#99. Leading a Sovereign Household with Integrity and Intentionality – Matt Beaudreau

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Today’s guest is Matt Beaudreau.

We go deep talking about:

  • The need to fully understand what it means to be a father figure
  • Being intentionally consistent and clear on who you are as a family unit
  • Why as parents we need to achieve our own goals and live a good life with integrity
  • Making sure you’re not falling into the trap of parenting based on cultural expectations or the fear of what others think of you
  • Being able to admit when you’ve made a mistake and being specific about what you’re sorry about when you are
  • Making sure our kids understand the correlation between responsibility and freedom
  • Why dads need to find a tribe or a community for their sons as they are still growing
  • Home education and raising dragon slayers


As a Keynote Speaker, Consultant, and Coach to organizations around the world, Matt Beaudreau’s clients have ranged from Wells Fargo, Honeywell, and Lockheed Martin to American Eagle, Cedars-Sinai and the United States Air Force.

Matt has a reputation as a provocative thought leader in educational and personal development practices. He is a two-time featured TEDx speaker and he was named Corporate Trainer of the Year at Stanford University, having spoken to over 250,000 people across the world.

In 2017, Matt Beaudreau Founded Acton Academy Placer; a school that utilizes the Socratic method, with an emphasis on self-direction and cultivating confident, independent young people with a strong sense of character and personal responsibility. He has since helped to open multiple campuses around the world.

Pulling from his experience in the Acton model, in January of 2021, Matt co-founded Apogee Strong with Tim Kennedy, a mentorship program designed for young men from 12 to 22 to take on challenges presented by men who have come before them, in order to learn to lead. It is a right of passage through mentorship, action, and self-discovery so that young men can become true leaders.

His podcast, The Essential 11, is also geared towards emerging leaders, garnering advice from the world’s leaders in business, sports, music and entertainment.

Find Matt online at:
https://www.instagram.com/mattbeaudreau/
https://apogeestrong.com/
https://www.actonacademy.org/

Resources mentioned:
Apogeestrong.com
actonacademy.org
Collaborative Homeschooling

Curt Storring 0:00

Welcome to the Dad Work Podcast. My name is Curt Storring, your host and the founder of data work. My guest today is Matt Beaudreau. And the title of this episode is leading a sovereign household with integrity and intentionality. This was an excellent conversation guys I'm so pumped to have Matt on I've really been inspired by what he's been doing in the world for young heroes, as he would call it. We go deep today talking about the need to fully understand what it means to be a father figure, being intentionally consistent and clear on who you guys are as a family unit. Why as parents we need to achieve our own goals and live a good life with integrity, making sure you're not falling into the trap of parenting based on cultural expectations, or the fear of what others might think of you. Being able to admit when you've made a mistake and being specific about what you're sorry about when you are making sure our kids understand the correlation between responsibility and freedom. Why dads need to find a tribe or community for their sons as they're still growing and home education and raising dragon slayers as a keynote speaker, consultant and coach to organizations around the world, Matt Boudreau, his clients have ranged from Wells Fargo, Honeywell and Lockheed Martin to American Eagle, Cedars Sinai and the United States Air Force. Man has a reputation as a provocative thought leader in educational and personal development practices. He's a two time featured TEDx speaker and he was named corporate trainer of the year at Stanford University, having spoken to over 250,000 people across the world. In 2017. Matt Boudreau founded Acton Academy place or a school that utilizes the Socratic method with an emphasis on self direction and cultivating confident, independent young people with a strong sense of character and personal responsibility. He has since helped to open multiple campuses around the world, pulling from his experience in the Acton model. In January of 2021, Matt co founded Apogee Strong with Tim Kennedy, a mentorship program designed for young men from 12 to 22. To take on challenges presented by men who have come before them in order to learn to lead. It is a rite of passage through mentorship, action and self discovery so that young men can become true leaders. His podcast, the essential 11 is also geared toward emerging leaders, garnering advice from the world's leaders in business, sports, music and entertainment. You can find that online where I follow him most, which is Matt Beaudreau, on Instagram that's MATT BEAUDREAU. You can also find them online apogeestrong.com, that's APOGEESTRONG.COM, or actonacademy.org. And of course, you can find all the notes and all the links relevant to this episode in the show notes at DadWork/Podcasts, check them out there, guys, this is fantastic. I really, really appreciate Matt coming on and sharing this wisdom with us. I had a ton of fun. And this was one of the ones where I learned a lot personally. And those are always my favorite episodes. So Matt was actually instrumental in me feeling confident enough to homeschool our kids moving forward this year. So you're gonna learn a lot from this whether or not you're homeschooling, this is a fantastic episode, make sure to leave a review if you have a few seconds on Apple or Spotify. I would very much appreciate that as a personal favor. This helps more men listen to this because obviously it helps the algorithm and that's just the way the world works. So if you want to help spread the word, please leave us a quick review on Spotify or Apple and with that, we will welcome today's guest Matt Beaudreau. Here we go

alright guys, I'm excited for this episode with Matt Beaudreau think I'm saying that right. And, man, I'm so excited to have you on because every time I open Instagram, and I never scroll more than like one little scroll, because I'm trying my best not to be on there. But you're always top. And you're always like, if I could bash the like button more than once. That would be like one of the few accounts that I would do it on. You're just spitting fire for basically any father and any man and any person who's related to young people. That man, we all just need to know. So first of all, thank you for taking the time because I'm really inspired by what you're doing. And, man, we're gonna get into an awesome conversation today. So thanks for being here.

Matt Beaudreau 3:52

That's awesome, man. Thank you for the kind words and thank you for the invite. And and I gotta say, you know, the respect is is more than mutual. Um, you're doing phenomenal work. And I think I reached out to you personally to make sure that I told you that a while back, right. And I very much mean that not just in the work in what you're doing on Instagram, but the fact that you know, you're you're living what you're preaching from what I can tell, and to me that's, you know, that's manhood. 101 Right there, right? So fatherhood want Yeah, so, so feeling's mutual, sir.

Curt Storring 4:20

Thank you very much. Yeah, that was extremely meaningful. I was one of those double takes us like, right, like, oh, man, I'm looking up to this guy. He gives me the affirmation. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, hopefully it's sort of a good relationship, my friend. I want to start by just getting to know you and your fatherhood journey. I love hearing about guys how they got into fatherhood. What was it what that was like what they've done on the way to become the man they are today? Because man when I became a dad, night and day, like I was young, miserable, no skills, no tools are lonely. And it took me a lot of work to get to this point. So was it easy for you maybe started there, maybe just walk us through your family and your fatherhood

