The Sevan Podcast - #176 - Matt Beaudreau

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. That's a good way to put it, man. It is a trip living the dream in someone else's nightmare. Yeah, dude, it definitely is. It's more of a trip now than it has been in a long time.

I don't know if that's good or bad. You know what I'm going to do, Matthew? I am going to fix your name down at the bottom. Tell me, what's your Instagram, letter by letter? It is just at M-A-T-T-B-E-A-U-D-R-E-A-U. I got that right. Far too long of a name. Yes, you did.

I was so happy when Mark Bell asked you how to say your name. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. Now I don't have to do that. That's hilarious. Yeah, dude. I never. That's so good. I always tell you, I never know.

How did your dad say it? You told him Matthew Baudreau. Yeah, they say Baudreau. That's how I grew up. But we Californiated it up, man. I was born and raised out here. I go speak in Canada or France, or they say it all French, and it sounds way cooler. How do they say it?

Oh, dude, I can't even. I'd have to French it up. It's like, you know, Baudaro, you know, Bojaro. My name in Armenian is Matosyan. Okay. And my last name Matosyan. And then just the, you know, the way I tell just like the dude at the sports club. Yeah, exactly. Your name's Sevan Matosyan.

Yeah, it just, it makes it clear how much lazier we are in America, I think. Yeah, it makes it clear how much lazier we are in America, I think. When people say my name, it exposes all the racism in people. I love it. Like I tell a Mexican, there are a lot of Mexicans where you live too. What's your name? Esteban. Oh, Esteban, nice to meet you.

Esteban, yeah. Oh, you racist motherfucker. I just think you're racist. And black people have no problem saying it because they they got made up names like mine too yeah their parents just make shit up yeah white people fucking they expose their race and they can't fucking savon savon fuck is wrong with you that's awesome savon yeah so i just like it i just think everyone's just horribly racist when they say my name i expose their their bias, their racist cultural bias. I wonder if your parents are hooking you up like that from the beginning on purpose, man. Good for them.

No. Oh, that's awesome. I went to Armenia and this guy's like, why did your parents name you Sevan? I go, what's Armenian name? They're like, yeah, but no one here has that name it's a lake i was like oh oh got it yeah thanks name your kid tahoe the talk fuck i wish we did i wish we had gotten all these ideas out before i had kids dude when i when i when you came on my radar, I was super interested in you because of your, and feel free to change any of my words, it's just my observation, but your obsession, your dedication to kids and to making sure that they were, in my terms, capable in the universe, like super duper capable. You wanted to make capable human beings. And then as I started researching you, um, before I jumped on the podcast, uh, last night as I'm calling through all this stuff, it's crazy how much stuff you've done. The, I had no idea you had a fighting background. That's a trip.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, uh, it's like a, it feels like a past life, you know, it was just yesterday, but it was also a whole nother, a whole nother life ago, yeah. Yeah, it's like it feels like a past life, you know, it was just yesterday, but it was also a whole nother a whole nother life ago, man. So, but I mean, obviously super grateful. It's one of those things you look back and there's so many, so many growth opportunities coming from that. And so much you learn, you know, mostly about myself, right? And I think you have a lot of guys that will fight and say the same kind of thing.

But so many lessons I learned about myself, the network part of that is has been great and being able to stay in contact with those guys man but um yeah that whole experience man a big a big part of my upbringing altogether very much so i was talking with the producer of the show and i was matt matt souza and i was telling him that i think that we get the level of people on the podcast based on my insecurities, based on my lack of belief in myself. And then when I looked at who you've had on your podcast, I started tripping. It started giving me like fucking crazy anxiety because I can't get those people because I can't ask those people because I don't believe in myself enough. Why? Are you following me?

Yeah, I do follow you, but why? Because they're adults. Because they're adults. They're smart. They're adults. You had Jordan Peterson's daughter, Seth Godin, Mark Bell. I'm going way out. Having you on is freaking me out.

You run schools. I see you as like like the principal gary v tony blower patrick bet david dennis prager like i would have to fucking put on a diaper dave rubin charlie kirk well see and that's what i kirk's like like what do you just why don't you just invite a brain onto your show that's the whole dude him ben greenfield and i'm not saying that to add more names i'm just saying that tim kennedy rogan hadley every one of these andros khalian i'm just like what the fuck is this guy fucking nuts you're either you're either extremely naive or you have a ton of self-confidence both i'm sure i'm headed straight to the i think the only way i can do it

is if i even double down on the naiveness it's I'm going I'm going both man I'm probably self-confident because I'm ultra naive I don't know I don't know which one comes first in that but the reality is it's you are absolutely right there in the I just get to sit back and listen to brilliant people like you and you can name all those names and they're all freaking rad humans. And they were amazing to sit in and talk to and learn from. And it was just as much fun to sit down and talk to you and learn from you. I was genuinely sad. Um, cause I remember very clearly having you on and, and, uh, I had somebody that was coming to camp. There was driving multiple hours. It was a buddy of mine from college. It was driving multiple hours to come here because he wanted me to help him

start a school like this up where he is. And so he and his wife were coming down and they were going to spend a few hours here. And, um, I was genuinely sad that we had to, I mean, we almost kind of cut our episode short, man, because I was just having a great time listening to you, connecting with you and learning from you. So you're right there. You're right there in that same boat, man. Make no mistake. You have, you have three kids. Yes, sir. And you have three that same boat, man. Make no mistake. You have three kids? Yes, sir. And you have three schools? Yes, sir.

Currently. And your schools, when I say you have three schools, are you the principal at those schools? Or am I projecting a paradigm that doesn't even fit? Do your schools even have principals? Yeah, that's a good question, man. We don't have principals. I'm the founder. I'm the owner.

But no, we don't have principals? Yeah, that's a good question, man. We don't have principals. I'm the founder, I'm the owner, but no, we don't have principals. The quickest way to shift the paradigm for everybody is I tell everybody that our ideal day on any one of our campuses is that the adults don't even show up. The students don't notice and it doesn't matter because nothing changes. And when I say nothing changes, I don't mean, okay, well then your schools are a bunch of kids running around batshit crazy, Lord of the flies. And of course it doesn't matter if the adults are there. What I mean is the adults don't have to be there and it still runs like a fortune 500 company. And that's a very different thing. One of the first things you said, you know, it was kind of my obsession with making young people capable. And I think the only thing I would change on that is my obsession is reminding humanity that young people are capable.

That's a different thing because we have been trained not to trust children, which has turned into a bunch of shitty adults that raise children that sometimes, yeah, maybe I guess you can't trust them, but if you can't trust them, it's because you can't trust the adult that raised them usually. So it's a reminder that we are entirely capable of so much more. And so that's the kind of responsibility that we are projecting on our kids. So we don't need a principal. Our whole goal is to turn everything over to the young heroes as quickly as humanly possible, easier said than done. And as a process and there's systems involved but when it takes root, holy shit, man, it is the, it is like nothing you've ever seen.

It really isn't. Could I ask you, are you you are you on a computer yeah is it is it a is it a laptop no sir it's a desktop couldn't you push it back a little bit yeah i just your your head is being cropped no no you don't have to go back can you push your computer back um but i don't lose your audio or maybe tilt the screen up a little bit so we get a little more of your your your head screens it's not bad i'm just i'm just oh yeah yeah yeah it's the tilt and what's the name of the school school so so we are part of a global network and i definitely would want to mention that too so but we are actin academy a-c-t-oN. A lot of people say action,

but there's no I in there. So Acton Academy, the ones I own are the Acton Academy Placer, P-L-A-C-E-R, which everybody says Placer if you're not from California. Placer is just the name of the county that we're in. And so, like you said, we have three campuses here. I will need to open more here in California, but I'm also part of the governance council for our entire movement, kind of our entire network. And we are opening as many campuses as we can globally. And when I say as many as we can, I mean, and doing it right. There are applications in right now, I think 17, 18,000 applications and people that want to open these um we're going through a hardcore filter did you say 17 000 yeah it's bananas it's bananas because people know if you went through an application every single day you couldn't get through them all in 50 years

there's an entire team well that's like 51 years at one a day well good dude look at that look at that man charlie kirk who i have amazing third grade math skills amazing third grade math skills yeah man three times 17 i mean it's just hard work man done that's right um yeah so but there's a team and it's easy enough to you know there are some things that are that are easy enough to filter out right but um you know we're looking for the best of the best of the best. And that's why if we know phenomenal, so Tim Kennedy, right. And I went to him and as we're building out Apogee in our program and he's, you know, he's learning about these schools and he's going, dude, I need to do this. Like I need to do this. So I just got on the phone and said,

Hey, there's a guy, Tim Kennedy. He's got his application in the pipeline, find it, move it forward. Like done deal today. Like, let's go. Cause that's a guy that, that, you know, we need in the front. So, um, but yeah, man, it's a great, it's a great movement. Um, when, when I say that, um, Matthew was involved in fighting, um, he wasn't just involved in like, just like any fighting, like were you were you were working with ken shamrock for your nine fights right yeah frank mostly actually but okay as well yeah so i i grew up um it's kind of a funny my dad you know wanted me to be an athlete my dad was a uh was a wrestler my dad was a pretty hard uh just kind of a hard fellow in general and um i remember he hit you

oh yeah yeah is that what you mean by hard like he drank and hit you is that what uh he never did my dad's never had touch of alcohol in his life wow sober hitting yeah sober impressive yeah he just totally impressive so he grew up getting beat up a little bit and he just kind of had that temper he looked like um rocky he looked like sylvester stallone in rocky four right when he was training to fight the russian like he kind of looked like that face face wise build wise he was just a kind of a hard-ass dude um worked in law enforcement like worked in the prison system here in california but should have lived there kind of guy you kind of are right that's that's a

a whole nother subject but yeah if you if you watch it's the same thing like if you kill people now you are also a killer. Like don't forget that. If you work in the prison, if you're holding people guard, you are now also a prisoner. I know people struggle with that. For sure, man. And a lot of those guys that gravitate towards that I find kind of naturally ride that line, right? And then that whole adage, if you look too long into the abyss, you become that monster. And I think that was true for a lot of – definitely was true for him and for his buddy so you are the five people you hang out with the

most that's right man we're just here we're just hanging out with charlie manson and a bunch of you know i mean that was was he at san quentin was he at he was it he was at san quentin alder in the 80s yep um yeah man at san quentin alder in the 80s and so you, and then went to a different prison in the 90s, a different prison his last 10 years. So 30 years in that. So, you know, and I. My wife taught yoga at San Quentin. No way. Crazy, right?

To the inmates or to the guards? Yeah, to the inmates. Same, same. No, to the inmates. But I just think it's fascinating. Like, it's just fascinating. San Quentin. Yeah, man.

For people who don't know, I don't know if it's big worldwide, but in the Bay Area, in San Francisco and in California, San Quentin, everyone knows San Quentin. Yeah, man. That's where you drive across. Yeah. And in the 80s, too, I mean, it was more of a some of the some of the stories, dude, that came out of there. It was like the Wild West. Right. It wasn't as there's so much more regulation now. There's so much more there's so much more inmate rights now right it's like they can do i mean they really have carte blanche on what they can do medical procedures but like whatever right in the 80s it was open so there was a whole lot of other stuff going on where it was like the guards would be like hey is anybody looking cool open my cell i'm gonna go in and fuck this guy you know what i mean so there was a whole lot of crazy shit going down um so he's a, you know, he's this kind of rough dude. Is he alive?

He is. Yeah, he is. Lives in Georgia. Okay. And so, you know, I'm this youngster and he's kind of pushing and prodding, wants me to play sports. I didn't really have any sports that were really like, kind of, kind of, you know, getting me excited other than, um, you know, I had some of the Bruce Lee movies and shit like that. And I was getting a little bit excited about some of the martial arts stuff, but I actually asked to go play basketball. He's like, you know, I'm a,

you know, I'm a five, nine white dude. Like you got no chance of, you know, basketball being a thing. I'm like, Oh no, I think that's what I want to do. So he signs me up for this camp as I'm a little kid and I walk in with my basketball and some kid runs over and snatches it from me. And I start crying and just bawling my eyes out. And my dad's like, cool, man, you're going to either suck it up and go back in. Or I've got a different sport for you tomorrow. I'm like, this basketball thing sucks. Like these guys are mean.

And so he took me to go start kind of kickboxing the next, the next day. Basketball's too hard. So I didn't. Yeah. So my kid wants to do basketball pretty bad yeah he has no chance of being over five five but i mean i'm gonna let him do it but yeah give it a go uh yeah might as well so yeah so martial arts started early man so i actually did tag window and kickboxing growing up um and then uh yeah i was 20 21 about to graduate from college. And I saw these dudes grappling.

And that's what first introduced me to mixed martial arts at kind of the early heyday of that. And so I ended up having nine fights and working with Frank for most of it. And got invited to be part of the Lions then with Ken as they were moving to. There was this league coming up called the IFL. And he was going to have a team out of Reno. And I went and fought on one of his promotions. And he asked me to come try out for the lions then and stuff too. So yeah, it was, it was a cool, uh, it was a cool experience, man. Cool, cool few years. You were telling a story, um, about how

you're, you were in the car with your dad and, um, the, the, there were these two boys who were picking on you at school and your dad knew about it and they were bigger than you. you tell the story that you're then your dad says are those the boys and you say yeah and he stops the car and tells you to get out it's like some it's it's some pretty cinematic shit and then the story stopped some like you like any great podcast host mark bell is you you able to go anywhere and that story stopped and you went to a different story did you get so for me can you tell me what happened after that yeah is that a good way to raise your kids like to you know Greg Glassman had something similar like that I'll tell you after you tell your story it's pretty it's pretty crazy having your dad tell you I can't imagine my dad telling me to go hit someone

to get out and go fight yeah I have no judgment on it I don't know how to process it my whole I get scared hearing the story yeah I'm all for battling the the dragons man and getting your kids you know uncomfortable and i don't think that that's necessarily the uh the lesson that that needs to be learned or how to go about that i see i'm very grateful for i'm grateful for him i mean we don't talk um at all but i'm grateful for him and i'm great is that your fault or his fault our fault okay yeah it's mutual you passed i was trying to throw you i was trying to fuck you up yeah good move good yeah no it's definitely it's definitely ours it's definitely a mutual uh mutual decision different reasoning i think but mutual decision um he doesn't like your mustache you don't like his beard beard. He does do. He wishes he had multicolors. Uh, you know, he's, he's a, he's a monochromatic bearded guy. And then I got,

I got a couple of different things going on, wherever the hell's going on on this. Uh, he tells you to get out of the car and do you get out and do it? Is it, is it get hit by him or, or, or take your chances with those guys? Are those the options? That's kind of where my head goes. You know, at that time I was nine, I think I was nine, you know, I was in, I was in fourth grade. I was in fourth grade. Those two guys were in fifth. One guy was named, um, I started marrying one guy was named Jesse and the other one was named high. Um, so I don't know where they are today, but I hope they're okay. Um, and so, yeah, it was like, get out and go, man. And so Jesse was first and he just happened to be closest. And so I just ran, I mean, they didn't know, I mean, they were 10, 11, you know, they didn't know what was going on. They knew who I

was and it was happening, but it was weird for them too. So I got out, you know, and I, and I remember hitting Jesse and then I just remember all three of us kind of on the ground, you know, and, and on top of each other. And then my dad, you know, pulled me out and he yells at those guys and they, you know, were like, what the fuck just happened and um so there was no serious injuries there was no it wasn't this long-lasting squabble it was just more a matter of him being like man get out and do this um you know so get out got out and did it and and then did you did you did it um did you learn anything were you like oh that wasn't so bad or like did it help you or like did you go home and cry and be like, oh man, I wish I wouldn't hit that kid. Or was it more like, oh, that, that was, what was your reflection on that? Yeah. I wish I could say if I'm completely honest, that was just one of those. It was just like another thing, um, as a young kid where I'm like, okay, all right. I know there's a lesson there, I guess. I got, I really don't like dad

that much. Um, and he makes me do crazy shit. You know what I mean? And so it wasn't anything that I could really reflect on until I was older. Um, it had nothing to do with those kids. It was you. Everything was about managing you and your dad's relationship. And that's it. And so when I did finally reflect on it, whenever that was, as I was older, it was really just more of a reflection on his mindset and how interesting that was to me. You know what I mean? I mean, I really do. I don't I don't harbor any ill will towards him, even though I don't necessarily like him as an individual. I really don't harbor any will.

And I'm very grateful for the lessons I got. And I really think that there is a, you know, for whatever psychosomatic way you want to look at it. I think that's a big reason that I am the dad that I am, that I'm, you know, driven the way that I am is, is a lot of it is, you know, he became kind of this anti-hero and he had a lot of good qualities too. You know, I, I don't want to miss that, but, um, he became kind of the anti-hero for this is who I definitely don't want to be.

And so I kind of took a hard turn going the other way in a lot of ways I'm going through some shit right now um with my parents um they're not going well I don't know if they're going through it but I'm going through it because as I I was raised um with these like um heroes you know like the Dianne Festein's and the gavin newsom's and and all these people who are now jeopardizing my kids actual existence in my life and i was raised to like not with a very in the bay area with a very subtle um dislike for country um hatred towards republicans um lie at any cost to maintain the the narrative i was basically just lied to for 40 years about what, what it means to be a Democrat. I thought a Democrat was you're a tree hugger.

You all you want is peace and love, honesty, integrity above everything. And, and I realized it's actually. Do you think, is that what it was though? Was that, you know, for a while, maybe that's what it was. Maybe, maybe, maybe, you know, I kind of tend to, cause I get, yeah, Was that for a while? Maybe that's what it was. Maybe. Maybe. I kind of tend to – because I get that, man. I tend to – as I'm looking at an older – the older population that still considers themselves we've always been Democrat or a hardcore Democrat, at least in my circle. I mean those – it used to be just a – it used to be that.

It was more that and really kind of this love. It was more what I guess we would call libertarian today I think. You know when I knew something was weird? I was a kid, and the – it's so funny. I told myself I was just going to talk about your school because I'm so interested in school. Oh, dude, I don't go where everyone would go anywhere. going to talk about your school because i'm oh dude i don't go where everyone wouldn't go anywhere um when i was a kid the anti-smoking yeah rhetoric became so fucking intense that i started thinking that i was like i was seeing some nazi shit in it oh yeah you started identifying that early

yeah as a kid i was like okay but i don't remember how old i was i remember i was probably 16 or 17 there was a massive anti-smoking movement in the united states yeah i'm like whoa this is like this is this is a little much like i get it i get it that it's bad yeah but but um treating people like this is they're like we're gonna become you don't want to like that's the that's the that's the that's the problem like these it's the going to become, you don't want to like, that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the problem. Like these, it's the prison guard thing. Like you don't, let's say you've totally, let's say you're a hundred percent for the vaccine. You are a hundred percent certain that it saves all human lives. You don't want to be the person who forces other people to take it.

It makes you a monster. Like do it for yourself. you a monster yeah like do it for yourself like no matter how bad cigarette smoking is do not do not it's it's the same thing we send these boys over to fight the bad guys in the middle east you have to remember that we're creating murderers yeah you have to like you you want to put charles manson to death with the gas chamber he's a bad guy he raped and killed blah blah but you someone has to do it who's going to become the murderer? Me or Matthew? Matthew, are you going to pull the trigger? Am I going to pull the trigger?

Cause the court says he has to be killed. Like there's an equation for everything. Yeah. And that's why when, and that's why when you do kill somebody, there's always two guys, you know, whether it's whatever it is, right. There's lethal injection. There's two guys hitting a, hitting a button for the plunger. There's two guys dropping the pill in the gas chamber.

