go, what is the right thing? If I shut the emotions off, I know what the right thing is for the business. And you've got to do that.

And you're going to have both of those things happen during the day. the majority of your day is going to be playing somewhere in the middle of those, right? You're going to be toggling all throughout. This is the same thing. You are responsible as a parent for both sides of this because, again, it comes down, you are educating them. You're educating them on that. So you have to continuously work to get better and then just have the freaking conversation with it.

We have this weird thing where there's a separation within families. Daddy does this. Mommy does this. Kids, you're over here. We pit ourselves against them. This should be a family unit, a family mission. We're all together. Daddy's got his mission over here.

Daddy's got a purpose over here. This is what this looks like. And everybody needs to know what that is, partially so they just understand what I'm doing and when I have to go somewhere and what I've got to do, but also so they can hold me to the standard that's all back here.

We've got our family contract, right? Our family rules, our family, like this is how we show up to the world. This is just what Bodro's do. We're all in agreement. Boom, here it is. Like everybody's here and we can all hold each other accountable to that. So here's daddy's mission. Here's how this is playing out during the week. This is the long tail part of that. Here's where I want to go with that. Here's who I want to serve

with that. Here's what this means I need to do every single day. I want you guys to watch this. I want you guys to come along with me. I want you guys to be a part of this because you're a part of this greater mission over here too, right? So you guys are all a part of this. There's Mommy's mission. Mommy's mission. Same thing. We're going to go here. She's got this that she's got to do during the day because this is her end goal. This is her end result. She's going to bring you along. Morgan what's your mission right now who are you becoming we got Morgan everybody knows what Morgan's mission is everybody knows what Morgan's day looks like everybody knows what real loudon now you got the entire hand right it's that it's that mentality of it's a yes and we're all

on our individual missions but we're doing it collectively together you're educating them through what you're doing individually and through going we're all in this together and I want you to go on your own journey too. I heard you mention before your children speak the language of you and not the other or not another. And what I kept thinking back to is, as I mentioned previously, I've had these conversations with people, I've met people and I've seen the parallels between their childhood and the person they've become as they've gotten older.

And that's why I know it's so important for, as parents, adults, continuous self-development and self-work to improve yourself. I keep thinking back to, you know, say as a parent, you have all these insecurities and low self-esteem and you talk bad about yourself in front of your kids, about your body, about your performance, about your job, and all these things, and your kids hear that. Well, they're going to observe and attract those same insecurities.

Correct. What kind of guidance do you give to parents to address? adults to keep working on themselves because it's so important for the observations of the kids. Yeah. Right now, that is the, it's not even necessarily a yes and in that point, right? At that point, if that's really where you are, anxiety, you know, self-hatred, all of those things, those are not the natural state of a human being. And you go back to that wild thing.

There's not how many anxious lions do you see in the freaking jungle, right? There's no anxiety. You watch, I love watching wild animal. I love having all the animals that we have to because they're just doing their thing. They're not busy trying to be something that they are not. The rabbits are not trying to be the freaking goats. The goats are not trying to be the freaking chickens. The chickens are dumb as hell, but they're not trying to be anything other than chickens.

They're running around doing chicken things. We're the only ones that will put all these other. It's not even just the story. Somebody else gives us a story when we're young or whatever that is. They give us a story and then we leave it up here in our head and then we tell ourselves a story about the story, right, so that we own it. So for those parents that are owning that garbage, and that's what critical thinking is, by the way. We talk about critical thinking, like it's a, you know, oh, I want to raise a critical thinker,

but we don't stop and again definition of terms, what does that mean? Most people don't even think, never mind, think critically. Thinking and questioning and asking why is only the first level. Thinking about your thinking is what critical thinking is. So it's unpacking, okay, why do I have this story about myself? That's one level. What is the story I tell myself about this stuff? Like how much of I really internalize this and now everything I do I'm acting because of this?

The best thing you're going to do for your kids is to unpack that as quickly as humanly possible. And one of the best ways to do it. Dr. Peterson talks about this all the time. And we don't, you know, again, this is one of the detrimental things we do in school. We talk about school is why do you got to write. What are we going to do? write, we're going to write paragraphs and I want it to be, you know, or you're going to write a story and it's going to be a thousand words. That's one of the worst things we've done in MLA format.

