Matt Beaudreau returns to share how his journey of becoming an education professional revealed the need to shift how kids are learning in order to foster curiosity and future growth. Listen in as Matt and I discuss how Matt’s academy is teaching kids multiple ways to find an answer, the meaning of “real-world responsibility” and what this kind of education is doing for our leaders of tomorrow.
Matt Beaudreau is the host of the Essential 11 Podcast. Through years of coaching, keynote speaking and educating, Matt knows the struggle of trying to navigate the world in the 21st century, especially for today’s youth. He created this podcast to offer valuable insight and advice, but don’t take it from him- take it from the successful people you already know.
Matt is also the founder of Acton Academy Placer. Utilizing and prioritizing the Socratic method, they encourage freedom of thought in all individuals, with an emphasis on teaching students how to think for themselves rather than what to think.
You can connect with Matt on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-beaudreau-071a5b99/
Episode Transcript:
00:26
In this episode of Acta Non Verba, we hear part two of my interview with Matt Beaudreau, host of the Essential Eleven podcast and founder of Acton Academy Placer. In part one.
00:55
Matt discussed the generational communication gap and how mentorship can strengthen our future workforce. Matt and I also explore the division between generations, how to help youth identify their personal superpowers, and the key things that we need to focus on as leaders to set up our younger generation to succeed. You can hear part one on episode 46 of Okta Non-Verba. In part two, Matt returns to share his journey of becoming an educational professional.
01:22
and the need that this revealed to shift how kids are learning in order to foster curiosity and future growth. Matt and I also discuss how Matt’s Academy is teaching kids multiple ways to find an answer, the meaning of real-world responsibility, and what this kind of education is doing for our leaders of tomorrow. You can find out more about Matt and his mission with Acton at actonplacer.com, that’s spelled A-C- And now part two of my interview with Matt Bodro. Please enjoy.
01:52
And I was looking at the curriculum. I was looking at the books that you were teaching from. Yeah. With Apogee. Yeah. It was so powerful because these are books that I’m giving to my CEOs or I’m teaching them. I’m like, remember in this book, they talk about this, this and this. So that is such a powerful, again, it gives these young minds a tremendous opportunity and you’re teaching them. You have reading requirements every week. So how many people do we know that’s like, Oh, I read three books a month. It’s like, okay, tell me the last two you read.
02:22
I read this in this, tell me the three big things you took from it. It was really good. It’s like, no, you’re not absorbing any of that. That’s it. That’s exactly right. You’re just pushing it down. Like it’s a buffet. You’re forgetting about it. You’re not using it. You’re literally wasting your time. Bruce Lee says, I don’t fear the man that knows 10,000 techniques. I fear the one that knows one technique, but it has done it 10,000 times. So give them those dozen of books and they just continue. Just like we were talking today, how these overlapping principles dovetail.
02:51
over and over again. And it’s like, listen, they may say it like this, they may say it in this language, they may say it in this audience, but philosophy and truth are just based on that moment in time. So what they were saying in Stoicism, which is in Greece at that time, but again, we see it in other religions, other philosophies, whether it be in Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, whatever it is, it’s there. But the idea, and I love how you’re teaching them to think, because to me,
03:16
The thing that I see so many people do is they have a hard time absorbing truth, irrespective of source. So if it’s a person that’s on this side of the political arena, they’re like, I could give them the quote and I’m like, do you agree with that? Yeah, I agree with that. Well, someone said, no, I don’t like it now. And it’s like, no, just absorb what’s there. And as you were mentioning earlier in the conversation, people are going to disagree with you and that’s fine. One, we don’t have to hate that person for disagreeing with us. If you and I sat down, we’re great friends. If you and I sat down with a list of things,
03:45
Eventually there would be something on that list where you’re like, you know what? I am minimally against that. And I was like, you know what? I don’t agree with you. That’s right. It’ll happen with my wife. It’ll happen eventually. Right? I mean, that’s the person that I’m closest to on the planet. We know each other well enough to know what those one or two things are at this point. And it’s just, it is what is at some point, every human being on the planet will disagree with you about something. So do you just not talk to anybody? It doesn’t make any sense, dude. It doesn’t make any sense. And you’re exactly right.
04:14
And I want people to understand how prevalent it is. The concept of what you just talked about with, we know that the messenger matters and you want credibility behind somebody who is making a comment. Like I get that the messenger does matter, but you also need to be able to judge the message based on the value of the message itself too. You’ve got to weigh the evidence of the message itself to decide if that message has value. You talked about people, okay, if I hear this quote, yeah, I agree with it. Wait, that person said it. Well, then no.
