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 part two of my conversation with Matt Boudreaux. If you haven’t already heard part one, please go back and give it a listen. We cover a mountain of material on the public education system and the mindset that Apogee employs as an alternative to that one size fits all education paradigm.
[01:07] I hope you enjoy part two.
[01:16] Welcome back, Matt. Yeah, so look on the, on the personal side, like, it seems like everything you’re, you’re doing is actually very personal. Um, but like, do you have a.
[01:29] This question seems almost odd given everything we just talked about, but do you have something that you think of as a give back? It seems like all that you’re doing is a give back to me, but I want to ask the question and just see how it lands for you.
[01:43] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, that’s. I was, I was wondering if you’re going to be like, but do you have a life right this chair. I had one of our guys in the Apogee men’s program was, man, what do you do for, you know, fun?
[01:54] I’m like, you guys are fun. Like, this is fun. This is fun to me.
[01:58] Yeah, the, the give back portion, it is depending on how we want to define that.
[02:04] I, I am roughly seven days a week right now with Apogee. And I do, you know, because we are building at such breakneck speed, I know that’s not sustainable or is, nor is that efficient.
[02:16] And we’re building our team so that I can focus on, on the things that I need to be able to focus on. And this entire mission does feel like a give back because it is a give back.
[02:26] You know, we, any of the money that comes in that can be used outside of operations does get used to, to give, you know, to give others. We’re very, the entire organization is philanthropic by nature and I want it to remain that way.
[02:41] Kevin Choquette: Are you guys technically a non profit?
[02:44] Matt Beaudreau: We have two non profit arms.
[02:46] Kevin Choquette: Okay.
[02:47] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, yeah. So the, the LLC itself is for profit, but we have the two non profit arms that we can funnel money through and, and to give back. So I Mean everything there is a give.
[02:58] You know, on the personal side, I run up. I know I don’t. That was, that was not true. I live on a farm. My wife runs the farm and, and my kids help run the farm.
[03:09] I just have to lift things every once in a while or chop things or saw things or kill things or, you know, that’s my role in it.
[03:17] But even with that, you know, we’re taking food and providing food to local restaurants and, you know, I want our entire life to be a give back really. So depending on how we’re defining that.
[03:30] Yeah, I think everything we do is that cool.
[03:32] Kevin Choquette: What’s one of the biggest personal challenges you might have had to overcome on this journey?
[03:39] Matt Beaudreau: Biggest personal challenge is it’s always has to do with people because we are doing all of this in a context of man. We believe in humans and we want them to believe in themselves.
[03:54] I have had to come to grips with. Sometimes you believe in somebody so much and you want so many good things for them and they will decide that they do not want it for themselves.
[04:07] And that is hard. That’s heartbreaking. And I took it personal for a very long time.
[04:14] I’ve just come to realize that’s it’s kind of the nature of humanity in some ways. And so the, one of the biggest struggles for me is, is not taking things personally when it comes, when it comes to that.
[04:26] Kevin Choquette: When you see like some self sabotage or somebody just.
[04:30] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, yep. It’s hard. You know, 100 it’s hard.
[04:34] And I don’t mean that in terms of like, I had the answers and they didn’t listen to my answers. And I’m not arrogant enough to believe that that’s, that’s the case ever, that that’s who I am.
[04:42] It’s just when there is a, a road map presented when it’s like, okay, what are the problems? These are the problems. Great, here we go. Here’s what the best people on the planet say and let me walk alongside you.
[04:54] And they eventually go, I just don’t want to do it anymore. And you’re like, okay, got it. And then they come back to you and go, but I’m still miserable.
[05:00] And you’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do now because you won’t, you know, just take one step. Like that’s hard.
[05:10] And you take that personally for sure.
[05:13] And that’s, you know, you see that with young people on campuses. You see it with their parents, you see it with the men in the women’s Pro. You just. We see it a lot.
[05:21] Kevin Choquette: So from my perspective, after a short conversation, you’re. You’re landing as, you know, curious, hardworking, passionate, clearly intelligent.
[05:32] What would you attribute some of the success that you’ve had?
[05:36] 2.
[05:38] Matt Beaudreau: First of all, thank you. That was very, very nice.
[05:41] The biggest amount of it is, is kind of a sick obsession, I think is a. Is a huge. Some people was. It’s a calling. Okay, maybe. And also it’s a sick obsession with.
