Welcome everyone to episode 22 of Offshoot. My guest today is Matt Beaudreau.
In 2017, Matt founded his first school in California, eventually opening or helping to open many more. In 2021 Matt co-founded Apogee Strong with his partner, Tim Kennedy. With a mission of reseeding sovereignty and freedom by disrupting education. Apogee has gone on to create mentorship programs for men, women, and teens, helped to launch over 100 K-12 campuses, and created 2 non-profit foundations to support families with increasing their education. As a Keynote Speaker, Consultant, and Coach to organizations around the world, Matt’s clients range from Wells Fargo, Honeywell, and Lockheed Martin to American Eagle, Cedars-Sinai and the United States Air Force and he has spoken from the stage to over 250,000 people across the world.
Before I go much farther, I want to remind all of you that I call this podcast Offshoot for a reason. The channel is primarily about real estate, finance, and entrepreneurship, all with an educational theme. I hope to support entrepreneurs, because if there’s any miracle cure out there, it’s the ones who accept responsibility. I also aim to foster relationships and meaningful connections, because even in a high-tech world, this thing called humanity is all about the people. And finally, I want to give experts a place to share their knowledge.
So, on its surface, this might look like a zig to the normal zag of the pod. If it’s not for you, all good. But for those of us who know there’s something off in the Zeitgeist, that perhaps we’re living in The Matrix, and that we might benefit from taking that red pill, I hope you’ll give this an hour to hear what Matt and Tim are up to with education and Apogee, and perhaps more importantly why he does this.
It’s largely about education, as a foundation to freedom, which absolutely aligns with this podcast.
Matt and Tim want to change the world by helping kids (and adults) get on a growth path to discover a more authentic education than one-size-fits-all public schooling, so that they can excel at what they want to be and express.
Listen in as we cover topics that include:
The entire idea of sovereignty, or self-governance, and what that means to Matt and Apogee.
What education is, could be, and perhaps should be.
How almost all of us have been deeply indoctrinated into the religion that is public schooling.
Matt’s background and how he came to this. Hint: this wasn’t part of the plan.
The core skills that form the foundation of any educational process.
How to run the business of a physical school, or place of leadership, which is the paradigm he prefers to use when thinking about Apogee K-12 schools.
How to think about the price of education when the public-school alternative is free.
What critical thinking is, and how it’s generally lacking.
Why the entire notion of all subjects, taught to all the people, at the same time is a fairly absurd notion.
How Apogee students think about universities, and how universities think about these alternative education students.
Why Apogee is really an investment in the human spirit, or the human condition, and our innate desire to grow and learn.
The challenges of enrolling parents into these schools, without losing center.
I loved this conversation, even though it is way out of my day to day. I hope you do too.
Transcript
[00:50] Kevin Choquette: Welcome everyone to episode 22 of Offshoot. My guest today is Matt Boudreau, co founder of Apogee. Matt and his partner Tim Kennedy have this mission reseeding sovereignty and freedom by disrupting education.
[01:06] Before I go much further, I want to remind all of you that this podcast is called Offshoot for a reason.
[01:12] The channel is primarily about real estate, finance and entrepreneurship, all with an educational theme. I hope to support entrepreneurs because if there’s any miracle cure out there, it’s the ones who accept responsibility.
[01:26] I also aim to foster relationships and meaningful connections because even in high tech world, this thing called humanity is all about people.
[01:34] And finally, I want to give experts a place to share their knowledge.
[01:38] So on its surface this might look like a zig to the normal zag of the podcast. If it’s not for you, all good.
[01:46] But for those of us who know there’s something off that perhaps we’re living in the matrix and that we might all benefit from taking the red pill. I hope we’ll give this an hour or so to hear what Matt and Tim are up to with education and Apogee and why he does this.
[02:03] I think in that it’s all about education, it absolutely aligns with this podcast. Matt and Tim want to change the world by helping kids and adults get on a growth path to discover a more authentic education tailored to them so they can excel at what they want to be.
[02:19] They’re helping us see why a one size fits all public education isn’t the only choice for our kids. Listen in as we cover topics that include the entire idea of sovereignty or self governance and what that means to Matt and Apogee.
[02:34] What education is, could be and perhaps should be, how almost all of us have been deeply indoctrinated into the religion that is public schooling, the core skills that form the foundation of any educational process, how to run the business of a physical school or a place of leadership, which is the paradigm that Matt likes to use when talking about apogee K through 12 schools, how to think about the price of education when public school is free, what critical thinking is and how it’s generally lacking, why the entire notion of all subjects taught to all the children at the same time is a fairly absurd notion.
[03:16] How Apogee students think about universities and how universities think about these alternative education students, why Apogee is really an investment in the human spirit or the human condition and our innate desire to grow and learn.
[03:31] The challenges of enrolling parents into these schools without losing center for the school. And I’ll just say I love this conversation, even though it’s way out of my day to day.
[03:41] I hope you enjoy it as well.
[03:49] Matt, thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
[03:52] Matt Beaudrea: Honor is absolutely my own. Kev, appreciate you having me, man.
[03:56] Kevin Choquette: Yeah. Well, look, I have a feeling this is going to be a far reaching and very interesting conversation, but to kick us off, how about just tell us a bit about Apogee and what you’re up to there.
[04:07] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, we say Apogee. You know, the mission is receding sovereignty and freedom in this country by disrupting education. That’s a fancy way of saying we want to help make everybody better.
[04:21] We believe, you know, education in and of itself is what we call a, a factory setting. We think we’re, we’re born with this desire to be educated, meaning it’s a desire to, to grow, a desire to stay curious and, and to be fueled by that sense of wonder and really want to continue to get better.
[04:42] And ultimately, the pursuit of sovereignty is the pursuit of building a life by, you know, my own design and being able to do the things I want to do with the people I want to do it with and not harming others in the process, but having the, the ability to do that and sovereignty and relationships and any way that that plays out.
[04:59] So that’s really the mission, which sounds huge and grandiose and kind of is we just break it down into a bunch of parts and try to help people in each one of those parts.
[05:10] So it’s a big mission, man.
[05:12] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, clearly. How do you.
[05:18] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, yeah. Wait, yeah. How about, how about that for a 30,000?
[05:25] Kevin Choquette: No, let’s, let’s start with what are we doing?
[05:28] Matt Beaudrea: Just trying to save the world.
[05:29] Kevin Choquette: What about you?