04:44
my friend Will Witt. Are you familiar with Will Witt at all? And are you from a PragerU, like Dennis Prager? I am. I’m familiar with that, but I’m not familiar with Will Witt. I need to be. So Will is this young, sharp young guy and he works for Dennis and does a lot of PragerU’s videos. So Will will go out to college campuses. He’s this young, feathery haired young buck, right? Good looking young guy. Love you, Will. Good dude. Super sharp kid. And so he’ll go out and have conversations with a lot of these people on college campuses and he’ll go look.
05:13
Here is this quote right here and it’s from Donald Trump and it’s this and this. What do you think? And these people are like, how dare he? He only says that because he’s a monster. He’s a white supremacist. He’s this and that. And he’s like, okay, cool. Oh wait, by the way, sorry, that was Barack Obama that said that. And wait, that was what? Now how do you feel about that? They weren’t looking at the message itself and having an actual thought. Around the message. It was all about the messenger.
05:42
And we see that far too often. I will blindly agree with this person and I will blindly disagree with this person. Both of those are equally dangerous and we want people to get away from that. Including everything, I know I talk to teachers, man. It’s like everything I say about this whole educational system that you’re in, this system of schooling, go look it up for yourself, man. Yeah, I mean, don’t take anything that I say as truth or even Buddha’s was like, listen, don’t agree with anything I say if it doesn’t.
06:11
make sense to you. We all have this philosophical filter, whatever it is, where some people resonate with us because either it offends us or it strikes so hard because it’s so true. We don’t want to unpack it or that it’s just something that is so obvious that maybe for whatever reason, it was just sort of going over our heads or you were talking about unlearning. Some of the things that we learn, I don’t want to say at our age, but as we’ve gone through life
06:40
didn’t know this, it’s just that I lost sight of it because of the distance or because I was focusing on the wrong thing. And I was justifying, I was using rational lies to not have to worry about these things like integrity, these things like humility, these things like honor and telling the truth. It’s very easy to get caught up in that. And that’s why I love what you’re talking about. I don’t know if you can explain it. It may just be your innate intelligence, the nature versus nurture.
07:07
You were saying even when you were going through college, there was a point where you were homeless and you would not take money from your parents. Why were you so against that and what made you have that sort of integrity throughout your life? Because again, that’s a true test of adversity and under adversity, most people are good until they think nobody’s looking around and they’re like, ah, you know what, I’m not going to pick up this piece of trash or whatever I should be doing. Again, it’s kind of that nature versus nurture thing. So we mentioned this when we were talking earlier with the young men.
07:35
from Apogee, I kind of mentioned a little bit about this story, but it’s something that really stuck with me. You know, martial arts was something I started at a very early age. And I started when I was five and it was taekwondo, you know, was the thing that was my first one too. Yeah, because it was everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, man. It was everywhere. So right down the street. And so I started Taekwondo and I attribute that to John Claude Van Damme and Bruce Lee and all those guys. I’m just watching the movies as a young kid going, okay, well, this is rad, right? Like I got to do this. Started Taekwondo and then
08:01
I got to be about 10, the world heavyweight kickboxing champion at that time, a man named Dennis Alexio. I was from my hometown. If you ever seen the movie kickboxer, Dennis Alexio plays John Claude Van Damme’s brother in that movie, right? So Dennis is from my hometown, went to the same high school. And so he started coaching a couple of us as far as kickboxing. So I already had experience in Tae Kwon Do so I could use my feet and I could move a little bit. And so kickboxing was something that at that point was a natural progression. And so I ended up being
08:29
pretty good and had the best kickboxer in the world was training us. So the whole concept to me of wanting to be, I didn’t know why, but I wanted to be tough. And I think that’s an innate thing for young men, right? Is we want to be seen as strong. We want to have other men respect us. When I talked to my friend Jack Donovan about who you are in the tribe and he writes about the way of man, he’s writing about who you are in the tribe and your desire for respect from these other men.
08:55
So even at that young age, my dad, of course, was the guy at that point that I really wanted him to think I was tough because my dad was undoubtedly a tough guy. My dad was not a good human being. He is not a good human being. I remember seeing my dad with stab wounds when I was a little kid and understanding that he had pushing through all that. I could see my dad working out and I could see like my dad was a savage dude. And so I wanted him to see me as a tough guy too. So I’m kickboxing and I end up breaking my arm pretty badly in a fight.