[05:55] With having to try to make the world a better place. And I’ve got a sick obsession with trying to get things as close to perfect as possible because I know I would never nor any human would to perfect.
[06:08] So I think it’s that obsession piece and then it’s. Thankfully, I think as I’ve gotten, you know, it’s that age old thing of. As I continue to get older, I see just how unimportant I am.
[06:24] How people say you’re the best thing in the world. You’re not even close. People say you’re an idiot and you’re not even close. You’re just kind of in the middle there.
[06:31] And I’ve come to accept that more and really lean into that. And that’s just brought a whole lot more peace and I think the more peace of mind you have on things, things like that too, and the more you’re able to just serve and not have any expectation.
[06:43] Kevin Choquette: That seems very stoic.
[06:47] Matt Beaudreau: That’s an attempt to be, you know, again, it’s. It’s an attempt to, to have that. More importantly, it’s an attempt to fuel that.
[06:56] And I don’t pretend like I had that perfectly because there are still some days where I’m like, what? That’s a. Okay.
[07:00] Kevin Choquette: Right.
[07:02] Matt Beaudreau: You know, like. But you know, I’m hopeful that that continues in that trajectory because we can just keep building that way.
[07:09] Kevin Choquette: I dig it. That seems like a less painful way to be.
[07:15] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, that’s. That’s probably the best way to put it. Yeah, it’s just. It’s less painful. It’s not not painful. It’s less painful.
[07:23] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[07:24] How about failure? I mean for me, I’ve clearly had, you know, some pretty epic like even short lived things where you’re like wow, that was really stupid. Or more long lived things where I’m like, really?
[07:38] I did that for long.
[07:41] But they’ve all taught me things, right? Like the experience. Experiences what you get, what you didn’t get, what you expected.
[07:48] Any failures of yours that, that you have found to be highly instructive and perhaps A favorite failure.
[07:56] Matt Beaudreau: Oh, gosh. It’s a. That’s a great question. I can name a number of failures that have always led to. So, you know, I. I like to cut.
[08:05] I use the metaphor of. Of dating. Right. So many bad relationships and relationships that went sideways a lot of times because of my own doing.
[08:14] But it made it very clear when I did meet my wife, like, oh, yeah, okay, this. I remember my. My sister going, you know, that this is never going to work.
[08:24] First time she met my wife.
[08:25] Kevin Choquette: Perfect.
[08:26] Matt Beaudreau: She goes, this that. She goes, yeah. She goes, you know, this is never going to work. I said, okay. She goes, look at all the other people you’ve been dating. Like, look at all my friends that you dated.
[08:34] Look at all these. Like, look at all the. Like, look at all them. They’re nothing like her. And I’m like, like, huh? And none of those worked out. That’s why I think this one will.
[08:41] Right? Like, that’s the point.
[08:44] And so I think from a.
[08:47] A million different places, like about public speaking, which, again, that’s how I took care of my family predominantly. I. I try not to take anything from the education side that I don’t have to.
[08:56] To cover any bills. And so many bombs, you know, on stage, just bombing in front of thousands of people. I remember losing my train of thought in San Diego for, you know, it was like 1500 people, and it wasn biggest crowd by any stretch that I’d ever been in front of.
[09:12] But for whatever reason, I just wasn’t feeling good. I remember getting super dizzy on stage, and there was just a period of time where I just blacked out, standing in front of all these people who’d paid a lot of money for me to be there, you know, and that.
[09:26] That just informed how I traveled from there on out and what preparation looked like from there on out. Same thing on the business side, you know, I launched a campus, but we lost a lot of families early on because I didn’t understand the balance of bringing the parents along and the difference between bringing the parents along and giving them carte blanche.
[09:50] And so I would swing the pendulum too far both ways. And both times of like, nope, this is my place versus, yeah, whatever you think, like, both times we lost.
[10:00] We lost families. And so I got better as I opened campus number two at going, here are the boundaries, here’s the mission, and here’s how we can all play within the boundaries, myself included, you know, so that first campus, luckily still ended up thriving and being a success alt.
[10:16] But it went through iterations where I’M like, ooh, are we gonna. Are we gonna survive this? And so that’s probably my favorite failure because that, you know, and I would say that’s two failures because we had two big exodus moments.
[10:29] But that really helped inform how to do it. Well, that campus is still thriving again. It turned into Campus two, Campus three.
[10:36] And now getting to help, you know, hundreds.