Matt Beaudreau 4:59

you Yeah, that's a really good question, man. You know, I'll start with the easy part. The quick answer that is no, it definitely wasn't. I always tell people, you, everybody knows how to parent until they become parents. You know, and I think you see that a lot in entrepreneurship, right as well, you know, everybody knows how to run a business. Everybody's got all the answers. It's the whole Sunday morning quarterback, you know, quarterback kind of kind of concept. And we do that with parenting. And I surely did as well. I definitely knew exactly what I was going to do and how I was going to do it until I had that first beautiful little baby girl until she was struggling until she was going more than 24 hours straight on multiple occasions, without sleeping, which is not a normal thing for anybody, especially as a as a newborn. Right. And so there were some correlating issues there. So, you know, if she's going 24 hours without sleeping, we're going more than 24 hours without sleeping, and that was nonstop, you know, so that only that only makes it more difficult. And, you know, what, you always what you kind of come to find out unless you're intentional going in, you know, I didn't have a great I don't have any ill will towards my father, but didn't have a great father. You know, example growing up, although I'm very thankful for it now, because it showed me who I don't want to be right. I mean, there's some very clear examples there. So I'm so grateful for that. And I understand now, now that I'm a man now that I'm a father, I understand he's, he's been battling his own demons. And so I don't have any ill will, towards Him. And I'm grateful for the lessons that I got. But what I came to understand very early about myself was that, although I'd always known I wanted to be a dad, I didn't fully understand what it meant to be that father figure because I hadn't had a good example. And I hadn't been intentional going in, around making a game plan around who I was going to be and what I was going to do, right, I didn't have a game plan, I was just excited to be a dad, right? I'm just, I'm just pumped about it. And then she comes out, and I'm pumped about it. And then all of a sudden, she's not sleeping, and I'm feeling tired, and I'm exhausted. And I'm, you know, driving to work, and I'm hallucinating on the highway, because I'm so exhausted, and I'm worried about her and my wife's calling going, this is not getting better. And we didn't prepare for any of that, right. And so what I found out was in the midst of all that stress, well, what I defaulted, to really, for the first couple years, was being a father, like my dad had shown me how to be a father, right, which is not the guy that I want it to be. So I made plenty of mistakes, especially those first two years, you know, that I wouldn't go back and, or that I would go back and change, you know, in a heartbeat I wish I could. So that was, you know, really kind of that first step into it. But you know, really, within those first couple of years, as I'm making these mistakes, I was blessed with this beautiful, amazingly strong young girl who at, you know, 18 months at two years old, was able to articulate her thoughts around what was going on, she's, you know, still to this day. I mean, just and I think genius is the default setting for a human being. So I don't, I don't pretend that she's this magical unicorn, I think genius is the default setting. And us as parents were responsible for preserving that default setting. She was able to articulate to me that you know, what I was doing when I was yelling, what I was doing when I was, you know, popping around the butt, or wasn't beating her by any stretch of the imagination, but popping her on the but what I was doing was was creating a rift in our relationship. She was able to articulate that. And I remember her articulating that to me, you know, at less than two years old. And I remember just going oh, my gosh, she is spot on. She's right, and what the heck am I doing? And again, I make it, you know, I was a much more loving parent than I was a parent that was coming at it from any other angle. So I know I did a lot of good things. But I did a lot of things that I would change too. And so her articulating that to me was really the first step of me going, Okay, I've got to do this better. And it really shifted my intentionality as a father and as a husband. It drastically shifted the intentionality behind when we had you know, girl number two, by the time we had our third, you know, it was it was a young man. I mean, we had put so many different things in place that I'm so grateful for now, because now Mike, you know, my kids are 11, nine and six. And I've got to tell you, it is the most joyful thing on the planet to raise these young humans. And it's so easy now, because we're so consistent, because we're so clear about who we are as a family unit, not as me as dad, my wife, mom, and my kids in their

roles. No, no, as a unit as a team. We're so consistent and so clear, and all have our clearly defined I find roles and boundaries and we lift each other up. That I gotta tell you, my friend it is it is easy, and it is a joy. And I know that's because of the intentionality. And so, you know, I try to do as much as I can to help other people get to that point. There's nothing else I'll ever do in this life. It's as joyous as this is. And if I can help another family do that. Are you kidding me? Like, what kind of charmed life I get to lead? You know what I mean? So,

Curt Storring 10:30

yeah, totally do man. That was, you know that I have a selfish motivation for doing this, which is I want to live in the world that is run by the children of the men who get healed. The unselfish is just like, dude, if I can have one guy not go through what I went through, who now it's like, deathbed, I'm good. But I'm, I'm super curious about this now. Because man, what a blessing at 24 months old. And she's like, Dad, what are you doing? And I imagine it wasn't just like, convicted on the spot. Everything changes. You're just like, flip the switch? Or what was that looking like? Like, how did you actually become the man you are today? Through those years over the last number of years? Yeah, it's

Matt Beaudreau 11:07

so you know, looking up to a lot of mentors, especially at that point, it was like, Okay, I do, there was a whole lot of self reflection that had to be done. It's like, okay, what am I doing, because it broke my heart, you know, with her articulating that. And again, she was speaking, she was speaking at eight months old, she was speaking in full sentences at 12 months. So she's just, you know, just very early. So 18 months, it was very clear like that and when you're doing this, this is really hurting is breaking my heart. This is like holy frickin crap. So there's a lot of reflection there going on what's going on with me? Why am I so high strung? Why am I stressed? So I started thankfully, taking a look at everything holistically, I'd stayed relatively healthy from a physical standpoint, in terms of like working out eating, all of those things were pretty dialed, but I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't happy with. You know, it was I wasn't happy with the work that I was doing. You know, I was in schools, right at that time, and I wasn't, I was seeing an integrity issue there with myself going, Man, I don't believe in this. But I'm still here. And I don't like that, you know, so I started taking inventory of myself going, so what are all of these areas that I need to improve in? I wasn't super pumped about the financial situation, right? So how do I improve that, you know, my wife and I, because we hadn't slept in years. You know, we were getting along fine. But we weren't getting along, you know, at this amazingly high level, as we did throughout the entire time that we dated, and we're engaged. You know, we just had a kind of this unique relationship that had suffered, you know, during that time, so I just took inventory of all these things. And the key thing for me was to start to look to mentors, you know, Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich is a very well known book, my favorite part of that book, is when he talks about the board of directors, and he talks about creating your board of directors in your mind. And these can be real people, they can be fictional people, they can be characters, they can be character from a book from a movie, live data, it doesn't matter. But he's saying you take these board of directors, and for each component of your life, you have somebody that you look up to in that area, and then you consult that person when you're going to make decisions in that arena. And I always found that to be a really, really powerful concept that I've now expanded on in my own daily life and and, you know, coaching parents and young men, especially I integrate this in there as well. But I started doing that and going okay, so in the relationship with my wife, where Who do I think does a really good job of that? Who's my kind of Board of Directors, you know, advisor there, and what would that person do? What would they decide? What would they say? How would they act? I'm going to go ahead and do that. From the financial standpoint, who do I look up to who I think he's doing it right with integrity? Okay, cool. I'm going to align with that. So I started making that my habit, right so that I could become a better person. I always tell parents, you've got if you want to raise a young Dragon Slayer, it starts by you being a dragon slayer, if you are weak, if you are unhappy, if you are not following your goals, if you are not living with integrity, if you are not doing any of these things, you will not be the parent that you should be, you just can't. So it really started with that, you know, finding those, that board of directors finding mentors that were in my day to day life that I could also go to in various arenas and not pretending like there was one mentor that had it all it was just I had specific people in specific areas, so that I could level up and as I did that, all the other relationships not just those with my you know, with my daughter or my wife, all my relationships got better. And so that is a you know, something that I've continued now for, you know, my girls 11 My oldest is 11 years old 11 and a half and I've continued it since that so I feel like I get a A better and better every year, you know, I always say my standard remains perfection, you can't be a perfect parent period, you can't be a perfect husband, period. But the standard should always be perfection, always. Because it keeps you humble enough to understand that you suck somewhere, and you still have a place to get better. Right? But it also doesn't let you off the hook of the excuse of like, well, everybody, if you keep with that language, oh, everybody fails, sometimes, of course they do. But if that's all you ever say you're training your brain to say a woman to fail, and I'm, I'm gonna mess up, I'm gonna mess up. Right? And I believe in the power of words like that. So I'll tell you that no, my standard is perfection. So I'm going to try every day to be the perfect dad, the perfect husband, and get as close as I can to that, and if you stack those days in a row, you know, you should be doing a pretty decent job. So that's kind of how that journey has been going and is still going.

Curt Storring 15:58

I love that man. So a couple of things come up. One is like, I'm sure there were some things along the way that were roadblocks, we'll be interested to talk about those. Because, I mean, maybe it is as simple as just like, get your board of directors and stop making bad decisions. And that sounds like it'd be sweet. But I'm sure there were things that came up. But the other question is, as it relates to that, you know, using perfect as the goal, I completely relate to that. And that's my standard for everything I do. And I got sucked into deep, or I started to judge and beat myself up for not achieving those goals. Now, that's my own programming and whatever else I believe growing up, and curious if that ever came up to you, or does it ever come up with you with other guys you work with?