[05:34] Let’s start with the business. There is a part of this that is a business and that’s, you know, you’ve got to breathe revenue and pay people and have a team that can do what you’re doing.
[05:44] And I know you’ve got a whole lot of growth stuff, but how does the business part of this work? How do you?
[05:48] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yeah, we’ve got a. So we have a lot of verticals that are all what we say. They’re, they’re different fingers on the same hand. Right.
[05:57] And that’s the hand that’s trying to grasp that sovereignty. So they all work together, but they can all stand alone as well. So we’ve got mentorship programs. That’s for. We have mentorship programs for men, for women, for young men.
[06:11] When I say young men, I mean kind of the 12 to 19 ish year old range, young ladies is on the way and I’ll just kind of break down, I’ll give you all the kind of the fingers and then we can talk about whichever ones you want to dive specifically deeper into.
[06:24] But we have the mentorship programs, those are virtual. We have young men, men, men, young women, all from all over the world.
[06:31] And then we have a home education program where we show families how to home educate. We have a couple hundred families actually closer to 300 that we bring through home education throughout the year.
[06:45] We have our K through 12 campuses. So we have affiliates who are opening K through 12 campuses all over the U.S. canada and Australia at the moment. We’ve got some applications coming from other countries as well.
[06:59] And then we have live events that we do that are educational live events as well.
[07:06] Those are fueled by two non profits that we have and a payment processing system and that we don’t take any money on. That all goes to help fuel the nonprofit.
[07:14] And the nonprofits help fuel families. So we have. Each one of those verticals is an educational vertical. All of those do work together inherently. They are woven together, but each one can stand alone itself.
[07:28] Kevin Choquette: Interesting. And so you kind of at the sort of corporate level, do you think of them as individual profit and losses and then maybe share some resources or.
[07:37] Matt Beaudrea: Yes, sir, that’s correct. Yeah.
[07:39] Kevin Choquette: Okay.
[07:39] Matt Beaudrea: And then they tie in together operationally and you know, from a practical standpoint, so you know, K through 12 campus, you’ve got young people going there. We want to support the affiliate so that they can run an effective K through 12 campus.
[07:52] Part of that is supporting their families, their parents. So the young heroes are going there. We’re developing, you know, the, the curriculum around that. And then mom and dad by nature of them sending their child or children to that campus, mom and dad get to go through our apogee man and apigee woman.
[08:13] That’s included in that. It’s, it’s education for the whole family.
[08:17] Kevin Choquette: Well, look, I think I, before we, you know, got on here, I told you our kids have been going, or one of our children have been going to what was previously Acton Academy and now is apogee.
[08:30] So I’d love to, you know, sort of jump into that vertical. But there’s a lot here. And I can tell you, you know, got a lot of thoughts around all of this, but why don’t we just start with what’s wrong with education that I could get from my local school district?
[08:49] Matt Beaudrea: That’s a good question.
[08:51] And I would argue that you’re not going to get an education from the local school district. You’re going to get the religion of schooling.
[08:59] So the religion of schooling is. And, and look, and I. I always like to preface these conversations by saying a couple of things because I know, partially to my. Partially my own fault, because of how aggressively I have gone after the system.
[09:15] That often gets confused with me going after teachers or administrators, that is, or parents who are sending their children to a government school.
[09:24] My beef is not with any individuals unless they are not good humans. And that goes for any system.
[09:31] The system itself is what I attack because the system itself is ultimately this Prussian model that was designed as a behavioral management model. It was not designed based on human development.
[09:44] It was not designed to be.
[09:48] To be able to change, to be able to adapt. It was not designed for anything other than let’s pretend this is how people develop and how knowledge is passed down no matter what’s going on in the world around us.
[10:01] And let’s perpetuate this system and pour more money into this system. It’s ultimately a behavioral management program.
[10:08] That’s the biggest problem there. It’s not the yes, there is the quote unquote, you know, woke agenda. Right. That people like to throw out and say, okay, well, I’m getting more and more of the agendas around sexualization of kids or around DEI or around cool.
[10:25] We can make an argument in some districts that there is an abundance of curriculum that doesn’t align with people’s values. I understand that.
[10:35] My biggest beef is the habits that young people learn over 12 or 13 years in that system. They learn to be obedient. They learn there’s always an authority. They learn they aren’t the ones in control of their own lives.
[10:49] They learn that there’s a very narrow scope of what needs to be learned at a very specific time. And if they don’t, then they’re quote unquote ahead, or they’re quote unquote behind, or there’s something wrong with them, or they have some sort of, you know, labeled some sort of disability.
[11:05] And again, the problem is, and the way I put it towards people is if Kevin, I wanted you to be really, really good at basketball.
[11:14] And So I took 12 years, 13 years of your life and I only made you play baseball. And then at the end I was like, okay, go play, go play basketball.
[11:24] Like, wait, all I’ve ever done is played baseball. I’m like, well, it’s a game, right? And there’s like, there’s balls and you have the same team. You’re like, wait, but it’s not the same game, it’s not the same rules, it’s not the same.
[11:34] Well, school theoretically is supposed to prepare you for life. Then why are the games so dang different? Yeah, to me that’s, it’s inefficient.
[11:42] Kevin Choquette: So I get all of that. And I was talking to my wife about this. But then if we were to not ask like perhaps like what’s wrong with the government run school, but rather what’s the purpose of education?
[11:57] You kind of alluded to it in your earlier comments, but how do you, what do you think the role of education is for just any human?
[12:05] Matt Beaudrea: I love that question, man. And that. So being somebody who came out of the system, meaning, you know, I grew up in government schools, I did all the right things. I got all the degrees and worked at Stanford, worked in the public schools, worked in private schools.
[12:19] Nobody had ever asked me that question till Seth Goden asked me that question. He goes, well, it’s your education. Even before, like gosh man, why have I never been asked that question?
[12:28] Education to me again is, is the nature of a human being. It is our desire for growth, it’s our desire for sovereignty, it’s our desire to self govern.
[12:39] To me it’s, that’s something that doesn’t go away until you’re six feet under.
[12:43] And so it should be an opportunity for you to explore what that means for you. At the end of the day, you can live to be 120 years old, study all there is that you can and during that time cram as much in as possible.
[12:55] And you know, 1% of 1% of 1% of 1 percent of all there is to know.
[13:00] So education is this wildly personal endeavor of how do I need to grow? That’s the meta skill question. What skill is neat? How do I need to grow to survive in the environment that I am?
[13:10] And then how else do I want to grow?