In MLA format. That's exactly right. Yes, gosh, dude. And that's one of the worst things we've done because we've just started to say, okay, if I can, even if you can say something succinctly and powerfully in 50 words, I want you to write a thousand. So we just teach people to spew bullshit. Right. So like, no, say it. as clearly as you can with the least amount of words that you need to say it. Like that's one of the things we should be saying. Nothing drives me crazier than when I'm on a call with someone or speaking someone. Yes.

And it takes them a thousand words and say 100. And they could have just said it right there. That drives me absolutely insane. And it's one of the things that drives me insane about myself is because I will start going back and forth in my head. I'm like, okay, dude, do it. Is there a point that you're not getting to or are you really making it? Like, that's part of that self-awareness part too, making sure that I'm not doing that.

Same freaking thing. It drives me freaking nuts. So we taught that the purpose of writing is to regurgitate some other BS that somebody else wants to hear. The purpose of writing is to understand how to think. That's the purpose of writing. Otherwise, yeah, if you're using it to write ad copy,

there's a specific formula to that. If you're writing a book, great, there's a specific, if you're writing an email, it looks specific. Otherwise, it's to learn to organize your thoughts and to get these things out of your head, And to get it on paper, once you can get that on paper, you can get out of head. You can start to detach from it and actually look objectively at something.

While it's in your head, it's all subjective. You get it on paper, you can start to detach a little bit. Look at it objectively. That's why getting a schedule down. I like to get schedules down the night before because otherwise I'll wrestle all night. Like, oh, but I got to do this tomorrow. I got to do this tomorrow. I get it all out there.

Cool. All right. I see what it is. I see what the priorities are. I'm good. I can sleep more peacefully. Well, same thing with all the BS stories that you tell yourself about the stories that somebody else told you.

My dad said this to me one time. And so you dive in, you write it down, everything. Everything you said, how you felt, what all that looked like. And you start to unpack that and you start to take a look at it for what it is. And you're like, that's unfortunate. And you read yourself through that, you breathe yourself through it. You start to unpack those layers so that you can get out of your own freaking head and get present with your kids.

It's the best thing you're going to do for them. Have you ever heard of the book, The Courage to Be Disliked? No, but I like it. It's one I'm listening to you right now. Okay. While I run and it's really, really good. The concept behind the book is that all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. And the solution to it is that you must separate your life tasks, the things that you can control from other people's life tasks.

And you can't control what other people think about you. So why worry about it? That's right. And it's this need for external validation that causes a life. lot of the issues we experience. For sure it is. From adults to parents to younger kids. That's right.

I think a lot of those, those concerns, those issues start in childhood. Correct. By the way you're raised. And then they're exacerbated in schools. Yeah. It becomes, you have so many of these other peer influences who may or may not be good influences and you start to worry about what so many other people think. And then we exacerbate that through social media and go hear a young person who's

can't feel like, grownups can't. can't even handle this tool, right, and get out of their own heads and then stop the comparison game, but we'll give it to a 12-year-old who's already doing it naturally with everybody and everything around them while they're a hormonal nightmare. And then we're going to exacerbate it here too. And then we're going to get rid of all the physical fitness kind of stuff, which will help their mental fitness. Let's get rid of like, we're causing a lot of these issues, but he's exactly right. It boils down to that external validation. So how do we, that that's where the game becomes like, okay, well, how do you just minimize that as they're growing up? How do you make sure?

you're minimizing the negative influences that they're getting. Again, that's not sheltering. It's building the foundation of somebody who respects others. We'll listen to another person's opinion. And we'll engage in civil discourse around that too. And be willing to change their mind. If somebody else's opinion is, you know, there's some validity behind that.

Like, that's great. But they're not going to be swayed emotionally by that. If we can get our kids foundationally to understand that, the separation between them and other human beings as they get older is exponential. I mean, the older I get, the more I, I, for sure, feel the impact of that as well. For sure, but you've also been given hyper access to getting a lot of reps in that too. Because you have a public face and because your success is public, you're going to have, you know, I know I have them.

I know you have them. It must be nicest, right? And so you're going to hone those skills of, as I was driving to the office today. And I was looking to the left or right of me and all these people driving around me. And it's all these people on their phone. Yes, sir. And then they're weaving into other lanes. They're missing exits.