There's two guys. So that way. I don't think that that that i don't think that fixes it though i think you'll know it doesn't fix it not at all not at all but at least gives the illusion of we care about that yeah you know i mean that's that's exactly right man yeah it's um it's interesting it's a really it's religiosity at best i mean but hardcore propaganda right becoming that guy that nobody likes just like look this is what you got to do yeah that's interesting why do you how do you think you recognize that at a young age um i don't know um because i remember it but i definitely didn't it but part of me is um um very i i don't know how i have this skill but i'm so thankful for it um i don't i don't do a lot of ad hominem and i don't drag people into the conversation

and so in that so for instance if you were there smoking a cigarette telling me how bad smoking is a lot of people would be like well he's a hypocrite like i would never go there i would see you as just a dude who's smoking who's telling me smoking's bad what does dragging you into the conversation we're talking about smoking being bad yeah what does like why the fuck am i even looking it's and there's a daoist saying that says i'm pointing at the moon and you're staring at my hand and that's all it's it's um it's because we live with such selfish people they have no ability to it's like the other day i posted it yesterday i posted a picture of like hey look well look what they're

feeding my kids they're feeding my kids gatorade um uh goldfish and um juice boxes and that's they're feeding my kids poison and all these parents got defensive and like we're commenting on my instagram how dare you judge us? We feed our kids that. How dare you call it poison? It's not poison. So I wrote the definition of poison out, and I go, it is poison. And there's no reason to be offended. I feed my kid this same shit too.

I use an iPhone that's made by child labor. I'm not in denial. If I tell you, you scumbag, you're using a phone by child labor that's made by child labor, and you say, well, so are you. Like, what? Like for me me that's not a response yep my response to them would be like okay now let's move forward and talk about the subject you're using a phone that's used by child like don't deny the fact you feed your kid poison you don't have to defend it that's right that's right well just own it be like yep yesterday it was my kid's birthday. I fucking brought home a big old pile of poison. Yeah. And then if you don't think it's poison, just look up the definition. Words have meanings.

That's right. The ability to separate, I think, the intellectual and the emotional on that, though, I think is an indicator, at least in my experience. That's an indicator for me of somebody who is self-confident, though. self-confident though. Um, I think you have to have a peace of mind that only comes with actual confidence, uh, in order to, to be able to do that and to be able to separate that. Um, I really, I really do. Um, so I kudos to you cause I agree a hundred percent. It's not a personal attack. Um, and it doesn't, you know, discredit the fact that we will own up to our own bullshit on that too. Yeah. It's, it's okay. It's okay to know – we all know picking our noses wrong. We all do it. Yeah.

It's okay. Yeah, yep. It's okay. I don't know if wrong is the right word, but you feel me on it. There was something I saw – oh, did I see this on your – did I see this on – oh, man, I have so many questions here. Let me ask – let me shift here for a second. What is Socratic discussion? You used that word.

I looked up the definition. I already forgot what it is. What is Socratic discussion? I mean, it's a hard thing to define, I guess. It's a harder thing to do. But the reality is in education, good questions are infinitely better than good answers. are infinitely better than good answers, right? I mean, that's really what our whole shtick is about is that we want people to continue curiosity. So for us, when we're talking about being Socratic, we are talking about the fact that our guides, the adults on campus,

are not going to ever answer any questions, right? We're going to do the whole Morpheus thing of asking you a question in return to see what you think and why you think it. And everything we do is to get you to come to those conclusions on your own, whatever those might be without any, you know, pretense of us saying, well, your answer should be this, but what do you think? It's like, no, what do you, what do you think? And how do we extrapolate those? Mr. Boudreaux, can I use the bathroom? What is the protocol around that? How do you do that? Why do you, you know, who, who can you ask if you're not sure? Oh, excuse me, Mr. Boudreaux, I have to use the restroom.

I'll be back in two minutes. See you later. I mean, it's really that it's, it's not, it's not Mr. Boudreaux, do masks work? What do you think about that? Okay. Right? I mean, it's really, it's not, it's what do you think about that? What have you heard about that? It's just exploring what their experience is.

Because the beauty is they're going to have, Siobhan's going to have a different experience of that because his parents have taught him this. Oh, I get it. His religion has said this. And then I have a different experience. And so then we want them to have those conversations, right? I can actually sit down and give rationale, give reasoning behind why I say I believe what I believe. But then I also learned to listen to Savan who says, well, I believe something completely different. And we go, okay, cool. What do you believe? And let's both compare, let's compare

evidence. Let's chat back and forth. And really at the end of the day, we may not come to a conclusion on this particular topic. We may actually find out that we don't necessarily agree with each other. And then we can also learn that, well, that's okay. We can still be friends because the reality is nobody on this planet agrees with you on a hundred percent of everything. So, you know, we have those kinds of conversations, but we will frame – we want them to understand how to think, right? So we'll frame some of these conversations. You said it. We want them to understand how to think. How to think.

And that's what you were doing to me just now. You weren't telling me what to think. You were giving me the opportunity to practice thinking. To practice thinking, right? And so then we'll give more thought exercises too where we might say um okay savon here's a um here's a an example of a socratic discussion we did during a um a nasa a nasa quest right so we did a project around around uh around nasa around space so and i say okay um let's give you a little background context, Saban. I'm going to show you the Challenger, you know, when the Challenger went up from 1986, 1987, right? And we're going to show you the actual, like you and I watched it when we were kids in school, and then the spaceship goes up and it explodes.

And then we're going to show you Ronald Reagan's address to the nation at that time. And he's going to come on and he's going to talk about how we need to come back and honor these guys and what we need to do. But now I want to put you in a situation. So, Siobhan, you are now Ronald Reagan. You are now the president of the United States. This just happened in the United States. Do you, A, double NASA's funding so that something like this never ever ever happens again or do you be dismantle nasa altogether so that nothing like this ever happens again where do you go with this

right and we'll pose these a and B questions and just kind of continue down the reasoning with why, why, why, why, why. And a lot of times what we'll do is intentionally pose A or B questions that are completely opposite sides of the spectrum. And a lot of times people will go, okay, well, the answers a lot of times are in these gray areas in the middle. Probably. Yeah. But it's a better thought exercise if we pose two extremes and then let you have to go, oh, OK, I've got to make a hard decision. I've got to pick one. If I've got to pick one, I'm going to pick this one. And I'm going to try to rationalize here, because even if your real true answer is right there extremes on things, you can usually get more comfortable with talking about why you believe somewhere in the middle is more of a right answer,

right? Because you understand- Oh, really? That is the natural consequence of that? That's thinking, right? You can understand how to, it just makes more sense because you've looked at, it just makes a more scientific observation of you're looking at these extremes, right? It's, it's true science. True science is that scientific method of wanting to exhaust all the options, right? And so if I've gone to this extreme over here and this extreme over here, well, now I can more readily be comfortable with wherever my, my real answer lies.

And your answer might come to be one of those extremes. It might be. But at least you are theoretically exhausting that full spectrum of thought in order to come to whatever conclusion it is. Most people just repeat. Most people just go, because somebody I like said this or because my mom said this or because society said this. Versus actually having a thought exercise of what's the full extremity of what are all the answers that could possibly be that the true scientific method rarely comes out. And so that's what the Socratic method is intended to do is really get into the science behind thinking, really exhaust all the options and come to a conclusion. Ultimately, of course, being, you know, hopefully humility is involved in there too,

understanding that if better evidence comes along, well, then I'll go ahead and shift my ideas. So the Socratic method is good questions are better than good answers. That's a big part. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm totally bragging here. I had a friend the other day call me and say to me, Hey, I'm no longer, um, pro choice. I'm like, Oh, what's up? And I'm soon as he tells me that I know how fucking cool I am because there's so or two subjects that I, I had a, I had a, there's one or two subjects around kids that I, that I will not bend on that. If someone starts going down that Avenue, I will become, I will push back. I'm not interested in hearing any, anything you have to say about it. But other than that, and he said, so, and I, and I'm, and I'm, I would say that I'm pro. I would, I don't know.

I'll just say, I would say that I don't believe, I don't believe in giving women – putting laws on women's bodies. And I also don't believe in abortion, but I would never put a law on a woman's body because I just think it's a slippery slope. Like it sets precedent, and I think that's really important. But anyway, so I said, hey, what's the deal? Tell me your thought process. He goes, well, when a woman has control over her body and she can say what she does and doesn't do. But the second she has intercourse with a man and unprotected sex and the sperm goes in her, then she everything's changed. That was where her control, her dominion over her body begins and ends.

The second you allow have sex with a man, you you lose that. And I was like, wow, like I was so glad that he told me that yeah i thought that that was like really really like well thought out i don't know if i agreed with him or didn't agree with him but i'm 49 years old and i had never heard that yeah and nor have i and i think that but that's just like but i was so like i'm the shit that my friends can have this conversation. I'm not like, fuck you. You hate women. You motherfucker. Like, I don't know.

I don't have any of that. Yeah, totally. It says it does say a whole lot more about and imagine if people could do that. Right. Like it does say it does. It says a lot about you that he was able to go out and exercise that train of thought. And he's going, hmm, this is an interesting way of looking at it i've never thought about it this before i'd love to bounce this off of savann and see you know and kind of play that and kind of play that out um because that's really you know i don't even think

that's more i don't even think that's a test of you i think that's more him testing out his theory going to someone who respects and figuring out for himself where he is on that spectrum. He's figuring it out for himself and he knows you're a good spot to be able to do that. I think that's a beautiful freaking thing, man. A workmate too. Yeah, a workmate. Like someone I worked with for 15 years. That's not like a common – just calls me one day and drops that on me.

Yeah, that's cool, man. That's a good thing. Yeah, I was tripping. And I want to have – and maybe you can help me with this. I want to have people on my podcast who know how to think because – so we're living in this world where they're telling us the choices. And that's why I felt like I got a little – maybe a little defensive inside when you told me you give the kid the choices, but I understand it now. Um, and then we'll go ahead. Sorry. And I don't, I don't want to interrupt on that too, but when I'm talking about given, given choices too, there is also a, a graduated, um, kind of scale for that too. So, so again, talking through, um, extremes, you've got your, your normal belief in society that you just can't trust children, period.

And you need to be the overlord of their lives. Huge mistake. Right? Huge mistake. Then you've got the other end of the spectrum where it's like, no, my three-year-old is a sovereign individual. Every single thing he or she does and decides is absolutely correct. That's also a big mistake, right? And so you have this whole graduated scale too. Clearly, if you go, okay,

my six month old is completely sovereign and I'm just going to leave them alone for a few months and he or she has it. Well, that's, you know, you would see how ludicrous that thought is. And so there's this graduated through throughout development. You start teaching early on how to make choices by presenting them with only good choices, right? And we've got our four-year-olds and our five-year-olds, and we're saying, hey, we want you to make a choice on this. I'm only going to give them choices A, B, C, and D that are all going to be good, solid choices. Then they get used to making choices. They start seeing what good choices look like. They can't conceptual, they can't rationalize what's a good choice and bad all the time right there. But the longer they do that,

the more they do that, the more good examples they have around them, the quicker they're able to develop, um, kind of that own internal compass of a good choice, bad choice, you know, kind of deal. So, um, it's, it's, there's, there's, it's just such a nuanced sort of thing. So I just want to make sure I said, I said that too. Yeah. I, I, I, I finally got my head wrapped around. I think what you were saying, I think it's anytime anyone asks you if you're pro-life or pro-choice or the abortion idea comes up, I think the smartest and most conscious people in the room rethink the entire thing. Like they've never heard it before. It's a very serious issue. Killing babies, putting laws over women's bodies. You shouldn't have a stance on it. If you's a very serious issue. Killing babies, putting laws over women's bodies.

You shouldn't have a stance on it. If you have a stance on it, I would say I would be willing to bet my finger against your house that you are unconscious. What do I mean by unconscious? On autopilot, you're just giving an answer. It is. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. I was going to go somewhere with this, but I'm going to switch gears again.

There was something you said about independence, and I don't remember where. My notes – unfortunately, my notes aren't detailed enough. You had independence somehow in relationship with responsibility. Does that ring a bell? somehow in relationship with responsibility. Does that ring a bell? Yeah. I mean, the, the freedom and responsibility link for us is a, is definitely a non, a non-negotiable link. We want people to understand personal responsibility matters and, and freedom matters. And those things are, they're, you know, the two sides of the same coin kind of deal. So that's why they're parenting or whether here on our, on our schools. I mean, that is, that is one of the messages that is woven in, not just verbally, but systemically as well.

So it made me think of something. I, I was, I was homeless for two years, then I lived in a car for five years and I was extremely free. And I had, and I was homeless for two years. Then I lived in a car for five years, and I was extremely free. And I had an incredible – like you, I was very, very disciplined. I woke up at the same time every morning. I practiced my drawing. I still worked out every day. I went to the coffee shop. I had this routine.

And all my peers, unfortunately, when you're homeless, all of my peers were drug addicts. It was really sad. They weren't doing what I was doing. But when I was homeless, I was extremely free. And because I had crazy independence, I had overcome all sorts of fear. People are terrified of being homeless. Terrified. Terrified.

But so you overcome that fear, and then you learn how to get and you learn how to where to sleep and where it's safe. And you start to really, really need so little and you have so much personal responsibility and so much personal accountability. And with that, your happiness just fucking flourishes. It really I can't say this because my ego won't let me. I want to say that since I've had kids, it's the happiest days of my life. But if you, if you caught me in a more honest mood, I dance, fight, and hunt, and now he can – and sorry to be so sexist about it, one-sided, but I have three boys – because now they can court women, get food, and protect the house? You know, I think the ultimate form of mastery in anything is simplicity. And when you're going back to what you're talking about right there, you just found the beauty in the simplicity. This is all I need. I need some sort of shelter. I need some sort of, you know, I need some sort of mate.

I need some food. You know, it's the very basic human needs. And when you can, but it starts in your head. You can, but it starts in your head. I mean, it starts up here, especially, you know, combating all the cultural shit that we're fed. And so that's exactly it is getting back to the, um, the closer you can get to just complete self-reliance. Right. The, that, that's the word I was looking for. It's, it's that, you know, and then, and then all those other good things, I think, you know, the, the whole resilience and the,

the happiness and the joy and the, um, you know, I think all of those things, those kinds of virtues that we want, um, are able to flourish in that, in that simplicity of self-reliance. That's where it really flourishes. We muddle it with all the other shit on the outside. How many teachers do your schools have how many students do these schools have we so teachers are got we wouldn't call them teachers we call them guides as few as possible um so the um we're kind of playing with isn't that funny to hear you say that like that's your that's your brag well the traditional brag is oh we have we have three three teachers for every 12 kids for for sure right it's like your brag is as

few as possible god if we can get to like oh you know the fuck the gestapo ratio the student teacher ratio for us should be we should be able to run a couple hundred students on a campus with about two adults i mean that's the wow that's the reality of where we want to get. And because it's this graduated responsibility to, for the older heroes to take on more and more of the responsibility of running the campus itself too. So they actually, so it solves a lot of things, right? You got, you create a community, it gives them massive responsibility. Um, it also defeats the conundrum of young people going, well, I need to get a job, but I've got no experience. And how am I going to get experience if I've got no job? Well, no, you actually ran a freaking organization in high school.

You spend a lot of your years running an organization. And then when you were doing for you, you were doing things like running an actual business and things like that. So they come out with a massive amount. They have come out of high school, assuming they've gone through, you know, kind of all the years, you know, with us. They come out with more real world experience than 95% of your college graduates, period, end of story. So and this whole, you know, growth mindset the whole time and this whole personal responsibility and resilience the whole time, too. So it literally allows, you know, I used to say, well, this, we, it creates different humans and that's bullshit. It actually just allows for humans to develop the way we're able to develop versus, you know, shooting all these arrows into

us while we're trying to grow. So, so how many, you have, there's, there's three campuses for people who don't know. Um campuses are around um within proximity to sacramento california and sacramento california is about 90 miles inland from san francisco so if you look at the north american continent find the state of california find san francisco and then go inland 90 miles there's three campuses i'd say within 100 miles of there right yep it was lincoln placer and roseville lincoln i'm here in Roseville and then Sacramento proper. Yep. We just, okay. And how many kids at each school? So each one right now is a little, is a little different. So this is our, this was our first campus. And so this is the first kind

of built out one. So we've got about 150 students here, which is about, and we've got a wait list, right? And so people will, if you've got a wait list, right? And so people will, if you've got a wait list, why don't you just add more kids? But that screws up the, everything that we do. So we've got- What's the age range? We're K through 12 here on this campus. Wow. And sorry, I'm going to let you go one second. I'm going to let you go in a second. And how much does it cost to attend? We try to stay like under market value. So it's only 10 grand a year, which I know that's still a lot of money.

I don't want to downplay that. I know that. And the downside of privatized education is always the cost. But the reality is comparative to some of the, you know, quote unquote, private schools and all that. It's a pretty solid deal. My kids Montessori school was $7,000 a month for my three kids to attend Montessori.

Yep. A month. Yep. Totally. Totally. We're ridiculously reasonable. So then I did the math, and if I put that $7,000 a month into a conservative mutual fund, my kids would have $20 million at the age of 70 each. There's no fucking way.

I'm there's no, and there's no fucking like, I just think, what would I want? Well, I take the 20 million at 70. Totally. As you should.

That's absolutely right. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. So sorry. Go on. Okay.

So 150 kids. So can you kind of walk me through, um, um, man, questions. Let's start here. Why do parents choose you, and are they scared? Shit, yeah, they're scared. A lot of parents are scared. So that's one of the hardest – that's the best question right there is why do they choose us? do why do they choose us um they're their kids your kids are your sistine chapel every anytime anyone talks about legacy i went to the moon i invented the lipo fuck off your only legacy is your kid like that's exactly right and dude honestly and that was one of the best and so mark was mark bell was on on my show too and we were sitting right here in the studio you know and i asked him about his um his legacy and that's he's like late he's like what are you talking about he's like i don't have i'm not worried about any kind of legacy i got nothing he's like my you know i got my my two kiddos at home like that's about as far as i can

get i think it's absolutely spot on i think it's absolutely right so why give acton academy why let them draw on my campus or my canvas that's my fucking canvas i'm the fucking michelangelo that's and so the um you are the mic as the parent you are the first and foremost um michelangelo that child is is uh the david um but at some point that david needs to start doing its own artwork too right so like the earlier the better that dav David needs to start doing its own artwork too. Right. So like the earlier, the better that David needs to start building out itself. Um, and that's why, that's why parents will come here is because of our belief that we're not going to teach them. We are going to put them in this kind of controlled chaos, this environment of continuous challenges, this

hero's journey where they're going to have to face some dragons that we can safely put in front of them. It's not going to be, Hey, we're going to get you out at nine years old and go fight these two guys. But we're going to put some, you know, we're going to actually have you open a business, run a business and put you in a real world scenario where you're maybe pitching to investors at 12 and really trying to get some money and having to get like, you're going to have these real world scenarios that are high, kind of some higher stress, higher stakes to allow you to build out all of that resilience and things that we were talking about earlier. And so we've just got a way to partner with you as the parent who we do see as the primary educator. Both of us need to look at that young hero and go,

okay, we are going to trust them to develop that resilience and self-direction to then perpetuate their own journey to where we are no longer needed, right? It's like parenting on steroids. You want to parent your kids in a way that they grow into these amazingly happy, resilient, joyful, integrous human beings. And ultimately they don't need to live in your basement, but they want to have a relationship with you, right? We're on the same page as that. We want us as the adults to be completely fucking unnecessary but to have a cool relationship where we can be this continuous morpheus of just like hey what about looking over here what if we open this door fucking it's up to you if you walk in it's up or that they can lead me some or they

could lead me someday eventually they end up leaving us right yeah and it comes full circle and in return right so it's that kind of. So that's what parents are ultimately saying. They're coming here for the hardest part for us is finding who those parents actually are. Um, and what I mean by that is, um, you've got a lot of people who intellectually understand that the government schools, I don't even call it public ed, I call it government ed, um, that government ed is. Yeah. You have some great talks on that, by the way, what you were saying on the Mark Bell podcast about monopolies. Maybe we should hit that, but, but finish your thought. We'll come back to that.