[13:13] You know, what are the, what are the interests? It’s bringing those two things Together, it’s drawing out that natural curiosity and genius and then tying it to whatever, you know, purpose or direct direction you want to go.
[13:22] And that endeavor doesn’t end until you’re dead.
[13:25] Kevin Choquette: So one of the things that I sort of think about in this juxtaposition, if you will, of I’ll just kind of call yours like the new model, which I think is probably not true, but for the sake of making my point here versus the conventional model, is this idea of, like, what you need to know might not be that profound.
[13:49] Right. Like, we need to figure out how to eat and sleep and move through the world physically and, and not hurt ourselves and things like this. And then what we want to know.
[13:59] You know, the schools are kind of rolling up this snap on tool chest and all the drawers are empty and they’re like, okay, over these 12 years, we’re going to fill every drawer and there’s no knowledge or reason given to the student as to, like, why we should fill all these drawers.
[14:19] Like, what. What is in the top right? When am I ever going to use that drawer? But the alternative of going like, hey, choose your own adventure. Fill your own drawer with whatever tools you want.
[14:30] Seems like there could be some.
[14:35] Matt Beaudrea: Be dangerous.
[14:36] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, because it’s what I want to, you know, you were saying what I need to learn to grow and what I want to learn to grow. And I think, how do you balance this, like, idea of a curriculum that’s, you know, quote unquote, time tested or, or at least is perceived that way against like, hey, we’ll just do custom whatever, like the qa.
[14:57] Matt Beaudrea: It’s such an important question, and I’m so grateful that you asked that. And asking good questions, I think, is. Is the key to anything. It’s. It’s far better than having answers.
[15:05] Those questions matter. The. There does need to be some semblance of a roadmap, in my experience, something that we’re all at least somewhat structuring things around so that we can get some things done.
[15:18] And so it begs the question, what you laid out begs the question of what does everybody need?
[15:24] Right. And then how do you structure in that along with what people want to know on a personal basis? So schooling makes everybody believe that the need to know are subjects and that there’s such thing as grade level and that those happen at very, very specific times.
[15:42] Although we can, you know, really get down and analyze and go, well, does everybody need trigonometry?
[15:49] I think there’s. That’s a need for some, but I’d argue That it’s few and so then we’ll shoot. What do we do with that? Since everybody has to take it at a specific time?
[15:58] You know, it’s, it’s those kind of things. So it’s, how do we develop a roadmap that is nimble enough to where we go, look, this is, these are the meta skills we think everybody needs to know.
[16:08] Let’s really have the conversation. Do we need those at a specific time? I would argue reading is. They need to know. It’s a meta skill that we all need. We all need to read.
[16:18] We need to have that ability. But what does that mean? What does that mean to be able to read? Does it mean to be able to just recite words that you see on a page or does it mean that you need to be able to recite back and answer a multiple choice test about something?
[16:29] Or should you be able to analyze the words and figure out how to apply it to your life? Right, so it’s everything begs a definition.
[16:38] And then when we have those meta skills, does it have a particular time frame around it?
[16:45] Does somebody need to be able to read at 4 or is it okay if they don’t read until 11? Does it matter? Does it socially might be one answer, practically it might be another.
[16:58] You know, and so all of these things need questions. But ultimately we come back to, let’s have a road map. Let’s base the roadmap on meta skills that do matter.
[17:06] Let’s put in as much individuality as we can and just give the best possible bet for this. First, you know, this 18 years that they’ve got something that looks like it transfers into life and then, hey, by the way, when the world changes, because the world changes pretty rapidly, let’s figure out how to adapt too.
[17:25] It’s, it’s such a, it’s such a daunting task.
[17:30] But gosh, I think that’s so much more rewarding, beneficial and, and I feel so much more optimistic doing that than going, no, no, no, no. It’s, it’s this old way where everything’s in subjects that don’t really matter.
[17:43] But at least we haven’t defined slavery for everybody. Like, to me that just sounds ludicrous.
[17:49] Kevin Choquette: So what, what are the, the, you know, sort of required reading, I agree with you. Has to be one of them.
[17:56] But there’s been things in my life where I didn’t think I need to know what I. No. And it just sort of shows up one day and you’re like, oh, actually that’s a, you Know, I could come up with some obscure reference, but it’s not required to make the point, but somewhere in the file of facts, you actually pull it out and you kind of put it to use.
[18:15] So what. What are you guys thinking? Are the core things that maybe people can draw on? Because it’s one of those, you know, need to know to grow kind of things, right?
[18:25] Matt Beaudrea: That’s a great question. And so, you know, those things that use those instances, and I agree that those things do happen. Are those normally byproducts of school, or are they normally byproducts of just life in general?
[18:36] Kevin Choquette: It depends. Right. So I do have an example. I was thinking about this.
[18:39] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah.
[18:40] Kevin Choquette: I went to music school, and I remember studying, like, the harmonic overtone series, right? And I’m driving down the highway at, like, 60 miles an hour past a bunch of rows of corn, and I look out the window and, like, we’ve all done this, right?
[18:56] But, like, 90 degrees, the rows look really wide, 45 degrees, they look half as wide. And, like, 33 degrees, they’re, like, half as wide again, if you’re sort of sweeping your head across a, you know, a bunch of rows of corn going by at 60 miles an hour.
[19:11] And I was like, oh, wow, that’s the harmonic overtone series. Like, there’s no way I ever would have, like, had that. Like, huh. I didn’t think you could see, like, the harmonic overtone series in a field of corn.
[19:26] But, like, that’s pretty freaking interesting. Like, that only became, like. And does it matter? Did it, like, change my life? Is it, like, profound insight? No, it was cool, but I never would have access to it if somebody hadn’t said, like, thou shalt learn harmonic overton series.
[19:44] All right, well, guys, Matt just lost power because of a lightning strike. So welcome back.
[19:52] Matt Beaudrea: You were telling this great story. You were talking about being in this field. You were seeing all this corn, and then all of a sudden, I just hear.
[20:00] And everything black in my world.
[20:04] Kevin Choquette: So it’s. It’s.
[20:06] The thing was the corn is like. I don’t. We’ll. We’ll clean this up in the edit. But if you’re. If you’re looking hard left and you’re going 60 miles an hour, you know, they’re wide rows.
[20:16] You look, like, 45 degrees off that. They’re, like, half the width. You look like, half that distance again, and they’re again half the width. And I just got this visual of, like, wow.