Matt Beaudreau 16:42

It comes up for me all the time, and I just when I you know, but I don't let myself beat up, beat my I don't let myself beat myself up, I go try to remedy whatever it is that I screwed up as quickly as possible, so that I can get past that right I will. And my wife or my wife will tell you, you know, it's, you know, my son, maybe we'll try to along it's better, you know, to go to bed or whatever. And it tries to elongate something and you know, does the standard, oh, it's bedtime? Well, I've got 45 minutes of other things that I'm going to have to do first, right, or whatever it is. And I, you know, if I snap at him in a way that I don't want to do that, or whatever, before he goes to bed, she'll be the first one to tell you, I'm like, gosh, I don't like that. I don't like the way that I handled that I let my emotions get the best of me right there. And I don't want to come at things from you know, that kind of emotional standpoint, I will immediately go back in there and go, Hey, man, here's what just happened. Here's what I did. Here's how I handled that. That was incorrect. Here's how I should have handled this. Does that make sense? Do Do you have any questions on that? Okay, you know what I mean? I'll go back in and remedy that so that I don't beat myself up. I find that I only you know, and I think most men are the same, you'll beat yourself up until you fix a problem. That's when you can start to let yourself off the hook a little bit. Right? Once you start to make amends, people beat themselves up, you know, men will beat themselves up for not being in shape. Cool thing, get your ass in the gym, like Go Go get after it. Right. That's when you can start to forgive yourself when you know you're doing what you need to do to make progress. We only continuously beat ourselves up when we know we're not aligned with integrity of what we believe or what we say we believe. Right? So I just make sure that my actions and My words are always aligned, and the minute those are askew, I put it right back on track, you know, so. But as far as, as far as obstacles, you know, and roadblocks for all of these things, there's, you know, you got the the the areas of you know, if you're if you're stressed about work, if you're stressed about physical health, if you stress, you know, all those things end up being areas that can affect you emotionally, and then you've got to make sure to either be able to compartmentalize or to work through that and getting getting aligned with integrity, so you can come back into your family the way you need to be, for me work was probably the biggest one, because I was in schools, and was, you know what I called creatively insubordinate. Because I saw what the people needed, versus what I was, you know, told they needed. And so I was continuously getting in trouble there. And I just didn't align with what we were doing. I really thought we should be doing something else. So for me, that was the biggest probably struggle that was kind of outside of the home. But I think what I see for a lot of people too in the parenting struggle is the fear of somebody else's opinions, whether it's your friends in the way they parent, or it's your own parents who don't agree with your certain, you know, whatever your take is on, on on parenting. And and, or the cultural idea of what it means to be a good parent. I see too many people acquiesce to that whether it's, you know, I've got to get the Harvard bumper sticker to prove to my friends that I'm a good parent because my kid goes to Harvard. are now you know whether or not they want it to or whether it's the I don't let my kids go outside and play because the neighbors next door are going to think that they're going to get kidnapped and they'll call CPS, you know, there's a lot of fear based parenting going on. And that's what I see is the biggest obstacle for most parents outside and even get their own stuff together their own life together. It's fear based based on culture or somebody else's opinion of them as a parent. And that's just, that's no way to, it's no way to live period, it surely is not a way to parent.

Curt Storring 20:33

Well said, man. So what I'm picking up from that is you audited, yourself and your life and I do this like quarterly, I sit down, and I go through like 10 basic levels of my life. And it's like, me and my wife, me and my kids, me and my business, me and my finances, me and my physical environment, me and my, you know, fitness, and I just go like, where am I head? That's right. And then like we've made, we've made crazy things like we've, I don't know whether this was 2015 2016, we moved to Thailand as a family for two years. Because we're like, this isn't working for us, let's go do something else. But it was because we took the time to be aware and then audit. So I'm just 100% on board with what you're saying there. And I just want to touch on two things that you mentioned a moment ago, I think what I heard basically, if I could sum it up is that action is the antidote to self deprecation in many ways, like just go do the thing. I've seen that in my life every single time. And that was a great apology template. By the way, as you were saying that I'm like, Oh, dude, I like very similar to what I've picked up over many failed rep repairs in my life with my kids going like a story. But then what I've really had to figure out, what does it take and owning the thing and then saying what you ought have done, and giving room for them to then ask questions, express your feelings, all that kind of stuff. Guys, take note. And just copy what Matt just said, that is a beautiful apology to

Matt Beaudreau 21:51

somebody give them something, you got to get them, you know, things that are tangible, right, and this is for the good things and the bad things you want to give the young people very, very tangible action steps, or very, very tangible evidence as to what the actions were that were taken, or whatever it is like the kids thrive on those specifics. Alright, so I always go, Look, here was how I reacted. And if I know why I'm just going, you know, I'm tired. And what happens when I'm tired is I let myself get, you know, all emotions run wild more, and I need to know that. So I need to proactively go, Hey, I'm tired. I'm more prone to being emotional right now. So I need to keep it in check. So that's something good for dad to think about later on, you know, if you're tired, or if you're panicking, all those things start to make humans, you know, not act, the way they know how to act. So I want to just continuously have those lessons, you know, over and over and over again, and point those out anytime I can, because then they start to understand those things. So I want to point those things out. But then I want to point out the very specific thing, look, this is exactly what I did that I don't think I should have done. And this is exactly how I should have handled that. Does that make sense? Do you have any questions? That way? You don't just say sorry? You're you're letting them know exactly what you're apologizing for? You are linking that to something, too. So not only does that become a learning opportunity for them, but then they also believe you. Right? If you just go hey, man, sorry about that. And they can't really specifically nail what it is that you're sorry for they just know you they got in trouble. Or you did something or you said something, but you're not really clear what you're sorry for. You're not You're not You're missing an opportunity to make a connection there where they just are able to you're able to build trust. Right? And yeah, and then it's the same thing. If you go back if I did that. And then the very next day, I went back into the exact same thing. Well, I'm losing trust there too. Right. So I got to be sorry enough to fix it as well. But they need those tangible examples, man.

Curt Storring 23:58

Yeah, yeah. Great, great. Last sort of caveat on that is like actually changing, you can apologize and you know, a sudden, over a number of times, it's just going to be empty words. So make sure you're not built, destroying that trust, because in relationship with your kids or your wife, that trust takes a long time to build back in my experience, and those that I've seen as well. I'm pretty interested, maybe more interested in almost anything that we're going to talk about, even though I'm looking at the time going like I think I need this guy for like three hours. But principles when it comes to parenting what I loved seeing recently, or the last couple of months, I think it was you've been sharing your family rules. Yeah, basically. And I have basically, I've stolen this for myself, because it's such a good idea. I'm going to get them together, we're going to build them and I want to put them out in the house. And I'm curious. You don't have to necessarily go into the principles because people can follow on Instagram and follow and find those. Although please feel free to share a couple if you want. But how did you come up with those? Was it a collaborative iterative process? And how do you get buy in for that move? going forward. Yeah,