09:22
And my dad slides in the ring and I start panicking and kind of screaming. Cause I had just broken my arm cleanly in two places. He smacked me across the face and he’s like, to get me to stop. And then he’s like, now’s your chance to show that you’re really a tough guy. Cause this is when it hurts more than it’s ever hurt before. And I’m going, okay, yeah, you’re right. So I calmed myself down and we had to drive a while to get to a doctor and they reset my broken arm with.
09:47
broken in two different places. It looked like a Z. They reset it without putting me under as an 11 year old kid, which was far worse than the break itself. Right. But it was, I’m going to grit down and I’m going to show myself now, whether that’s abusive, whether that’s the right thing to do the wrong thing. That’s besides the point. The point is at that point I realized, okay, man, I can push myself through some things and that him saying, look, now is your chance because now is when it hurts. Now is your chance to
10:17
prove that you’re the tough guy. At that point, I wanted to prove it to him, but eventually that grew into I just wanted to prove it to myself. And so at 17, there was a little bit of me that wanted to prove it to him too, because he and I had already kind of started to have the faltering relationship at that point, right? Because I’m becoming a man. So we’re having that, you know, and I’m realizing, hey, man, there’s, you’re doing some things that are just not integrists and you’re not okay. So I wanted to prove to him, I can go live on my own, but I also wanted to prove it to myself. And so it was that dichotomy.
10:44
I’m going to put myself through college and I’m going to work three jobs. I’m going to live on my own. I’m not going to take any more money from my parents. And there was a little bit of stubbornness and for sure there was ego at that point, for sure. Cause I’m a punk kid at 17. And so there’s ego, man. Of course I’m going to show you, I can do it. And so when it came to the point where I was 20, it was I had put down a whole big chunk for school to try to get this part completed, but ended up losing one of the three jobs that I had just because the business shut down.
11:14
I was in a tough spot, man. And so I lived in the car for a few months, but there was no, I wasn’t gonna tell my mom cause I didn’t want to break her heart. And I wasn’t gonna talk to my dad cause I wasn’t gonna admit that I needed his help. And so I had to go back to that part of my head where it’s like, man, okay, show it now, show it. You’re all about running your mouth about it, show it. Because you have no integrity if you can’t show what you’re talking about. And so that’s definitely defining.
11:39
moment for me. So the arm break, the homelessness, I mean, both of those things are things that I can go back to and go, man, okay, I can get through whatever. That was your gift of adversity. You learned that true resilience. Very much a gift. So thankful for both those things. This is always a difficult question, but what is it that allows a person to do what you did where they go through that sort of hardship, they faced genuine adversity over and over and then they get stronger from it while we have other people that will go through hardship, adversity.
12:07
trauma, whatever it is, and they just stay stuck there. And then that becomes their identity. That becomes their existence. This happens to them from their 25. And then they just repeat that cycle until they, they’re 75 and they just die. What is it that separates that? I think the majority of people repeat that cycle, right? Yeah, the quiet desperation. Yeah, that’s exactly right. The only thing I can think of is that it’s a perspective thing. And I looked at those as opportunities to
12:34
push myself to the level of some of my heroes and some of the people that I wanted to be. And I think that’s part of that hero’s journey was you find those mentors, right? We talk about that cycle and finding those mentors. For me, the desire to show myself as strong for those mentors, whether I knew the mentors or not personally, desire to show myself as that, to become what I thought of them as being. It’s simply…
13:04
outweighed the alternative. And I really think that was it. So that was always my perspective was that this was going to be a gift and fighting through this is going to be another experience that I can collect that is going to catapult me into an arena that nobody else is playing in. And again, that was kind of an innate understanding that I had. I would go back to that Braveheart thing and be like, Hey man, not everybody truly lives. Well, wait till I come out on the other side of this and tell my story.
13:32
at some point about being homeless, wait till I tell my story about turning down the secret service job right before graduation and then literally having no job at that point and having to figure out again, like now what, now what do I do? It was that perspective. I wanted to live up to that ideal that I had placed in my mind and I wasn’t going to let that go. And there was no wavering on that. And I don’t know why other than that had always been my perspective. That’s kind of the way I felt about it. And then even what you’re describing, you had that beautiful culmination of
14:03
the integrity, the male role model, the intelligence and the emotional awareness to say, okay, this is what I want to gain from this. But I also don’t want to do this other bad that this person’s doing because for me, for example, on one side of my family, there was a lot of alcoholism and I’ve never been drunk a day in my life. I was a bartender in Atlanta for a long time and people are just blown away by that. And at a young age, seeing what alcohol can do to people, seeing the fights it creates, seeing the destruction within it, you have a decision.