[20:25] This is actually a visual representation of the harmonic overtone series, which has no, like, Bearing in my life. But it was a moment of like building a bridge of understanding that only would have shown up because at some point there was thou shalt study harmonic overtone series.
[20:46] And you know, maybe that’s not the best example, but those kinds of things seem like they’re available when our minds are immersed in a curriculum that we might not choose a hundred percent.
[20:59] Matt Beaudrea: And so then again, the question then becomes, okay, cool, well, you can’t learn everything, so then where do you go?
[21:05] Kevin Choquette: Right, right.
[21:07] Matt Beaudrea: Because what you just experienced right there, I’ve never studied it. That never would have crossed my mind.
[21:11] Kevin Choquette: Right.
[21:11] Matt Beaudrea: Never would have ever. But I’ll tell you what, that lightning strike just happened here. And if I go outside later today and there’s a giant tree that is laying across my electric fence and took the electric fence down, you know what I know how to do now?
[21:27] I know how to chop that tree up. I know how to splice together electric fence back now because it’s a part of my life.
[21:33] You don’t know that. Maybe you do. I don’t know. But the point is that’s education is wildly personal. So again, talking about the exact same thing, it’s okay, what are the meta skills?
[21:42] Everybody needs to know.
[21:44] And then. And because those have to be few with that many variables, that many variations, that has to be few. What are the things everybody needs? And then what else can we just lay out and give as much exposure as possible in the time that we have with them?
[21:59] Yeah, it’s because that’s another part that informs this discussion. And I. Again, you’re asking really, really good questions.
[22:06] This is another part that informs this discussion is we have this weird. It’s not explicitly said, but it’s thought by. By the majority of us. Oh, we only have till 18 to cram everything in and then they have to know everything and go off.
[22:20] They’re all done. They’re all done. We got to get everything that’s important in right now. Otherwise their head explodes and they die. Right. Like, no, you’ve got, hey, the rest of your life.
[22:30] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[22:31] Matt Beaudrea: So the important thing is that we teach them things that matter and then we set them up to continuously be curious, to find patterns, to be able to go pursue and understand how to do that and be willing to adapt, be willing to unlearn things that are no longer relevant or necessary and go relearn.
[22:48] Right. So it’s. All of this is a mindset thing. So all of this is a roundabout way to say, yeah, the things that matter. I think reading matters Communication matters.
[22:57] No matter what happens with AI the ability to communicate with somebody else, I think is a, is always a meta skill. And that begs the question, what does communication mean?
[23:07] I think oral and verbal communication matters. I think the written word does matter.
[23:13] I think the ability to critically think matters. And this is a buzzword, critical thinking. Most people don’t even think, never mind think critically. Critically thinking means you are emotionally stable enough to be able to form and accept that you have an opinion on something because you’ve earned the opinion because you’ve, you’re, you have the ability to argue against yourself better than anybody else can.
[23:37] Like you’ve really gone to war with your own thoughts.
[23:41] And I think that matters greatly. I think physical health always matters no matter what you’re going to be in physically in the body that you’re in. So the pursuit of physical health matters.
[23:53] I think relationships matter. The ability to, to, you know, to differentiate between my relationship with Kevin, who I don’t know well, but we’re having a fun conversation with, you know, and then after this I go upstairs and I’ve got my wife and I show up as a certain version of Matt for, for my wife.
[24:09] And then my three kids are there and I’m still me, but I’m a different version of me for them. Right. It’s finances are always going to matter unless you’re completely off grid.
[24:19] So there are these handful of things. So let’s build projects and opportunities around those.
[24:26] Let’s go ahead and expose to some ideas or concepts over the course of the, you know, 18 years that we work with them. Some things they may not have been exposed to.
[24:37] And then let’s more importantly just have a person that comes out of there feeling confident that they can remain curious and go find the answers if they don’t have them.
[24:48] Kevin Choquette: Well, it’s funny, there’s two things that come up for me. One is like, it sounds like you’re pointing towards adapt, developing some sort of agency in them. Right. So, yeah, so that they can say, hey, I’ve done this before because I’ve been doing it for X number of years with these different themes and explorations that, that have been my learning curriculum, which I think is awesome.
[25:15] But the other part is I hadn’t really had this visual before, but when you, when you say it the way you did, which is like, you know, you can cram everything you can do for the next 120 years and have the most incredible retention and you’re in the 1% of 1% of 1% of 1 percent of all the knowledge in the world.
[25:34] And then. And then zoom out and go, okay, so here’s the thing that everybody must learn, like the kind. The kind of arrogance that actually is portrayed in the idea that, like, all of the kids in the state of California are all gonna learn this because this is what you need to know.
[25:53] Matt Beaudrea: Like, holy cow, that’s a great way to put it is arrogance. I think that is extraordinarily arrogant, and I think it’s provably false. You know, I.
[26:06] I share this story with people all the time about, you know, I got straight A’s, all this. I always had straight A’s. And it’s. I’m not that smart. I just figured out the game of school.
[26:14] I figured out the patterns. I figured out how to take tests while I figured out what teachers wanted to hear. I figured those things out so that I could figure out how to get the grade.
[26:21] It didn’t mean I knew anything, but I gave the illusion of it.
[26:26] Kevin Choquette: Same, right, Same.
[26:28] Matt Beaudrea: And by the way, so many people.
[26:31] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, it’s a skill. It’s a skill. Oh, another test. I know how to do this 100%. Yeah.
[26:36] Matt Beaudrea: And so you get some people that are good at the skill and then. And sometimes their life works out well. It’s not the same game, but they still do well. You get.
[26:44] Sometimes you get people that are really good at the skill and life doesn’t work out well. And we don’t want to talk about that because, wait, they did all the things they’re supposed to do.
[26:51] They got the good grades, they got the straight A’s, they studied hard, and then they went and played the different game called life. And things didn’t work. Waste. No, no, no, we can’t do that because we have to sell.
[27:00] Getting good grades is what opens up the doors.
[27:03] And we all know people that. It’s the opposite too, right? They didn’t do well in school necessarily, but, man, they’re thriving in life, you know, in different. Different kind of game here.
[27:14] Kevin Choquette: Well, I mean, isn’t this saying that like, A students work for B students? Like. Yeah, there’s. There’s something to that, right?
[27:22] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, a lot of times there is, unfortunately, you know, so.
[27:27] And I, again, I got my straight A’s. Man, I came out, I had no idea who I was or what I was going to do. I had to go through life scenarios and try things and try to build things before I figured anything out.
