2020-08-27_Jonathan_Harris

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00:00:26.400 | ♪ Gannon Zone, Auto Zone ♪

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00:00:30.040 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:32.440 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:34.240 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:36.400 | to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:38.680 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:40.040 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:41.720 | My name is Joshua Sheets, I am your host,

00:00:43.200 | and today I am joined by Jonathan Harris.

00:00:45.860 | Jonathan, welcome to Radical Personal,

00:00:47.440 | or welcome back to Radical Personal Finance.

00:00:49.720 | - Thank you, glad to be here.

00:00:52.880 | - It's been, what, four years, probably five years,

00:00:56.040 | something like that, since you were last on the show?

00:00:58.680 | I don't remember exactly,

00:00:59.800 | but I know that you have been on the show before

00:01:01.360 | where we talked about homeschooling.

00:01:02.200 | - Maybe five years.

00:01:03.040 | - Yeah, it's been significant.

00:01:04.640 | - Yeah, I think five years.

00:01:06.160 | - And so I wanted to invite you back today

00:01:08.200 | to talk about home education,

00:01:10.560 | talk about some of your experiences with home education.

00:01:12.940 | And I think that you are uniquely positioned

00:01:16.960 | to talk about home education.

00:01:18.920 | Unlike many parents who this year,

00:01:21.800 | due to all the school shutdowns for COVID,

00:01:24.820 | unlike many parents who find themselves homeschooling

00:01:27.840 | for the first time, you've been doing this for quite a while.

00:01:31.040 | And not only that, but you've got children at every stage.

00:01:34.320 | Your eldest is how old now?

00:01:36.080 | - My oldest is 22 now.

00:01:38.760 | - Okay, 22, and your youngest is?

00:01:40.120 | - My youngest is four.

00:01:41.880 | - Okay. - Four.

00:01:42.920 | - And you've homeschooled all your children

00:01:44.520 | on the way through. - So the last time

00:01:45.360 | I talked to you, yeah, the last time I talked to you,

00:01:47.200 | my youngest would not have even been born yet.

00:01:49.960 | So, yeah, that's quite a span, actually.

00:01:54.960 | - It is. - Of ages.

00:01:56.400 | So I feel like we've moved from one decade of homeschooling

00:02:01.200 | into a new era of homeschooling.

00:02:03.240 | The trends move and you don't see it from year to year,

00:02:06.000 | but then when you look back and try to remember

00:02:08.360 | your youngest one, how you were doing it

00:02:10.120 | more than 10 years ago, and it's like,

00:02:11.560 | wow, things have changed.

00:02:13.120 | - Right, right.

00:02:14.200 | Well, I think this is really useful

00:02:15.480 | because I admire you.

00:02:17.540 | I've admired you for quite a while.

00:02:19.520 | When I first had you on the show before,

00:02:21.920 | you were talking about 10K to Talent.

00:02:23.520 | That was your brand at that time.

00:02:25.480 | You and your wife were starting a new brand

00:02:27.200 | where you're just adjusting 10K to Talent

00:02:28.840 | into something called Parent Their Passion,

00:02:30.480 | which we'll talk about.

00:02:31.720 | But when I first got to know you

00:02:34.440 | and I first got to know some of what you were doing,

00:02:36.600 | I started watching your children,

00:02:39.400 | watching what you were doing

00:02:40.400 | and how you were helping your children to learn.

00:02:42.680 | And I've admired that a lot of ways.

00:02:44.880 | - You know, and I have a four-year-old

00:02:47.480 | who's managed to get through two layers of protection

00:02:50.680 | to find me.

00:02:51.640 | She's being whisked away.

00:02:53.280 | So it's real.

00:02:55.400 | I really do have small children.

00:02:56.840 | - Yeah, I've got dogs that bark at the neighbors

00:02:59.200 | whenever I'm doing this.

00:03:01.360 | So you've been doing this for a while,

00:03:04.120 | but you've done a really good job, I think,

00:03:06.000 | of making schooling relevant.

00:03:08.440 | And that's one of the things that I most admire

00:03:10.760 | about what you've done with your homeschooling.