Matt Beaudreau 25:00

although you start with that the buy in comes by making it collaborative, right. And so collaboration matters and consistency matters. So there's got to be, you know, it's got to be congruent with how you actually behave on the day to day basis. So, yeah, we've at the idea came from the schools that I that I open now that I've, that I have founded, and I help entrepreneurs open the schools, as well. And when I say entrepreneurs, we've got about 300 entrepreneurs in our network. We're in 41 states, and we're in like, 26 countries, which is pretty rad. So we're building you know, we're not complaining about all schools are broken. And Scott, we're, we're actually actively building a different model that answers, you know, the answers the question or answers a problem. And in those schools, we operate in studios, the students operate in studios, which means kind of a mixed age group, you know, old school, one room schoolhouse sort of thing. And those studios run really, really efficiently, because there is a studio contract. And that contract is something that the students that the young heroes will come up with. And it gives again, that tangible, you know, because you got young people who don't necessarily have life experience yet, so it gives them a tangible. Okay, well, we all agree that we're supposed to act this way. And of course, not acting this way, I can go, hey, you know, look at the contract. Rule number six says this, I see you're doing this, and to me, those don't align. So we either need to have you change that behavior, or, you know, there's got to be a follow up consequence on that. And so then the students figure out what those behave desired behaviors are, what they agree upon, and then what the, you know, as proactively as possible, what would the consequences be if that behavior is broken, and it allows you to take the emotion out of a situation where you're just reacting, you can just very tangibly go even at a very young age, hey, rule number six is being violated, we know that the you know, the consequence for that is this. So you're choosing to do something that's got a consequence, I'm going to honor your choice. And it takes the emotion out of that. And it makes things very clear, right. So same thing, brought it home, brought it to the dinner table, and just had that conversation. Kids were still especially my my young man was, and he was far too young to really participate. But the girls were were were involved, my wife was involved. And we just kind of talked in generalities. Who do we want to be? Like, what do we think good people do? What do we think successful people do? What do we think happy people do? How do they treat other people? What do they do every day? What did they not do? What did they stay away from? We just had some very general conversations like that. And we're just writing down all the answers are okay. And then so we kind of cultivated, you know, use that to cultivate kind of our 11 for our house. And I just went back to everybody and said, Okay, so this is kind of how I surmise all of these, put these out there. What do you guys think everybody's like, yeah, that's our game plan was like, Cool, man, we just made a saram. You know, we made ceremony around that, and then got them printed and hung up on our wall. And so that's something that we revisit. And again, it gives a very tangible thing that we can revisit and go, Look, this is just who we are. So when we have our weekly, you know, kind of business meetings as a, as a family, we can refer directly to those. When my kids start to argue with each other, they can refer directly to that and go, Hey, you're violating this right here, right? And so it allows them to resolve some things without having to even consult with us a lot of times, right. But the most powerful part of that whole thing is that we all hold each other accountable to that. And what that means is Yes, can dad go, hey, you know, rule number, you know, rule number three here be the hardest worker in the room? Or can dad refer to those and tell other people like, Hey, you

got to remember, this is one of our rules. Are you doing that right now? Okay, we need to change that. Can I do that? Yes. Can they do that to me? Yes. That's what makes it powerful. When my six year old goes bad. Rule number six is no complaining. Fix it. You kind of sound like you're complaining about something right now, what is your solution? And he says it very respectfully, but he puts me in check. Because it did sound like I was complaining around something and I go, You know what? You're right. I am complaining right now. Okay, here's what I think I need to do to solve that. And then we walked through that together. That's powerful. Because he now again, sees that we are fully aligned as a family, and that dad cares enough to get called out by somebody else. And go, yeah, I gotta change that. I got to do this. And here's what my solution is going to be and we talk through all of those things together. Now when you do those kinds of things, every single day, you normalize what you normalize. So when you make those conversations the norm, you have ninjas in your household. You have young humans, that act like adults, I tell parents all the time, I know, you know, eight year old and 10 year old and 12 year old adults, I have a six, a nine and 11 year old adults in my house. I also know 40 year old children. Right? And it's it's all based on who you have decided to be and how your actions, you know, correlate to that. And and that's how they handle things. And that's how we handle them in our house. Man, it's so powerful.

Curt Storring 30:47

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm going to listen to this myself again, and literally do exactly what you just said, because this sounds so important. And I don't want to take anything away from that. And I'm curious that last comment about, you know, six 911 year old adults, how do you frame that, with still being honoring the kid in them? Sure. Do you know what I'm saying? When you know what I'm saying there?

Matt Beaudreau 31:11

Yeah, you know, it's a, it's a cultural myth that young people, one can't handle responsibilities. That's, that's a myth in and of itself. But there's another myth that if they take on a lot of responsibilities and take on, you know, things that are usually culturally seen as somebody more mature will take these on, that they'll somehow lose their inherent childhood nature, you know, that childish part of them will, will go. And I have found that to be completely the opposite. It, it allows them to be free in that and they still revel in their silliness. And I'll be silly with them, and they'll still want to go, they still want to go play. And it's like, that's great. And they get a chance to go play, and have free play and interact and explore and do all of the things and just wonder at the world, right? And look at everything with just kind of these young eyes and the youthful exuberance, and all of those things are only amplified by this because they have such a peace of mind around who they are to. And they have such a pride around the fact that they take on all responsibility. They understand very early the correlation between responsibility and freedom. And so they've taken on these responsibilities, which is built up pride and self confidence. And then they know those responsibilities have also earned them freedoms on the other side. So they actually start to value the freedoms in the in the ability to just play and wander and what they value that even more so I don't think that those things are, you know, mutually exclusive.

Curt Storring 32:58

Yeah, man that reminds me of in Victor Frankel's book, Man's Search for Meaning. He suggests that on the West Coast, there should be a statue of responsibility to balance out the Statue of Liberty. And man, I think that the fact that I even questioned that in the first place probably speaks to a cultural issue with adults in the first place, which is like we're just not playing. We're not free like that. We're not unencumbered, to gratify all of these things that would allow us then to interact with the world. Like you're saying, I'd much rather be an adult, like a kid is an adult than what you know, I'm supposed to be so called as an adult today, which is just serious.

Matt Beaudreau 33:34

It's just serious and not just serious, but scared. It really, if you look at most adults, they're scared. They're living their life scared. They're scared about their finances. They're scared about their relationships. They don't understand civil discourse. They can't do it. They're scared to talk to anybody that's got a different opinion than them. They're scared to question their own opinions. They're scared. They're scared. They're scared. So why would a young person want to be an adult? Now? We've D incentivize that we've made it look awful. Right? As a culture Oh, when you're an adult, you're afraid of things all the time you hate the work you do. You argue with people, either in person or on the internet. You talk about how your job sucks how life sucks how Joe Biden sucks how Donald Trump sucks how the gas prices sucky. It looks like being an adult is miserable. Right? So I don't blame them. Yeah, I don't blame him. Right. But we can give them a different perspective to we can be the person that doesn't live like that. And in fact, that's our job as parents is to get get our own stuff together so that we're not living like that. So that they see, ah, responsibility plus freedom and sovereignty and all these things are our joyful things. Dad's the happiest person I know. You know, dads, you know, connected to these other people who are really happy. This looks pretty cool. I can't wait. That's awesome. You know that Are you

Curt Storring 35:00

just having the courage just having the courage to do that, I think what you said earlier about the dragon slayers is so good like that, I just want to take that little clip and play it for everyone after this, because if you are showing, like they're gonna model what you do, and I see this all the time, and I didn't, I didn't know this until I experienced it. But no matter of like, preaching to them is gonna get the point across, they're just going to do what you do, it's going to be do as I do not, as I say, because they don't care what you say for much of it. If you're not living that life, they'll just do what you do. And so I'm always reminding myself and the guys we work with, that you will be the man that your son probably turns into, unless he does a lot of extra work, or you're the man that your daughters will marry. And unless you are the man that when you look back on your life and be like, Yeah, I think if my son turned out like me, I'd be proud. Or if my daughter married a man like me, I'd be proud of that's not the case, then you gotta go back and do the audit that Matt was talking about and do everything in your power to become them in. At least that's how I've been thinking, if I agree with

Matt Beaudreau 35:59

you, 100%, you'll have work to do, because you're right, they do what you do before they do what you say. And the problem there too, is not just that they will follow your example. Because again, that's either a problem or it's a blessing depending on how you're living. But the biggest problem is if there is a disconnect there, where you're not doing as you say they should do, you're not leading by example, every single time you do it, whether they tell you or not, you are plucking out one more little connection from you and your young person, you're removing one small piece of trust, because what they see whether they can even articulate it or not. They see it even when they're really young and can't necessarily put their finger on it. And their conscious mind doesn't get it but their subconscious does. They're seeing hypocrisy. And if they see hypocrisy in you, they don't believe you that to the level they should they don't respect you to the level they should they don't trust you to the level they should. And that's your fault. It's your fault. Yeah. And the thing is, guess what? You don't believe yourself? Trust yourself. You know, either when you're doing that, right, you know, better, you know better. So yeah, that's that's well said out of match.