[27:38] And it was just figuring out, you know, about myself, what I liked, what I was decent at. What I sucked at, how to build a life around, around those things.
[27:46] And I’m still figuring all that out.
[27:48] Kevin Choquette: Well, that’s a perfect segue. You just, you know, previously alluded to sort of some of the educational time and being at Stanford and stuff like that. But how did you get here?
[27:58] Like, I know you could probably tell the three hour version of that and the 32nd version, but like inappropriately long. Like, what’s the journey? How do you get to the point where you’re saying, hey, I’m, I’m going to start an educational movement to have an impact on the general population.
[28:17] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, I appreciate that. I always tell in this, when I say this, please don’t think I’m going to go into super long story, because I’m not. But I tell people my story started when I was 4.
[28:27] So I promise you, I’m not going to watch pretty far now. I’m not going to give you 40 years of an overview right now, I promise.
[28:34] So.
[28:35] But I was four. When I was four, I was starting kindergarten early. I’m a November baby. So I started kindergarten and I remember very clearly one day when they’re breaking us into groups and I was in the red group and there was a reading exercise that we were going to do.
[28:49] And I remember sitting at the table looking around the classroom and I went, oh, okay, well that color over there, it’s all the students that need the most help with reading.
[28:57] That student, those students need a little bit less in that group, that group needs a little bit less than them. And then where the group of people they think are the best readers.
[29:04] Interesting. Okay, there’s a game going on here. So I remember seeing that pattern at 4 and I remember at 8 having paid attention enough to where I went. I’ll never get anything less than a night unless I want to because I got this game.
[29:17] Now I won’t have to try. I don’t even really have to do homework. Like, I got this game figured out. So I knew there was a game forever. But again, the game didn’t serve me well because I came out and went, all right, well now who the heck am I?
[29:29] I guess I better go to college because that’s what everybody else says you’re supposed to do. So I’ll do that. Got my A’s in college, came out and actually turned down a job at the White House, believe it or not, and then went, okay, cool, now what I’ve got, I worked a number of jobs to put myself through college.
[29:47] I left home at 17 and didn’t ask for any more money and put myself through school, worked really hard. I always had a good work ethic, but I was working, you know, bouncing at a bar and working at a bank and managing an apartment complex.
[29:59] But now I’m a college graduate. Shoot. Life is supposed to be. Companies are supposed to be throwing jobs at me like millions of dollars, right? Nobody’s saying anything to me what’s going on?
[30:08] So I had to figure this whole thing out.
[30:11] The work ethic was one thing that helped me. Odd jobs here and there ultimately landed me at Stanford University and working there. And that’s where I started being reminded of the game.
[30:21] I could see the young people that were all smarter than me, you know, academically speaking, Brilliant young people, but they were struggling, man. They were. You know, they. I’m like, how did some of you.
[30:30] I’m like, how do you not fall down? More like the common sense was just not there. Some of them was just an emotional struggle.
[30:37] Some of it was, you know, a mix. A mix therein.
[30:42] Naively went, okay, well, I’m gonna. Now I know I. I started getting up in front of people at Stanford, and I went, okay, you know what? I think I’m. Maybe I’m meant to teach.
[30:50] Maybe I’m meant to help fix this so that young people that don’t get to a place like this and feel like life is crumbling, even though they’ve got an A in Ochem, you know, and so went into the public schools as a public school teacher, public school administration, you start to go, okay, wait a second.
[31:04] None of this stuff is really about the kids. This is about testing. This is about money. This is about perception.
[31:11] Naively went over to private school. Private school. It’s usually. It’s same pig, different shade of lipstick. It’s. It’s really. They’re modeled predominantly after the same thing for the most part.
[31:20] And that’s when I really started diving into, well, why do we do this this way anyways? And it was when I was willing to ask that question, you know, like, what is.
[31:28] What is this game we’re playing here with school? Started research and reading people like John Taylor Gatto and Ivan Ilyich and Maria Montessori. And.
[31:38] And I went, okay, got it. This is what this is for. That’s not what I want for me. It’s not what I want for the people I serve. And I have children.
[31:48] And my oldest was about to go into school, and so ultimately it would end up being that I was like, I gotta build something different, because she’s not gonna go.
[31:56] She’s not gonna go into this, and they’re not gonna go into this. So I have to build something different.
[32:02] Kevin Choquette: You know, that’s really where it started. How’s the journey going?
[32:08] Matt Beaudrea: Amazing. I mean, heart it is. You have children.
[32:12] So if I was to ask you, was having children harder than you thought it would be before you had them, you’d likely say yes. I don’t know what your answer is.
[32:26] Kevin Choquette: I would definitely say yes. Yes.
[32:29] Matt Beaudrea: Is it more rewarding than you could have imagined as well?
[32:32] Kevin Choquette: Absolutely.
[32:34] Matt Beaudrea: That’s my answer to this too. You know, I mean, it’s really that far harder than I ever thought it would be. I had no idea what we were gonna end up doing.
[32:41] You know, I just started by building one campus. I was building one campus and traveling around the world as a keynote speaker to put food on the table while I was building, you know, one campus.
[32:52] Those ended up blending together nicely and helping. And luckily the campus took off and one became two and two became three and. And then I met, you know, then Tim and I decided to do the mentorship side for the young men of Apogee.
[33:04] And there was no way to predict. Predict how it would all pan out. And that’s another thing that we kind of get hoodwinked into because of school is we. We feel like everything is predictable, but it’s not, you know, it’s.
[33:18] We don’t know.
[33:19] We don’t know how things we didn’t know about the. I didn’t know about the Internet wasn’t a thing when I was a. When I was a kid. Right. Cell phones weren’t a thing when I was a.
[33:27] Social media wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. There was no way to know there were going to be jobs and opportunities in my marketing availability. And there’s no way to guess all that stuff again.
[33:36] It’s just a product of moving forward. This has been the same thing, man. I didn’t know we would be here. And I don’t, you know, people. Where are you going to be in five years?
[33:42] I don’t know. I’ll give you the best guess of what we want to do, but we’ll see.
[33:46] Kevin Choquette: Well, look, you’re putting a ton on the table here, but let me drill in on this.
[33:50] Some of what I have picked up from a. I would say very topical exposure to apigee is that you seem to want to co create the educational experience with the parents and.