00:03:13.360 | And so I'd like you to start by sharing with me,

00:03:17.960 | if you were asked to describe your family's philosophy

00:03:21.960 | about home education, how would you describe it?

00:03:25.500 | - The approach we take is that we're trying to find a way

00:03:30.500 | to expand the child into a future that makes sense for them.

00:03:35.980 | And what I mean by that is,

00:03:38.980 | when we first started off homeschooling,

00:03:41.020 | we had great success.

00:03:42.300 | We're following much more of a traditional approach

00:03:44.140 | as far as filling up buckets of knowledge,

00:03:47.140 | which in and of itself is not bad.

00:03:48.460 | And we still do that to a certain extent.

00:03:50.500 | You know, you start off, you say,

00:03:52.540 | okay, we're in fifth grade.

00:03:53.780 | We wanna know this kind of math.

00:03:55.220 | We wanna know this kind of history,

00:03:56.620 | and maybe we'll throw in some extracurricular activities

00:03:59.380 | so we're not just sitting, you know,

00:04:01.100 | reading and moving around a bit.

00:04:03.180 | And we might throw in a hobby,

00:04:04.460 | but it's really in that sense,

00:04:06.700 | centered around trying to accumulate

00:04:08.260 | in certain buckets of knowledge.

00:04:11.420 | And then we gradually switched to being more focused

00:04:15.440 | on developing an education that was looking to the future,

00:04:22.520 | that made sense for each individual child.

00:04:25.040 | So we're not talking really about tutoring.

00:04:27.840 | That's a separate issue.

00:04:29.280 | Tutoring is more, you know,

00:04:30.400 | you wanna fill up this bucket of knowledge

00:04:31.960 | so you might hire a specialist to go a little bit faster

00:04:34.760 | so you can accelerate.

00:04:36.240 | But what we are really doing now

00:04:40.000 | is we're focused on having them create a kind of talent

00:04:45.000 | that they can bring value to other people in the longterm.

00:04:47.840 | So kind of create an identity for them

00:04:51.200 | that makes sense far beyond high school.

00:04:53.800 | - Do you think of, when you use the word talent,

00:04:57.920 | do you think of that primarily in an employment perspective?

00:05:01.460 | How does that, 'cause,

00:05:03.720 | so if we talk about like the philosophy of school,

00:05:05.480 | you think about what we usually think of as school.

00:05:07.960 | We think of school,

00:05:09.700 | that school is supposed to position us to,

00:05:13.240 | position us for the real world, right?

00:05:16.880 | The idea is we're studying

00:05:18.640 | so that we're prepared for the real world.

00:05:21.440 | Now, there are different roads that we could go down.

00:05:24.400 | Practical skills, employment skills,

00:05:27.440 | versus say the life of the mind.

00:05:30.160 | So when you use talent,

00:05:31.520 | are you primarily thinking about

00:05:32.840 | how that interacts with employment,

00:05:35.000 | or is there something else?

00:05:37.140 | - Both, actually.

00:05:39.520 | So especially for guys, I think that's really important.

00:05:43.160 | As all men know,

00:05:44.600 | and sometimes wives can get a little depressed about that,

00:05:47.400 | but identities as men are so much wrapped up

00:05:50.040 | in what we do for a living

00:05:52.980 | that it becomes really important.

00:05:54.200 | So it's a combination of both.

00:05:56.520 | But a talent can also mean something that has real value

00:06:00.980 | that you wanna bring to other people

00:06:02.960 | that's not academically based,

00:06:06.040 | but you're bringing,

00:06:07.280 | you're creating a real impact on people

00:06:09.280 | with developed skills.

00:06:10.840 | So a lot of times, as you get older,

00:06:13.400 | especially in the early 20s that I have noticed,

00:06:16.240 | people may be successful in academics or not,

00:06:19.320 | and then when they're outside of the controlled,

00:06:22.560 | artificial environment of a high school, let's say,

00:06:26.040 | then reality hits home.

00:06:28.080 | You may have some aspirations,

00:06:30.340 | but then you realize you're stuck flipping burgers

00:06:33.080 | 'cause you need the money,

00:06:34.080 | or you're back doing another six years of schooling

00:06:36.400 | when you thought you were finally out of that phase.