14:32
early to say, this is the model, this is my impression, and this is what I’m going to do, or I’m never going to do that. I’m not going to do what this person did. And now this propels me to go the complete opposite, which again, ironically runs you towards the very thing that you should be doing. Yeah, that you should be doing. And I think that early onset of taking on that mentality is a huge help too. And I think that was a big part for me that I started developing that early.
14:57
There was the early, okay, I want to show myself as being what I’m saying that I’m being, right? I want to say that I’m a tough guy, so I better show myself as that. So there’s that early foundational integrity. I could see my dad as almost like this anti-hero. I knew I didn’t want to be like him. I had seen the same kind of things of the drinking and the rage and all that stuff. So same as you, man. I’m in my 40s. I’ve never even had a drink. And I worked at a bar as well. So a lot of parallels on that. But I think developing that early, I think is also…
15:25
probably part of the reason that I’ve taken that into perpetuity because that is something that I’ve seen as part of my identity for so long. There’s a difference between saying I’m somebody that doesn’t eat meat. By the way, I pretty much only eat meat. There’s a difference between saying I’m somebody that doesn’t eat meat and somebody saying I’m a vegan. One is like their identity is that. Not here’s what I do because it gives me the out of well, sometimes I will right? No.
15:55
I’m a vegan, right? Like that’s an identity. So for me, developing that identity early matter, I’m somebody that follows through. I’m somebody with this integrity. I’m somebody that says what they mean, means what they say. And I’m going to fight through, like I developed that so early that I think I didn’t want to let that go. And that’s again, why it’s so important for me to work with the younger generation. I believe very strongly in what Frederick Douglas said about it being
16:23
much easier to build strong kids than it is to fix broken men. So much easier for me to build that foundation for young man who’s 12, 13, and hasn’t been super conditioned by the world and his circumstances. And it is for me to go change the behaviors and thought process of a 50 year old man. It’s just vastly different. Absolutely agree. And what you’re doing is you’re giving them that warrior code. You’re getting them that culture, but you’re also balancing it.
16:49
Sorry to use the word balance. I was talking about that now or the one I was like, balance doesn’t work. That’s it. I get it. But you’re counter acting that with this ability to have self-knowledge, to have empathy for themselves and for others. And for so many people, I was talking to Rich DeViney earlier this week. He wrote the attributes, incredible, incredible man. And he was saying how that people ask, they say, oh, when you see a person, Jaco or David Goggins, or even him as a seal.
17:17
People always want the loud, the explosiveness, the one-liner. What is that all about? And he’s like, well, it’s almost like you’re making a movie. They always want that explosive component that like attracts people or they want that one-liner. It’s like, there’s so much to it that they don’t understand that if they really got in and had a conversation with these people, they would understand that they are so multifaceted and there were so many layers there and you’re only fixating on this thing that puts them in this little box, it makes it easy for you to identify them and they don’t understand that there’s much more to.
17:47
Again, the multifacetedness of a warrior, of a Bushido, a Budo, of this code, of this idea that I have to be able to not only be able to defend myself or my country or somebody that can’t defend themselves with or without a weapon, I also have to have the ability to love this person or to feel that they feel shame here or to face those things on my own. Because if I can’t do that in someone else, it’s impossible for me to have it within myself, which again, eventually becomes a weakness, especially when you’re in the face of adversity. That’s when it all comes apart.
18:16
Yeah, we talk about being the savage and the gentleman, right? You got to be able to do both and you’re going to live your life the majority of time as that gentleman. You just have to have the ability to be that savage as well. Whether that again comes down to personal protection or protecting somebody else, or whether that’s a savage pursuit of your goals to things happen for yourself or those you love, but you’re going to live as a gentleman while you’re doing it. And you’ve got to have both sides and the best men, or I will say, I’ll say Jack Donovan makes kind of this distinction to men who are good at being men.
18:46
not just good men, but they’re good at being men, I think have the ability to toggle back and forth as needed, right? They can come forward and they can protect somebody and then go straight from protecting and having to possibly impose violence to straight to, ma’am, are you okay, right? And it’s, you’ve got to be able to toggle back and forth between those as quickly as you can. And I think good men are able to do that and live their life that way. Well, and I think that that takes a tremendous amount.
19:15
to unpack those things and to be able to have the capacity to understand that there is complexity, to understand that in this moment, this is the most important thing. But overall, if it’s a 20% savage versus the 80% gentleman, what’s the famous quote where there’s like, man, that is not dangerous is useless because there’s a difference. One of the books that I talk about is Thick-Faced Black Heart, and it was written by Chun-En Chu. She’s passed away. But the book is incredible because she says, there is a time.