[34:08] Yeah. So part of what I am aware of in hearing you tell your story and when we Think about, like, what we’re really teaching our children. The idea that you stood at the abyss, if you will, and looked at what was available to them and said, yeah, no, I’m not, I’m not gonna do that for my children.
[34:30] I mean, just that, just the fact that you said, no, we’re gonna go build something else, I mean, that’ll be with them for the rest of their lives.
[34:41] Matt Beaudrea: But that’s, I mean, as far as I’m concerned, that’s my obligation to them. You know, it’s to be the. There’s no such thing as perfect, man. There’s no, there’s no perfect parent under the sun.
[34:52] There’s no perfect anything, man. But the, the pursuit, you know, Mike Glover said to me one time, perfection is not possible, but the pursuit of perfection is always possible. That remains the standard.
[35:03] And, and I love that. And that’s really, it’s like, okay, my obligation to them is to give them the best flipping opportunity that I can in whatever way I can define that and whatever, you know, I can do while I’m.
[35:14] So. That was part of it.
[35:16] Kevin Choquette: I dig it. So talk to me about that sort of co created educational experience. Right. As opposed to me outsourcing the education of my children to the government.
[35:28] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, I think that’s, you know, I, that’s one of the areas I, I would never partner with. So. GK Chesterton had a great quote where he talks about how we get education wrong because we look at it culturally as a series of subjects that we all have to tackle.
[35:46] When he said education, what it really is, and this maybe my favorite definition, at least currently, he said, education is the transfer of a way of life.
[35:56] I love that. Right. And so that’s exactly what it is. When I look at, you know, raising my own kids, a big part of that is I want to transfer my way of life to them.
[36:04] I’m not saying I have all the dang answers. I’m just saying I want to transfer my values. I want to be able to transfer my. You know, what I think is right, what I think is wrong, I want to, I want to transfer opportunities.
[36:15] I want to transfer, you know, anything that we’re building here as a family, I want to transfer that to them. That’s what we do as parents. That’s our role.
[36:23] And so anybody that you’re partnering with when it comes to your kids, and that means, you know, sports activities and the coaches and the teammates, it means where do you send them for any sort of educational experience, you are giving a nod to Partnering with them at some point to transfer their way of life to your kids.
[36:47] If you think of it that way, I think you become really far more intentional about who you allow to pour in. So you partner with a government school. First of all, you’re partnering with the government who is saying, okay, this is what all kids need to do at this time.
[37:01] And again, we can make plenty of cases against those outcomes. But you’re also partnering with teachers that you may or may not know. And look, most teachers are great humans.
[37:12] There are some great humans in. In. So you may get lucky 90 of the time, but, man, there’s some bad ones, too. I’ve had some that I’ve worked with. There’s some bad ones.
[37:21] There’s some bad ones in terms of just can’t teach, and there’s some bad ones in terms of just their attitude. So, you know, your. Your luck of the draw there.
[37:28] What about all the other kids who are pouring into them? And again, I’m not for sheltering. I’m for parenting. So if I don’t know if these young people are coming out of abused homes and are sharing those things with my kids and they’re the primary transfer because they have the most time with my kids, I just don’t want to give a nod to that.
[37:44] Everything is, who are you? Who are you partnering with? So we need to take that approach. Apogee, from a standpoint of our campuses needs to be like, look, man, here are our values.
[37:54] Do we all align on the same values? Because that’s a big. That’s the starting point. We’re going to have differences of opinion. Everybody’s going to have differences. That’s okay. But do we have the same values?
[38:06] And if we do, can we work on building something together? Here’s kind of a roadmap we’re going to provide.
[38:11] But parents, we’re going to provide you with a roadmap, too, so that you can push forward on growth. And then we really are going to have this triangular conversation of, well, here are the goals that your young person’s setting.
[38:23] Do you sign off on those goals? Because if you sign off on them, parents cool us too. And we’re going to come alongside you and we’re going to help them to, you know, do the best we can to help them reach those goals.
[38:33] That’s the job. That’s the role. We’re not trying to step in and be anybody else’s parent. That’s. That’s ridiculous. We need to come in and partner with these families while actually helping the families helping mom and dad push forward as well.
[38:48] It’s a comprehensive endeavor.
[38:51] Kevin Choquette: Yeah. So what does that part look like? I mean, just high level or whatever level is appropriate.
[38:58] Not the hard part, the interface with the parents. I mean, look, people are diverse, right? Isn’t it like the conversation we have about the kind of education we’re going to get it, it’s as diverse as it could be.
[39:10] So how do you find or enroll other people into and yeah, yeah, we.
[39:17] Matt Beaudrea: Got, so we got to have a starting spot. So one of the things you’ve seen is a rise in like homeschool co ops and you know, like small, like the micro schools.
[39:26] Like, I mean there’s been a rise in that in the last five, six years.
[39:30] The majority of them fail and the really the reason the majority of them fail is because they don’t have any shared or at least stated shared values in a, in a shared roadmap to start.
[39:40] They just go, okay, let’s all work together. Do we, do we want to do something different? Yeah, cool.
[39:45] I want to do this. Kevin’s like, well, I want to do this. And then Heather’s like, well, I want to do this. And then Whitney’s like, well, I want to do this.
[39:53] And then Tim goes, I want to do this. And ultimately they’re like, we’re all going different directions and so this is not working together and that’s fine. So you should all go home, educate on your own and just transfer your own way of life to your kids.
[40:05] That’s great. If we’re going to come together, we at least have to have agreed upon starting point and an agreed upon roadmap as much as possible. So we start there, go.
[40:14] Do we agree on the values? Here are the buckets. On our campuses, you know, we have a physical education physiology first bucket. We got, you know, real world projects. We’ve got logic and speech and debate.
[40:25] We’ve got academic skill acquisition and we’ve got, you know, some basic, some mini product, mini projects. And there’s our, our, you know, kind of a road map. Does everybody agree there?
[40:36] Everybody agrees there. Great. Cool. As we do that, that’s what your young people are going through. Mom and dad, you’re also going to go through a very similar thing together.
[40:44] We’re pouring into you partially by putting you to work so that you are our growing simultaneously. We can talk growth mindset all day long with your young people. If they’re going home to mom and dad who are not of that same mindset, well, then they lose.
[41:01] And so From a practical standpoint, you know, we’ve got that mom and Dad’s program is really supplemental. And then parents can be on campus and involved in volunteering in any of those buckets.
[41:13] We want parents to be there for, you know, the exhibition of the student work.