Curt Storring 37:14

Love it. Okay, I want to touch on what boys and young men need from two groups of people. One, what can their fathers do that no one else can? And secondly, who else do they need in their lives? Because I know for sure, I am looking for uncles left, right and center to be in my boys lives would love to get your thoughts. So what do young boys and men need from their fathers? And then who else do they need? Yeah,

Matt Beaudreau 37:43

you know, the one thing that there are the basic human needs, right that sons and daughters need and those can be provided by moms and dads, right. Those are those basic things can be provided and responsibilities can be provided by both. eliminating distractions can be provided by both world class education opportunities can be provided by both world class experiences. And that doesn't mean something that costs a lot of money. But experiences can be provided by both and can go to boys and girls alike. All of those things can be provided from both to both right from mother and father to young boys or young girls. But young men specifically, it doesn't need to be overly complex. What they need is the example of exactly who they're going to be. We touched on it just a second ago, you said I want my young man to be the man that I am. Well, guess what, by default, he will be unless you're intentional about making him better or worse, right. So the default setting will be pretty close to a carbon copy of what you are. So that's first and that's something only a father can provide. That you're providing the baseline example. The first inner voice, right, we all have our inner voices that we have in there, that first inner voice for a young man, the most powerful inner voice that he has, is dads for a long time. For a long time, whatever he's saying to himself, you know, he's about to go slay that dragon, whatever that is, you know, obviously, metaphorically speaking, whatever that is. He's got dad's voice in his head of, I can do this or I can't this is going to be hard or no man, I've got it. I'm I'm capable or I'm not capable. That's dad's voice that's in there. And then he's also going to refer back to dad on what would that do? Right here, Dad would shy away or dad would go tackle it and go get it right. So that is the thing that only dads can provide. And then you need to layer in the things that make that baseline higher MIT layer in the things that allow him to be better than you and be a become a better man than you And often, you know, again, you're gonna be able to do some of that through your actions and some of that through your words, but you need to add in things like ceremony, you know, and that I'm gonna pretend like there's a one size fits all. But there's got to be something that there is a ceremonial leveling up that only you can provide right? The Spartans had the whole ago geek, right, and the men took the young men away, and then put them out there and they had to fend for themselves. And there were ceremony on them coming back and becoming a man, right? There is ceremony that needs to be involved, at some point, somehow, where you are going, Hey, son, you leveled up, I the main male in your life at an early age in honoring you, as a man, you are coming into this manhood dad is the only one that can do that, and do that powerfully. Right? So those are the things dad needs to provide. But he also needs to be intentional about understanding that at a certain age, the young man also will be looking for other voices to come in and help cultivate that inner voice will naturally start looking for the approval of other men as well. He's going to still look for that. And he's going to figure out where do I fit in a tribe? Where do I fit in? You know, where do I find a tribe and society in general. And so the best thing dad can do there is make sure there's a cadre of other really good men around that can also speak into that young man's life that are also living in a way that leads by example. And that's the big thing. That's why we developed apogee, right. And most of the young men in Apogee strong have, most of them have really good father figures, some don't, some don't have father figures at all. And they left him some phenomenal mom, you know, single moms, but most have good father figures. But the fathers know that young men need other voices as well. So we want to put the best the best in front of them. So they start seeing those patterns of success.

Curt Storring 42:00

Amazing man, and I would like to transition into apogee. Because I'm super excited about this, I want this or something very much like it for my boys. And I know that for everyone listening. I mean, you're also an expert home education, and all things education, from what I can tell actin I think is the name of your schools. Is that right? Act? Okay, so I may look, maybe I'll just step on your toes and be like, can you come back and talk about that, because I would love to talk about that kind of stuff, too. But let's go into Apogee now. And if we don't make it to home education, I'll try and get your foot around,

Matt Beaudreau 42:35

no worries. And I want you to do what you need to do if we need to go a little longer. And you want to I'm glad to do that. If you'd rather cut wouldn't come back. I'm glad to come back again, as well. So whatever serves you the most.

Curt Storring 42:46

Okay, man, well, I just wanted to be super respectful of your time. I appreciate it. So if you do have time, then yeah, I got a few more. I got some time after this. So anyway, Apogee, tell us about

Matt Beaudreau 42:57

it. So you know, being in education for as long as I have and seeing all the things and getting to work with so many amazing, you know, young people, being an education is what made me leave all of the different schools that I'd run to build to build my own right to build something again, no complaining, fix it right. So we're build a better model, something that we think and again, selfishly, first and foremost, I started building that very first campus because I wanted a place that I wanted my young kids, my own kids to go, right. And then of course, it went from there of wanting to make sure I could help as many other kids as possible. And so while I love what we're doing on the educational side there, you know, there are some things in a co Ed environment, that you just can't you just can't dive into certain conversations that a young man needs to have, there is just a difference. There's a difference. It's not cool to say it anymore. But there's a difference between boys and girls, right? And so there are certain things that only men can give young men and you don't necessarily even want to have certain conversations in the presence of young girls. And they're not necessarily the young men are going to have the conversations in the presence. So it's like Ash was always looking for ways to Okay, well, how do I lead another like a young man's move on campus to write and just pour into these guys, and just make sure they've got another trusted source? They can come to you and I can't fix all the problems in the world. Nobody, nobody can. But I always continuously look for how, how can I still serve more people? How do I help more people I can serve the young men that are here at my campuses? How do I expand that? And it was kind of in that conversation with my friend, Tim Kennedy. And we're kind of sitting everyone you know, a man and we're so lucky because we've got a great network. You know, he's got a great network of guys that he's friends with. I got a great network of guys that I'm friends with. And so we just went, Man, what if we get, you know, as many young men as we as we can from around the world, give them something that's definitely different than schools and experienced the roadmap that challenges them to go rode to get better at opens up doors, it creates a network for them. And then they also get to meet with some of the guys that we get to just chat with on a day to day basis that make us better. What if we put something together like that? And so that's kind of how it was born. Man, we were sitting in a coffee shop in Texas. And, and we kind of went, Okay, what could that look like? And so we mapped out, you know, we got 12 months of projects, challenges, workouts, readings, that these young men are taking on all of them very, very intentional to grow them in very intentional ways. And we always tell the young men follow that roadmap for the 12 months. And then the whole point is that you follow that so that then you can not, then you leave, and you can create your own roadmap, like that's the point is, we want you to create your own roadmap for you. But this 12 months will help give you that self awareness and that self confidence. And by the way, if the young men complete the 12 months and put in the work, they are then invited to stay in perpetuity at no charge. We're not you know, we want them to stay on and continue to lead and we want to continue to pour into them. And then every single week, man at least once a week, they are meeting with the best of the past man they're meeting with you know, military generals and navy seals and and actors and billionaire CEOs and comedians and musicians and the only through line, you know, an author's the through line being the guys that come on are all good men who are who are actively doing something who are taking action in the world to make the world a better place. And so, you know, they come on and pour into these young guys and the young guys get to ask them questions directly and you know, they take notes and then they're able to go back and go okay, let's see Bryan Callen said this Andy for Sela said this Ryan McClure said this. Frank Grillo said this, Jeff Hoffman said that look how all of these kind of align, and they start to see those patterns of success for what a good man does and what a good man looks like, you know, when it just helps again, create that inner voice. It's phenomenal, man. It's it's some of the most fun I have all week.