They're all over the place. And I was thinking, holy shit, we live in a world of zombies. For sure. Zombies. Yes. And I'm curious, like, what are your thoughts on smartphones for children? children, social media. How have you allowed or implemented the use of social media

or a smartphone with your kids? Or what's your plan? Yeah, it's a really good question, man. So we talk about mental health for young people. It's like kind of a buzzword in our society. And what we've done is essentially eliminated all the things that come before mental health. Physical health comes before mental health for our young kids. So a big part of our proactive plan because my kids don't have phones right now.

Will they get them at some point? It's a tool, and we're going to talk about the tool that it needs to be, and I'll get to that point. What are their ages right now? 12, 10, and 7. Okay. So we know that that tool is going to come. So a lot of moments in parenting, it doesn't really boil down to the moment itself.

It's everything you have done up until that. It's just like running the race. It's running the bodybuilding show. It's doing like, that's just that moment. It's all the preparation prior to, right? Same kind of stuff. We know the smartphones are going to end up being a thing.

Cool. So we're parenting around that. Now, and it's not just by talking about this. So we're talking about, what are we worried about the potential of getting these negative influences? We're worried about the potential of getting the addictions. We're worried about the potential of the distractions.

We're worried about the potential of, you know, other people pulling them in another direction that we don't want to go and having a deteriorating version of a mental health thing because that's what a parent wasn't worried about. So let's start building the foundation over here. Physical fitness matters, physical health matters. And having my kids understand the why behind that matters too. So we very, very intentionally, we exercise very, very intentionally. So do they, and they know the why behind it all. And we're also very quick to point out, not in a dick way,

but it's like, look, this is the majority. What's it? Like, this person just had a heart attack. They're 47. Why do you think they had a heart attack? They don't look like they're very healthy. They're not very healthy. So what kind of things do you think they were, like, what do you think they were eating? What do you think their lifestyle look like? Right. So we're using. So we're using the examples of heroic thinking to show them the way to be. And we're giving them examples too of just going, and if we don't go this way, then you have a tendency to go this way. So that's really front load this, this, this conversation, you know, going forward. It's the same thing. So we get the physical fitness side checked in. That helps the mental, the mental health

be off the charts. We're not jabbing them with a bunch of extra crap. We're not feeding them a bunch of extra crap. We're getting them exercise. We're getting them sunlight. We're getting them all those things. So they naturally feel good. Your physiology precludes your, your output. I remember learning that from Tony Robbins freaking years ago. Right. So get the physiology right. Then you've also established that you're going to have conversations around these things. And what is the example mom and dad are setting with the smartphones? So I use them. I use them for my, I have one. I use it for my business. My wife has one. She uses it for her business and we use it for the personal things. They're learning from us. So are we always at the dinner table with the phones out? When we're hanging out with them,

do we have the phones out? Dad's got to put his phone away because I'll get too distracted, even if it's an email, even if it's a good thing, even if I'm using it for the right thing, I'll get too distracted. And this right now is family time. And so this is what I need to do. We're setting the precedent for all those things going in. And then as they get to where they actually need it, we can go, okay, here you go. But what are the rules that we've established around the house? How do mom and dad act with the phones? What are you guys going to do? What are the responsibilities that you're going to take now because you have the freedom of the phone. It's all these things we're talking about already.

It gets layered in before that ever happens. I mean, I personally get to a point where I don't have a smartphone anymore. So do I. One of the most impactful, powerful, wealthiest people that I know has a flip phone and has almost nobody in his contact list and doesn't have an email.

Sounds amazing. You have to fax him things. I'm definitely changing my number in the next couple of years. For sure. Not of spam calls I get. For sure. Especially building in business over the last decade. You put your number on everything.

Yes. It's insane. It is non-stop. Yeah, I saw Adam Grant made a post on Instagram a few days ago. And it said there was a new study with 27,000 people involved. And that owning a smartphone at a, younger age predicts lower self-worth, motivation, and resilience, more sadness, anxiety, and aggression, especially in girls.