[41:18] And then it’s really up to each campus owner how much more they want the parents to, to become involved. Because it’s hard to ride this line of like, I want you to be involved.
[41:27] I want to pour into you so you grow. I want you to be here in volunteering and you got to be careful not to go into the. And every parent tell us exactly how to do everything because then everything falls apart again.
[41:40] Naval Ravicant says, if you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone.
[41:43] Kevin Choquette: Right, right.
[41:44] Matt Beaudrea: Very quickly get that torn apart. But that’s kind of the, that’s the game.
[41:49] Kevin Choquette: This is the same as any at least reasonably well run corporation. Mission, vision, core values. Right?
[41:59] Matt Beaudrea: Correct, sir. Yeah, 100%. And you know one of my favorite sayings, customers always. Right. But you get to pick the customer.
[42:06] Well, you know, it’s. And so it’s like with that same value set.
[42:09] Kevin Choquette: Yeah. So let’s go to that. I’m flipping around it. But it all ties. So the business of running an apogee school. Right. Like you, you’ve got customers and clearly, you know, you’ve got to manage a revenue stream.
[42:26] How does, how do you, how do these things grow? How do you figure out the price? How do you like, is it a sliding scale where those who are more capable of paying are contributing more?
[42:39] Is it, is it a for profit endeavor? Like it seems very difficult to. When, when people perceive the government program as free, which clearly it’s not, but we’re all paying for it.
[42:53] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah.
[42:53] Kevin Choquette: How do you, how do you open up that part of this?
[42:58] Matt Beaudrea: Really good question, man. And that is, that is the hardest part. I tell all of the affiliate owners and again, we give guidelines, we don’t give rules on it because sovereignty and freedom and those things that we were talking about.
[43:09] So the affiliates have an ability to do, you know, do things in a variety of ways as long as they stay within some general boundaries of it. But I always tell them that is exactly what is going to make it so difficult is that the perception is, quote, unquote, school is free.
[43:26] And so you’re battling against something that is free. And there is a religious adherence to what school has always been. I can walk. And I’ve done this for years and years and years with hundreds and hundreds of families where I’ll walk them logically through everything we’re talking about here.
[43:44] And they’re like, yeah, this tracks. I get it. Yep. See it in my own life. Yep. See what the people I work with. Yep. I see. Yep. Yep. Cool. You’re gonna send your kids over here.
[43:52] Kevin Choquette: Oh, gosh.
[43:53] Matt Beaudrea: What about prom? Right? It’s like. It’s like. It’s like Agent Smith from the Matrix.
[44:00] Right Just over their body and they’re like, what about college? You know, and it’s like. It’s like, okay, man, let’s unpack this more. And I get it. I get it.
[44:09] Because it is a real. It is the biggest religion in our country. I really. I say that without hesitancy.
[44:15] And so you are having to walk people through. Some people just go, yeah, man, I get it. Here we go. But you are having to, you know, to help squash the fears around that.
[44:27] So that’s a part of it is squashing those fears. So there’s the emotional side and then there’s the practical side and that practical side, you know, getting the right families on board, the people that inherently see this or go, yeah, okay, I get it.
[44:43] And I want to. I want to give that a shot.
[44:46] There’s the structure of everything in general anyway, so to run this as a profitable business, part of what I talk to our owners about is stop trying to open a school.
[44:57] Like, quit. As soon as you’re in that mindset, you’re going to try to be the best school in town. You’re not offering anybody a school. You’re offering a leadership environment.
[45:05] You’re offering an education environment.
[45:07] It’s not the same thing. So how do we make whatever building you’re operating out of run as close to 24 hours a day, seven days a week as the educational hub for your community?
[45:20] So one of the campuses I opened when I still lived in California, one of the campuses was, you know, we K through 12 during the day, Monday through Friday.
[45:30] And then when the young people were done, we would have, you know, quote, unquote, after school programs. But the after school programs were other leadership opportunities. There were other leadership project type type things run by either some of our staff or some outside volunteers.
[45:48] And then we’d also have other groups that would come in and use our space. So we had political groups that would rent our space. We had other. We had churches that would come rent our space.
[45:58] We had theater companies that would come rent our space. And then on the weekend, we had a church that leased it. We had a gym that ran out of that.
[46:06] And so in, in the nights we’d have people come and work out there. We would have, we threw plays, we threw TEDx events, we had. Should we had a presidential candidate come and, and do a Northern California presidential speech there.
[46:22] Right. So it’s just we wanted to get it operating 24 hours a day as much as possible to just be this educational hub for everybody, not just a school, four kids.
[46:34] That just changed the vibe of everything. But it also changes the financial situation.
[46:39] Kevin Choquette: Exactly. Which, which impacts the question of price.
[46:44] Matt Beaudrea: Yes, sir. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And so price, again, you have flexibility on how to do that.
[46:50] Obviously you open a campus in, you know, Manhattan and that looks a little different than if you’re in Coeur d’alene, Idaho.
[46:58] And we have them in both places. So part of it is taking into account, okay, what are the campuses near you? What are they doing? You know, and even though we’re not running a school campus, you can use the local private schools as somewhat of a gauge for tuition on what it could be, should be.
[47:16] But you got to take into account real estate prices. You got to take into account does the owner need to make anything? Does the owner going to be an owner, operator, what does that person need to do, you know, up front, can you, can you float and sliding scale sort of deal?
[47:32] You know, are there other ways to bring money in again like we were saying with those other operations, Are there ways to help the kids as they launch businesses pay.
[47:43] I had students that paid their own tuition based on the businesses they made while they were there. And the businesses they, not our campus like that, that helps.
[47:52] And then one of the things we are doing from an organizational standpoint is we’ve got multiple foundations as well.
[47:59] Those foundations exist to be able to help families. So we’ve got one campus, just got a $5 million piece of land donated full write off to the people that donated to the campus.
[48:12] And now we’ve got a $5 million piece of land that we can start to do some building on. That’s, that’s amazing. That helps a lot of families.
[48:19] We have people who donate specifically for scholarships for campus. You know, I this so far this year I think I’ve gotten to send out like 75, 80 grand worth of scholarships to families to be able to attend that wouldn’t normally be able to do so.
[48:34] And we’ve got our payment processing program which is, it’s a payment processor just like anything else, just like striper or PayPal, but it’s apogee pays and we don’t take money on that.
[48:46] Any business can utilize it.
[48:48] We don’t take money on it. The money that would normally be made on a margin for that goes into one of the foundations that goes directly to scholarships, and 100% of that money goes out.