I mean, you have some great thoughts on that. It's a hot frigging mess. So people understand and people understand that they get it. Um, but do they really trust their child? Do they really trust their parenting of that child? And do they trust themselves to support that child and do that? Like, those are all the harder questions. So those are the things that we try to filter out as much as humanly possible.

Ultimately, it ends up being somewhat of a guess, right? Until, until the shit hits the fan. And so like, you really have that kid in there and and see how they respond how the parents respond and you watch that growth like we're filtering those those families up front too because they are scared they are scared of like we don't want my kid to come out of this government school but shit right now it's only uh exaggerated with all i don't want my kids going to a school where they're going to be masked i don't want my kids going to the school where the jab is going to be mandatory so we've got how about your or how about your school I don't want my school where they're not what time do

they have math well they don't what the fuck this school they still have they still have the ability to do math yeah it's time for math we go here you go you got these you know parameters around going and getting it but we we don't have to. If I come to your school, if I send my kid there in kindergarten, by the time he leaves, has he done all – has he been the janitor? Absolutely. He's done some cleaning? He's cleaned classrooms? Absolutely.

And then by the time he's a senior, he's maybe managed the money for the wrestling team he's managed the money he's been the maybe he's been the athletic director he may have been a guide for younger students so going in and teaching he may have developed a pe program for the school he may have learned from our chef on on how to cook real food and actually been cooking food um for the young students and oh by the way he also might be through calculus if that's part of his journey. All of the above. Yep. I met a parent the other day in my kid's tennis program. The parent hadn't been there in a year. And I asked him what happened, where did he go and he said well he didn't like the fact that the tennis academy that that these kids went to um he didn't like that their rules and regulations around um the so-called pandemic he didn't like the protocols they put in place to protect the kids and i just bit the

inside of my cheek i didn't say anything to him i said okay cool and then he said to me hey do your kids um where do your kids go to school and i said that um i don't know my wife does all that but i don't i'm not i have no real interest in any of that stuff um and he said oh well my wife's a professor at at the college the big university uh and uh we put a premium and she's a math professor and we put a big premium on education oh yeah i put a big premium on education too because well i thought you said you're just not worried about it i'm like well that's not the method i'm going to do it yeah and then he said well what well why not i said well the primary reason and i just exploded on him basically not in a bad way

not mean or asshole but i just said hey dude the same reason i have no interest in tennis yeah my kid's been doing tennis here a year he does it i practice tennis with him seven days a week i have no interest the only reason why i brought him here is because the instructor doesn't fool around and because they didn't require masks yeah and so um to go back even one further step i only people thought that i was gonna put my kids in i was trying to get my kids interested in sports yeah i have no interest in my kids getting sports i have them interested in getting relationships with adults professional adults yep perfect good exam and yeah and now it's funny you say this my seven year he just turned seven he can now he's been taking tennis for over a year and he's been he does practices five to seven days a week and same with jujitsu and the martial arts has been doing that for three years

he can teach it and i see him teaching his brothers now. But like I don't even recognize the person who's the teacher. Like when he goes into teacher mode. Yeah. Yeah. It's a different deal. It's on. Who the fuck is this guy? Totally.

And that wasn't that wasn't even what I was trying to teach. I wasn't trying to teach him to be a teacher. I wasn't trying to teach him Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I was just trying to get him in front of Garth Taylor and Santa Cruz so that he could see what it's like to be. That's right be a professional. That's right. And all this other shit's like and my kids know math because we've been working out since they've been two

and so their subtraction and addition is insane, right? Yeah. My four-year-old can be, we can be at rep 32 and he's like, yep, we have 68 more reps till we get to 100. I'm like, god damn. And he's just got it yeah yeah he just no no t i heard you say something to mark bill about that we don't teach kids how to walk or talk at all they would they but we just encourage the failure right we encourage them to they they get up and they fall down and when they fail we

fucking applaud we applaud we go yeah job. Cause you got up and you tried and you fell down and then you're going to go, you're going to go again. Cool. And then you fall down. Oh yay. And we applaud. Right. And then at some point we're taught that we'll, when the failure happens, you don't applaud anymore. You go in for intervention. Right. It gets, and, and that there's a, and there's also a timeline associated with it. When you started getting into school, I put a premium on education too, but fuck school. Those are not the same thing. Those are different things.

And so, yeah, we put this timeline on it too. And I use this example quite a bit too. When people look at me, I walk into a room. Nobody goes, that dude did not walk until he was 18 months old. Nobody looks at me and does. Nobody says that. I was a 5'9 white dude that could dunk a basketball. I was a pretty good martial artist.

I was a pretty good. And you didn't walk until you were 18 months? Right. Yeah. So we put these nine months. I know this isn't the point, but did you crawl? Did you scare? Yeah, not a whole lot. Yeah, yeah, I guess I was pretty

minimal and it was just getting, always getting picked up too. So I knew I could pick up. And so it was just, you know, there was just a culmination of things. I didn't necessarily even have anything wrong. It was just more parents snatching me kind of deal and just picking me up and watering me around. I was lazy, you know, or whatever it was, but I mean, 18 months old, all of a sudden I could walk and everything was fine. Do you have siblings, Matthew? Yeah, I do. I'm the oldest of four. Oh, boys or girls? Two other guys and one girl. Are you friends with them?

I am friends with the oldest two. My brother, who is just a year younger than me, is my best buddy. My sister is a few years younger than me and lives locally too. The other brother is, uh, is actually our half brother, um, who lives with my father. And he's quite a bit. How old am I? I'll be 42 next month. So my brother is 20. That brother is 22. Oh, he's young. Yeah. He's young. So we didn't have much of a, um, you know, we didn't grow. I was, uh, I was in college when he was born. And so we don't have a ton of, and then he lives with my dad and, and, um, you know, has been told that we're, we're kind of the enemy too. So, um, not a lot of relationship there, but no one's in jail. Uh, nobody's in jail.

Yeah. Nobody's nobody's in jail. No. Uh, no. Is your dad proud of you? You think? Yeah, for sure. He is. Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, I think man man to man. I think he has a high level of I would think he has a high level of respect for me. Very, very much so. for me very, very much. So, um, again, I harbor no ill will, um, to him, uh, towards him whatsoever. Um, and I want nothing but the best for him. I don't think having a relationship with him benefits me or my kids. And I love my kids, uh, and my wife more than, more than, uh, I care to develop a relationship with him. And I think that's, that's the priority for me. It's weird, right? Did you ever have this um like you're growing up and you're like shit one day my parents are gonna die that's gonna be so lonely it's gonna be everyone's gonna die i'm gonna be all alone and then you have kids and i don't mean to be an asshole but it kind of mitigates that totally does yeah you're like

you're kind of like okay if my parents die i mean it's going to really hurt but it's going to hurt my kids more than it hurts me and that's yeah isn't that interesting like that's because i have my kids now i almost feel bad for it guilty i don't quite but almost for sure well and that's when uh it's one of those things it's it's i used to be able to just think about my mom dying and start crying crying yeah i would do that drama in theater all the time if i needed to do a scene where crying i just pretend like my mom died and fucking right yeah and now it's probably different but if you did the same thing with your kids yeah yeah oh yeah oh you're screwed now it's more like right now it would be more like yeah i don't know i wouldn't even fuck with that you couldn't even maybe i probably wouldn't even go there yeah yeah as soon as i was going to try

it i'm like nah i'm not doing that yep don't even want to pretend dude yes don't even want to pretend yeah a hundred percent and that's one of those things that you literally dude you'll never um you can't you can understand it intellectually you cannot understand it emotionally and viscerally until you have those kids there There's just no way to understand that. Yeah. It's a, um, my, my, my, um, I wonder about my, uh, I wonder about my parents. Um, I, I speak to them. I see them a lot. I'm very, very, very close to my mom. I see my mom almost every day. Um, and it's, it's awesome. I usually tell people that my, my crowning achievement in my life is the, um, my relationship with my wife. Just, I just so fucking proud of it. But, um, but maybe it's with my mom too. I've

never thought of it until just now saying to you, but I'm pretty proud of that. It's pretty, it's a, it's, it's the crown jewel. It's pretty fucking it's pretty fucking dope say that again mom more than that uh yeah yeah yeah yeah i i'm not as i'm a little more i think that my the fault with my relationship with my dad i don't believe it's both of our faults i believe it's his fault yeah i think that maybe he he my dad drinks a lot um and he doesn't listen he's not a good listener and so and he's got a hearing issue and so i just think that he's done stuff to himself that's made it so he's or and he my dad's had an extremely hard life my dad's the oldest of 10 kids born in a fucking concrete hut in fucking lebanon no running water no fucking electricity fucking death and mayhem

all around him chaos by scrambling to get every meal named after fucking stalin i mean my dad's not like like he he's not like these fucking guys like around us in this world yeah you know uh raised nine brothers and sisters two of his siblings died they slept in the house for a week they stayed the dead body stay in the house for a week because it's part of his culture he had to sleep next to his dead siblings i mean just you know just all the old country crazy shit right that walked 10 stay in the house for a week because it's part of his culture he had to sleep next to his dead siblings i mean just you know just all the old country crazy shit right that walked 10 miles in the snow but i want even my parents are politically like so um they see the world so differently than me but i wonder sometimes if they're still proud of me because of what a

warrior i've become and the fact that i'm willing to stand up for my kids in a way that like, like, I wonder if they see what I'm doing. Yeah. That like, I'm feeling this responsibility to speak up for all the people who can't, it's not even responsibility. Maybe, I don't know what the word is, but I'm speaking up for my kids and all the other kids and all the people out there who are being coerced to do shit that they don't want to do i'm standing up against the bad guys and i just wonder if my parents see that even if they don't agree with what i'm doing if they're like holy shit yeah because it's not it's not who i am yeah i'm not this person that people think battle yeah i'm not i'm not i'm not um i don't care about like, if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't care about like the constitution or freedom or like, I don't care. I don't, I'm fine going to the beach and drinking beer every day and playing Frisbee.

Yeah. like not tolerating racism, not tolerating medical coercion, not tolerating, like bullying. I really don't care. But I have to do this. But I have to do this because I'm independently wealthy and I can. I can't be canceled. Like I just have to do this. I don't want to. I don't want to.

I'm not interested in it. I'm not like, I just have to. I think that same, you know, the genesis of, of you doing that anyways, and really the genesis of that being the love that you have for, for your own kids. I would think that, you know, I mean, that's still, um, that would still instill a will to, to watch what you're doing and to be, um, you know, proud with integrity. I would think so. But then how can, how can, how can someone vote for someone that wants your kid to get an injection? Yeah. How can, how can you. Yeah. How can you be 80 years old? Like if I was 80 years old and there was an injection that could make it so I live another five years or forced to take my kids to take, I would die. I would not – I would throw my life down for my kids or my grandkids in a second.

Like how are all these people okay with not standing up for their kids? I don't get it. I really don't get it. I'm asking you. I really think the cognitive dissonance, especially for that generation has been, I think they grew up in a very programmed time, right? It was a, you don't question the media. You don't question the government. It's Democrats are the people for the people. And so I'm just going to sign my tickets. Like I'm a Steelers fan for life, right? It doesn't matter. Yes. That's how I think of it. They're football fans, but it's our lives are at stake.

For sure. And I don't think they get, you know, it's, it's, um, I think they grew up in a very unique time where that programming was real and they just believe, look, man, if you just fucking just shut up and just, you know, listen to what the media is telling you, if they're telling you there's a pandemic, there's a pandemic and we're going to ride it out and we're going to do what the government says to do because they have your best interest at heart. Like, I really think they actually believe, um, I really think they actually believe those things. And I almost wonder if they're just kind of getting tired to the point too, where it's like, look, it's not worth, you know, we believe them and it's not worth the thought exercise to go

down the logic train. It's easier at that point to just stay with kind of my emotional, you know, um, my, my, my pre-programming. I really think that generation is really there. They don't want the thought exercise of having to go down the logic train. I don't think they do. Um, and it's an, are you hopeful? Are you hopeful? No, I don't, I don't think hope is a strategy at all. I'm proactive. Are you, let me rephrase it. Are you optimistic about- Are you optimistic? I'm optimistic about what I'm doing.

I'm optimistic about what I do for my family. Am I optimistic about what this, I think the country is going down a road that is gonna get worse. I really do. But I'm optimistic in my resilience and what I'm going to make sure I do for those that I can, that I can serve to, to make sure we're okay, no matter what. Right. Right. It's a different kind of thing. Personally optimistic,

collectively far. No. So someone in the comments named Jesus Ramos has quit bitching about the damn shot seven. You don't want it. We all get it. You're totally, I think, missing the point. It has nothing to do with me. Correct. I'm not going to get it. I'm independently wealthy. There's nothing.

I don't care. I can quit bitching about it the second. But the 10 cops that are my friends that are being forced to take it who can't speak up or else they're going to lose their jobs. And the firefighters I know, the doctors, the nurses I know, all these people being forced to take it who can't speak up or else they're going to lose their jobs and the firefighters i know the doctors the nurses i know all these people being forced i'm just doing it for them you if jesus i totally i totally hear you yep i don't want to turn i'm it's um it's all the other it's all the others and that's where the and they can't speak up and that's where the laziness of of thought comes in is it just stops with the, on both sides, on either side, pro vaccine of pro COVID shot, right? Anti COVID shot. It's the laziness of thought, which by the way, has been perpetuated by things like school and lazy parenting. And,

and, you know, along with, um, other things in pop culture, but it's laziness to just stop right there and go, I want it. Vaccine's good. You know, I don't want it. Vaccine's bad, both lazy. It's what is the, what is the ripple effect? When I asked you that question around Ronald Reagan and NASA, well, then the thought exercise is, okay, well, what are the extremes? Like if, if we double down on this, what is the long tail effect of doubling down on building out a space program? What are all the net positives, net negatives? What are the ripple effects, right?

Likewise, go to the other side. What are the ripple effects? If we just shut that down altogether, what are the ripple effects of that? And this is the same thing, right? When you start talking about this jab, it's paying attention to what are the ripple effects that are going on. If you take a look outside the American bubble, take a look at, you know, history of government overreach, you start going, okay, what are the ripple effects of us saying that this is an issue? It, that's where it starts to get, I think, scary. And that's where I think you see where things are going with all these vaccines, people losing those jobs,

the vaccine passports, you know, what if this does get attached to you, your ability to travel? Does that shut it down for you or your ability to buy food? Right. If I can no longer go to a grocery store or have access to my money because I'm not a compliant boy, that's that's the area we're headed. And I think that's what the majority of people are speaking up against. I don't think the majority of people give a shit if somebody wants to get the shot or not i agree 100 percent um do you believe that um i i had this car it was in 1986 um uh mercedes 560 sec or something it was like the song that was always talked about in rap songs it was the most expensive production car made in 1986 uh like 109 000 a car and i bought it on craigslist um when i first started working for crossfit when i was making like 3 000 a month and i and i got it for

like 3 600 bucks it was like mint condition and it was the first production car ever that had an air bag and do you believe and now we have just bezos going to space and now every car has a an airbag and do you believe and now we have just bezos going to space and now every car has a an airbag right and and and every day there's a new car coming out that can park itself and like the technology and everyone can afford a toothbrush now and a water pick it's just like the just the price everyone can get a 60 inch tv for 300 bucks yeah When you look at the Acton Academy and you see it, I don't think you owe any explanation for being $10,000 a student. But do you see a day where this thing becomes so big that maybe it, like, could it, could it be public education or is that a oxymoron? Could public education be run like that or would that be an oxymoron?

That's a great question. Yeah, government schools will never be run like this ever. Period. End of story. But the price could drop, right? In 20 years, there could be 10,000 of these schools. Oh, the price on – so that's two different conversations. So yeah, sorry.

That's where I was kind of leading to it. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, so do the government one first sorry to be clear government schools will never will never adopt this government schools um well and i and i always want to delineate so i've got another like tedx that i shot last week that'll be coming out and i kind of um you know i'm talking about it's the post post-covid education yeah. Yeah, I can't wait. Can't wait to see. We got that coming. One of the things I always want to delineate, I did so in that talk, and I want to make sure I always do that too, is I am not anti government school teacher,

government school administrator, the human beings, right? It's like what we were talking about at the very beginning. I can separate those things, right? And so those people, the majority of people in those systems, perpetuating those systems really are there for the right reasons. The majority of those people really do want to help young people. They believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing, just like I believe a lot of most doctors believe wholeheartedly in what they're recommending, whether or not I agree with what they're recommending is different. I think most people have the right intent there that are in schools. So there's that. The system of government schooling, though, is about politics.

It's about profit. It's about control. It's about all of these things that really don't help humans develop the way we're supposed to develop. So government schools, there's too much money power politics involved for that to ever change. There's too much money power politics involved for that to ever change. Otherwise, you know, it would be more like, well, let's integrate the system and let's or let's let's infiltrate the system and let's figure out how to blow it up from within. And there are still people that want to fight in that way. It'll never happen. So we just went, OK, cool. We're going to build the better model. We're going to build a better example to to begin that, yes, there is a cost involved. Unfortunately, our cost per student on our campuses is drastically lower than any kind of government schools, and it will continue to be more accessible to young people. One is just by

fact of the very nature of what we do with our students starting businesses. I've got high school students that pay their own tuition because the businesses that they've run and started while here pay more than that. I mean, we have students- Can you give me an example of that? Just a quick, like, it doesn't have to be detailed. I mean, we've got- Someone started a car wash. Now they pay their tuition. I mean, we've had people start a car wash, but we've also had people do more intricate, you know, kind of creating custom. So a young lady that created custom art project, she does abstract art. Right. And so she was being commissioned to like do abstract art on she did a VW bug.

She's done paintings that she sold. She painted on, she did a VW bug. She's done paintings that she sold. She painted, she painted on a VW bug. That's correct. Yeah. And did this abstract artwork. Um, she really found her niche with, um, snowboards and skateboards and then got them into local stores here in the Sacramento area. Right.

And so she's creating a business out of that. She actually sold a skateboard to Tony Hawk. He took it to his California Hall of Fame induction. And so we have another young man who in – And she does that at school. That's your school. That's part of her specific journey. So I could walk onto your campus and I would see her either painting the skateboard or on a computer writing an email to like the paint manufacturer or like

ordering or talking with tony hawk's agent and being like hey we mail this out all that i could see all that going on be part of her that'd be part of her day just like you would see her possibly you know interacting with other younger students just like you would see you wouldn't necessarily go wait a second that girl's doing something different it's just the hubbub of what everybody's doing and she's inspiring her peers to do that too and they see it they're like holy shit and i'm gonna sell a violin to fucking adele now like guys that make do custom woodwork and they do custom um bike ramps and do custom um wooden flags um that they sell and there's kind of i mean these how about any stand-up comedians

are there any kids yet i'm down when i was a kid i really really enjoyed making fun of other people and making fun of myself i really yeah i loved i loved filthy humor yeah i loved rodney dangerfield i loved how he made fun of himself and made fun of other people it was fucking amazing i could listen to his records all day yeah but but it was so taboo i mean my mom let me buy the records but then i'd still listen to him like i was hiding out yeah yeah yeah totally but i mean that's but i was like seven eight nine ten i was fucking i was ready to tear shit up man that's seeing that something that i had no outlet now i'm 49 i'm trying it on you i'm trying to like squeeze some jokes in here with you as we talk about serious shit. But you have a knack for communication, right?