19:44
turn the other cheek and then there’s a time to slap back twice so that you are never slapped again. And this understanding that so many people had this fame of humility, but it’s actually just masked cowardice because they are afraid to take action. They won’t ever slap back because they want to have this moral hierarchy. It’s like, no, you’re just afraid to do it. You’re afraid to slap back. You don’t have what it takes to do that.
20:12
Am I saying that you should do it all the time? No, but there is a time. And even people that I’ve met that are pacifists as you and I have, I have never seen a person that’s been attacked that just drops their hands and lets themselves get hurt. They always have the idea of bringing their hands up to defend themselves. And so as human beings, it’s within us. So everything that’s within us, every emotion that we’ve ever experienced, good or bad, is there for a reason. It’s not by accident, it’s intellectually designed. So to…
20:42
Act like that’s not there doesn’t help us. If anything else, it impedes our progress. It impedes our capacity because all these things, all these strengths have to have the weakness to allow us to, once they sort of leverage out a little bit, now everything can go up. Even with CEOs, even with people that say, oh, this is my edge, my aggression or my anxiety. And I don’t want to deal with these other buckets. But once they trust me and they realize, one, this is not sustainable.
21:09
Your blood pressure is out of control. You’re 30 pounds overweight. You can’t have a conversation with your wife. Your kids think you’re a stranger. Let’s work on these other things. Well, that’s gonna take away my edge. It’s like, give me six months. Let’s work on this. And I think you’ll find that as these things elevate, so goes everything else. And now it becomes something that is enjoyable, something that’s sustainable. And guess what? Now they’re in better shape. Then you get that phone call from the wife. It’s like, I don’t know what you did, but you brought my husband back to me. It’s like.
21:37
This is why you do it. This is why it’s all there. But again, the man in the arena or we’ve all seen guys in the fight, right. And they’re in the ring and it’s like, man, that guy’s dropping his hand. Why can’t he see that? Because we’re not in there. We don’t have the adrenaline. We don’t have the fear. We don’t have everything on the line. And then he gets caught. And then you show them the film. It’s like, Hey, you’re dropping your hand. It’s like, ah, how could I not have seen that? It’s like, because you were in it. The adrenaline’s dumped. It’s it’s there. And so when all of it’s on the line, you have to have that. And.
22:06
Like I told you guys today, the way that we conduct ourselves in the face of adversity is an indication of how we will conduct ourselves in every other capacity. But that’s why it’s a gift and that’s why we have to be willing to be uncomfortable. We have to be willing to say, it’s not going to be easy, but let’s be honest, if it were easy, we wouldn’t respect it. We wouldn’t value it. That’s where it comes in, right? That’s right. That’s exactly it. That’s why we look at Tom Brady and go, okay, we’ll use the goat. That’s why.
22:35
because he’s out there and he’s actually doing it. It wasn’t easy. So we have a massive amount of respect for it. And that’s why we don’t want easy for our young people as we develop these campuses that we’re developing. It’s always tell these guys like our students love actually being on campus. Like they get, we’re on break right now and they actually get bummed out when we go to break, which is cool, right? Like it’s cool that they actually all wanna be there. That’s awesome. But I always still tell them like, we have no desire for this, especially I tell our launch pad, which is our high school.
23:03
Got no desire for this to be the best four years of your life. If high school is the best four years of your life, you suck at life. That’s just the way it is. We have every desire for you to learn so much about yourself during those four years that you can now go out and create the life that you want to create for yourself, create a life that you like Seth says, you don’t need a vacation. That is it, but you’re not going to get that without the hardship and the adversity during that time. So we want to scaffold.
23:27
that’s what we’re doing is kind of scaffolding experiences. We’re not playing school or scaffolding experiences for them to come out with that self-awareness and self-confidence. That’s the curriculum. I hate that word, but that’s the curriculum, right? Self-awareness and self-confidence. It’s that. But they come out with that. Anything else, they can figure that out. Like we were talking about on your show earlier, how it’s this idea that having a compelling why is powerful. But if we don’t have self-knowledge, if we don’t know that, so
23:56
It doesn’t matter. I can chase after somebody else’s dream all day. Eventually I’ll get burned out. And it does sound kind of cheesy or kind of kumbaya where it’s like, Oh, if it’s something you love, you’ll always work for it. But it is the reality. I mean, just like with what you’re doing or what I’m doing, it had to be something where it was like, there is no other choice. I don’t like that there’s no other choice, but when there’s no other choice, the choice is simple. That’s it. You got a kid that you got to feed. Some days it’s hard and some days you’re tired, but you’re not going to not do it. You’re going to go take care of your kid and you’re going to go feed your kids. It’s the same thing.