[48:57] So it’s very multifaceted on how to pick a price, how to stay profitable, how to help the families.
[49:03] You know, ultimately, we want to make it all as accessible as humanly possible. Because again, you’re going against the religion of freedom.
[49:10] Kevin Choquette: Yeah. Right. So at the property, let’s go there. And we could also talk about Apogee as a whole. Actually, that might be more interesting. Let’s do the big picture. What’s most holding you guys back right now?
[49:23] Is it people? Is it scale? Is it capital? Is it finding students? Is it regulatory? Like, where’s the, where’s the wall that’s. That’s pushing on you?
[49:35] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, I mean, we’re growing ridiculously fast. So I hesitate to even answer it with the question frame that way. Just because of how fast we’re growing.
[49:44] Kevin Choquette: There isn’t much constraint.
[49:47] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah. I mean, because we’re. And, and really just because we understand the game a little bit and so we’ve done this for enough time to be able to go around the inherent constraints.
[49:57] Regulatory. There’s always constraints.
[50:01] You know, state to state is always constraints. Real estate is always a constraint. Finding a location is always, you know, the first or second hardest thing for any owner. So having the, the facilities and being able to pay for those, that’s.
[50:18] That’s probably the biggest hurdle.
[50:21] 1. But again, the religion of schooling and getting people to the mindset. Getting. It’s the mindset. Yeah. Of the country 100.
[50:30] So, you know, one of the things we’re doing to combat that too. And again, I just. Because I forgot to mention earlier, but by the end of this year, Apogee University accredited through Oxford and Cambridge and, and a trades route as well.
[50:42] That’ll all be signed, sealed, delivered. So just want people to see, hey, everything’s okay. Let’s start pouring into your kids again instead of playing this game.
[50:50] Kevin Choquette: Well, that. Let’s do the university thing. I didn’t know you were doing that, but one of the questions I thought of is kind of two parts. One, how did the universities look at these children?
[51:02] And two, how did these children look at the universities?
[51:06] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah, that, that is the better question because in my experience, they, they look at it as a tool if they know they need the tool. And so that’s, that’s One of the things that I love the most is that they’ll take a look at the university experience and go, is it needed for what I want to do?
[51:26] And that’s really what we should be doing now is looking at that and going, do I need it? Do I need the degree and do I need it? And if I do, great, where do I want to go?
[51:35] Not because a brand name theoretically is a better option, because it’s almost never the case. But what are some of the smaller, you know, liberal arts colleges that still, or the, the professors still get paid to actually educate and not just research and publish and, and how can I take advantage while I’m there to actually get a great education?
[51:53] Like that’s how they’re looking at it. And even that, you know, I’ve got students that send me, I got a student that sent me a text message, I don’t know, four or five days ago who goes to Vanderbilt and was like, this is an absolute joke.
[52:06] Kevin Choquette: Wow.
[52:06] Matt Beaudrea: You know, I get like, I understand, I get it. I get the joke. That’s hot. I get it. But he also understands why he’s there and what he’s doing and it makes sense for his chosen career path.
[52:16] Right? So that’s the best question is how do they look at the universities? But the other question, how do the universities look? College is a very easy game to play.
[52:25] Forget Apogee University, forget that I even said that is is going to be a thing.
[52:31] Just as it stands right now, getting into college is easy. Here’s one of the issues.
[52:38] Parents have this thing just like we talked about earlier. Oh my gosh. By 18 they have to know everything that there ever is to know, otherwise it doesn’t work. Right?
[52:46] Like, like there’s the same thing. If they don’t go right into this four year right out, oh my gosh, what are they going to do?
[52:53] That’s ridiculous.
[52:55] Hey, take a year off and by the way, take a year off and go, you know, work and then transfer in at 19 as a adult transfer. And you may be weighted more heavily than if you had come right out of school, like take a year off and all of a sudden it got easier to get.
[53:17] A lot of universities, all universities have the game that they’re playing. A lot of universities would rather have young people from an alternative program or from homeschool. A lot of universities even have a different application process for them where they accept a higher amount.
[53:34] Stanford was very much that way. You could only accept publicly the normal traditional method of applying. When I was there you could only accept 5% or less of the applicants, and that was 40, 000 applications coming in every year.
[53:48] Why could you only accept 5%? Well, because then you screw up your rankings for U. S news and world report if you go higher than nothing to do with, with them actually being able to be there or if they should be there.
[54:00] It had to do with that, that silly game. But I’ll tell you what, you didn’t have to count. You didn’t have to count the homeschool applications. You’d get 5,000 of those and you could take about, you know, 40%.
[54:11] And you actually just wanted to see an interesting young person.
[54:14] Every organization, meaning university, every one of them has a game that they’re playing. And so you just got to figure out, okay, what is the game they’re playing and how do I apply for that specific game if I really want to go there?
[54:26] And again, there’s thousands of colleges like just if you don’t get into one, you can apply to another. There’s so many ways to play the game. College is the silliest thing to worry about.
[54:36] I only worry that people blindly accept it and will pay exorbitant amounts of money and put their students in debt just for a four year degree. That doesn’t really mean anything because they’ve wasted the four or five years of their time.
[54:47] That’s the only worry. As far as getting in. It’s a cakewalk.
[54:50] Kevin Choquette: Huh, that’s interesting. Yeah. Four or five years of spending mom and dad’s money to have the party of your life and wasting your time.
[55:00] Matt Beaudrea: Yeah. And look, I understand, like you can make some good.
[55:04] You can make, you can learn a lot of. There’s a lot of social skills and you can make some. I get it, man, I get it. Also, what if you were really intentional about those four or five years?
[55:13] Would college be the part of that? I mean, for some people, the answer is no. Okay, cool. Then now what? You know, it’s just, it’s asking the question, man. I’m not anti college by any stretch of the imagination.
[55:23] I’m anti waste of time always.
[55:26] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, well, look, let’s take a break for a second. Not that all of this isn’t super personal. It seems like everything you’re doing is an expression of you yourself. And you’re clearly very passionate about this.
[55:38] But let’s flip the page and talk about maybe some of you outside of apogee, if that exists. It doesn’t really sound like it is, but we’ll take a quick break come right back.
[55:56] Thanks so much for listening to part one of my conversation with Matt Boudreau. Please listen on to part two or move into a bunch of Matt’s personal routines, habits and learn about some of his relationships that have gotten him here, as well as learn of resources for those who might be considering an alternative education path.