And you were able to communicate through film. You're able to communicate through your words. You're able to communicate through these things. And that's something that needs to be fostered early and often. We had a young lady that came to us that was deathly afraid of public speaking, but knew that that was going to be inherently part of what we do. There were going to be presentations. There were going to be pitches to local businesses.

There were going to be all these things. And then she got herself, she went from that to emceeing some of our exhibition events to getting invited to speak at a TEDx herself. Right. And so it's those kinds of things. Holy shit. Did she do it?

Let those things. It hasn't happened yet. But how old is she? 16. Wow. Yeah. Is she going to do it? I I hope so. Yeah. I mean, that's something that you've been working on. And then are you proud as shit of her?

It's amazing. Right. And that's what it goes for. It's literally every single student here. It's like, cool, man, go get it. What does, what does that, what does that journey look like for you? If we've got a young man, you know, she's got, she's doing TEDx. Somebody else is making jewelry that they've got in local stores. Somebody else is creating these wooden products. Somebody's building sheds. Somebody else is writing cookbooks and somebody else is working for YouTube right now, making six figures as a 17 year old in high school. Oh, geez. Hey, anyone, anyone grow marijuana? All the, uh, not that i'm aware of yeah yeah um i don't smoke marijuana anyway but but i really as a kid it's so it's the funnest thing to grow it's like

i i i cannot condone burning or smoking anything people it's fucking idiocy breathing and burning objects into your lungs i don't eat that shit i don't do any of that that being said everyone should grow a weed plant it's the most fascinating fastest growing plant ever it's fucking crazy that's what i've heard yeah it's it's it's amazing it's so hey growing anything's fun i mean tomato plants are fun too so yeah sorry sorry well you're good man no um so you have these kids and they're doing this stuff and they're all able to do all of this. Right. So a lot of them are able to pay their own tuition. But then, you know, I'm getting a foundation going to where we can do the 501 C3 thing so that people want to donate.

That's all scholarships. When we do events. Do you hate that, that you have to get in bed with the government through a 501 C3? I'm doing it in a way where it's just that that allows for the it allows for the donations um we've got i don't fully even understand the whole cycle of it where it's like this business trust that goes to the foundation that goes i i full i honestly don't fully understand that you have smarter people than you do who do that are doing that that's exactly right and it's literally just to perpetuate helping is young people. So we've got that set up and we do events. So like this last August, we hosted

TEDx Roseville. So we actually put a TEDx on here on this campus. And we had sponsors that came in to sponsor the event. Those sponsorships that were over and above the cost of putting on the event all went back towards kids. So the students that we have that we know struggle the most, like we feed that in there. We want to purchase local businesses as well that if there's anything that we can do to perpetuate income and have that going to drive more of a scholarship fund. So we are doing everything that we can do to try to ultimately go as many places as we can go everything that we can do to try to ultimately go as many places as we can go and drive that cost, uh, down, um, and, and make it accessible to everybody. Cause that is the, that is the biggest downside forever and always will be the biggest downside of privatized. That is the fact

that it frigging costs money. I just, I just see that going back to my original thought is, is that like, yeah, this shit has to start somewhere. It has to start at $30,000. It has to start at then $20,000, then $10,000. Eventually, one of these kids will graduate. He'll be the next Jeff Bezos, and he'll give back $50 million. 100%. Then eventually, this thing will get a – what are those called? Endowments?

You get billions of dollars that just sits parked somewhere and you bet and that's what's it's already that's already happening if you take a look at the global kind of this global push now and what we got with the global network and some of the bigger players that have come alongside this um we're just at the precipice we're at the forefront and the the organization that i relate it to the most honestly with this movement is crossfit i use that analogy quite a bit because crossfit kind of started as this grassroots sort of thing and the proof became in the pudding and then all of a sudden now there's you know there's a crossfit on every you know on every corner kind of deal and everybody knows what it is and there's this huge collaborative event you know every single year and there's these local regional events and

it's the support upon support upon support and you've got all these big players that are jumping in and it's a very similar trajectory i believe for for this too we've got some big big players coming aboard then there's probably some crazy lessons in there for you by the way no doubt uh but basically you know crossfit was great basically greg glassman's experiment. He just wanted to train people, and he just experimented on them. He's a scientist. He's a scientist like is in the scientific method. He's not a consensus scientist.

He doesn't care what the consensus is. He believes in real science, the stuff that – like the hard sciences. Sociology is not a science. I know you know all this. Psychology is not a science. These are not – this is sorcery word sorcery um to say those things uh the the sciences are math biology physics and chemistry yeah all done that geology maybe yeah it's like all done um and uh uh uh weather weather is consensus science climate change is consensus science i'm not saying this like that there's no such thing as that i not saying that there's no such thing as that.

I'm not saying there's no such thing as global warming. But it's not science, people. It's consensus science. It's the same thing that got Jews burned and witches taken. Don't confuse the two. And it's the same thing with what's happening with all the medication and the entire COVID response. There is no science in it. The science is – it's all consensus.

There's a guy, Thomas Kuhn, he wrote a book. It's the most cited book in the history of all science literature. And it fucked everything up because he believes in consensus science. You know someone is not a scientist when they believe in consensus science, when they lean on peer review. There's no science there. It doesn't matter how many people say two plus two is five. Oh, so I forget where i was going with that i was gonna um glassman and then kind of the experiment sorry so was this yes so it was this experiment

and he and and we all jumped on board yeah yep because it was getting great results okay do this do this do this constantly very functional movement, execute at high intensity, move larger objects over large distances quickly. He defined fitness with kinematics and science, and he paid for physics, and so it started growing. And what ended up happening is people started making it their own, and it got so big, and I would argue that maybe he didn't manage his finances right. But when the woke crowd tried to come after him and he should have just – it's up to him. It's his ultimately. I would have liked to have seen him say fuck off. Yeah, totally. Fuck you.

De-affiliate then. I don't give a fuck. You want to call me racist, sexist? Fuck off. Yeah. But he didn't do that. And now someone else has it, and it's just all venture capital. And anyone who thinks that anything with integrity is coming out of there now is out of their fucking mind.

It's being eroded every single day. Take your L1 now before it's fucking gone, and it's lied to. They have something called precision healthcare now. It's like inviting the wolves into the chicken head. It's fucking complete insanity what they're doing over there. I worry about when I hear you and I shouldn't say I'm worried about it. I see this amazing thing you're building and I think, oh my God, what's going to happen in 30 years when, or 40 years when Matthew's gone and the woke crowd gets

ahold of your school. Well, and see, and so that's part of the, and I fully get that. And that's part of the conversation for all of us as kind of this governance council, which is a fancy way of saying there's like 10 or 12 of us out of the, you know, 300 or so current owners that kind of go, Hey, how can we kind of serve more? Right. Like the, the whole part of the bigger part of our conversations are how do we just continue to grow, but have everything be completely decentralized and nothing but what's best for the young heroes. And so as an example, so Acton Academy, right? A-C-T-O-N, Lord Acton. I don't know much more about him. I should probably look up more about him and understanding who he is in his life, but he is, if you've ever heard the quote, power corrupts, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. That is credited to him, right? So that's why we say act and we believe in educational freedom, individual freedom,

personal freedom, religious freedom, economic freedom, medical freedom. And that needs to stay a central component as does the decentralization of everything, right? Our goal on each campus is to empower those young people so that ultimately they're the ones running the campus. The adult is no longer needed. Same thing from, that's a microcosm from an organizational level. Our goal is that there really isn't any kind of centralized power. There is no hierarchy. There is no mothership that says, do this, do this, do this. What you have is you've got this entire network of individuals who are going in. It doesn't matter if you've had one campus, three campuses, if you've just launched a campus this year, if you've had your campus for 10 years,

it is, I don't know what's working best for you right now. What's working best for you? I'm going to try this. Great. I'm going to try this too. And then the only thing we do from a, you know, kind of a corporate sort of structural standpoint is we all agree we're going to take 1% of our gross every single year. We're going to give that percentage back into that governance council is going to take a look at that and go, cool, here's this money. What do we do to perpetuate the network? A small portion of it can go to, and I say small, I mean, small portion of that will go to any kind of marketing and just kind of letting people know kind of what we're doing. Even that we want it to be relatively stealth and sort of quiet for a few different

reasons. But then the rest of it goes back into kids. So this year you're going to have 20 graduates from Acton Academies around the world that will be, that will get, they'll have to compete for it. There's no fucking eighth place trophies, but they'll compete for it. And 20 of them will receive $100,000 fellowships from the network to go on to take on their next great adventure. So, and that's, that is awesome. A hundred grand for them to go off and just, what's your next great adventure, man? What do you want to do? There's some, make some promises to us on what that looks like.

That's $2 million. Bingo, right? So it's like, pour that money back into the kids, back into the campuses. It's back into, it's not into anybody's pockets. And that's the beauty. That's the power behind this network. So I agree with you a hundred percent that power needs to be maintained. And that power is only maintained if the integrity is maintained, which means no, you know, no lining of anybody's pockets. And that's

really what we're all, you know, kind of agreeing to is like, this isn't going to be a money thing from, I still don't take money from this. I don't mean to be the from this i don't mean to be the dead i don't mean to be the dead horse but but but how it goes down is this um 20 years from now you're pulling into the um best western and and and and you tip uh uh you're you're the guy who pick who picks up your car from you to park your car the valet and you tip you tip them ten dollars and then you when you leave um another valet comes and you give them five bucks. And someone there is like, did you see that? The founder of these kids schools, I don't know what you call them, the acting academy schools, he tipped a white guy ten dollars and he only tipped the black guy on the way out five dollars he's racist and then the 50 campuses you opened up they panic and they're like

oh my god um look look look we're gonna hang three of our white students from these trees and kill them in the front yard so that you know we're not racist and that's how the whole thing fucking like yeah for sure that that's how the whole thing uh like for sure that that's how the whole thing gets out of control. It's like, wait, wait a second. Like that. He didn't even he's fucking Matthew Bordeaux is fucking blind. He didn't even know how much he was tipping him. You dumb fucks. So actually, actually, the black guy did get 10 bucks and it was a white guy. I got five bucks. And now you're hanging white people in your school to make up for what this guy. And that's what scares me in this in this world we're in like for sure man a hundred percent uh freaking thousand percent first of all

i'm sorry i don't mean to be just throwing grenades you're a hundred percent right dude so but these are things that we've got to think about too so like first first when i walk up to those valets which one did both of them ask me for my vax passport because that's we've got to make sure we put that bullshit in there too. Cause that's good. So, because otherwise I can't even go to the best Western. Right. Um, so, um, so that's absolutely something that we're aware of and have to, and have to keep tabs on. So what part of that decentralization too, is understanding that, um, individual owners won't necessarily have, we have the same foundational beliefs in the young people and their hero's journeys, unlocking whatever journey, whatever that looks like for them.

And us as owners are also going to have their own individual journey. That means that Matt doesn't speak for the entirety of the network. If, unless I'm speaking about something of like, yes, we believe every child is inherently a genius that should be able to be allowed the opportunity to go on a hero's journey. That across the board. And those tenets are written somewhere. Those are our promises. Yep. That's exactly it.

Those are our promises. That's our mission statement. The minute I go outside of that, I'm no longer an affiliate either. Get the fuck out. It doesn't matter who I am. Right. of that, I'm no longer an affiliate either. Get the fuck out. It doesn't matter who I am. Right. So, but me personally, um, I, I, you know, if I'm speaking to something that I personally believe, I need to be very clear that this is my personal belief and doesn't necessarily represent the,

you know, the, the greater thing at large. When Tim Kennedy speaks about what his policy or stance is on, you know, Afghanistan and withdrawal of troops. That's not acting speaking. That's Tim Kennedy speaking when he's speaking about Apogee Cedar park and his act and Academy there. Well, then it's all about those heroes and our belief in their journey. I'm same thing. I've had people that, you know, I get DMS, um, or emails or calls and people go, Hey, I just went and checked out the, uh, the Acton Academy over here. And I walked in and they've got masks on. I thought you said you, you know, I thought you said that you are against masks. And, and so I've got to differentiate and just

go, look, man, that's their owner that wherever they are decide in that community, deciding that they're going to do that. And they have every right to do that. That's part of that whole freedom thing is I want you to have the freedom to do that if you want. Like that's great. And by the way, everybody's got freedom to do that on our campus. If they want to, they just happen to not want to, um, because they also have the freedom not to do it. Uh, and that's, you know, that's the difference. So that's, that's different than the act and Academy philosophy. That's Matt saying, Hey, as the leader of these campuses, free to do what you want to do. Um, but you know, it's those, it's, as the leader of these campuses, free to do what you want to do.

Um, but you know, it's those, it's those core tenants, those core principles, those core promises, those core beliefs that we all hang our hat on together collectively. Did you start these, this whole thing because you had kids? Yeah, man, I started, I was in the game, you know, I was in the game of, of, of schools. Um, so I saw, I saw the game and had my own kids and went, well, they're not going to be involved in that game. Can you give me more details? Cause I heard you say your kids are the reason. Yep. What does, what does that mean? Yeah. Um, so I was in traditional conventional schools, right. And actually before that I was at Stanford university working there for, for a while too. Um, and then went into conventional schools, right? And actually before that, I was at Stanford university working there for, for a while too. Um, and then went into conventional schools as conventional school

teacher, conventional school, uh, administrator. So I understood the game of school. And, and as I started to ask, well, why, why are we continuously doing this? Why can't I usurp from the inside? Why do we, you know, when the world is doing this, why the hell are we still doing this? Why do I have to, you know, I'm mentoring this young man and trying to help him when he goes home, his parents are telling him to get out and deal drugs on the porch. And you know, he's, he's, he's got to decide, you know, what point he gets involved in the family gang and all this stuff. And I'm trying to mentor him out of that. Why do I have to make sure he has algebra to save his life versus

any of my conversations? Like, why is that bad? Like, so I'm asking all these questions, right? And once I kind of started figuring out the answers to that, uh, it was right about the same time when my oldest was getting to be, you know, it was close enough to where she was getting to be school age. Um, and so for me it was like five. Uh huh. Yep. Okay. Exactly. And so it was like, okay, well she's not going to come into this mess. So then what? Right. Um, it's there's, I don't believe in complaining and whining. It's, it's cool. I, I've been, I need to be responsible for figuring out what the alternative is going to be. And so alternative is going to be, do we home, you know, do we homeschool and figure that out? Or is there something else that I think is even more advantageous?

And that's, you know, ultimately was, so that was the genesis of it. Once I figured out what acting was, and it was related to everything I'd always wanted to do and been trying to do in that game of school as it was, there was no, I'm not going to compromise for, for what I do for my kids. Um, that's just wasn't, you know, that's non-negotiable. So it was like, cool, I will build this for them. And by the way, if I build this for them and that means there's 10, there's 10 kids and that's all we have. Great.

Then so be it. I'm building it for my kids. Um, it just so happened that more and more people, um, you know, we're excited about it too. And then once more and more people are excited about it and more and more young heroes started having transformational sort of results as far as who they were, their self-confidence, their self-awareness, all of those things, um, just kind of went from there, you know, and how more and more people are waking up to that game though.

How old's your daughter now? My oldest is 10. She'll be 11 in january so i got a 10 10 and 8 and a 5 two girls two girls and a boy so this shit is growing fast goodly yeah how do you have time to even do a podcast it is this is all part of the mission man it's all all inclusive i don't do the whole balance thing it is this is all inclusive everything i do is is, same thing in this mission. The name of your podcast is called the essential 11, the essential 11. Yes, sir.

And why do you call it that? So we, um, so as I've been building these schools, I had not taken any money from these schools. I've been so like you, I like communication, right? And so I've been, um, a keynote speaker and consultant for, for companies all over the world. So I like communication, right? And so I've been a keynote speaker and consultant for companies all over the world. So I've done almost 400 keynotes in the last seven years. Wow. All over, all over the world. So that's how I've been providing for my family and the money over here. And then when I'm home, you know, we're building out, we're building out the schools.

And so I had the good fortune to work with a phenomenal research company. Um, when, as I was doing these keynotes and it's a team of PhDs that just studies generational trends and they have generational research and, um, and I got going to, I'm going to do a podcast. And I really just want to get, um, I want to help young people get the answers that they want to questions that they've got. And I want to go to, you know, some of the world's best minds and get those answers and just kind of get everybody's take. It was really kind of inspired by like tribe of mentors, right? Tim Ferris's, um, kind of book. So we utilize that research firm, um, and went to 1500 young people and it was ages 13 to 22 all across America. And we just said, Hey, you know, if we're going to go, it was essentially like, if we're going to these brilliant people, like, what do you want to know? What kind of, like, what do you want to hear from them? What kind of advice do you want? And so we kind of, you know, cultivated the responses on that and came up with what we called the essential 11.

And so the essential 11 questions as the framework for the conversation. And most of the time I don't have to go number one, number two, number three, it ends up being, yeah, I've never seen you do that. Yeah. This conversational flow. I've only had to do that a couple of times when it's like, you know, Greenfield was, was out walking and he's like, dude, I've only got 15 minutes. I'm like, fuck it. We'll just kind of go through the list, man. We'll just kind of rock through, you know, and just kind of go down the list like that. And so I've had to do that, but for the most part, it's just, um, we have a conversation and those all kind of come up, you know, um, and we're able to kind of

weave those in. Um, so it's cool, man, because everybody's got different responses and, and, you know, based on their perspectives and their stories. And so, yeah, it's a hell of a lot of fun, based on their perspectives and their stories. And so, yeah, it's a hell of a lot of fun, man. Wow. It's really cool. So I want to go back to this reason thing. Yeah.

I don't want to say I feel bad when I say stuff to people because I get on my high horse on my Instagram or my podcast or just in my day-to-day life i i don't i don't i don't care that like you give your kids twinkies yeah what i care is is that you should know that there's another way i don't care that can tell your kid, Hey, there's absolutely no TV when the sun's out ever. You can do that. You can, and, and you will help your kid. Kids love boundaries and rules. It's, you can tell your kid, Hey, you will only drink water in my house you will never drink another kind of liquid in my house you can it's yours it's your sistine chapel this fucking guy

matthew bordeaux built a fucking school for his kids i'm not saying you have to do that but don't fucking argue your limitations that's it's exactly like it scares the shit out of me and i feel fucking like a piece of shit parent hearing him say that but i'm doing the best i can do and so don't let me make you feel like a piece of shit also because there's levels to this shit and matthew's at the highest level and he's fucking starting a school and all of us are bending from it but don't argue your limitations and say that there's a food drought i I don't have enough money. I don't know how to say no. I do not, do not stop.