So why they don't freaking need, all their friends have it? Well, you're letting somebody else write the script for your kids. And again, my kids don't interact with a lot of kids that have those either. They're not in a school. They're going out and interacting with other young people in a controlled environment, in a physical fitness related kind of environment. They're just not hanging out with those kind of, and it's not that those kids are bad,

they've been allowed to use something that my kids just, they're not going to tackle right now. My kids have watches, they can make a phone call. If they need to call us, they can. If they need to text us from that, they can. And even that, they earn that through taking on more responsibilities. I remember when I got my first phone. It was a Nokia brick phone.

Yeah. When I was in middle school, my parents gave it to me for, when I was at sports practices. Yeah. I remember getting it. This is before smartphones were a thing. Yeah. I was like, why would I need this?

So I put in my sock drawer, turned off all the time. Never took it anywhere. But, you know, now you go anywhere. And kids are on iPads, they're on phones. Sure. They're becoming these zombies. For sure. That their parents are as well.

For sure. Next thing I want to talk about is the Apochee Strong program. Yeah. So I think you guys are doing really good stuff with the younger kids, but now with adults too. Yes, sir. You kind of talk about that program that you, you know, you guys are doing. you guys are working on and the impact that it's making yeah it's been the freaking best man so we're now about two years into the young man's program and so tim and i started that um knowing we were

going to be building these schools knowing that he and i were operating other businesses too but we just went man we have so many good guys it's good men in our network we need to do a little extra for these for these young men right so we've got these young men they're as young as 12-ish and again we pick that partially because of those developmental ages we don't we don't because a lot of the program is virtual because we got young men all over the world and we don't we don't want to go too much below that um you know for the for the screen part of it so about 12 to about 18 and what we're doing is we're providing them a roadmap of real education because we know many of those guys go to school um many of them go to school full-time part-time

public school private school many of them are homeschool and then some of these guys are they're actually like working full time and and you know just doing the program uh on the side so you got this whole wide range but they go through 12 months of a very specific educational process and it you know we dive into the mindset but we dive into teaching them how to connect with other human beings teaching them how to go look at the patterns of success from other people go interview CEOs go interview you know law enforcement and fire go take on these challenges like a they have a paperclip challenge that's in there for one of these months where they have to start with a paperclip and go be intentional about trading up and seeing what they can get at the end of the 30 days and they can't go to grandma

they can't sell it they have to go be intentional about trading and that might mean you go out into your neighborhood it might mean you utilize the tools that are available to you but let's see what you can do you got to be intentional about that there's what's what's the largest trade up you've seen uh we have a gentleman a young man that got his very first truck really paying zero zero started with a paper clip, traded up to a truck. That's awesome. It is freaking awesome. And that's over the course of the 30 days.

I've taken students to like shopping malls and given them three hours to do this. And I had a student come back with a working functional cell phone in three hours at a mall with a bunch of strangers. Incredible. Neon signs and clothes and all this kind of stuff, man. So it just makes them really, really intentional about, you know, the actions that they're taking. So all of these projects and challenges over the course of the 12 months are designed to put them in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation and make them grow from it. They also have specific readings every month.

They have specific workouts every month. They're in a private platform that Tim and I are posting to every single day and having conversations with these young guys. And then every single week we bring on a new guest mentor, which you have been one, right? We bring on these mentors that these young men look up to. And again, it's that whole concept of heroic thinking and looking up to these heroes and going, okay, what is your story? What is your pattern of, like, what were your steps?

success so they can start to see these patterns. Nick Bear did all of this and we can start to see this and then we look at Bezos and Bejro's has a very different story, but you start to see some of the crossover patterns. Then we talked to Brian Callan and Brian's story is very different than those guys, but well that kind of cross, that's kind of the same thing Nick did. It just looked a little different, right? So they start to see these patterns. So every week we're bringing in the best of the best of the best. These young men build out this digital portfolio over the course of the year that shows the intentional journey into leadership. Now the cool thing about the product is they can then go apply to college with it. If they want to apply to college with it, they can go get a job with

it. If they want to get a job with it, we've had young men do the same. We actually have colleges that are now giving blanket entrance and scholarships to anybody coming out of Apagee. If I go, that's awesome. Yep. If I go, yeah, this is an Apagee guy. Automatic entrance and we've got one university of Mississippi is just like, yeah, we'll go 20 grand off the top, you know, to have one of these guys here. So, We've got that. We've got relationships with these other programs as well. They're doing the same thing, scholarship-wise.