[10:38] Kevin Choquette: Right on.
[10:40] Who’s helped you along the way? Like, who’s been a real instrumental?
[10:45] Like, I don’t know if Seth Godin is or not. You mentioned his name, but I know he’s got some similar philosophies around changing the educational paradigm. But I wonder who you might have run into along the way that has been transformative or kind of really elevated for you to, you know, from where you were to where you are.
[11:06] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, Seth has been. I mean, Seth. Seth is great. He’s not somebody I speak to regularly, but every time I’ve reached out, he’s had some words of wisdom to share. So he’s been, you know, he’s been great.
[11:17] I’ve. I’ve leaned into a lot of the guys that have helped me along the way. I don’t even know personally. Naval Ravikant, again, somebody I mentioned earlier. He’s helped me a ton.
[11:24] I don’t know him personally. I’ve never met him personally.
[11:27] I’ve got the, you know, the cliche answer of talking about the fact that my wife has held down, you know, I think we’re in.
[11:35] See, we’re married 16 years together 19. This is house number nine or 10 for us, and, you know, second state. And. And so she’s, you know, now we’re running a farm.
[11:47] Like, she holds things down no matter what I’ve got going on. There were times where I was at 200 flights a year, you know, doing 70 keynotes around the country while building campuses when I home.
[11:59] And so she really has held things together and held things down for us in a way that none of this would be possible if she had not. So from a real, true, practical standpoint, she’s the number one.
[12:11] But, you know, the way we’ve built this out with our mentors and our mentorship programs, I get poured into every single week. So the more I’m giving back to our community by running these mentor calls, I’m getting the wisdom from good humans every week, multiple times a week.
[12:30] That has helped sustain me as much as anything else. It really has, because I can. I can find the wisdom I need when I need it, from the person I need it to and then.
[12:39] And then I can, you know, go on to the next.
[12:44] Kevin Choquette: A virtuous feedback loop. Right. You get what you give.
[12:48] Matt Beaudreau: Very much so I. In my experience, you get more.
[12:53] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, that’s cool.
[12:55] Matt Beaudreau: Feel selfish. I mean, really. But you do. You get more.
[13:00] Kevin Choquette: Managing success. Right. So let’s go back to the early days. And, you know, you’re bouncing at a bar and, you know, you’re doing whatever you can to work hard and get through and make ends meet.
[13:14] And then at some point there’s an inflection. And there, you know, I think it was Tim Ferriss who had this analogy of, like, when you’re early in your career, you’re.
[13:26] You have, you know, you’re out on an island and you’ve got a bunch of glass bottles and you’re putting messages in and you’re. You’re sending them all out. And then one day, like, a bottle comes back, and then later on, like, there’s so many bottles washing up on the shore that you can’t even address them all, which is like, success.
[13:42] And I’m wondering how things have changed for you and how you manage. Like, you just said, you’re working seven days a week, but I can imagine there’s other aspects of that.
[13:52] How do you deal with.
[13:54] How do you respond to either tactically or emotionally? Like this change from, you know, young guy who’s a bar bouncer to what’s happening now?
[14:04] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, and that’s you. I like the way you framed it as far as tactically and emotionally, because it’s definitely both of those, you know, from a tactical standpoint.
[14:15] And we walk our. Our men and women through this kind of. This lead concept. Lead of what’s life or death? Like, what is only you can do, and it has to be done during the day.
[14:25] What can you eliminate out of your schedule altogether? What can you automate? What can you delegate? You know, we kind of take a look at that. So I’m continuously revising that.
[14:33] I’m definitely in that phase of where I, you know, I’ll kind of walk through that. I’ll gain my time back. And then I’m going, okay, what is the next thing I want to build?
[14:44] And then I’ll get myself to the point where it’s, you know, again, 200 text messages and 300 emails and. And, you know, 100 DMS, and that’s okay, cool. I need to reassess and go, okay, what is the life or death?
[14:55] What can I eliminate altogether? What can I automate? What can I delegate? So I’m Definitely at that kind of tipping point now where some of my meetings earlier today were around assigning more roles to more people that are ready and willing to help so they can take a lot of that time off the, you know, a lot of that off my plate and I can earn my time back from a tactical standpoint because I can’t get back.
[15:17] It’s impossible to get back to everybody as much as I want to get back to everybody on things. So I need to make sure there’s other people that can take that for me.