It's not arguing your limitations and stop arguing your kids limitations. They have, we have so much potential. That's right. And, and what sucks is when you argue your limitations or you operate out of this thought that you've got an endless amount of limitations, your kids learn that too, right? They learn that from you. They can learn that, you know, what boundaries

are just meant to be, uh, you know, boundaries are meant to be held over here and limits are meant to be pushed over here. And they, but they've got to see you living from that paradigm before they actually believe it. I always tell people, kids will, um, you know, do what you do before they ever do what you say. Right. And it was, uh, and that was something that I, and I remember saying that to Tito, uh, Ortiz too, when he was on and he's like, holy shit, man. And he pulled out the sign that was in his bedroom. And it was like, basically that same kind of thing. And it's like, dude, that's, that is, uh, quite literally the, the case. And I fucking, I mean, I've messed stuff messed stuff up too ever there's no such thing as a perfect parent um at all but um operating out of those out of those limiting beliefs is going to be the first thing that they that they learn man if you're doing it by example

vice versa doing right shit they're going to be on it it's it's interesting you say that so the fighting with your with your what not your wife the rhetorical wife the um fighting with your wife, not your wife, the rhetorical wife, the fighting with your wife in front of your kids. You now have an amazing opportunity to show your kids what it's like to make up. So, you know, you yell at your wife. She left the refrigerator door open and the three kids are sitting there and you're like, dude, we're trying to save money on electricity. Can you please close the refrigerator? This is the 10th time I've told you. And then you see your kids are looking and you're like oh fuck yep yep don't immediately be

compassionate with yourself yeah and and turn flip the script take a few deep breaths go take a piss come back and be like honey that was right so try to do it so your kids don't know you're fucking hamming it up but ham that shit up i am sorry. And if your wife doesn't accept your apology, you don't get mad at her. You accept that too. Totally. You fucking get on the high road and be a good example for your kids. Don't be hard on yourself. You can fix everything.

You can fix it. Yeah, you can turn it into a positive. I had no business yelling at you, honey. You deserve better than that. Exactly. And you need to do the work to do it though because you make that apology, right that apology right and you can openly say man kids the way i just handled that was bullshit this is what i should have done right here and then the most important part is that you try not to do that again yes yes yes right if you do it again the next day yes and then you do it the

next day the kids don't believe you because what you do and what you say are not the same thing. If I walk up to Siobhan every single day and go, dude, I love you. And then I punch you in the face. Yeah. I love you. Bam. And I punch you in the face. Right.

All you're learning is that it's cool what he says, but ultimately he's going to fucking hit me in the face. Right. Like it's the same thing. It's your, I don't want anyone loving me. Exactly right. Yeah. Love same thing. I don't want anyone loving me. Exactly right. Love sounds awful. Yeah, man.

So it's that. It's the consistency. And that's what kills. That's what kills. I mean, it's just like fitness, right? And health and fitness is consistency matters. And people struggle with consistency. And it's no different in parenting.

But it's that consistency man at your first at your first fight bruce buffer was there yeah dude he was the announcer was he nobody uh no he was still bruce buffer like he was still yeah he was still bruce buffer i mean ufc wasn't as big um as it is now ufc was i think is he cool he's so weird he's like he's like a barbie doll kind of like just because of the role he plays for sure he's so one-dimensional he's very theatrical um you know he's very theatrical he's very over the top um and he can be kind of theatrical even in conversation but he's a good he's a he's a he's a good guy he's he's a cool guy um i was having you know i've had multiple interactions with him but not so much where I can go,

look, Bruce Buffer is a good friend of mine, and here's who he really is down deep. I don't have that kind of relationship with him. But he's always been a good dude. But yeah, UFC was, I think, 50, 60-ish events in maybe at that point. And they weren't doing them every weekend like they do now. Right. And so it was, um, uh, yeah, cause it was right about 2000. My first fight was 2005, 2005 and 2006. We're all within a truncated space. So, uh, it was 2005.

And so it was right about like, uh, to give context for fans. I had that fight. And then I think the next week i was in vegas at the fights uh and it was like liddell versus jeremy horn too um you know it was like it was that gsp gsp was like on the he was like this up-and-coming guy yeah you know and so it was it was that how are you on time i'm good man i i wanted to be able to just chat as long as you wanted to chat today so okay i have two more things i'd like to bring up go for it man when i worked in a home for disabled adults one of the things i worked there for five years i lived in

the driveway in my car there um i started seven bucks an hour and when i left i had 20 people working for me and was making 21 an hour just, just rich as fuck. Like 15,000 in the bank, still eating sandwiches out of the dumpster. Yeah. Killing it by my girlfriend, whatever coffee she wanted. Fuck the good old days. Anyway.

So, so one of the things was, is you don't want to take power from people. Like if someone says to you, and I hear this a lot in your talk with how you deal with kids, I think, and I just thought it was an interesting different spin on it. Like, you don't want to take power from people. What does that mean? That means when I tell my kid, hey, I signed you up for a jiu-jitsu tournament,

he says, I don't want to do it. I just say, okay. Then the day before I said, hey, tomorrow we're going to the jiu-jitsu tournament. He says, okay, I don't want to do it. Then we wake up in the morning and we get in the car and I get him dressed and we're driving there. He says, I don't want to do it. And I just say, okay. And there's nothing for me to say. I don't, I don't have to respond. I don't have to take power from him. I don't have to say you have to do it. That's taking power from him. I don't have to say you don't have to do it. That's taking power from him. I just keep moving towards the target and as we get closer he ups the ante on me it's it's 10 minutes before his first jiu-jitsu match in the history of his life in a

public setting um it's his first tournament and he says do i have to do it and i just look at him and i stay quiet because i have nothing to say that i don't know what to say because i because he because he doesn't have to do it but i'm but i'm also not going to tell him he has to do it or doesn't have to do it because i don't want to take it. It's him. It's all on him. I know it's safe. I'm looking around, making sure no one's going to hurt him. I'm going to stay close to him.

I'm not enjoying the process either. I don't want him to do it either. But fuck, it's not me who has to go out there. So I need to shut the fuck up and suck it up and i just and then eventually i said hey i love you i said you you just do you yep you know and um and and he goes out there and does his first match and he comes off and and he's like well the next thing i was now says when's my next one i go in like three minutes he said okay

and then he does his next one and then we we get in the car. We're driving home. And I go, how was that? He goes, man, I was shaking. And I go, oh, I go, is it hard to do jujitsu when you're shaking? He goes, no, no, it stops soon as you get out there. When they say go, it stops. He goes the whole time up to it. I go, wow.

I go, that sounds nuts. I go, like, you want to run away shake? He goes, yeah. And then I'm like, oh, you just redirect that into, and I just talk to him about it. Like you're saying, the Socratic,atic ask questions help him with some ideas that i think maybe it might be but i never take the power from him yeah i love that and it's the integrity of um of that whole situation that goes back to kind of what we're talking about where where there's no um you know they they don't have the sovereignty yet at that age they don't know what they don't

know they don't have so you're not stripping. They don't know what they don't know. They don't have. So you're not stripping the power, but you're still. Or the accountability. It's all on him. Accountability, right? Yes. So you allow all that to take place.

And then the learning that comes out of that, there are too many parents who don't want. And this is part of what we talk about at our informational sessions, right? Like we'll get 100 families that will come through for an informational session in a month thinking that they want their kids here. And I actually start with like a whole top 10 reasons you probably don't want to be here. I actually try to get people out. And the reason I do that is because I know for a fact, most parents don't actually want their kids to go through something like that. They don't want that because they want to save, they want to protect, they want to bubble, they want a helicopter, they want to whatever you want to call it. And, and, you know, however, they're approaching it, they want to just have this protection, which I fully get, but they're not willing to let their kids go forward and fail. And they really don't actually want that to happen. So they'll, they'll acquiesce to those things early. And that's where you get to a situation where, you know, your kid doesn't take on responsibility. The kid doesn't ever want to go outside. The kid doesn't want to, you know, push themselves to do

harder and harder things because they've never had to, they don't understand the fricking glory that comes out of pushing through some hard shit and coming out the other side going, okay, now I'm different. And this is cool. And and he was different and he was totally like totally different and that's called that's called confidence by the way right like that's what that is confidence doesn't happen unless you actually do some shit and he lost both his matches doesn't matter and he was totally different kid for the better like nuts far more confident far more confident and that's what parents need to be able to foster and most do not want to do that they want to avoid it and And now you get to these, you know, so we've got these low bar. And if he would, and Matthew, if he wouldn't have done it and he would have started crying, I wouldn't have cared. I would have let him come run in my arms and held him, kissed him. And then like, I'm so proud of you that we made it this far. We'll try again next month.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Cause that would have, you would have seen, okay, look, there's a breaking point right there. And then we'll try again later. And it was his that's exactly right because that would have you would have seen okay look there's a breaking point right there and we'll try again later and it was his decision further and further and it's his decision yeah you ran off if he would have run off and it's happened yeah it's a it's a it's a nuanced game man and but it's it's like you said it's never stripping that power and putting more and more small dragons in front of them to slay and you should never fucking apologize for, for building up a dragon slayer when real fucking dragons exist out there right now. Like that.

We have so many mental midgets in, in our adults, right. That are building further, further and further down that lineage of that mental midgetism. And I've, dude, I had,

so I got the Apogee hat on, right? And so Tim and I have this, this mentorship program that we run for young men. And I've had, I had a young man get on a zoom call with me that, you know, was maybe going to sign up for it. He's 15 years old and mom comes on the zoom and she's like, ah, he's being kind of shy right now. And in his bed, dude, with a covers over his head ah he's being kind of shy right now and in his bed dude with the covers

over his head he's 15 he's 15 we have 15 year olds that are running you know multiple businesses and you saw the whole reason in one thing it's because his mom's interfering mom's interfering and has for 15 years i'm like i have no to, he cannot be part of this program. Sorry. Like, there's just no way I can't fix that. You have set a foundation of 15 years of, um, just a foundation that I, I'm not going to tell you anything's going to be able to, like, he's going to have to get at a breaking point where he decides enough is enough. I'm going to change this. There's nothing I can do. That's going to help him. A friend of mine brought one of my best friends in the whole world.

He's an amazing guy. God, I hope he's not listening to this. Actually, it doesn't matter. He brought his kid over to my house, and I knew his kid was coming to my house, and I bought his kid one of those spinners. Do you know those spinners that kids would play with? You spin them in your hands. And I bought him one of those, and it was an expensive one, like $40, $50.

It was all made of steel, and it it was super intricate and it did all these cool things. Yeah. It was so fucking neat. Yeah. And I gave it to him and the kid took it and didn't say thank you. And the dad told him to say thank you. And he wouldn't dad told him to say thank you. And he wouldn't. And he goes, Oh, he'll come back and say thank you later. And it was great for me because I just thought to myself like yeah like my i would take that from my kid and i would be like dude you know you can't have this until you look him in his eyes shake his hand and say thank you it's it's it's part of just and he let his kid off the hook for that and i just i i i probably should have said something to him in the thing but

people should know there is no homeostasis. It's not like he got away with something. It's you taught him something bad with kids. Yeah. It's always, you, you are either doing something good for your kid or doing something bad for your kid.

There's, there's never like, there's never like, Oh, we didn't learn anything, dude. You, you are crazy. If you don't think they learned something. You are full of shit. Yes. Set that foundation early. I very much agree with, um, Jordan Peterson has this whole thing about like parenting in the early years. And you know, he's when those

first five, six years, you were setting this foundation for who this person is going to be. And part of your job, your biggest job right there is to make sure they are not an asshole, right? Make sure that they are a likable human, because that's going to do them good in the long run. That is going to make it so they understand, so that people want to be around them, that people will listen to them, right? That they'll have influence, that they'll have relationships, that they'll have opportunities, right? If you allow them to be just this ungrateful asshole, you know, human being, you are inherently limiting their opportunities. You are increasing exponentially the chance that they're going to be broken adults. Frederick Douglas said, it's easier to build strong men than it, or build strong kids. And it is to fix

broken men. Right. And that's absolutely, it's absolutely true. Right? So you set that foundation early. Those things are non-negotiable. Manners are non-negotiable. Look at somebody in the eye communicating, saying, thank you, shaking hands. Those things are non-negotiable and it just sets up the foundation for actual confidence and relationships moving forward, right? We were, we are very much a hundred percent, man. There was no way in hell my kid would have touched that thing ever and that would have been um right there like it would have been like nope you're gonna say it before we even move on to anything else we're gonna stay here and make this awkward as shit until yeah yeah you don't have a choice and it's an easy win for your kid super you're not you're

not asking to get out of the car and punch someone super easy super easy like you're gonna make eye contact say thank you and you're gonna get the best spinner in your life it's so easy bingo that's that's literally how we start our morning meetings on campus when i say morning meetings the studios on this campus whether it's the young ones that are four or five six years old do you know seven eight nine twelve eighteen whatever it is they literally are starting in a circle they stand up they look the next person the eye they say good morning savon savon says good morning matt they look each other in the eye they shake hands they go in a circle. They stand up, they look the next person in the eye, they say, good morning, Savant. Savant says, good morning, Matt. They look each other in the eye, they shake hands. They go around the circle and do that. And then they launch the day, right? Because those things are foundational to just making things happen. And it's bananas

because so many people don't do it. We have had people walk into this campus. We've had this happen more than once where we have somebody come onto this campus for an informational session. They're coming in because they're exploring potentially sending their kids here to this school. They go through all this and then I'll go, hey, if you want to take a break from the questions and you want to go take a tour kind of of the campus, you're not going to walk into where the studios are. It's a sacred space for the young people. But if you want to just kind of take a peek and walk around, see what the campus looks like, go for it. We've got some of our high schoolers that are over here. They'll take you around.

They'll answer any questions that you've got. And so the high schoolers take that. Oh, wow. They're your docents. The kids are the docents for the school. That is so awesome. The younger, the better, right? Because if they're capable, they can do that. Yes.

And so the kids take them around and you know, they're walking up saying, Hey, you know, my name is so-and-so nice to meet you here. Let me walk you around. I've had multiple times where we've had that make, I've had a gentleman come back to me and go, Hey, I need to hire that kid. How old is that kid? Like I need to hire him, right? I need to hire him right now. We normally only hire college graduates. How old is that kid? Because if, as soon as he's 18, like I need him to come work for me, right? We have had parents who were driving by and it just happened to come in. And now we don't even have, like, we don't have the ability to do that anymore because we have such a massive

interest. We have to go through the informational sessions. But even prior to that, we had parents that, you know, drove by the campus and went, what the hell is this? Got out, walked up and were greeted by, you know, an eight-year-old, nine-year-old that said, hi, you know, my name is so-and-so. Nice to meet you. Are you, are you here to meet, you know, Mr. Matt? Let me show you where he is. Right. And they bring him in and they walk in and they go, what the hell just happened? We were about to move out of the state of California, but that's ridiculous. And is that what you guys do here? Like we're going to stay in our kids are going to go here. I mean, all of these things are real things. And it's literally just because our young people have the confidence and the awareness and the understanding to go, Hey, I'm going to look somebody in the eye. I'm going to shake their

hands. I'm going to say, nice to meet you. I'm going to be a normal human being. And you would think we're introducing people to Jesus. Yeah. Not the Jesus that commented on the shot earlier, but like Jesus, the deal, kind of deal, right? Like you would want the sandals, the one with the sandals, right? Because it's so unheard of for young people to have that kind of understanding in those kinds of manners, which is that says, it doesn't say a lot about us. It says a lot about society and where we've kind of gone. Right. But it also says a lot about the opportunity for our young people then who will take on that massive responsibility,

who are willing to be those good humans and hold themselves to those standards of integrity. The gap that it's going to create for them moving forward versus their counterparts, it's ridiculous. It's compound interest of being a good human young, right? It's like investing early in the compound interest by the time you're 70, you know, and you've put that $7,000 a month into that mutual fund and you got $20 million. It's that same thing. You put that foundational goodness of humanity in them young. The, the, the payoff on that is ridiculously high.

How much does it cost to start one of these schools um the ip uh to gain access to the ip and to the network and what i mean by the network is um you gain access to all every freaking conversation we've ever had every system every um everything we're uh the quests the big projects that we're trying and continue to try the forums where we're connecting with other owners around the world um i think it's like it's like 15 grand to to come in and get the ip um but then the real cost is well then what then what's next right it's the cost of the buildings it's the cost of the people it's it's all of that kind of stuff but we don't want the't want the entry to be crazy big.

I'm living in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I have hundreds of millions of dollars and I have these kids. Can I hire someone to open one of these schools for me? Of course. I can just find someone. Find somebody. Like I want my kids to go to this school, but I don't want to move back to California. Yeah. And I can afford it, and I want to start one of these schools. Totally, 100%. And if there's not, so you can check out and see if there is one that's already open near you.

Otherwise, yeah, if you would like to start some, then you bet you can find. But, again, it's about finding the right people. Just like we're looking to find the right people for the network. Um, and when parents come to my campus, I'm looking for the right parents because I want the right mindset and I want the right mindset of the young heroes. It's that same thing you want to find, you know, you don't, you probably don't want a teacher. Um, you know, if you're going to have somebody running it for you, you probably don't want to pull somebody that's been a teacher for 30 years, right? Cause they've been trained in one particular way. you want to find the right

right folks but absolutely where's a list of all of these schools i've only been to your site where i see those three is there a website that has every sort of act and you go to actinacademy.org and there's a search function action um when when uh i dress my seven-year-old i basically dress him every day i go i go in the bedroom with him i pick out his underwear with him his pants his shirt i put it all on him i hug him i kiss him i love on him it's like my time with him and at the age of five he can't even put his shirt on um because i do it for him every morning, but my two year olds can get themselves dressed. And I see that there's this with a benign neglect. If you don't do a benign neglect,

your, your, you, you, I shorted my kid, you know, not a big deal. I'm not, I'm not judging myself for it or just using as an example.

Even to this day, I still do it knowing that like I'm fucking them. I don't care. It's my selfish way of, I just want that time um when i took him to his first jiu-jitsu tournament there's a there's a moment where you have to let the kid go and they walk next to you and for about 150 yards in this big fucking auditorium with thousands of people but i get to stay next to him the whole time he's he's six and i'm only two feet away from him but he's on the other side of like one of those ropes yeah and i'm holding on to him as they're going to take him

away and one of the other parents um is who's uh my buddy josh who's like twice the size of me you know i'm 150 pound guys got maybe almost 300 pounds he's like got my shoulder and him and mike and his kids the same age as my kid and the kids are going and i won't let go of my kid's hand yeah and this guy josh is pulling my shoulders like dude let go of your kid i'm like what do you mean i'll just walk with him with my you know one hand on either side of the rope we can just do it dude and i look at him i go dude i still get him dressed in the morning he's like yeah you need to stop that shit too you know what i mean and he fucking just like let go of your son you know what i mean and i almost start crying and my kid's only five feet from me yes and i'm just like what the fuck is going on and my buddy's like like dude he's right there

chill the fuck out and i i'm exaggerating a little bit for the sake of the story but it was such a um like i get it yeah but like it's hard it's i i get it it's hard for parents yes it's it's um really is and we're told that the world is scarier and scarier so it gets harder and harder i get it but you got if you got to push yourself out of the comfort zone too as a parent bingo you have to you've got to do that otherwise that's exactly what you're doing otherwise you're handicapping them. There's this Polish Jew. I don't know what he is, psychologist. I'm sure you know who he is. I cannot fucking remember his name.

I've watched a bunch of his videos. He's older now. He's probably 70 or 80. He's got thick black curly hair. Polish Jew psychologist with black curly hair. He says he talks a lot about parenting. I really like him. There are some things where he wants to argue. He does these He talks a lot about parenting. I really like him. There are some things where he wants to argue.