Curt Storring 47:05

Man. Yeah, it sounds like something I would like to attend. So if you get to that point we got.

Matt Beaudreau 47:10

We got our youth group coming. Yeah, man.

Curt Storring 47:13

Sweet. Yeah. So this is all online. Right? So this is all honors or something.

Matt Beaudreau 47:18

Yeah. So we do all of those things, you know, virtual throughout the weeks, but then we have, we have physical meetups as well. And so our last physical meetup was in April, so a few months ago. And so we thought we'd do at least one physical meetup. But we're going to try to do try to do multiple, and we're actually in the process of trying to get a an official kind of like a headquarters where people can come and actually stay. And, you know, the brothers can can be there. We want to do that for the dads, as well. So

Curt Storring 47:48

nice. And what is the age group that you can get into this? Yeah, so

Matt Beaudreau 47:51

we kind of target the kind of 13 ish, excuse me too, late teens, early 20s. But because we don't have the dads group, yet, I know for a fact. We have some some men that are in there that are 2829 30. I know for a fact, they don't usually attend the calls. But they're going through all those things. And they watch the recordings, like because I send out the recordings, if you can't make the live call with the mentor, I send those out. And so, you know, they're following on along that way. But you know, we want to make that dads group. So it's really targeted to more like that. 13 To kind of 13 to 19.

Curt Storring 48:28

Amazing, is there anything on the lead up to that? Like, my oldest is nine? Is there anything that you have worked on? Or you know, I've been, I mean, I'm not trying to, I am trying to outsource my parenting to you. What else can I get him into in preparation for joining? Yeah,

Matt Beaudreau 48:41

it's a really good question, man. And so we don't have anything virtual for that age, precisely because they're not at a developmental stage where virtual makes sense for them, right. And so what I always tell parents is to, you know, prepare, so to speak, is the intentionality around the educational environment going in. So if you can stay out of conveyor belt schools, I highly recommend you do stay out of conveyor belt schools, which means if you can find something like an act and Academy, awesome, if you are home, educating awesome, we want to help you do those at a high level and understand how to build, you know, the kind of character and the self confidence and the resilience and all those things in your young heroes so that when he hits it at 13, you know, hits the ground running, he's ready to go because what we'll see is, if a young man has been home educated, or he's come through something like an acting Academy, and he's had the opportunity to take on responsibilities, he has conversations around or like heroic behaviors, right? He's reading things around heroic decisions, and he's putting himself in those shoes and his parents are helping him be intentional around that they're having heroic conversations, very tangible conversations around good decision making and all those things and he's taken on all those responsibilities. Then he comes in 1314 Whatever it is, right, he is one of those 1314 year old adults that we're talking about, he's ready to hit the ground running. On the flip side, we'll also get some young men that are 18 just graduated high school went through conveyor belt schooling the entire way. And they're like, man, okay, I don't, I don't know. And there's work involved on this. And that's, you know, and so those are some of the young men that we tend to, to let go, you know, and because we're not going to serve them, because they're not ready to serve themselves there. You know, I mean, that's simply that's really what it is. So that's all we ask of those parents is be intentional about those that education going in.

Curt Storring 50:38

Beautiful Man, I'm really excited for our decision, to homeschool, which is supported by a number of guys in our community, but also just like really inspired by the things that you have been posting, I think that was one of the things that pushed us over the edge. So thank you for that. One of the things that we do to get our boys ready for something like this, and I enjoy because I love reading, but I'm reading them books that are like way beyond their level, that are specifically full of good men. So we've read, we're reading Musashi right now, which is like a samurai epic. We read The Hobbit, I think one of the first ones, we read the Odyssey, Homer's Odyssey, these are beautiful instances of men being men that we then read and talk about afterwards. So that's what I'm excited to continue on in more of the home education, not just before bed. So I don't know, I don't know if that's up your alley or not. But I love doing that.

Matt Beaudreau 51:37

Forget up my alley, what you're talking about is the number one priority for salt. I mean, again, there's the parenting side of things, right, you leading by exit, there's all of those things that we've been talking about this whole time. But from an educational standpoint, a world class education, can start and end right exactly where you are talking about right there. People ask like, Okay, well, this homeschool, like, it seems overwhelming, like what do you do? Right? So the entire course that we're launching around home education, what we do is we have parents start by auditing their time as well. What are you really what time are you really investing, understand that the best way to invest in your young heroes education is to simultaneously invest in your own? Right, again, it goes back to that whole leading by example thing. And we start kind of priority stacking and force ranking. What are the things that you know, if you could only do one thing during the day to work on the quote, unquote, education? What the heck would it be? It's exactly what you're talking about. It's reading, being intentional about what it is reading the classics, reading alongside your young heroes, and having deep meaningful conversations about that, putting them in the shoes, of the heroes of the story on Ooh, what would you do making, you know, if you can, making a, you know, a parallel to something that's going on today, or something they deal with? And that's like when, you know, pimp had to do this, or that's like, what, right? You relate it to that. And you have conversations around that. If you do that, you will have a young human who is far more educated, and able to be self directed than 99% of the population. That's what you know, you look at Thomas Jefferson, you look at Ben Franklin, you look at the that's exactly how they were educated, they read the classics, and had discussions about it with a mentor. That's, I mean, that is how they did it. And then and then they went out and they worked, right? They took on responsibilities. Right? That was their education, read the classics, talk to a mentor, get out and work and become an apprentice of something. That was it. And they are arguably far more educated than 99.9% of our population today. That's exactly it. So bravo,

Curt Storring 53:57

man. Well, thank you for the affirmation. And I love how you just put it there, work, reading it, discussing it and then working like going out and living. There's so many people I've seen these days that are just like stuck in academia, or academia, ask positions that never do anything in life. And I think it's a tragedy that the culture today thinks that there's no ability to objectively observe reality. And I think that's BS, there is absolutely a faculty that we carry to see reality in objective means that if you just apply yourself to it, you'd get there's feedback that we have access to that we're now forgetting, because we're so worried about feelings and not doing the work and blah, blah, blah. So that little like mental shift for me that you just said, man, like that will guide everything. So thank you for putting it like,

Matt Beaudreau 54:47

it's awesome. And I love that you said you know, we can observe reality. It's an interesting thing we've done, you know, a very sneaky thing we've done culturally as well, where I posted something a couple days. ago I was out I had been out in California was with my friends, Chris and Mark Bell and we did a podcast on Mark show. And I was talking to Chris and he says, Hey man, he says, you see what Tucker Carlson was saying about young men and how it relates to school shootings and and the overmedication of our young men. And I said, I hadn't seen it. So he sent me this video. So I took a clip of it posted something and just said, Hey, look, man, like our young men are crazy over medicated, I see it. You know, I saw it at the school level all the time, where it's like, Oh, hey, your five year old has, you know, whatever the diagnosis of the day, we need to get them on some prescription medications, we need to do it early. And my stance was essentially, you know, your five year old young man doesn't have a speed deficiency. Because that's essentially what we're giving these young men is we're giving them you know, Ritalin or Adderall, or all these things that are low grade methamphetamines, that's what we're doing. And I feel confident in saying that that's not the natural state of humanity is to need to be medicated with something like a methamphetamine at the age of five or six to then be on prescription medications for the rest of your life. I posted something around that. And inevitably, you get somebody goes, I'd like to see the studies. What are the exact percentages?