[15:24] Kevin Choquette: And what about the emotional part of either? Well, however that lands for you. And then, and then. Well, yeah, go. I’ve got to go ahead.
[15:32] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, no, I mean, I think the emotional part is the, that is the biggest part is knowing.
[15:37] Yeah, I gotta, I gotta have an element of self awareness, knowing how do I feel good. And how do I transition from work mat, which again, all of these are, everything is, you know, the buzzword is authentic.
[15:50] Right. Everything’s a real mat. But again, you and I even have become good friends. We’re not going to have the same relationship as I have with my wife and because that would be weird.
[16:00] And so, so I’ve got to show up as a different Matt. And then when I go with my kids, I show up as a different version of Matt. And by the way, it’s slightly different from all, with all three of my kids because they each need a little bit of a different thing, especially the difference between girls and boys.
[16:16] And then, you know, the men that I help mentor, they need me to show up as a different version of Matt. All of these are Matt, but they’re all a different version.
[16:25] So how quickly can I transition from one version to another and still maintain energy? Like that’s kind of the way I look at it. And if I’ve, if I’m losing energy, I either need to fix something with my schedule or take something off my plate.
[16:40] And so I’m consistently self assessing that way just to make sure I wake up every day pumped, go to bed every day spent, you know, and, and it’s efficient in between.
[16:51] Kevin Choquette: That’s cool. Now my question was nowhere near as beautiful as what you’re talking about. It’s just more the part, the emotional part of letting go. Right. Like you’re going, okay, like I’ve, I’ve got another level of, of busyness in my life and I’ve got to delegate this to some other people and have to trust that they’ve got the aptitude and skills and, and sort of wisdom to do this properly.
[17:19] And if not, then maybe they’ll come back to me and say, hey, I’ve got. Got a challenge here. Could you help me with this?
[17:25] Matt Beaudreau: Yes. That’s definitely been a process over time.
[17:28] That trust thing is hard until you realize that there was so much wisdom in all the people who came before you, who were like, hey, make sure you are working with people who are smarter than you.
[17:40] And then once you actually go, that’s a good thing. I don’t have to be the quote unquote boss that knows. No, I want people who are so much smarter and better than me that I can just help work.
[17:53] You know, I work for them and just hopefully give them some inspiration along the way that makes life a lot easier because then people that are taking things on, well, it just made it better.
[18:05] So then I can release that easily. Right? It made it better. I. I don’t. I’m not as good as them at that. Cool. Great.
[18:12] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw a visual a long time ago. It was a entrepreneurship class, and the guy put up an anchor on one side of the PowerPoint slide and a sail on the other side.
[18:24] And he’s like, these are your employees. Figure out which is which.
[18:33] Matt Beaudreau: That’s exactly.
[18:34] Kevin Choquette: Yeah. All right, so routines like, you just sort of said, hey, I’m waking up refreshed, I’m going to bed spent. What. What might you do to sharpen the saw or quiet your mind?
[18:44] And do you have anything that you do.
[18:49] You’ve been using the word religiously. I’m using it slightly different here religiously to kind of cultivate your own state of mind or well being.
[18:59] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, it’s. Consistency is always the thing in our household. So we all go to bed at the same time and get up every day at the same time seven days a week.
[19:07] We. Everybody in our family’s like, well, what about the weekends? Do you guys. Nope. Same. Literally the same. Like, we don’t change anything. Now, part of that, there’s a benefit of living on a farm, and there’s certain things that have to get done at certain times in certain seasons, and you can’t skip it because otherwise, you know, things like animals tend to die.
[19:23] Kevin Choquette: Right.
[19:24] Matt Beaudreau: So.
[19:25] So there’s some of that that is inherently just built in because of what we’ve chosen, but that consistency matters. So same time to bed, same time, you know, same time up.
[19:35] Because when I get up, I. I will go really straight to work while I’m. And that’s kind of my quiet time. I’ll go straight to the things that I can handle in the morning while I’m getting myself warm, walking on the walking treadmill, waking myself up, getting, you know, caught up on communication, all that kind of stuff.
[19:53] If I can knock those things out those first couple hours in the morning, then I’m. I’m able to tackle the priorities. I prioritize. My, you know, my schedule is quite literally down to the minute scheduled and, you know, 30 minute, hour, hour and a half blocks.
[20:08] But I’ll have it prioritized too. You know, this is number one, two and three. I don’t prioritize past that. If I get more than that done, awesome. I almost always do.