He does these big talks in these auditoriums. He does a lot of child psychology. What's his name? Alfie Kohn. Maybe that's who it is. I'm going to type in. I'm going to see if that's him. He's probably 80 now, 70. I i just found him i just found him recently

he looks great he has really thick hair let me see if uh alfie's that old um alfie might be no alfie's in his 60s i think no but it kind of but it could be they could look like that guy okay Okay. But older. But older. God, I wish I could remember this guy. Super famous. He was blowing up in my algorithm and YouTube. Anyway, he said this thing that I'm so curious what you think about. He basically said – he explains that when you're born as a kid, you are trying to stay alive, and you lose yourself because you are not willing to take the risks to stay yourself because you need your parents to stay alive.

to stay alive. So you need your mom and dad for food and protection. And so you're willing to jump through any hoops to stay alive. And because of the hoops that parents make their kids jump through, they lose themselves. He explains it so well. I have to find it. It's such a beautiful explanation. And there were some great lessons in parenting in there about how to – but I tie it to this thing about taking power from your kids again. Like making decisions for them that really they should be making for themselves. And like it would have been so easy just to react. And really you have to be able to create space and you probably have to have a meditative practice to be a great parent because your kids are going to ask you things that you really shouldn't answer do i have to do the jujitsu tournament right there's no

there's nothing for you to say there that like you're going to it's it's like this um um anyway do you have any thoughts on that about people who um about that it's it's like you know like kids who are beaten think that it's okay to be beaten until they're like 20 then they're like because it was how they survived right yeah they just think it's normal they think they're normal deal i see what yeah um yeah i mean i see what you're saying and i think it really does go back to obviously they need their basic needs met And I think it really does go back to, obviously, they need their basic needs met, but I think it really does go back to that whole, in my head anyways, I feel like it goes back to that whole, like, I'm going to do first and then I'm going to show you why we do this together and we'll have conversations around it, right. They're going to do what you do before you do what you say, kind of deal. You know, I think it really goes back to that and leading by example and having conversations with them early on to get to where, you know, understanding ultimately takes place, but you're laying out, you know, you're, you're only laying out the rules that are kind of those

foundational non, non-negotiables after that it, it's laying out potential for decisions. I don't know. I don't I would have to listen to. I want to see how to find how he frames that, I guess. What are some non-negotiables you have you with your kids? We actually have. I never thought of it like that. We actually have like a foundation like Boudreaux Family Rules. We actually have a family rule set that is framed on our wall. And it's the non-negotiables for just who we are as a family, who we are as a group.

And that's who we are collectively, but more importantly, it's who we are as a, as a family, who we are as a group, and that's who we are collectively, but it's more importantly, it's who we are individually. And so that means it's a non, it's, those are the non-negotiables for all of us, which means I go, Hey, you know, Hey, Loudon, you know, this rule states this. And so I need you to, you know, to, to buy there's one of our rules is no complaining, fix it, right? It's not worth complaining about. We're not going to complain about things. We're going to come with a proposed solution, right? And you can ask for help on some things and we can walk through a thought exercise of

how do we fix this and make this better, but there's no complaining about it. There's no whining. We just come with, okay, this is a situation that I don't really dig. And I either need to understand why the situation is here, or I need to figure out a solution on how to make it better, right? That's a non-negotiable in our house. The flip side of that though, is that they have the ability to hold us to those standards as well. And they're expected to, right? So if one of our rules is to be an emotional ninja, right? That's one of the rules in our house. And all that means is that we know we're responsible for how we react to any scenario. Ultimately, it's up to us to determine how we move forward. And it's going to build our perspective. So if daddy, that mom leaves the refrigerator open and daddy loses his shit because mom left

the refrigerator open, I was not an emotional ninja. They actually have the ability to call me out in that moment and go, dad, literally like I just yelled at mom and said, what the hell we're trying to save this electricity. That same example from earlier, they have the ability to go dead. Rule number three is to be an emotional ninja. And you're not doing that right now. They have the ability to remind. So it's almost like our contract, our covenant with one another. And so those kinds of things, you know, it's really gets down into those values of that core integrity and honesty and you know, the emotional control and not whining and having perspective and doing the right thing, always being the right thing. We have those rules literally set out for us. I can send them to you if you want.

Yeah. I would love to see that. How did you come up with them? We had a conversation. It's just like, what do we, who do we want to be? And it was conversation around the dinner table, right? It was like, what do we think good people do? I mean, it was just very basic. It was just, what do you, like, what do we think good people do? Like, what do we, who do we want to be? If we could be the best possible people, we could be, um, what are some of the things that, that we'd want to do? And so it was a, you know, it was all five of us kind of coming up with some basic ideas and, um, you know, as the emotional ninja was just, was more my way of kind of, um, encompassing, you know, what, what had essentially come out of the conversation

around our emotional responses. And so we just kind of put fun names to all of those and, and slapped 11 of those together, which is kind of funny. We got 11 of them. Oh, like the essential 11, but yeah. Yes. Yes. i just looked up the word definition the word integrity i use the word a lot and a couple of the definitions here are um incorruptible um firm adherence to a code especially moral code or artistic values it says the quality of being um honest and fair i don't really like the word fair um yes A state of being complete or whole. Do you remember the first person you met who had integrity? Do you remember meeting someone and being like, oh, shit.

A really good question, man. Like when you really met someone who was honest. Yeah. Like, wow, this is fucking nuts. Yeah. And just the difference is real because i'm sure i probably did but meeting that person or uh or not just meeting up but realizing that or seeing that um is a different is a different thing because i probably i probably did know some more

but gosh yeah yeah i i yeah of course that's a really good point you probably met a thousand of them and then one day you see it in someone and you're just like what the fuck like it just hits you like a brick you're like i want to be like that yeah just kind of those actions and those words are fucking right on top of each other right there is no there's no marriage god i don't know if i can i don't know if i can pick out oh yeah like this was the guy or this is i remembered i don't know if i have that i was raised to be nice yeah and it and it cost me my integrity yeah for sure raised to be a good boy and i was very nice nice. Right. I was very nice. And it worked out very well for me. It was like you said, eye contact, shake hands, be pleasant. But I did it at the price of integrity.

And it's – It cost me my integrity. That's right. Avoid hurting other people's feelings or what I perceive to be – like how Katie Couric just lost all of her integrity. Yeah. Did you follow that story a little with okay so basically ruth bader ginsburg said that uh kaepernick is a complete douchebag i'm paraphrasing yeah dropping a knee is like and since she was the poster child for the left katie tour took it on herself to say oh she was too old she didn't mean that she didn't know what she was saying and and and she buried it and got it with through that kate uh i mean that that's like the epitome that's like and i was guilty of that as a kid too not on that scale but that katie cork now has no integrity

zero gone flustered just your shit down the toilet yep yep it just and it only takes that it only takes that one freaking it only takes that. It only takes that one frigging, it only takes that one. And she's still trying to justify it. Yeah. Justifying it's even worse, like to be nice. Yep. Yep. Totally. I didn't tell Hitler to fuck off because I didn't want to be rude and a few thousand Jews burn. Yeah. Like what? Totally. Totally. And that, so, and that's what gets exact. So like, that's where the new, that's where the nuance is, dude.

that's where the new, that's where the nuances dude, it's so hard because you like, it's foundational. If my kids are going to be those, um, they, they need to have that. Hey, I'm going to look you in the eye. I'm going to, I'm going to shake your hand. I'm going to say nice to meet you. And then equally on the other side, as soon as that person shows themselves to be, um, you know, to, to lack integrity, I need to be willing to say, okay, cool. Here's how this needs to change. Otherwise our relationship together is no longer in existence, right? Like they need to have that backbone too. It's developing both of those things simultaneously when, right. It's that backbone when most people need a backbone, you need a backbone and you have no ability to develop a backbone in government schools. You are rewarded. You get extra bonus points for just being nice, following directions. And the best one at following

directions is the winner, right? You get your, you know, you followed your little rubric, you get your stuff here. You did you, you were the quietest one in line. You were, it's all about just everybody learn to follow directions and the better you can follow directions, the better human you are, you know, and, and the teachers are taught to exacerbate that too, right? It's all classroom. You don't go through a teaching credential program to learn child development and how people actually learn and grow. You go through on how to manage behaviors of young people and continuously manage their behaviors essentially into subservience. Like that's what that whole thing is about, right? So you get these good obeying young people,

which then all of a sudden fucking surprises people that we have a society who is so fraught with people who are willing to just obey and not think and not question. And then somebody that's not doing a good job following the rules, well, then there's got to be some sort of punishment. They've got to have some sort of detention, right? We wonder why that shit happens. And isn't it interesting that the least educated demographics by fucking race and ethnicity are the best critical thinkers and the ones avoiding doing what the government is saying?

There's this narrative going that – and there's black-skinned, melanated people pushing this narrative, and I challenge this narrative. They're saying that black people don't trust the government because of what happened in Tuskegee, and they give all these fucking examples where black people are used. I'm going to say eat a dick. I'm going to tell you that these fucking people, because of their cultural heritage, it's not that they don't trust the government. It's that they're fantastic critical thinkers this is more of just that fucking narrative that black people aren't smart it's soft bigotry you because a black person doesn't know in general you're saying they don't know the fucking chemistry's chart of elements um that they're not smart and that they can't critically think. You're a fucking idiot. You're a fucking racist moron.

You are – they can't register to vote. They can't use computers. Shut the fuck up. Totally. Telling me it's because of what the government did to them. How about just that they're fucking smart and they can critically think because they weren't brainwashed by the school system? When have you ever met a fucking black man on the street who couldn't fucking articulate himself 10 000 times better than the white dude you want to be racist yeah and go to go to your college go to your college that's what i love about what will wit does right it's crazy it's

crazy go to the college campus and listen to them and see if they can articulate a point you know the majority of them it's just they're they're parroting um you know they're parroting horseshit but there is and and they have a fucking backbone Bingo. The thing that white kids don't have. And why? Because their brain. Anyway, it has nothing to do with color. I'm sorry to do by say by color. I'm just kind of appeasing the the demographic has to do with just the protocol and the culture where they were raised. Yep. That's exactly it. It's perfect. Someone here, Leslie Smith, is asking any suggestions for helping a 13-year-old who's extremely introverted. Yeah, so is that introverted as in code for doesn't want to do anything or is that introverted, right?

So what we find a lot of times is parents use code words, right? And they'll kind of say, hey, my child is very extroverted when when they really mean i've raised an asshole um and i'm not saying leslie i want to give i want to give one quick example um my kid i can't believe your kid eats vegetables my kid doesn't eat vegetables that that's that's yep and and i want to say gently to to leslie like that's what concerns me like then don't feed your kid anything what do you mean he has to eat well yeah he has to eat vegetables well he won't eat them well then he's not gonna fucking eat sure like like yeah like i don't i don't like like he had rice and broccoli and some steak on the plate and he's still hungry and there's broccoli on the plate still okay eat

the broccoli i mean you are the fucking parent how do you get your kid not to watch the ipad um take away the ipad there's no ipad i don't know i don't know what you want so when you say he's introverted i i leslie i don't know your situation but i just want to say it's because you let him be introverted you're speaking up for him or something and and that's the whole and so that's where that um that's where the nuance comes and so that's where that, um, that's where the nuance comes in, but that's where that self-awareness comes in on, on the parent side, right? Is it just introverted as in this person? I mean, I haven't, I have introverted students on this campus that are the most self-confident and self-aware young people.

They just know they naturally are really quiet and would be no problem keeping to themselves, reading some books, working really hard on things. They're nice. They'll say hi to people, whatever, but it just doesn't charge them up. They're naturally more introverted, but at the same time, if they've got to go make a pitch because their business needs money and we're going to have developers on site and that's part of this next project, then they're going to go, okay, well, I need to go ahead and be extroverted for this. I'm introverted human being, but I'm going to go, okay, well, I need to go ahead and be extroverted for this. I'm introverted human being, but I'm going to need to do this because this is something that still needs to get done. Right? So that's introverted and that's fine. There's people

that are introverts and that's, that's great. Some of the best keynote speakers I ever met are truly introverted people, but they're really, really good at communicating. And you would see them on stage and be like, oh my gosh, that person probably is just like life of the party extrovert. Now they actually don't ever go out ever. Um, they'd rather stay inside, stay with their family and just kind of stay quiet. Like that's different is an introvert because they'd rather hole away. They have the iPad or the video games to go just, you know, and they want to go put all their effort at like, that's a different kind of deal. So I would just kind of push back on like, what does that actually mean to be introverted versus what are you saying?

Decode what that actually means, my child is an introvert. We're back to Socratic discussion. He's asking for a definition of a word instead of making an assumption. What does that mean? Yeah, what does that mean? he's asking for a definition of a word instead of making an assumption. What does that mean? Yeah. What, what does that mean? Is it, is it, is it, is it you? Is it him? Is it, is it you projecting onto him as introverted? Is he really introverted? Did he say he's introverted? Yeah, it's great.

Introversion has more to do with where you get your energy from being shy or having social anxiety is a different thing altogether. I've been contemplating the current generations find myself problem growing up we weren't exposed to many different ways of life so by the time we get out of college we are looking for exposure that was uh i'm just reading the comments did you know we're live right now matthew experiences i'm cool man awesome i mean that's that's great bring on bring on the. Yeah, I really like the live shows. Yeah, no, I think it's smart. Super smart. And I even do a show where people can call in. It's pretty wild. No, I think it's super smart, man. I love it.

Yeah, it's fun. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I think what that last person, I mean, that's the big thing that we talk to our young people about while they're here. And what we try to provide here, it kind of goes back to that, like, why would you come to Acton? It's providing experiences, right? And so you're talking about coming out of college and, you know, the previous generation and not are as individuals, what we're good at, what we're excited about, be able to figure out how to mash those two together. I'm really good at this. I'm also really excited about this. And if I can create a life around those things, then that's great. But you're not going to find that out until you have experiences.

We talked to the kids about the adage of ready, aim, fire. And we think that's bullshit. It's, it's flip it around. It's firing ready, do something, go do many things, go do many things down all kinds of paths. And then once you do that, let those experiences then go, okay, well, I really hated this. And I was really, you know, maybe like just really naturally bad at, but God, I saw some G my genius is kind of over here. Cool. I'm going to kind of go down these two or three paths. Now you fire first, that allows you to aim to eventually ultimately be ready. And so that, you know, this current government schooling system that was perpetuated really all the way through college, it eliminates a lot of actual experiences

for somebody to understand what life's about or what they're about. Um, how to mix those two together. You know, we confuse the experience of going to a prom and getting hammered and, and, you know, sleeping with somebody. I mean, like that's the, I want my kid to have the normal high school experience. What does that mean? Right. What do you, what do you really want them to have? They need real life experiences. Starting a business is a real life experience. Taking on responsibility and having to clean up and having to fire another student. That's a real life experience. We had students fire some students a couple weeks ago. That means the students no longer go here and I gave the parents refunds. That's a real life experience. Wow. that's a real life wow that's a real experience right and that human who has gone through that at an early age who is now going on to lead a family or to lead a company and lead an organization they have a different uh you know a different modality that they're working out of them there

are other people um can you can you share anything about the firing story without i don't want to i don't want to ask and like do anything it happens every year so i mean i can speak enough in generalities for people to understand what we're talking about so students on on this campus much like we have our um rules at home right and everybody's allowed to hold each other accountable to those rules the non-negotiables for who we are just as a family and kind of our code that we live by. The studios on campus will create their code as well. Every year, the students will create their code. This is what our non-negotiables are here.

We're going to operate in this fashion and we all sign it to be there. There's a whole signing ceremony. They sign it saying, look, this is, we're all, we got, we have agreed. We have a come to this code together. It gives them something tangible to go back and have conversations around too. So they can go, Hey, you know, it doesn't matter if you're five, you're 12, you're, you're 18. You go, look, Hey, Jimmy, this, the code says this, you're currently doing this.

So I'm going to need you to provide solution, right? Here's, here's what you're doing. This is how it violates this. I'm going to need you to do this. Here's the solution for it. How can we help you get there? Right. It allows for those tangible conversations around that.

If somebody does not want to, somebody in that studio has signed that code and does and continues down we've got multiple systems in place for this to play out but ultimately what happens is if they are continuing to violate that code and all the systems have been played out where the students have said hey look the penalty for this code violation is this penalty for this code violation is this they continue down that road the students have the ability to get rid of them let's so let's say one of the codes was you're not going to vandalize the school and i'm in and i'm in the shitter and i write um seven loves kathy on the bathroom door

and they're like dude seven you can't write i i know you like kathy it's cool but and i know that you probably weren't thinking you were, you were doing ready aim fire. Yeah. Yeah. But you got to go in there and you don't do that again. And you got to go in there and clean now the whole bathroom. Yep.

And you have to apologize to the students for, um, then you got to stay in front of the whole school. I'm sorry. This stall is going to be closed for two hours because I wrote in the stall today and the paint needs to dry. And I apologize for inconvenience. You guys, you guys got to take a shit down there. Cool.

And then, and then I do that. do that yep totally would that be an example of so that's absolutely it and that's that's exactly that we want the students to take the ownership of going hey look here's what you did we're gonna cut that down here's the solution but and so that can be like yeah cool we're gonna we're gonna take care of that if savon goes no i'm not going to clean that well now we've got a very clear violation this is a choice this isn't a mistake this is a choice right because you say no i'm not going to clean that and then depending on the violation and kids do that kids do that oh 100 100 so depending on the violation i can't imagine doing that as a kid i go hey look and that's the

earlier we have i could write in the stall but I got caught, I would own up to that shit. Dude, but it's the earlier we have the young people, the better too. If somebody comes in at 12, 13, 14, and they've been in traditional conventional schools prior to that, the chances of them wanting to call that out and having the self-confidence to call somebody else out on that and hold that line and not feel weird about it. Right. It's something they've been trained like, ah, then I'm not going to be the cool kid. I'm not going to be, it's a whole different scenario from their head.

So it's much harder to come in later in life into this and just feel comfortable with doing that. But our younger kids will just be like, Hey man, that's, you can't do that. And then they'll, Oh yeah, you're right. Okay. Sorry. I mean, you get more of that than anything else. But if Saban says, no, man, I'm not going to do that. Well, then there's a whole process of, okay, cool. We're going to,

we're going to, you know, pull, uh, pull this kind of, we have like an internal monetary system that goes for, you know, you do the work, you get paid for the work, but there's also a, excuse me, a social component to it where it allows for those tangible conversations where I can go, okay, Siobhan, I'm going to need to pull some, uh, some of these lion bucks, you know, kind of for you. And then if you disagree with me doing that, you have a whole appeal process that goes to a jury of your peers. Like there's all of these systems in place to allow them to have real adult conversations. Um, ultimately if Savan continuously just says he's clearly showing he does not want to be here, then the students have every right to, they've documented the process of him continuously violating that contract. And we're going to have to let you go.

And they'll write an email to the families too, and just say, Hey, you know, we want that young person who's messing up to take ownership, have to let his family know what he's doing as well. That's part of that process going on. But if he continues to do it, the young people will write it and go, hey, man, dear Mr. and Mrs. Matosian, really sorry to inform you. This is something that's going on. Saban has chosen this, so we're going to let him go. We really wish him the best on his hero's journey, and we're going to let him go. And then they will have the face-to-face conversation with Simone and they'll

let him go. And then they'll alert me and I'll refund the family. Has a teacher ever been let go? Yeah. Holy shit. Yep. They just don't become a fit. It's just not a fit. And again, there's no, um, no judgment on that, right? There's no negative vibe on that. There's no – your journey is different than the journey we're all on here. Wow. When I hear you talk about your school, I'm like – I have a – I hear you – I watched your TED Talk from 2015.