24:25
There was no other alter, like this is what is going to get done. Period. That’s where it comes into play in the education system that we see so much of. What is the biggest misconception? Do you believe? And then I suppose that what you’re doing is the antithesis, this obviously antithesis. You’re exactly right. Yeah. The biggest misconception is around academics being the save all. And when I say that is it’s we’re around this early and often kind of thing, right? We got to teach.
24:53
two year olds need to have math and they need to be in a preschool that’s teaching them to read when they’re 18 months. Otherwise they’ll never be ready for college. Right. And so I don’t remember who said it, but I agree fully. Somebody said we’re only a generation away. If we were to send young people to school at six months of age, we would only be one generation removed before everybody thought you had to go to school to learn to walk.
25:16
And I think that’s very, very powerful. And I fully agree. Like we would think, Oh my gosh, they’re never going to learn to walk unless they go to school right now. And that’s just not how human beings actually work. It’s not how we develop. So there’s this pervasive thought that academia is what’s going to save everything. You start early, you do it, hit it hard. You hit it often, especially math reading and science, even though I don’t know what that means. You need those.
25:39
And then you need to do it for 16 years and this, and as long as you do that, and you put academia on this pedestal, well, then life is going to turn out. Okay. And we’ve completely flipped that on its head. Academics has a part in what we do for sure, but it is not the pinnacle that it’s not the goal. It’s a byproduct of doing it’s a byproduct of creating. My daughter doesn’t sit down and do math.
26:03
worksheets to learn math, but when she’s creating a restaurant and creating a menu and she’s sourcing out what it would take to create this restaurant and she’s making a 3D model of it, she’s doing it in CAD first and she’s doing a 3D print and then she’s building it out of foam and she’s measuring all of these and then creating the menu and pricing out all this food and running a P&L for this restaurant and deciding when she’s going to get to break even. I don’t care that she’s not memorizing math facts. She thinks this is rad and she’s
26:33
doing something that’s real work, it’s work that matters. And by the way, the academic stuff comes out of it. That’s the difference between us. Traditional school, my son is five and wants to get into Jiu-Jitsu. Traditional school would say, cool, if you wanna be good at Jiu-Jitsu, here’s what you need to do. I’m gonna strap you to this desk. I’m gonna teach you all the different moves and memorize all the different moves that could happen in Jiu-Jitsu. And I’m gonna let you watch this film.
27:00
about Jiu-Jitsu and then we’re going to memorize all the different guys that have ever done Jiu-Jitsu and all the different Naga World champs and all of the different black belts and different lineages of all this. And we’re going to like, we’re going to do all of these things. And then you’re going to make a trifold board around your favorite person in Jiu-Jitsu and you’re going to, right, you’re going to do all this. And we go, hey, you want to learn Jiu-Jitsu? Go do Jiu-Jitsu. Let’s get on the mat. Let’s sweat. That’s the difference. We’re not going to pretend academia informs everything else. We’re going to understand that.
27:30
Ready Aim Fire, it is fire aim ready. You’re going to do right now. You’re going to build a business right now and you’re going to learn and you’re going to fail because you’re going to make mistakes while you’re building this business and you’re going to have all these issues come up. But each one of those issues is going to now point you, it’s going to narrow your focus a little bit and start pointing you in a direction. And then by the end of all of that, you’re actually going to have a profitable business that you have now built. You’re going to learn all those things.
27:57
You’re going to have some academia that comes out of that, but you’re going to have that awareness and that confidence that we were talking about. That’s the biggest difference between school and what we do. It’s like in shooting, right? You’re going to walk it in. You’re like, oh, that’s where I was off the mark. I’m just going to read. Okay, here I now again with academia, we see that was the joke in some of the schools you go to. You’re like, if you’re teaching this class in business or whatever this is, if you’re telling me all these things and I can create this thing, why the hell aren’t you out there as a multimillionaire or scaling these seven figure?
28:27
Academia is the ultimate pyramid scheme. It is the ultimate pyramid scheme. That’s it. Why do you have to learn to write this essay in MLA format so that you can teach other people to write an essay in MLA format? That’s it. Like there’s no good reason to do that for anything other than playing academia, right? It is a pyramid scheme. That’s a reason that our network, the Acton network.
28:52
actually started from an MBA program first. It was an MBA program before it was ever any kind of K through 12. And so there’s still the Acton MBA program out in Texas. And if you look at the Acton MBA grads, I think it’s something like 64% five years out after graduation still own and operate their own business in a profitable fashion. You look at your Harvard’s, your Stanford’s, your MIT MBAs, the industry average is 4%.