[20:17] But if something happens like lightning strikes and it drops a freaking tree on my property and I gotta go saw it off the. The fence, well, cool. I can go do that because I know I got number one done, you know, and so I’ll kind of prioritize that way.
[20:34] But we pre, we pre fill schedules, you know, all throughout the week with my entire family. It’s not just me, for me, it’s the entire family. So I know what everybody’s doing when they’re doing it.
[20:44] They know what I’m doing when I’m doing it. They know when we’re doing all these things together. We’ve got intentional time together in there.
[20:51] You know, the schedule is almost overly business and neurotic, but, man, that is the only thing that gives us freedom and peace of mind. So I wish it was sexier than that, but that’s the reality of it.
[21:02] Kevin Choquette: That’s cool.
[21:04] And then as far as just growth, I mean, you’re obviously in a growth mode. You are expressing yourself into the world and, and, you know, having your way with it, which is beautiful.
[21:14] But are there any inputs that you try to drive to yourself in terms of perhaps reading or, you know, what, like what, what is it that you do to feed it in.
[21:26] Matt Beaudreau: I appreciate, I appreciate that because our, our overall goal, you know, the river. Yes. I want Apogee to be. I want Apogee to be global. I want that to be a household name.
[21:35] I want, I have all of those, but I do not want. There is no part of me that needs to be the guy. I don’t need anybody to know who I am outside of the people that I live with here.
[21:46] These, these, you know, four humans that I live with, like, that’s it.
[21:51] And so everything is geared towards making everybody know what Apogee is and nobody knowing who I am. Like, that’s the whole thing. So I have that mindset already. But the personal side of that, we had our year one guy, our Apogee man, you know, as a.
[22:10] It’s a 12 month program.
[22:12] And so I went through all of year one with our very first class of guys. I was also, you know, I was leading them, but I was also doing all the projects, all the challenges, all the readings that they were doing this year.
[22:26] As of January 1, 2024, we had built out our second year for Apigee man at the request of a lot of our men. So currently, while doing all this, my personal growth is really rooted in going through all of year two with those guys.
[22:46] So I’m in those projects. New projects and challenges every month, new readings every month. I’m a voracious reader and, you know, we’ll read at least a book a week. So that is.
[22:56] And. And then hobby reading is translating Dead Sea Scrolls to the best of my ability.
[23:01] When I have the ability to do that on the weekend.
[23:03] Kevin Choquette: Wow, that’s interesting. That doesn’t seem like it’d be easy.
[23:08] Matt Beaudreau: It is not.
[23:09] Kevin Choquette: I am, I am.
[23:10] Matt Beaudreau: I am a good decade into it and still awful.
[23:13] Kevin Choquette: Wow.
[23:14] End of the day, what. What makes you feel relief? How do you kick up your feet and. And take a breath? It doesn’t sound like you do that frequently, but when you do, what’s that look like?
[23:23] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah, we. We don’t do it super frequently, but it is as weird as this sounds, it’s the evening chores, man. With my family, it’s the evening. Like we, we will always.
[23:32] I have meals with them. Every meal I will have with my family. Unless there’s a meeting that gets scheduled over the top, which is rare. I’ll have those meals. So I get those three resets.
[23:43] And then the family chores at night, you know, we all go outside together. Whether it’s rain and pouring or beautiful and sunshine and it doesn’t matter. Like, we’re out there working together.
[23:54] But that is my reset. That’s my time where nobody. Even though there’s things we are doing and there’s chores and there’s physical labor, it is the mental reset. Because I don’t have somebody saying they need something that sounds like work to me.
[24:08] That’s, you know, that’s.
[24:09] Kevin Choquette: You’re just outside doing your task.
[24:12] Matt Beaudreau: Yes, sir.
[24:12] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[24:12] Matt Beaudreau: Yep. And is that is the biggest mental reset for sure. And then, you know, there’s. We’ll come back in and I’ve got at least an hour. If I can build in more during the day, I do.
[24:22] But I have at least an hour to hang out with the kids on whatever they want to do, games, whatever, and then an hour with my. That last hour of the night is always with my wife, no matter what.
[24:31] Kevin Choquette: So very nice.
[24:33] So look, if I go back to your sort of, hey, I just had a college and now what do I do?