00:06:39.080 | Or you may wanna help,

00:06:41.680 | in fact, we had a discussion recently

00:06:42.880 | with one of our older teenagers

00:06:44.280 | that wanted to do a little more

00:06:45.760 | of a kind of charity service.

00:06:50.760 | And as he was calling around,

00:06:54.000 | he quickly found out that really,

00:06:57.200 | if you wanted to have an impact

00:06:58.640 | because these charity services were quite developed,

00:07:01.340 | you had to have some kind of skillset

00:07:03.760 | that they could use, right?

00:07:05.120 | So let's say you wanted to go help a family

00:07:09.040 | work on the remodel of their house.

00:07:11.920 | If you don't know how to do a deck or fix a roof,

00:07:16.000 | really, what are you gonna do?

00:07:17.040 | Sweep around the house?

00:07:18.360 | They already got that under control.

00:07:20.240 | And I think as people get older,

00:07:21.920 | they realize doing pity service activities

00:07:26.920 | don't really cut it.

00:07:28.840 | So what I mean by talent is either and/or both,

00:07:31.840 | you develop a set of skillsets

00:07:33.840 | that can really take you in your career somewhere,

00:07:36.360 | so it gives you the freedom to do the things you wanna do,

00:07:39.720 | or you're gonna use it as an act of service of some kind,

00:07:44.160 | but you really need to develop that part

00:07:47.000 | to really have an impact.

00:07:48.120 | If not, you're not really making much of an impact.

00:07:51.120 | - Tell us some of the stories

00:07:54.440 | of your elder children's talents

00:07:58.320 | and what they've been able to do with those talents

00:08:01.400 | as you've helped them develop them.

00:08:03.160 | - Yeah, so there are four kids out of the house right now,

00:08:08.320 | 22 down to 18, so I got a 22-year-old,

00:08:11.760 | and I have a 20-year-old, no, 21, he just turned 21,

00:08:16.160 | so 21, and a set of twins, a boy, girl,

00:08:21.160 | and they're 18, and they're living and working on their own,

00:08:24.480 | and they are all using the skills and talents

00:08:28.280 | that they've developed deliberately

00:08:30.480 | throughout their high school years

00:08:31.960 | in combination with their schooling.

00:08:35.400 | And the oldest right now,

00:08:37.480 | he works on various big contract jobs

00:08:40.840 | that involve civilian drone work,

00:08:42.840 | usually for surveying special kind of equipments

00:08:45.760 | across the country, and he uses a lot of videography,

00:08:50.760 | he manages people, and that's something

00:08:53.360 | that he started back when he was in our home.

00:08:55.920 | He started helping us out with our photography

00:08:58.480 | for our home business, a completely separate home business,

00:09:01.320 | and we got him involved with our,

00:09:04.480 | I think our first digital camera at the time,

00:09:08.160 | and we needed to take more pictures

00:09:10.440 | of what we were selling, and so I was thinking,

00:09:12.080 | why don't we use him and put him to work on it?

00:09:14.440 | So he started helping us in that area,

00:09:16.000 | and then over time, one thing led to another,

00:09:19.660 | and we met a friend who was one of the early drone adopters

00:09:23.660 | for civilian use, and he gave him one of his older models,

00:09:27.000 | and then he decided, hey, I could do this

00:09:28.600 | for real estate filming, and one thing led to another,

00:09:33.520 | and he just kept developing that,

00:09:35.160 | and eventually started getting work across the country,

00:09:38.440 | which he absolutely loved.

00:09:39.800 | He loves to travel, specifically,

00:09:43.960 | he loves to see the wilderness in different areas,

00:09:46.120 | and the kind of work that he does often involves

00:09:48.520 | surveying equipment in remote locations

00:09:51.040 | for big companies that will contract with people like him.