29:22
we’ll be doing the same because they were taught by a bunch of academics that love to sit there and talk theory, but aren’t actually doing it. It’s a vastly different thing. It’s just expensive bloviation. They’re just pontificating to get each other. It’s a silly game and it’s frankly, it’s dangerous because the beauty of our country is we’ve had peace. The problem with our country is we’ve had peace. So it allows us the luxury of all these ideas that are not going to make sense in the real
29:52
Once they hit the litmus test of gravity of the real world, it falls apart. But unfortunately, because we’ve had generations of this, now we’re under the impression, oh, you don’t need to have this skillset. You don’t need to have the ability to have situational awareness. Something as simple as self-awareness has to create these things. So without that being there, it’s very easy to, what is the joke? It’s a, I’m an entrepreneur and I create, I’m creating this course on what?
30:21
telling people how to create courses. For sure. It’s for sure. The continual overflow of that. And it’s sad to see that. It’s that, man. It’s exactly that. I legitimately remember it brings back to being a young kid. And I remember seeing an ad in magazines. This is pre-internet. And it was so in the back of the magazine, you had all these ads. And if you want this, send a check to this address, and we will send you this, right? It was a guy in there saying, hey, I made millions of dollars placing ads.
30:50
And if you want to find out how send me a check for 20 bucks, and I’m going to tell you how, and you send him a check for 20 bucks. And he’s like, dude, I just make ads like that. And everybody, I just make ads that tell everybody to send me 20 bucks so I can tell them how to make millions of dollars. And I just put that in there and everybody sends me 20 bucks, right? Like that was it. It was the ultimate Ponzi scheme. And that was a real thing. And academia is a much more complex agenda driven version of exactly that.
31:20
I think that COVID, both of our businesses have exploded since last year because of this and because of what we’re experts in. It’s interesting also that I believe that the student loans are the next bubble, would you agree, where people are starting to understand why would you spend 50 or $100,000 to go to a school that is a glorified Zoom class? It makes no sense whatsoever. No, I would argue that even pre-COVID, we had already gotten to the point where spending all that money was not going to be worth it. There are ways to…
31:49
And again, unless you’re in a very specific industry that requires you from a legal standpoint to have a degree around something, that’s great. Go play the game. Even then, you’re wasting a lot of time and money and go get it for as cheap as you possibly can. Otherwise, yeah, it’s an inflated game. It’s a no-win deal. We’re going to see a lot come out of this. And that’s part of what my talk is. My next TEDx, it’s education post COVID-19, kind of the great reset for education.
32:18
And I think we’re going to see a lot of these universities close down. We’re going to see a lot of emerge. We’re going to see a shift where a lot of these universities have to allow for specialization programs versus actual degrees, right? Like I got a kinesiology degree. I did personally. And I remember having to take geography and geology. I don’t care about rocks, dude. I don’t care about rocks. I don’t do anything with rocks, right? But I had to take that and I had to pay a thousand dollars for that specific class. Why? What’s the deal? So.
32:48
you’re going to see more and more they’re going to start doing specials because they’re going to have to do all of those things that have survived. Because the reality is people can understand now, I can learn anything I want to without having to go sit in this class to learn that I can learn it for free. Then if I can understand how to go get employed or to go run my own thing without having to be a hundred thousand dollars in debt to start it off. Well, then why wouldn’t I do that? This whole situation has been an emperor has no closed moment for a number of reasons.
33:16
think that we’re beginning to see even more and more this idea that if you can provide something that’s not easily Google-able, if you can give something that even if there’s an answer out there to create the experience, to create what you’re creating, to create what I’m trying to create with the way that we speak, the services we provide, whatever the case may be, that’s what people need more of. But again, what does that take? Life experience. Life experience means that you’re not afraid to try and even if you’re at a 50% success rate, that means half of it’s, you’re still going to fall down.
33:46
I remember making this comment, you and I are old enough to where we had to walk across the gym floor at the prom to ask the girl to dance. And remember how long that walk was? It was like, Oh my God. And when you get shot down, it’s like a 25 mile ruck march back and you’re carrying this ruck of just shame with you. It’s just like everybody saw that. It’s like a rite of passage. But even now, as you were mentioning, if you swipe left, you swipe right, like all the leg work is done.