Curt Storring 56:21

Source? Matt source, right is exactly

Matt Beaudreau 56:23

the man is like, you know, there are certain things where you can that you can just view and call it and you don't need to find the statistics around it to know that it's, you know, that that's an issue is to make a judgment call on something. You know, we've gotten to this really weird place where it seems like the intellectual thing to say that you need to see the study or the or the source of the data around it. You know, which is horse? Not that? I don't I don't buy.

Curt Storring 56:55

Yeah, 100% agreed. I also had something on Instagram the other day, and someone asked me what my I was like, philosophical school of thought, or my facts or whatever. And I just said reality. Like, it's, it's just reality. And if you don't like that, then like we're operating on different planes. And I'll never reach you, man. So many things. Can we have you got time to chat about home education? Yeah, glad to. Okay, so this is very personal to me right now. And I'm going to make it useful to everyone, I hope, maybe quickly, because I think you've mentioned it multiple times now. But is there anything else that just wrap up that what is wrong with conveyor belt school? Because I guess I want to preface this by saying, I'm going to drop the link to your conversation recently with Ryan McClure, my head even on my podcast recently, and we talked about this as well. So I would like to get sort of a brief overview, and then go into what else? Yeah, no, like, what do I need to know? Who do I need to be to educate my children? And I think you just affirmed me in a way that I'm feeling pretty comfortable now. But maybe just wrap any loose ends of what's wrong with it? What can we do better? Who do we need to be? And then what is the goal of all this? Like, what do we want for our kids? So that's a lot. But also, I, I'm assuming this is sort of up your wheelhouse. So yeah, for sure. Why don't you take it from there? And we'll go, we'll go from there.

Matt Beaudreau 58:16

I'm gonna start with that last question. Right, what is the goal? What should education be for? Right? And so I always differentiate between schooling and education, those are two different things. schooling is a system, that is a very specific system that has been designed for a very specific outcome. education really is synonymous with just a growth mindset and living in general, right? I mean, you're always being educated, I'm get you're getting an education through this conversation. You know, I went out early this morning. And, you know, we've got mold in one of the feeders for some of our animals, and we had to realize, okay, well, in the summer here, there's humidity, cool. There's an education, right, education is always happening. So we have this weird little concept that it's this, you know, all these things that we've got to check off. And then once we've checked off all the boxes, now we're educated, right? And that's what school is made us kind of think that, that there's this, you know, process, and then all of a sudden, you're done, and you're educated, and you don't have to grow anymore. And that's, you know, that's a dangerous sort of spot. So there's a difference between school and education. So what should education before Well, education should be for, you know, for, for sovereignty around all the things that we were talking about earlier, it should be for self sufficiency, it should be for peace of mind, it should be for continuous growth, it should be for, you know, the ability to live in integrity and to live the way you want to live with who you want to, you know, live with and do the things you want to do without harming others and be able to impact you know, the way you want to impact and not answer to other people. And it shouldn't be for all of those things. And by the way, that's a continuous pursuit. So at the root of that, it's got to be the mindset of this continuous pursuit around living right. What schooling does is it tricks us into thinking there's that those box He says, and it starts to build habits around living your life in those boxes. So that's my biggest contention with it, right? We've been taught that there's a few different life works in subjects that you should only, you know, operate within this the people with your same date of manufacture, right, if they're younger than you, you automatically look down, if they're older than you, you automatically look up that there's specific things you have to know at a very specific time. Otherwise, you're, you know, you're quote, unquote, behind. You know, if you focus on academia, and you do well in academia, then your whole life works out well, which is, you know, provably false as well. But it's, we've created a religion around all of those specific things. And because we've now done that to our country for 100 years, and so what's happened is 100 plus, you know, and so now we've got this society that really has this emotional attachment there. And it's got an emotional attachment to a system that was intentionally designed to have nothing to do with human development, how humans actually learn and function and thrive. It's actually designed to do opposite, it's designed to keep you in these silos is designed to not have to make sure you don't have a voice, it's designed to make you obedient and to make you automatically believe anybody that's, you know, claiming authority deserves it, and you deserve to give them their reverence, and that you have to follow directions really, really well. In order to be a productive citizen, it's just I need to follow directions, like that's what I do to do a good job, it teaches you that failure is something to be avoided, right and something to be feared, you don't want to fail. Because if you fail, something's going to be wrong and your life's gonna, right, you know, work out, you don't actually have a it's all of these things, the only system that we have in our country that somewhat mimics school is prison. And that's not unintentional. Right? So the problem with conveyor belt schooling people say, Yeah, I pulled my Get out of my government schools, and I put them in the local, private, you know, private Christian school, same pig different shade of lipstick, you know, it's still that same system. The indoctrination you know, the government, communist indoctrination may not be there anymore, but there's still some sort of indoctrination going. But the biggest problem is those habits that are built in because you build it and think about, if you do something for 12 years, you get pretty good at it. Right? It becomes ingrained, you built 12 years of a habit. And that's just a hard thing to break. Well, we've given our kids 12 years of a habit of outsourcing their thinking and being obedient. And thinking that academia is their focus and not actually doing anything. And they become the bystanders in somebody else's script about their life. And it's usually not even a very big role. It's a supporting role, you know, whereas education should give you the pen to be able to write your own script, and you can write yourself into a very heroic script. That's the difference. Right? So yeah, that's my problem with conveyor belt school. And,

Curt Storring 1:03:10

yeah, and this, I mean, like, there's a million things to talk about the how I'm sure. And probably not as many as I think. I know, we'll definitely touch on what you're coming out with, because I'm going to be a member of that, whatever it is. But I think that this particular bit of conversation is important to influence people's decision making, because it's not just Yeah, but they get like free babysitting for six hours, so I can go to work, like, isn't that important for me? It's like, man, everything that you just said, if that doesn't kick you in the ass, and start making you make other decisions to make this work no matter what. Yes. And I feel very privileged to have so called entrepreneurial privilege, I can get my kids to do this. My wife stays home, I can work whenever I want to, yes, I don't have to make a huge decision to change a job. But even if I did, I would, because what you just said is like the difference between good human life as humans, and whatever they get when they go to school. That's not acceptable to me. And I think there needs to be things in our lives that are unacceptable. That's why I'm trying so hard to be a better father because it's unacceptable. That's right to be a bad dad. That's right. It's unacceptable to have kids in school like this turn out that way, and not believe in themselves. Because they're always believing in someone else. So I just like that little piece. I know it's not a how I know people are like, Okay, well, what do I do, but you'll figure it out if you just make the decision. Well, and that's what we're doing.

Matt Beaudreau 1:04:36

And you are the most educated you are the most qualified, you are the most qualified person right? And somebody's and that's one of my biggest things that I that I get from people all the time as well. I'm not qualified to do this. Right. And so what I always tell parents and I tried to try to get them to understand what they're saying is is I say okay, so you're telling me that you're not qualified to to, to educate Get your own kids, right? You're the one that you know, your kid came down the stairs and everybody else was around there and your kid said burger and made like a noise. And you're like, Oh, he's saying he wants a popsicle, right? Like you could translate it, nobody else knew what was going on. Why? Because you know, that young human inside and out, right, you are the most qualified from the get go to raise that young person. But then what is interesting is you likely went through a conveyor belt school, whoever this parent is, and you now feel unqualified to educate your own child. So your decision is to then put your child into the exact same system that left you feeling unqualified to raise your own child. Isn't that ironic. And if you can't understand the amazing job that government schooling has done in trapping people into that mentality, when you hear that statement, you've got to sit back and take another look at that, right. So you, the parents are the most qualified to do that. Because again, maybe you're not qualified to school them. Because that's what you're taught as a teacher how to perpetuate schooling. But you're the most qualified to educate them to different things.