00:09:55.720 | And then I have my 21-year-old,

00:09:59.080 | and we originally started,

00:10:02.680 | by the time I got to my second born,

00:10:04.800 | this philosophy, this method was really full-blown

00:10:09.920 | by that time, I had started experimenting

00:10:11.520 | with my first born, and by the time I got to the second one,

00:10:15.640 | I think I'd kind of figured out most of the kinks,

00:10:18.520 | and that way, locally, we have a gem and mineral club,

00:10:24.520 | which is very unusual, this particular club

00:10:27.160 | is very unusual because it was the center

00:10:29.160 | for a lot of the old gold rush days,

00:10:31.880 | and the equipment, over the years,

00:10:34.160 | I don't know, it's been around for 80 years, longer,

00:10:38.520 | I'm not even sure, and as the older guys pass on,

00:10:43.520 | whatever, they'll give their equipment to this club,

00:10:46.400 | there's a lot of people who know firsthand

00:10:49.520 | about mineral deposits and rock formations and stuff,

00:10:53.320 | and they love having young kids join in there

00:10:56.120 | and show 'em how to cut stones and things like that,

00:10:59.300 | so we started going there, I didn't have any knowledge

00:11:01.600 | in that area, but my son was absolutely fascinated by that.

00:11:04.880 | That eventually led to him doing some metal work,

00:11:09.000 | because there was some metal work related to this skill set,

00:11:13.080 | and then from there, he got fascinated by making blades,

00:11:17.920 | he got very, very good at it, and when he left our home,

00:11:22.060 | he was still selling custom blades, Japanese blades,

00:11:25.280 | he loved to make those, he got very good,

00:11:27.240 | they were beautiful, it was beautiful work,

00:11:29.320 | and then he decided he, well, actually, I gotta get that back,

00:11:33.720 | no, then he went for a custom knife builder,

00:11:37.240 | and then from there, he decided he really wanted,

00:11:39.040 | he loved the machinery that they were using

00:11:41.840 | to make some precision parts for it,

00:11:43.880 | and then he decided he really wanted to go into CNC work

00:11:46.880 | or machining work, high-end machining work,

00:11:50.800 | and he was able to get an interview,

00:11:54.360 | I think he cold-called them, by then,

00:11:57.520 | he was already out of our home,

00:11:59.040 | working and paying for his own stuff,

00:12:02.640 | and because of his background and his passion

00:12:06.200 | and determination, he also had a great portfolio,

00:12:08.520 | he documented everything, so he was an early adopter

00:12:11.200 | on Instagram, showing all his work and how he learned,

00:12:15.280 | all that stuff opened up the doors,

00:12:16.720 | and when he came to one of these big shops

00:12:18.280 | that would be very hard to get into,

00:12:19.720 | they gobbled him up right away,

00:12:22.480 | and at this point in time, he's just absolutely loving it.

00:12:26.020 | So the other two, I have a coder,

00:12:30.700 | and he's almost a stereotypical coder,

00:12:35.400 | with all the precision and some of the social skills

00:12:42.360 | that go with that, absolutely fascinated

00:12:45.120 | by how things work logically,

00:12:47.240 | and he was helping us in our business,

00:12:51.320 | the same thing a bit, he started getting

00:12:54.200 | onto some of these gaming sites,

00:12:55.880 | working just on the development side of it,

00:12:58.320 | and learning how to manage other programmers,

00:13:01.200 | at, I don't know, he was 17 or 16,

00:13:03.920 | and the beauty of that, and that will come up

00:13:05.720 | probably later, is that a lot of these skills

00:13:07.600 | you can do without people knowing your actual age,

00:13:10.400 | I mean, they know they're young,

00:13:11.360 | but they don't know how young you are,

00:13:13.240 | so if you can perform and deliver, they don't care,

00:13:17.180 | and I can tell you, that really boosts people's confidence,

00:13:20.420 | I mean, my child's confidence.

00:13:22.240 | He's on his own, he's working full-time,

00:13:25.400 | he just codes from morning 'til night,

00:13:27.680 | we're trying to encourage him to develop

00:13:29.480 | some more hobbies on the side,

00:13:30.660 | so he's not always doing his talent,

00:13:32.400 | because he just loves it, and I think he's picking up,

00:13:37.400 | he likes taking apart motorcycles now,

00:13:39.800 | and all that kind of stuff.