These guys have this tangible proof, this journey into leadership. And then as they pour in for the 12 months, they're invited to stay in perpetuity. No charge. They get to stay. Because what ends up happening too is this happened just last week. We now have organizations that are calling us. They're like, hey, we need to hire. I don't want Indeed.

I don't want 100 frigging resumes right here. Hiring stuff. Hiring sucks. We just went through the process of hiring a market dealer in the business. Yes. And it took me months to find the right person. So hard. So we've got companies now that are coming to us going, do you have anybody that's, you know,

they might need to be 17, 18 sometimes, whatever, but do you have anybody that's got this interest and, you know, somewhat of in this field over here? Because I already know the character, the work ethic, you know, their ability to communicate, all the meta skills that are necessary. We know those are there. I can train them on the job, but I don't want a cultural fit, and this is about the best way.

So we've got a young man just moved from Florida, Dallas area, take on a big job. He got to hire somebody as a remote worker, so we hired another one of our young men who's like 16 that lives in Idaho, hired him to work for, you know, so these guys are making real adult moves,

real adult money, real adult impact right now. I mean, I was interviewed by, one of the students in Apoit program. Yep. And every time I am a part of that, I am absolutely blown away. And I ask him at the end of the interview, how old are you? Yeah. Because you're talking to me like you're 26 years old.

Mm-hmm. You just built a business. Yeah. And you're a leader of an organization. Yep. And I'm like, yeah, I'm 13. Uh-huh. Yeah.

I'm always like, mind blown. He's given a big speech. I know exactly what you're talking about. because I've worked. I mean, I worked with them too. He's like, okay, you know, he got to hear you when you came on with everybody. And he's like, okay, for my, you know, this version, the CEO project right here, he's like, that's who I want to reach out to.

You know, I'm like, okay, well, let's do it the right way. Let's see what you need to do it. Here's what you're going to, you know, here's how you're going to approach. And, you know, you know, the way that we know our Apogee code, you know how to show up, you know, so you'll be fine. Like, this is how you do it, but this is how we're going to approach it. So he rocked, yeah, he rocked that out, man. and he was just like, he called, I mean, he emailed me, called me after.

I mean, he was so freaking fired up. So, you know, kudos to you and thank you for that. I was so impressed. He's a freaking rock star. He's giving a big speech to, I don't know what today. Today's Wednesday, he's given a big speech on Friday, too, but in front of a bunch of people. He's amazing.

Yeah, you guys are doing absolutely great stuff. It's the best. I can't wait until my kids get to that age because I'm pushing him your way. Cool, man. Go to Abbegee, learn, experience. and have the conversations. And the beautiful thing is, the way we look at,

it's like what we've been talking about forever. It's, he's part of, he's the rock star that he is, ultimately because he's choosing to do it. We're providing this roadmap, mentorship, guidance over here, saying,

it's not the road, it's a roadmap for you to learn your own story so that you can go then create your own roadmap, right? So we're giving you this thing to experience because at the end of the day, you're going to get this self-awareness, you're going to get a self-confidence from having done the hard things, and then that's going to set you up so you can build your own roadmap now

and go lead other people. But in that conversation, I also know mom very, very well because it needs to look the same at home too, right? That's the beauty. I know mom very well. I know the parents very well. We're making sure we're pouring into the parents.

That was part of the reason we launched the dad's program, too. A lot of the dads and the men's program, a lot of the men that we have are fathers of young men that we have here, do because they know how much we're pouring into them too and we want them to be the best version of themselves for the young people that they're raising too all comes back to the family unit is it the same website where we're the men and the kids can sign up so it is it's going to be so we have very much fire aim ready do we've done all this without really good tech at all we had the old apagy strong site that was just around the young men um we've got a landing page apage strong dads

for the men's program. We're doing a focus group. We've got a bunch of really rad women that are like, that's been the next thing. They're like, wins the moms. When's the ladies. So we're going to do that.

We got a focus group coming up. We'll launch that later this year, early 2024. But one of my meetings this morning right before I came here, that was with a gentleman who's out here in Texas and he's helping us to put it all under one site. And we have our 501 is what. We got our foundation.