I've seen you talk about it a few other times, but the TED Talk, TEDx Talk was the one I hear you do. I watched your Ted talk from 2015. I've seen you talk about a few other times, but the Ted talk, Ted X talk was the one I watched last night. And I, um, there's, I'm, I'm cruising along.

I'm like, Oh, this is cool. This is cool. And the second you say, and the kids can fire the teacher. And then it flashes to that picture of all those, everyone's sitting in a room,

kind of like, um, in a discussion. I have a visceral reaction to it. Yeah. I have like a, uh, a minor violent reaction to it yeah i have like a uh yeah my a minor violent reaction to it yeah and and you warn people before like and i don't know why i'm not like

some defender of teachers or some shit sure i just something about it just rocks me i'm like no no he's he you can't do that you can't fire the teachers like i have this uh well and i'm disturbed by it yeah well it's like any other so if we look at it from like an organizational standpoint right i can't just go you know you don't just go fire somebody because you're like ah shit you had a red shirt on today i don't like red shirts see you later right you can't just do that right because then you're gonna have all kinds of you're gonna have all kinds of issues same thing students aren't just like you know they always listen to shitty music when they drive in. So we're going to let them go. There's a very clear, uh, code, a very clear contract that it's a contract of promises that our guides have made the young heroes too. Right. And so they all work together when they're

creating these contracts. This is how the studio is going to operate as a guide. My promises to you on your hero's journey are going to be this. I'm going to be able to hand over responsibility. I promise I'm not going to ask questions. I'm only going to speak with growth mindset. I'm not going to be sarcastic and antagonistic. I'm not going to, you know, have any, like we have all these contracts in this code too. And that guide will sign that and go, look, here's my promises too. So they can't just, if they're going to let a guide go, it's going to be because there is a violation of those principles that they have agreed to right there's a clear i can never be a guide if that

was one of the principles can't be sarcastic and what was the other thing antagonistic yeah yeah that's one of my core characteristics for sure for sure that's okay that's okay i can still fund i can still send a kid to this school. I just can't be a guy. And so it do. And it's being a guide is so fricking hard. It's so much harder than being a teacher. Yeah.

It's so much harder because ultimately you have to teachers. It's about here is, here is me and my infinite wisdom. And here is what I am going to teach you. I am going to make you learn this. And then you're going to respond back to me with what the words that I said earlier. And that's how we know that you have listened to me and taken my knowledge and pass it on, right?

Whereas we're going, we're going to question you. We're going to allow you to ask questions. We're never going to answer your questions. We're going to question you back. We're going to allow you to just kind of explore. We're going to point your eyes to a horizon. We're going to say, where do you want to go? What do you want to learn? We're going to open doors. We're going to ask if you want to go, you know, through those doors. And we're going to kind of be this whole, you know,

do this whole psychoanalysis the whole time. Because, you know, if I ask this question, how is Siobhan going to react? But if I ask this question while he's working in a group with Matt too, what are they going to do together? How do they interact together? And then, okay, well, if we bring, if we bring Josh, you know, over here too, we know how he is. So I mean, this is, it's a vastly different thing and you ultimately have to make it not about yourself because you're asking all these questions and then going, okay, cool. And then what systems do I need to make sure are in place so that they don't even know I'm here? Like, how do I become super invisible, but they still go off and kick ass and grow at, you know, the fastest rate possible. That's so hard. Such a different

mindset. How many of these schools are there in the United States? In the U S we're coming up on about a hundred and I think we're about 175 ish. Maybe we're looking about 300 globally. And when I say 300 globally, that doesn't mean all 300 have, you know, a full on built out 150, 200 students like this. Some of do, and then some are just starting up and maybe intentionally starting with just four and five-year-olds, right? Because remember what I was like, you bring in a high school student that's gone to school forever. Good luck.

Like ridiculously hard. So they're starting with four and five-year-olds. And then the next year, they're going to just let that grow organically, right? So we have some that are just starting like with an elementary and they're just going to grow organically from there. But yeah, so we got about 300 globally 175 i think ish us have you had people move into the area just to go to the school all the time i'm gonna move what all the time yeah that's funny i because uh it's definitely something it's definitely something like i like i would move

i would i would move anywhere for my kids i think think. Yep. Yep. I'm just really, I don't really know. Um, it's funny that you say that I'm shoot. What'd you say? Shoot, aim, fire, fire, aim. Yeah. It's not ready. It's not ready. Aim, fire. It's fire aim ready. Right. Fire aim ready. Yeah. That's kind of how I am with my parenting. Like, I don't really know what I'm doing. Yeah.

But I'm firing. Like, I don't know why I keep them busy from morning to night, even if their free time is them keeping busy too. And I don't know exactly what the end goal is, but I definitely know what they shouldn't be doing. Yeah. That over-analysis paralysis is a killer, man. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely know what they shouldn't be doing yeah that over analysis paralysis is a killer man yeah right yeah i definitely know what they yeah i definitely know at three o'clock in the afternoon when they say hey can we watch tv which they really don't do do anymore probably yeah exactly i there is no like there's no matter how tired i am there no matter what there's no giving into that like i have my non-negotiables like like what the sun's out shut the fuck up get out of here go outside totally totally yeah no we have we've had people move um quite a bit and and you know which is which is awesome um and that's a

huge compliment um and i also want to you know obviously get to the point where we don't have to have anybody move anywhere because there's something that's near them where they are. Yeah. You know, is there one in Santa Cruz? Um, I believe there might be a group getting ready to get up and running. I know we had a guy that was looking a while ago. He ended up not being kind of the right, he was kind of in it for the wrong reasons. Um, I would have to double check, um, and see if there's anybody that's getting something up and running in Santa Cruz. We've got a couple that have come up in the Bay area, um, for sure. Um, what are the wrong reasons you want to make money? Yeah. Good luck. I mean, really, honestly, I guess it's a hard, it's a hard business to really, to make money in. And if that's really what you're in it for, yeah. Good. Um,

yeah. Good luck. I mean, mostly, you know, the, the right people, the ones that we've found and pushed through, cause this is hard. It's a hard bit. I run, you know, I run a couple of businesses. This one is by far, this is, there's nothing harder than this because you're dealing with, um, you know, young, young people are the easiest part of it. You're dealing with all the preconceived notions of parents that have grown up in traditional schooling and conventional schooling and all of their fears and all of their, you know, that's, that is really hard. Um, and, and then trying to find the right people, trying to find the right guides during this climate of just, you know, frigging hot mess in California. So it's a hard, it's a hard deal. So somebody has got to have that really strong. Why? And most likely that's usually going to be

because I, I, they need something for their kids. You know, they want something different. Uh, do most of the, so, so do most of the people who start the school, for their kids. You know, they want something different. Do most of the, so, so do most of the people who start the school, they start it cause they have kids and they want it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. It's, it's, it's, it's amazing. I, because I see so many other parents, I see so many parents taking opportunities away for their kids or like they feel like a coach is being too harsh or not nice enough or and just. Yeah, man, I didn't even think about that.

It's not dealing with the kids that you deal with. So if you have 150 kids at a school, you're dealing with 300 parents. And that's right. And so the hard thing. And they're just emotionally biased. They're just all. So that's part of that whole filter. Correct.

I'm going to ask a super big super big favor i really i want to talk about that parenting part if i guess okay can i run and go pee really fast oh yeah yeah yeah i'll go to p2 i'm not gonna mess anything up yeah this is my show no no no it's a live show everyone take everyone take three Thank you. I'm like a hundred and how many shows, 175 shows in and no one's ever asked to take a pee, but I've probably taken pee in like half of those shows. Can you believe it? And finally, at show 176, a guest asked to take a pee. I can't believe how perfect that is. Hope you guys are enjoying this. I wish this guy had one of these schools near me.

I would consider sending my kids to school there. It sounds awesome. It's amazing how much kids can just learn on their own. Just bring them, not necessarily on their own, I don't mean in a vacuum. Obviously, none of us learn in a vacuum. But you get them in front of the right instructor. Not the right instructor. The right situation, the right environment,

they're going to flourish. I take my kids to so many teachers, now they've learned how to become teachers. Taking them in front of so many instructors, they've learned how to become instructors. Let's all take a whiz. Good idea, Steve.

Do these kids CrossFit? If so, how has that been beneficial to the process? That's a great question. I mean, clearly this guy's in shape. And I've heard him talk on Mark Bell's podcast that he puts a premium on staying fit. I think he does something every single day. And he's extremely disciplined.

Doesn't fool around. I wonder what his other businesses are. Okay. I'm going to ask him that question. What are his other businesses? And then we were saying, and then what about, oh, parents, parents being emotional, the 300 parents for the 150 kids. Do that. And then, then I got to go take my kids to play tennis i should ask my wife if we're uh should i call my wife right now live on the show let's see uh hayley bam she's in the room next door maybe she's not going to answer text her hello you reach me

damn I'll just text her it rained here today. First rain of the year in California, Santa Cruz. Tennis in 15. Tennis in 15. I think they canceled my Sogo. I used to have this Sogo Snacks discount code.

Did you guys know that? You could go to Sogo Snacks and type in 3 Plain Brothers and you got 10% off. He was actually going to give me the money for sending people there, but I told him just, nah, just use it to give the people who buy it the discount. But I don't know if he does that anymore. I think that guy, I just ordered some, I need to order some more, but I think that guy got a, um, I think that guy had a supply chain issue getting his meat. He was getting his, uh, grass fed meat from New Zealand. Hey, Matthew. Yes, sir. I'm 170. So I'm racing to 500 shows.

I'm doing at least one show a day, sometimes two shows a day. Nice. And I'm at show 176, and I've taken a pee break in at least half of those shows. And you're my first guest. You're my first guest who's taken a pee break. I'm really impressed. That must be your assertive training. And I'm sure others have wanted to say it. They just haven't had the, the, the, the assertiveness, the integrity. I, I, maybe that's what it is,

or maybe it was just actually getting painful enough to where I was like, I got to rock and roll. Cause I think it was somewhere around, uh, the Polish Jew where I started going, this is all right now it's getting you know no no it's funny man i actually have a bunch of really i wish i didn't but i have a really a bunch of really good p stories um but um yeah uh yeah no you were talking about 300 parent emotional parents yes all of those emotional bias to 150 kids. So that is, I think currently that's our biggest, um, chart is I'm looking at running, you know, running these campuses. And ultimately everything I do is a microcosm of what we're doing on campus too. I want the campuses and they really can. I want

them to run without me having to be a part of that. Not that I don't want to be a part of it because I love being here. I bring my kids here every day and I get to hang out here. Like I get to be here. It's fantastic, but they don't need me to run. Um, but my biggest, uh, point of influence currently is working with the parents. So it's both on that filtering upfront of just trying to give that context upfront for those parents going, Hey, you are going to need to allow this hero's journey the parents. So it's both on that filtering upfront of just trying to give that context upfront for those parents going, Hey, you are going to need to allow this hero's journey to take place. Everybody loves the hero's journey archetype. Uh, and they love the whole, you got

to battle the dragons, but you overcome, you come out the other side and you're the stronger. Everybody loves that until it's their kid who's having to battle that dragon. And then you don't love it anymore. Then it's scary. Then you want to jump in and go, well, this is why my kid is different. And this is why, right? Everybody wants to do that. So I'm trying to front load as much of that as possible up front. And then once we do that, and I just, you know, it's part of the reasons you probably

shouldn't be here because you probably do want a helicopter. You probably do want to, you know, I get people get past that part. Then I try to pour into the parents as much as I can. So like we will do weekly. I have so many parents who are entrepreneurs here on campus. And so I'll do weekly mastermind meetings where I'll bring all these entrepreneurial parents in and we'll just have discussions about their business and what they're doing. And I try to pour into that and help them in that regard,

nothing to do with their kids, because I know if I'm pouring into them and making sure they're on their own journey, then it's more likely that not only are they going to lead by example at home, and that's going to ultimately trickle down to their young people, but they're more likely to understand their child also on his or her own journey. All right. So I'm trying to pour into the parents that way. Um, even doing all those things proactively, you still get some of those parents. So I try very, very hard. We had a parent, great guy, email a bunch of questions this, this weekend. And I just respond back. Same kind of thing. Here's a bunch of questions in return. Are you trying this? Have you done this? Have you thought about this? What do you think about this?

And I tend to not get as many responses, um, from that too. So systemically speaking, I'm trying to arm our parents as well to where they also know every single thing that is going on because they should have those conversations with their kids, but it's not because they've had to come ask the guide or come ask me or come worry about this is because their relationship with their young hero is so solid that they know everything that is going on. What do you think about that program outward bounds? Um, I don't know a ton about it, but I mean, it sounds from what I understand, it sounds like a pretty cool sort of deal. And actually the guy that I think was going to start something in Santa Cruz,

I feel like he came out of that program to tell you the truth. My friends who, my friends, when I was younger, who went on that program, it really affected them. Yeah. In a good way. In a great way. Yeah. Yeah. It's experience. Um, if, if, if, if easy for me to say now, but i had a 17 if god forbid one of my boys is 17 years old and he gets into heroin um i would just kidnap him and um put him in a box and ship him to africa

and i would show up there and we would live in a village for three months with nothing naked amongst the people and till he woke the fuck up yep um i don't know what the program is but for those of you who have kids and you want to change them i'm sure there are programs out there i don't know what they are but there are programs like outward bounds that will um unfuck your kids uh but but you have to let let them go and let that let that happen there there's an incredible movie of these inner city kids from baltimore who were sent to africa and they basically it's a uh it's not the lost boys of sudan it's something like that i want to say it won the academy award but basically they were sent to kenya and they lived

in a village with no electricity no running water no cell phone service and they were there for like three months and after three months of being there they didn't want to come back to baltimore to the inner city not a single one of them wanted to go yeah and after three months none of them wanted to come back and what was crazy is all their ghetto slang and all that shit was gone. Yep. Yep. It left their fucking vernacular. It was fucking – it's the most amazing fucking movie. First perspective, dude, and that shows – But you can – but this kid who's – sorry, sorry, Matt.

No, you're good. This kid who's 15 years old who's an introvert at 13. I want to be really nice to you, Leslie or Lindsay or whatever your name was. It's got to be your fault. Oh, The Boys of Baraka. Thank you, Garrick. Yes. The Boys of Baraka.

Crazy, crazy movie. I'll have to look that up. The Boys of Baraka. Yes. Boys of Baraka. Yeah, dude. I mean, talk about just a straight up perspective shifter, man. I mean, that's all it is

is perspective shifting you know we had uh at late you know lafe babin um you know jaco like jaco willink right i know i know of him i just know him from like instagram he's the guy who posts like i woke up at 4 30 in the morning yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly so he and lafe uh i'm so i'm so i'm so envious of that like how the fuck do you have a million followers and you just post your fucking watch? He does. What am I doing wrong? Yeah. I mean, obviously you may need to get a different watch.

Um, yeah. And I mean, these guys are, you know, obviously former seals and, and the, their leadership mentality and all the things they're doing in leadership with echelon front, their company is, um, doing some really, really, really great things, and they're leading by example. They're brilliant. They are brilliant guys, not just badass dudes and SEALs, but just brilliant guys in general.

And so he and Leif Babin worked together, and Leif came on the Essential 11 last week and was with some of our Apogee boys. And they were talking about – he was talking about perspective and talking about – thinking about what hard really looks like and talking about, we don't necessarily, there's not a whole lot of hard things actually in this country a lot of times. And your perspective is skewed on that. And when somebody says something's hard, it's hard in respect, you know, uh, in respect to what, and he was given an example of being in buds and going out to surf torture.

And he's talking about, you can always tell who is going to be, um, who is going to make, who's going to make it through. And it's the mindset of we're all dealing with this shit, but am I, uh, optimistic in the middle of the suck? Even if things are going to continue to suck, like when you asked earlier, are you optimistic? I'm very optimistic for myself and my family and my community moving forward. I am not necessarily optimistic of the country at large, but I'm optimistic in what we're going to do and whatever the hell happens, right? Because we're going to be proactive about that. And Leif said, you can, you know, see me lay there in surf torture and everybody's freezing. He's like, and look to the left and this guy, you know,

and the left will just have the thousand mile stare and just be like, this sucks. And he goes, this guy's not going to make it. And you look to the right and this guy is laughing his ass off going, Oh my God, this sucks. That guy's absolutely going to be fine. Right? Because his perspective is different. Same situation, both saying the same damn thing, but their perspective is completely different, which is why he's going to be okay. That's what we're talking about in terms of modeling these things for our kids. And those kind of examples, you are bringing these young people out of a, out of a shitty situation to what could arguably be a worse situation maybe. Um, but you're looking at the perspective of all those people around going, well, man, we're actually back to the basics. It's some, you know,

it's simplistic. We're all happy. We're all working together and it's a perspective shifter on what life could look like, what hard actually is. It's all of those shifts, man. And it's a perspective shifter on what life could look like, what hard actually is. It's all of those shifts, man. And that's ultimately as a parent, that's what we're doing for our kids with every fricking decision we're making, um, you know, is, is giving them that perspective in a good way or a bad way. You said something that exactly what Greg Glassman used to preach to me for the, for the 15 years I worked very closely with him he said the tsunami of chronic disease is coming and when he said the tsunami of chronic and he told the world that over and over and over and he told them the cure for it and he also told us over and over that he has no hope for um no hope or optimism for health care

as a whole he's basically it's done it's it's completely fucked but what he did have optimism for and and knew would be successful is the people who took their health into their own hands that responsible person and eight yeah and eight basically you know um meat vegetables nuts seeds little starch no sugar you know his whole and then on top of that they did some movement yep he knew that those people would be absolutely fine and and that these crossfit gyms that he would that were affiliating all over the world, if they partook in his experiment, that they would build a hedge against chronic disease and they would be fine. But that there was no cure by going to the hospital. Like he knew that the tsunami – and the weird part is he never predicted that it would be disguised as a virus that's killing people who are 30 years complicit in his demise. But I mean, but it's no surprise, right? You drink Coca-Cola for the last 30 years and you smoke cigarettes and now there's this little fucking bug going around and it's

killing people. And you want to say it's the bug. It's like, it's like walking on a high wire in between two giant tall buildings and the wind blows and you blame the wind. It's like, no, no dipshit. It was that you were on a high wire between two high buildings. Anything, anything to take responsibility and put it outwards. Yes. Yes. Yes. Anything to point the finger outwards, man. Anything to point the finger outwards. It's so fucking crazy. It's amazing. And that's how deep the conditioning goes, man. It is anything, anything going outwards. Yeah. But he was very optimistic like you are about his, about his cohort.

Yeah, that's right. The people, the people in his, um, and in his, in his group. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, cause like I said, hope is not, hope is not a strategy. No. Right. Like it's never a strategy. So it's like, okay, cool. No. Well, what's next's next well if it's next where you're gonna have to you know get a jab to to work or to get it and whatever like we're gonna go ahead and be proactive against all of this to to the best of our ability and our mindset is is you know it's a it's a freaking steel trap and we're to just keep moving forward, man. It's that perspective. It is, it is weird for, um, it is,

it is weird for me that I've been, I've been to all seven continents. I've seen famines on three continents and, um, uh, and, and been deeply integrated, uh, filming them and seeing kids who are like dying from starvation. And then to be in the united states and hear idiots talk about food droughts and and just shit that's like just making up limitations and their excuses and then being that i was homeless and and to hear people like um spending tons of time in africa and hearing people talk about black people they don't even

know what the fuck they're talking about um even whether you're white or black in the united states you have no idea what you're talking about skin color is just nothing that and it's it's just so fucking crazy to get a little perspective like like you know nothing about skin color if you've never fucking spent three months in africa that's right all over the continent you know not like you know you know and it shuts the fuck up and i don't even know where to start with these people. It's those exposure. There's no way there's, there's very limited way to help. I think because experiences are what gave you the perspective and the maturity, right? The experiences are what provided the growth. Um, and it's the same thing as we were talking earlier about the experiences

of being a parent versus I, I, dude, I was the perfect, I was the perfect parent before I had kids. Yes. That's exactly what everybody should do all the time. All the time. Then you have kids and you go, holy shit, way harder. Also way better. Right. Way harder than you thought.