[24:42] That experience is not a whole lot unlike my experience of being like, okay, I’m a dad, I have a wife, I have a four year old and a six year old and I’ve got to make decisions about how to put them in a place where I believe they can be successful and well educated.
[25:04] And thank you for taking the time to do this with me. But for all the other people who might be in my shoes and looking at the public school system with a bit of skepticism and then looking at Apogee and going, just to put, as my friend says, put the **** on the table.
[25:21] Who the hell are these guys? Like, what would you recommend for them other than listening to something like this to kind of diligence and like, figure out, like, does the shoe fit?
[25:34] Like, am I in on. Is this something that’s calling to me or something that’s pushing me away?
[25:39] Matt Beaudreau: I love that, man. That’s a great question. Look, we’re not going to be a fit for everybody because not everybody’s going to. There’s going to be people that love their local public.
[25:45] That’s great, man. I’m not in the business of trying to convince anybody what I will ask people to do if they are interested in us. I think the website does a decent job.
[25:53] I think the documentary does a decent job. We’re not hard to find on podcasts and shows and I mean that’s. We’re not hard to find as far as like who we are, what we believe, how we show up.
[26:03] Tim and I are not hard to find. Tim, especially not hard to find.
[26:09] But I would say the better question is the thing you think you forget us. The thing you think you know, being schools because you went to school. That’s what’s kind of funny is all of us went to school.
[26:22] So we all think we know everything about it and how. Go dive into why it looks the way it does. Go dive in. No matter what you are thinking. I’m thinking homeschool.
[26:31] I’m thinking Apogee. I’m thinking, you know, Acton Academy. I’m thinking Montessori. I’m thinking, you know, this private school down the road, I’m thinking my government school is great. Go dive into the history of why we’ve done School, the way we’ve done it.
[26:45] Start there. John Taylor Goddo is always my go to recommendation. He was a brilliant human being, passed a few years back, was former New York State teacher of the year, foremost historian on the, on the history of schools.
[26:59] Go read Dumbing us Down. Go read Weapons of Mass Instruction. Go read Secret History underground, you know, underground History of American School. And go read anything and everything that you can find that he wrote.
[27:13] And then you’ll actually have, I think, the proper, the proper lenses to look through to make a decision that makes more sense for your family. Because it’s hard to make a decision when the things you’re choosing between, you don’t really know what the definition is of them.
[27:30] Kevin Choquette: You haven’t made the distinctions yet.
[27:32] Matt Beaudreau: That’s right.
[27:32] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[27:33] Matt Beaudreau: Yeah. So I say start there because then, because the thing you think you know the most is probably going to be government schools and almost guarantee it’s the thing you know the least.
[27:43] Kevin Choquette: Right on. Well, I very much appreciate you taking this time, Matt. The floor is yours for any sort of closing thought or comment. And you know, I know you’re super busy and I appreciate it.
[27:56] Thank you.
[27:58] Matt Beaudreau: No, I mean, I appreciate it. And I, you know, I get the honor of coming on a handful of shows usually every week. And I want to say publicly, you, you do a really good job.
[28:09] You do a really good job because you ask really good, insightful and important questions that show a lot of thought and that’s that in of itself. I want listeners to take away, you know, the quality of your life, really having something to do with the quality of questions you’re willing to ask, not just others, but the quality questions you’re willing to ask yourself.
[28:27] If you’re really willing to ask yourself hard questions and then, and then question those questions and dive into your beliefs. That’s what critical thinking actually is. So I encourage more people to do that.
[28:37] You do a great job of it, Kevin. And if anybody wants to know anything more about us, man, we’re easy to find. ApolloStrong.com is, is the first place to go.
[28:46] Check out the documentary if you feel so inclined. It’s about an hour long.
[28:49] You know, I’m not hard to find most places just at my name, most platforms or podcasts or whatever you want to check out. And Tim’s the same, so anyway, I can help.
[28:60] Just say the word.
[29:00] Kevin Choquette: Tim Kennedy is your partner?
[29:02] Matt Beaudreau: Yes, correct.
[29:03] Kevin Choquette: All right. Well, yeah, and thanks to all the listeners, those who have been listening for a while. You’re going to know this, this this podcast is called Offshoot for a reason, so we’re taking a different tack with Matt.
[29:17] And, Matt, thank you again. I very much appreciate the time.
[29:20] Matt Beaudreau: Honors my own brother.
[29:21] Kevin Choquette: All right, take care.