Curt Storring 1:06:25

Beautiful Man, I almost now at this point, I'm just like, I don't even care, I'm just gonna read a bunch of books and take them outside and build some stuff with them when will be good. That's when I think

Matt Beaudreau 1:06:35

100 to 100%. And that's what this whole course that we're launching, you know, the homeschool course. Because, again, I got, we got the schools that we build, and people have come to me forever and going, Okay, I don't have the ability to either start one of these, or I don't have one near me. Definitely not going back to conveyor belt schools, we're definitely gonna go out and homeschool. Oh, my gosh, what do I do? You know, and so that's the whole course is around that here's so as around, here's the high level of what to do. And I want to give people enough information where they can then go take it and run if they want that. Or if they want a supportive community on the side, we want to give him the option of doing that too, right, kind of like what we do with apogee, we're gonna go, okay, here is a community that you can also be a part of, if you would like to. And we'll do weekly webinars, so we can just do hey, here's kind of focus this week for the webinar. You know, we want to talk about this specifically. And we want to take all your questions and answers. But then every single month, we also want to send you specific book recommendations as well as specific conversation starters in there too, right? So it's like, hey, parents. And so I'm basically going to take them along with what I'm doing with my own kids, right? This this week, or this month, we're going to be reading this, here are the conversations we're going to have, here's what those look like, I kind of went out of from a Socratic standpoint on this one around this, and this, here are some of the prompts you want to use. And then we're going to give them projects as well. Right? So I always, like I told you, if you're going to do one thing, and one thing only, exactly what you're talking about is what I would do, I would do the reading and have those conversations, make sure you're getting outside and you know, playing and having the physical activity and getting them involved in responsibilities as early as possible, right, like I would do that. If you've got time to do some extra things, those hands on projects to that expose them to all these other challenges are probably the next thing I would do. And so we're gonna give parents some templates of what projects can look like. And then every month, we're gonna go, Hey, if you're a part of this, as well, we'll send you, you know, kind of our project of the month mapped out, you know, here's, here's kind of how we would launch it the way you would kind of launch it to give them sort of background info, here's some videos, have them, watch this, have them build this, have them start this, and we'll kind of put a project in there, too. We just want parents to be equipped. Knowing that there. I really don't want to just alleviate the fear, knowing you're doing everything that you can do. And you're young humans going to be more than fine.

Curt Storring 1:09:04

Man, this is there was nothing I wanted more than exactly what you just said. Because I asked I was like, Man, I need like a project. You're like, oh are building this. So I'm so excited now that I'm not worried about like, oh, this and this and this subject and this curriculum, this this, it's like, just don't even need any of that. Yep. So if I have a project, and I have some direction, the thing that I worried about is just like, oh, man, I'm going to come up with 12 months of projects for the next, you know, 10 years of education, right? Oh, man, that's a lot. So if I can just get a little help along the way to organize my thinking, because I'm going to list the stuff I want to teach them. But it's like, oh, man, how would I organize that into like the actual doable monthly things? So I think this is going to be a game changer. What is it called?

Matt Beaudreau 1:09:47

Yeah, so that's called educating modern day heroes. So we're launching, we're launching educating modern day heroes. Simultaneously, we'll launch the parenting course that some will want to include in there called Raising dragon slayer And then the CIO will launch that, actually, this month in July, is when the launch the availability of it, there'll be all the high level, the videos, the PDFs, all of that. And then the, the correlating community will start September 1. And we'll put everybody in a, in a closed group in workplaces is the platform that that we'll use there, because it allows us to all just have a closed group have continuous conversations, they're able to put questions directly in there that I'll be able to come in and answer and not even just wait for the weekly webinars, sometimes sometimes I'll just be able to go jump in and do a live video and answer questions that are there. We just want parents to know that they're, you know, they're, they're supported. And ultimately, they'll get to the point where they're like, Okay, I can design my own, I can design my own projects, we can design our own points, like ultimately, they'll get to that point. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's what, you know, that's where you want people to get, I think a good doctor, you know, gets people to understand health to a level where they no longer need the doctor, right. And I think a good educator, gets people to understand, you know, things enough to where they don't need a good parent, right? You don't want your kids living with you when they're 40. And depending on you to pay for everything. You want them to be fully functional outside of that and still have that relationship with you. And we want to do the same thing, you know, just be a part of this community as long as it serves you. And then as soon as you feel confident that you're rock and roll, go get

Curt Storring 1:11:21

it. Man, I picked up a Ryan McClure quote, which was I want like fatherhood for me is making myself obsolete. Yeah. Which is I think what you're just saying, and that's absolutely true. Exactly. Whether that's as a parent educating or as a parent for our children,

Matt Beaudreau 1:11:36

right, man. And here's what's cool man is we went to Ryan and I went to Mexico with our families. In December, when we were with a few other few other guys to John level, came down brought his family Pedro school and Ray care. Stephen Mansfield, Tanner Ghazi, Jack Donovan, it was a pretty cool crew. And everybody brought their, you know, brought their spouses and brought their kids. And what was cool is that, and I can tell you Ryan's not lying when he says that is his, his goal, right? We all it was part of the cool part was that we all talk about our parenting things, and we talk about it all online, and you talk about it on our podcast, and we talked about it. We all saw the integrity for one another with that too, because we went down there, you can't fake it for a week in front of everybody with all of your white like, you're gonna see all of it right. And, man, we all go to restaurants at night. And we did work together during the day we go to restaurants at night. And our kids are all young. They're at a separate table, man. And they're all adults, it we never left a restaurant without people coming up to us, or going up to them going. This doesn't look like this should function this way. But you're all acting like adults, you're ordering your own food. The older kids were cutting food for the little kids, they were all handling their stuff. They weren't going you know, crazy and running around. They were just handling themselves. Because all of us maintain that integrity at home all the time, too. So they just they just did that. It was cool, man. It was cool to see. So I can tell you Ryan's which sees what you get, man, he's not full of it.

Curt Storring 1:13:21

Amazing, man. This is this has been one of my favorite conversations in a long time. So I appreciate you very much. I appreciate all the work you're doing and the fact that you're just willing to share this with me and with all the guys listening. So thank you and please literally DM me the moment that your community is out. And I'm going to dive in that's work and other where can people find you? I know we mentioned a couple things, but you want to just give us give us the list of where we can check. Yeah, for sure.

Matt Beaudreau 1:13:46

If you're interested in looking at the schools go to Acton. academy.org So the AC t o n Acton academy.org. If you're interested in looking at what we're doing on the mentorship side, it's apogee, strong APO g strong.com. And then that's where we're actually going to host the education you know, educating modern day heroes and the Raising dragon slayers it'll all go up through that as well and you'll be able to find everything I'm most active probably on Instagram just at Matt Boudreau and I'll put all the links for everything there as well and people can always DM me there or email me Matt at Apogee strong.com And I'm glad to help people where I can

Curt Storring 1:14:27

amazing man Well thank you very much. I'm gonna put all of that in the show notes at Dad.Work/Podcast where people can find you and there's been a pleasure dude, thank you so much this

Matt Beaudreau 1:14:35

has been mine you do a really good job man not just on what you're posting there but you do a great job with this as well so honors mine sir. Thank you man

Curt Storring 1:14:49

thank you for listening to the Dad Work Podcast. That's it for this episode. But if you would like to stay in touch between weekly episodes, why don't you go over to Instagram and follow me there because I dropped a number of things throughout the week that are related to what we talk about on this podcast but usually go a little bit deeper, provide some tips you can find me on Instagram at dadwork.curt that's DADWORK.CURT And please, if you have been getting something out of this podcast if it has touched you if it has improved your marriage, your parenting your life, would you please leave a quick review on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating. If you have a few extra seconds, leave a quick review. That's the best way that we can get this work in the hands of more fathers. And I truly believe that we change the world, one father at a time, because each father that parents better that loves better raises children who do the same. And in just a couple of generations. I feel like we could be living in a world much better than the one we live in today. Your review will help along that path. And I thank you so much for being here to listen until next week. We'll see you then.

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