34:15
And then literally the first time you see this person, you can just be like, Hey, there’s like zero ability to even some of the business means that we see. If you can’t see that person face to face, if you can’t look them in the eye, if you can’t shake their hand, a lot of people, no matter how incredible they are, if they don’t have that simple. And again, how many courses do we see now? We’re about how to make friends and influence people and how to have charisma. It’s like, no, how about you just be present? How about you just talk to them? But in this environment, in this world,
34:42
It’s not necessary. It’s like, nah, take it or leave it if you want. You can, and if not, there’s somebody that’s going to have a course for $297. They’ll teach you how to pay attention and listen. And it’s crazy. And that’s part of the reason that one of our projects and one of our challenges with the Apogee and it’s something we do on campus as well. We start, we actually have morning meetings on campus. That’s how every studio starts. When I say studio, I mean like a mixed age group. So we have one studio that’s kind of five, six, seven year olds and another studio that’s kind of like eight through 12 or another studio, right? So we have those mixed age studios.
35:10
but they start their day with a morning meeting. And that meeting literally is sitting around in a circle. It’s gonna be used for the Socratic conversation, but they stand up. They look at the person next to them. They say, hey, good morning, Marcus. Marcus says, good morning, Matt. They look at each other in the eye, they shake hands, and then it goes around, right? And it’s getting back to some of those very, very basic things. And the yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma’am, no, ma’am, holding doors, getting back to some of those very basic things has impacted some of these young people in ways that they don’t even get.
35:37
And they’ve got, I’ve literally had a young man get a job offer because he said, yes, sir. And as somebody who came in, shook his hand, took them somewhere he wanted to go. And the guy was like, you would have thought I just introduced him to Jesus, right? If it was a 17 year old kid. And he’s just like, I don’t see that ever. I need that kid on my team. And he got a career level job offer straight from high school because it started there with literally a simple handshake. So getting back to those things and understanding the, that we still value that it’s huge. It’s so understated in it. It’s like an E skill.
36:08
You don’t need it until you need it. You don’t realize you need to learn how to swim until you’re in the water, but we don’t want to be that person that realizes while we’re sinking, Hey, you know, I should have, maybe I should have jumped in the water a couple of times and splash around. So true, sir. I could talk to you forever, but I want to be respectful of your time and our time, and I’m sure we’re going to have many more conversations in every other capacity. Where can we learn more about you, about what you’re doing? Where would you direct people? Matt Boudreau? I appreciate it, man.
36:34
places I get to pour into kids are through Acton Academy. So A-C-T-O-N Academy. And I always encourage people to go to ActonAcademy.org because they can go there and find out if there is anything in their area wherever they are around the world as we’re pushing this forward. So Acton Academy and then of course Apogee Strong is where I get to pour into the young men. So that’s A-P- That’s the mentorship program that Tim and I run. And then anything I do
37:01
on the personal side is under Matt Boudreau, just my name. IG is probably where I’m the most active, like you, IG and LinkedIn is probably where I get the most feedback. And then of course, the Essential 11 is our podcast outreach to him. We’ve had great guests like yourself and Seth Godin and Patrick, that David and Gary Vee and many more to come and the Bell brothers. And man, we just got so many just rad humans, man. And it’s so much, so much fun. So check that out too. And what he’s putting out, all the content that he puts out is quality. There’s no
37:31
It’s not superfluous. It’s not a bunch of fluff. It’s not just out there trying to see if you can gain the algorithm or whatever. So I have a lot of respect for that. And, and I’m the same way as like social media is an evil. It’s a necessary evil, but what you and I are trying to do, we don’t have the time or the compunction to go through and do that. And I’m not going to hire somebody to do it because there’s no way they can emulate my voice. So I would rather put quality stuff out, you know, a few times and get to work on the real stuff.
37:59
in between there as opposed to, oh, it’s like, what’s going to be this newest thing that I’m doing this like, man, if you have time to live on that, live on social media, you’re doing something wrong. Yeah, you’re not doing or you’re just not doing something. I have Sean Whalen on. I had a great conversation not too long ago and somebody gets on the DMs like, Oh, dude, I see why you had Sean on. You’re trying to be a new wave Sean and trying to get your followers and trying to go like, dude, I, okay, cool, man. Like I.
38:25
I have no desire to get to a certain follower count. I have no desire, like none of that means anything. I’m building the businesses that I’m building in the way that I’m building them, and none of that is on social media. So it is what it is, but again, I hear those things and it’s like, cool, there’s the man in the arena, but there’s gotta be the spectators in the arena too. And I know there’s a whole lot more spectators than there are combatants. And so I always just hear that from a spectator standpoint and wish that person nothing but the best because I truly mean it, and I hope everything works out for them.
38:55
is going to keep on rolling. Yeah. The loudest boos always come from the cheapest seeds. There is no doubt. No doubt. All right, my brother. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. I will talk to you soon. Can’t wait. Have a good one, all right? You too, sir. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