Also way better. You have no way to really have that perspective until you have those kids these experiences are that same thing so until we have experiences you're a baby right it's it's um you know you're talking to grown adults so we forget it's the same thing as talking to your you know your four-year-old who is still refusing to go in the toilet right they just feel like i'm gonna go over here I really want to continue wearing diapers. I'm going to go hide in the corner and shit my pants. Like, and you're sitting there as an adult going, I'm telling you, life is better when you stop shitting in your pants. Like I promise you it is. And to you, it's just like, oh my gosh. Okay. I've got the, I've got the maturity to see this. These people that have no experiences and they've grown up in this bubble and they've had

these super perspective right it's the exact same thing they're just haven't grown into that maturity yet they haven't had the opportunity they're still shitting in their pants you know culturally speaking or philosophically think you know uh speaking they're still shitting their pants and they just they haven't gotten out of that yet uh And they want to defend it. Going back to what you said about this guy Leif Babin and Jocko Willick. Willick or Willis? Willink. Willink. I don't know them.

But I did have the honor and privilege and the luck and the fortune and whatever to work with a lot of people in the military and a lot of seals and one of my one of my um dear friends is was a was a seal and then he pushed himself further and became part of dev group um at which seal team six and he then i work side by side with him in my job when i worked at crossfit and he was an extraordinary leader and i had never even i'd never even thought of what leadership was. I just thought leadership was the captain of the soccer team or the guy who manages the Safeway in the corner or whatever, you know, like the supermarket. And over the 15 years I worked with him, I really started seeing leadership and I really started seeing professionalism and I had never seen leadership or professionalism. I thought

leadership and professionalism was like wearing a suit and being president of the United States or wearing a suit or what Tim Cook did or like what Steve Jobs did. Like I thought that was professional. Steve Jobs is kind of a bad example because he redefined professionalism too. But I thought it was like stuffy suit shit. Yeah. Like being polite and nice and standing up and doing what the crowd wanted and kissing babies and then recently in the last three five years i've heard people criticize my friend for not being professional he's in a very very top executive position forward facing in the

company of crossfit dave castro and and i'm and i realized oh shit this is a guy like Jocko and Leif whose decisions were at the highest level of professionalism because their wrong decision in a leadership position could get them or other people killed. It's not that they're not being professional. It's these other fucking idiots don't recognize professionalism. They don't know what professional is. They think the kid with the diaper is the smart one because he doesn't have to take. He can just shit in his pants. Right. Totally. That's exactly it.

That's exactly it. And I'm like, holy shit. That's exactly it. Dana White's another great example. Yep. The genius. Yeah. It's like, dude, you are witnessing a leader and a professional.

Yep. Just because he's not shitting in his, don't get it confused. You have it asked backwards. That's exactly right, man. That's exactly right. That's, that's a spot on. And it's that, it's that conditioning. And that is the, um, Hey, you know, you guys are running, uh, an alternative. You guys are running an alternative, you guys are running an alternative

school. And I hear that all the time. That's alternative education. Don't get it twisted. This is education. School is the radical alternative. And it's been this hundred year experiment versus what we've been saying is, you know, kind of since the dawn of humanity, how people have learned and become educated and what they to go on and do great things has always looked like this. This last hundred-year experiment of school is not education. Don't get it twisted, but that's where we've gone as a culture is that that is education and anything outside of that is alternative. That's the same thing. Didn't Darwin and Einstein kind of had the acton academy experience

anybody that anybody that had to take on responsibility at a young age and learned from masters ahead of them learned from coaches and took on like an apprenticeship kind of you know mind and mindset and had a good mentor in front of them had an act in academy experience it's back to the basics man back to the basics you're capable you're responsible you're driving the ship there's some there's plenty of masters around you and there's a community around you and and lean on them and move your ship forward because you've got things to do lean on them and move your ship forward because you've got things to do. Are you, are you still, are you making new connections every day? Yeah. All the time. Whether it's through acting, through Apogee,

through whatever it's all the time. Yeah. It must be exciting. It's the best. A lot. I mean, you genuinely, I don't think you can get into edu even traditional. I don't think you get into that if you don't actually enjoy people, you know? And, um, so that, that selfishly is super exciting. I love, you know, I love it. I love, I love this. I love getting to know, you know, just in this past year, getting to know you and an

occasional text message or occasional phone call with you sitting down for a couple of podcasts with you. Like that's fantastic for me. I didn't, it's selfishly and enriches my life too you know do you know the spartan guy uh the guy that started the spartan race yeah i think his name is joe disana yeah i know who that is i do not know him i was i think i sent you a text message a few months ago i saw him speaking and i thought oh me and matth Matthew and him should do a podcast, the three of us together.

I remember that. Yeah, I remember you saying that. Yep. And then somehow I dropped the ball on that. It was an idea I had. And then I think someone put me in contact with him. I need to dig through my emails. Very cool.

Yeah, he's not somebody. I think he's doing cool shit. Yeah, yeah. I don't know a ton. I don't know. I think he's just, he's pushing people out of their comfort zone. And I think he's doing cool shit. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know a ton. I don't know. I think he's just, he's pushing people out of their comfort zone. And I think he's really focused on,

I think he's focused on kids too. I think he has like a wrestling Academy for kids. That's awesome. Yeah. I think he's really pushing. And then have you ever met Greg Glassman? Um, I've never met Glassman.

No. Cause he wasn't the only, um, you know, I've never, I've never been to any of the, the larger events. He was not at the L one. I didn wasn't the only um you know i've never i've never been to any of the the larger events he was not at the l1 i didn't l1 um years and years and years ago in aromas wow and i what year was that i'm gonna go 2008 maybe um i mean it was a while ago and so i want to say you may have been there yeah

i'm guessing i was there i really think you were um i think you were there i can tell you almost all of them back in the day yep um i believe no i know for a fact kalipa was coaching was one of the uh was one of the coaches there. And the only other guy that I remember who was going through and getting the L1 at that time was a guy named Neil Maddox, who I know went on to be, was a beast. He was taking the L1 with you? Neil Maddox? He was taking the L1. That's awesome. I remember Freddie.

I remember Freddie. Yes. Macho. Yes. Kind of running the show. So, yeah, it was back in the back in like 2008. Isn't it weird? I had no idea you were even had any.

I didn't even know you had any. It's such a small world. The same people gravitating. These are all personal accountability people like the people who do CrossFit are very interested in accountability. I mean, that's basically what CrossFit is selling, accountability. Bingo. And that's what, so when you're talking to the- Such a weird product.

Isn't it? And it's kind of strange, but you're right. And so it does, it shrinks the world down, man. We're talking about the very beginning of some of the guests that I've been, you know, lucky enough to, that's a common thread, right? The common thread is these are people that believe in accountability and they care about the next generation. And that goes back to what we were saying before about independence. If you can kill your own food and you can build your own shelter, I know as silly as it sounds, especially to someone who has three Mercedes in the driveway and has a job that pays four hundred thousand dollars a year but if that were to vanish which it could vanish overnight don't think it couldn't hopefully it doesn't for you right but your ability to get

protection from the elements and catch a deer that runs through your yard that's right pretty pretty fucking important i don't think the um total side subject i don't think the new owners would know who bought crossfit inc from greg i don't think that they know that that's what they're selling totally different games i haven't been i've been out of the gap and really followed so it's so i know there's a guy named eric running the show i don't know much yeah it's a trip it's a trip they i think that they think they bought harley davidson but they really the hell's angels yep got it i think they bought a motorcycle manufacturing plant and they bought a group of guys with the same with a with a anyway it's gonna be very very it was um it's gonna be very

it'll be it's it's an interesting thing to watch can you take something that was basically a movement and turn it into a business and the only reason why greg even got into activism is because these fuckers in pharma and in sugar were in big food were basically um perverting the health sciences they were saying stuff that wasn't true about fitness and food so he had to kind of like push back as he should yeah as he should have yeah that's that's gonna be interesting it's gonna be interesting how do you keep that um if you got a bunch of a bunch of hell's angels who want that that culture to remain be interesting to see how that how that pans out yeah i don't know and that's that's the danger man that's the danger of this i mean you're you're

absolutely right and that's what i don't want to um i would never want to pervert on our side is the continuous like this is ultimately a um it's very much a movement it's very much a building the bigger building versus trying to tear the other one down it's a different kind of thing um and the the threat of becoming corporatized um is the threat of essentially setting ourselves up to become exactly what public government schooling has become right and i can avoid that at all costs man i'll give you i'll give you a perfect example he he greg's running 15 000 uh an organization that's sort of at the at the top of the pyramid of 15 000 gyms worldwide right and he does everything in his power never to fucking take the money and endorse a protein powder yeah never to endorse a vitamin never to endorse like a shoe never to like yes and but the problem is is that then the second he's gone that's that that structure is set up there to fucking take advantage of all of those people in that structure when the whole

premise of that do you get what i'm saying and that's what and that's what's basically happening these people saw all these people are like oh my god greg's leaving so much money on the table he's a fucking idiot well that's because they were coming with the presupposition that that was his goal and that's exactly right because that's the way because that's the way the world thinks yeah and uh and so now it's basically like um imagine if we built like the most amazing cleanest water network system in the entire world and we collected all the water in roseville california and it went all over the planet with perfectly clean water and everyone was happy and then we died and someone put a droplet of poison in our in the water in roseville

and it spread to the in this thing that was for the better good of the world and now killed everyone because they went to our one source and poison and that's the that's the that's the scary that's the scary part yeah yeah no i fully i fully get that and that's you know parents when when parents are like oh what's the um you know what is the curriculum right what is the curriculum they i hate that is the curriculum? They, I hate that word. And so they're always looking for a set of like what we use, you know, coming from this, this producer curriculum or this, you know, publisher or this, whatever. And we always just tell them it's, well, whatever makes sense at the time, right? Like there is no, there's no loyalty to a specific, if, if Khan Academy is

a great free resource and we're able to use it. Awesome. If there's something all of a sudden Khan becomes irrelevant or calm becomes this political, whatever, that's no longer about education and something else comes along. That's better. Like we is to the promises to those heroes. Like that's where the loyalty is. So all of a sudden, you know, this, this frigging iPhone that we've got here becomes as relevant as a pager and something else becomes more relevant and easier to use and better for us. Great. Like we can adapt, we can shift, right? It's that same kind of thing. Like you're not going to don't, we're not going to sell your soul because you end up losing them. You end up losing the integrity of the mission. So, so someone believes they know what school is and they come to you and they say, okay,

what is the curriculum? Right. Then you know that they're, cause that's something I would probably say to you. So they're coming at you with this paradigm of thought that they believe that there's going to be this layout from when the kid's five to when he's 17. Can I see that layout? So what should they ask you? Um, they should ask more about the, I mean, really it's more about the, the mindset of what can I do? How do I support my young hero? Like, it's really that, like, how do I support, how do I support them? If parents are saying, how do I support them on that journey? What does that look like? And we can talk about what that support looks like at home. Um, and we can talk about, um, how to, how to listen to that young person, how to set the examples for them, all the stuff that we've

been talking about. I mean, those are better, those are better questions because then they're just saying they want to get to know who that young person is and what that young person is capable of doing. Like how do I unlock the genius that is inside there? Because the reality is – John Taylor Gatto says genius is as common as dirt, and we fully actually believe that. But the genius looks different from person to person, right? Okay. So how do you cultivate, would a fair question be is like, okay, I want to send my kid to your school, Matthew. What is the process of cultivating his genius, exposing his genius? Yeah. Well, the problem that most people have is that it's a long tail game, right? They want to go, what is that? And how are you going to

show me in six weeks? Right? It's like fitness. It's like fitness. How are you going to show me in six weeks that I'm the fittest I've ever been? And I'm completely ripped and I'm ready to go. And I'm perpetually healthy when the reality is that's a long tail game. And that game doesn't end. If you want to stay healthy, it is a consistency that does not stop. You don't get to stop being healthy at 49 because you were healthy from 20 to 30, you know, to 48. And, and so it's that kind of mindset is what we're looking for in them. Understanding, look, this is a long tail game. We're only going to have them for a certain amount of time, but we're setting this foundation. So during that foundation, it is literally just going to be

massive amounts of exposure to different things, massive amounts of experiences, massive amounts of responsibility. That's it. It's high expectations. We're going to put those things in front of them. We're going to give them those high expectations and we're going to, we're going to give them the mindset to go after it. Have you ever seen, um, and I, and I know that sounds, it's hard because people are like, okay, you know this step give me a b c d e yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what everybody wants um are you going to give them a saw and a piece of wood and tell them to go build a birdhouse sure like that they want to know yes i want to know you're right like i want to know and so when people are like yes that they are you going to do that yes are

they going to be able to code yes are they going to be able to code? Yes. Are they going to be able to look? It is, it is literally it's life. If you have the ability to do it in life, well, then we have the ability to work in here. We are going to essentially a buffet restaurant, right? Where we're like, look, here is the buffet. All we are asking in this buffet is that you are going to try a number of foods in every single category. Um, and we want you to try as many foods as possible. And in terms of a measurement where we're going to ask you to spend X amount of money, right? So for these kids, it's X amount of hours of, of actually doing certain amount of work that they can, that they can show that they've done, whether that's reading, you know, books out of a, you know can show that they've done, whether that's reading pages out of a book, whether that's taking a specific kind of math course, whether

that's starting this business, whether that's all of the above mix and match. So they got to spend X amount of money trying X amount of foods in all of these categories. And then the longer you do that, then you start to hone it down and you go, okay, I don't like seafood at all. So I'm going to take that off. But I know, cause I've been exposed to it a bunch. I'm gonna take seafood off. I'm still going to spend the same amount of money, but now I'm going to be able to narrow the field, right? But you're having more and more foods that you're trying. You cannot possibly ever pick out your favorite food unless you've tried a shit ton of food. And so we're doing the same thing with them. Like we're just exposure, exposure, exposure, experience, experience,

experience so that then they can start to go, okay, now I have confidence because I've actually done some shit. All of this exposure and the experiences that we put together every six weeks, we're doing an exhibition on this campus and exhibition of the work. And they've got things that they're going to do and they're going to produce. It's a tournament, right? It's their jujitsu tournament. They're going to do this in front of parents. They're going to succeed or they're going to fail and they're going to do it publicly. And then they're going to learn from that and they're going to come back and they're going to do it again. They're going to be exposed to new things and they're going to take on their individual things. And they're going to look

through this buffet of courses or projects, or they get to create their own because if it's related to anything they want, like they have all of these things they can do. And they're just going to do that every year over and over and over again with all these systems of character control in place, right? Maintaining high level of responsibility and character for themselves, holding their friends accountable to that too. And they're going to do to that too. And they're going to do it for as long as they're with us. And then when they leave, they got to keep doing it because they're still alive. Like they just keep going. Right. And they know they can. And they know they can. Yep. It's, it's just, if you set set the and so our job then becomes to just set the environment in the right way so that those things continue to grow if you're growing the flower you fix the

environment you don't fucking beat on the flower to make it grow better you fix the environment you fix the soil you make sure there's sunlight so our job is the guides is to consistently just be this environment that allows that to just continuously grow. It's exactly that. Have you ever seen the School in a Cloud, Sugata Mitra TEDx talk? No. TED talk? You got to check that out.

School in a Cloud? School in a Cloud. Yeah, it's an older TED talk. Gosh, it might be from like 2009, 2010. I'm not sure exactly when it was. Do you get nervous to do those? To do what? TED Talks? When you do them, do you get scared?

Not anymore. Oh. Not anymore. Not anymore. I would be so scared. Until you did it 500 times. Oh, yeah, maybe. You know what I mean?

It's that. That's all it is. Yeah. And now it's just exciting. Now it's one of the only, you know, it's one of the only things I know I'm really good at. It would be if I got, if I had to go to a, um, you know, if I had to go to a CrossFit competition, I'd be nervous because I know that there's a lot of things that I'm not super good at and there's going to be some guys that are better and I'm going to get crushed in some of it. I'm going to feel like that would be more nerve-wracking for sure sorry 2009 school in

the cloud yeah yeah so no you're good sugata mitra and so this this guy had this experiment and he went and obviously the ted talk will will do it far more justice than me talking about the talk but he went and uh they did this experiment where they dropped a, I don't remember what country it was. It was a impoverished nation, third world country. They went and dropped a, essentially a kiosk that had a computer on it that had access to the internet. Kids had never seen a computer. They'd never seen internet. They dropped this and they had cameras on there and then they just left it alone.

And they said, see you later. this and they had cameras on there and then they just left it alone. And they said, see you later. The amount of time it took for all these young kids that were seven, eight years old to come in and to figure out how to utilize that, to figure out how to bring music to it and how to record themselves, right. Uh, singing along, um, and all this, it was amazing. And they were doing it and not even in their, their particular language. Right. And they were doing it and not even in their, their particular language. Right. And they were learning this other language. They did this.

There was no adult there. It was just the, the impetus of the young people, the excitement of these young people to go take on this challenge and go, what the hell is this? And to go explore. And then what they were able to do was ridiculous. So we tried to repeat the concept, brought it in. It was only going to be, um, the program was only in English. The computer only had access to English and it was only like a biology, like a college level biology course.

And these were a bunch of kids who didn't speak English from a third world nation who were all, you know, like 12 years old, right? They go through, they take this biology course in English and are able to pass a college level examination afterwards in English purely because of how excited they were to just have the opportunity to take this on. If that doesn't talk to you about our default mindset, nothing will. That is our default. Parenting can rip us out of that. School can rip us out of that. Culture can rip us out of that school can rip us out of that culture can rip us out of that our job as parents and educators is to pull people back to those default settings as quickly as humanly possible um i i truly i say to you unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven matthew, one 170 shows in first time I've ever quoted the Bible on the show. I remember hearing that as a

child, you know, when you hear things that are true and I'm not even a religious guy at all. You're just like, yep, that one's true. Yep. I don't know what heaven is. I don't know what children is, but I know that whatever the fuck that that just said. Yes.'s it man it's getting back to those those that basic default setting no wonder you love going to work every day dude it's the best it is the best you are now officially my longest podcast in the history of podcasting dude one out of 170 yeah 176 thank you so much, brother, for your time. Dude. Anytime. Anytime I get to connect with you is good with me, whether it's publicly, privately, doesn't matter. Um, I appreciate you. I appreciate your voice so much, man. And,

um, I always learn, always learn so much from you too. And so, um, you know, it's all, all same team, man. So pleasure's mine. Uh, if anyone has any questions, feel free to, um, So pleasure is mine. If anyone has any questions, feel free to – there's his Instagram down at the bottom or DM me, and I will get you in touch or send you the links to the Acton Academy, the schools, and everything that Matthew is doing. And make sure you check out his podcast, The Essential 11. The guests on there are just crazy. Including you. Ah, thank you.

Yes, sir. True story.