We're raising money through the foundation to build. more campuses to, you know, launch this headquarters where we can now fly young men in who maybe they can't participate in the program throughout the year for whatever reason, you know, school or whatever. But we want young men that have shown character in their community, but maybe dad's not there. Maybe dad's not present. Maybe dad fell in the line, you know, he's gone because he lost his life in the line of duty, whatever that looks at.

We want to fly these young guys into and go, okay, if you can't be part of it during the year, let's give you a three, four day experience and give you a roadmap to take back home with you with some connections in that area too so that you got you have good men around you so we're raising money for the 501c3 for that as you know for that as well so we've got all of these different components so we need to get it just centralized under one thing right it's all the same mission i'll tell you i had louis house on the podcast a few a few months ago and uh he talks a lot about having a meaningful mission and it's it it seems that you are living out a true meaningful mission right now with massive impact that is just compounding.

It's the best. And it's not a, talking to one of our guys about this in the men's group the other day. He says, you know, I'm having a really hard time finding, finding my path. And, you know,

it's great that, you and Tim found your paths so early on, but I'm not having a really hard time finding my path. I mean, neither one of us, it's not finding a path. you go after a purpose, you go after something that you want to, somebody you want to help,

somebody, you know, something you want to fix. And then you just keep doing iterations of that. You forge a path. You're not finding it. You're forging it. I 100% agree with that.

You forge the path. Forge the path. Yeah. And that shifts. It's what problems, you know, I started building schools because there was a problem

that I wanted to solve. Complaining does nobody any good. And that's one of, that's why it's one of the rules in our house. No complaining. Fix it. You're going to complain about it. You're going to complain about.

it, do something about it. Otherwise, Josh. So saw the school thing. Cool, man, let's go create. And it's in the process of that. We're like, okay, well, here's this other problem. Young men are getting cut off at the knees and we're asking them why they can't stand up as adults. So let's create this. Created Apogee. And Tim and I created Apogee while we were both running multiple other businesses because it was a problem that we thought we could uniquely help solve. Is it the end all be all known? Do we know we were going to change and do other iterations? Of course, but we needed to start somewhere. So let's start solving the way we know how now.

Done is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. And then you can pursue perfect. Yeah. Right. So it's got other iterations and we've gotten, we've gotten better of what we've done there. So we've used that to go,

okay, now we have a pretty good idea of how that works and how we can scale to really help a lot of people. And what if we do a similar thing that's parallel for the men? And then even today in that meeting around the tech. We were also looking at just the operational part of that going, I think this could actually be better for these guys if we did this too.

Okay, cool. growth, education, forging a path, all the same things. Well, Matt, you're doing great things, man. Thank you. And, you know, as a new parent, it's a new dad,

and as someone who wants to be even a better husband. Yeah. As I get older, yeah. You are one of those guides and mentors that I'm constantly looking back to of... Thanks, ma'am. Just like helping become the man

that I want to be. So I appreciate you and everything you're doing and really appreciate the time today. Thank you, brother. know the honor is mine and um i want to give a quick shout out to a young man named hobby partially because i want to give kudos to you here too i pull up in dallas i got my rental car in dallas and did some stuff in dallas yesterday before i drove here get my car going out guys like what brings you into texas i said i get to see some friends and do a couple

podcasts and he's like oh what podcast i said i said oh do you know a gentleman named nick bear and he goes Nick Bear and Austin Nick Bear? I said, yeah. So it's a young guy probably early 20s. I said, yeah. He goes, man, would you tell him Javi? said, man, he doesn't know who I am. He doesn't, I said, I'll make sure he knows who you are.

He goes, man, that's the guy. He goes, I'm a college athlete. You know, I've had this, you know, continuous, you know, growth. And I'm trying to work myself through. Like, that's the guy. That's the guy that I look to. You know, that's there. He's been a huge inspiration for me, man, a huge motivation for me.

So would you just tell him, Javi? you know, said hi and he was a great young man. I mean, it's a lot. Yeah, and I said, man, I'll make sure he knows and I'll try to make sure he knows on the show itself too. So it goes both ways, man. You are impacting so many people. You're leading your family well and you're leading others well too. So it's an honor to be alongside your brother.

Well, thank you. Thanks for sharing that. It's a wrap.