00:13:42.260 | We have, the next after that, is our daughter,

00:13:45.860 | and she's always been super artistic,

00:13:47.920 | she started down the artistic path in the beginning,

00:13:52.080 | not because we had a particular talent goal for her

00:13:55.680 | at that time, but she had great difficulty reading,

00:13:58.500 | very serious reading problem,

00:14:01.200 | we tried out everything we could,

00:14:02.640 | and so at that time, as parents, we decided,

00:14:05.000 | you know what, we didn't want her to be constantly

00:14:08.440 | frustrated, and we decided we wanted to develop

00:14:13.100 | some kind of talent that she could look forward

00:14:15.940 | to doing during the day, and we,

00:14:19.900 | that was, she was one of the key people,

00:14:23.660 | and the children here, who helped me to understand

00:14:26.340 | that really, you could really use your talent

00:14:28.340 | to actually hijack your curriculum,

00:14:31.320 | and so a lot of the time, she had difficulty

00:14:33.980 | reading, let's say, a history lesson,

00:14:36.560 | without a lot of help from someone else,

00:14:38.820 | she has no problem now, but at that time, she did,

00:14:41.120 | and so we just started encouraging her,

00:14:42.700 | well, let's get some more books that show accurate

00:14:45.180 | illustrations of the time period of what's going on,

00:14:49.380 | and we encouraged her to kind of draw her way

00:14:51.540 | through history, draw her way through all sorts of things,

00:14:54.620 | and she, her talent just kept building,

00:14:56.660 | and building, and building, and eventually,

00:14:59.260 | that became kind of her identity.

00:15:02.300 | Fast forward, she is, she has two part-time jobs right now,

00:15:07.300 | even during the lockdowns, and one is related

00:15:10.120 | to restaurant work, which has been good for her,

00:15:12.680 | a lot of social skills she's picked up there,

00:15:15.080 | and another one is actually related to her art skills,

00:15:19.680 | and so there's a company that is right now on the rise

00:15:23.000 | because of the lockdown, so providing a lot of

00:15:25.240 | club, academic, homeschool-related badges

00:15:31.680 | and supporting material, and she's working in that area,

00:15:35.820 | and she's, right there, she's learning how to move quickly

00:15:40.180 | in an office environment, so typically,

00:15:42.320 | and I think it is true, a lot of illustrators or artists

00:15:45.920 | have a hard time with time management in general,

00:15:51.760 | and it's kind of the reason why they're here now,

00:15:55.460 | and so this has been a good opening for her,

00:15:58.260 | she's found someone who can give her the mentorship

00:16:00.540 | she needs in an office environment,

00:16:02.760 | but that also validates her artistic skills.

00:16:04.960 | - So, you have four, you have four older children,

00:16:10.300 | all four of them are out of the house,

00:16:12.120 | and is it accurate that, especially the older two,

00:16:17.120 | if not the 18-year-olds, but that they are able to

00:16:19.780 | use their talents to provide enough income for themselves,

00:16:23.300 | or they're able to support themselves,

00:16:24.700 | or at least mostly support themselves, is that accurate?

00:16:27.420 | - Yeah, no, and support themselves entirely.

00:16:30.340 | - Right.

00:16:31.180 | - In fact, I think,

00:16:32.540 | in some ways, as the years have gone by,

00:16:38.900 | I realize that they don't have to be, you know,

00:16:43.060 | world-class level, 10,000 hours in order to be able

00:16:46.960 | to make a living with their talent set,

00:16:50.620 | so if I would tell parents, it's like,

00:16:52.500 | if they're on to something, and they're super passionate

00:16:55.060 | about it, and motivated, and they have enough of a skill set,

00:16:58.660 | so of course, in the popular literature,

00:17:01.100 | you'll see a lot of that, especially for adults,

00:17:03.620 | you know, saying you can't run on passion,

00:17:07.620 | and find a livelihood and a career,

00:17:09.740 | and I agree with that, too, in the sense that

00:17:13.180 | if you have passion, but no skill set,

00:17:14.980 | it's not, you're gonna set yourself up for frustration,

00:17:17.780 | so if you can get enough of a skill set together,

00:17:20.540 | and a passion and motivation to become really good

00:17:23.580 | at something, I think it carries its own momentum,

00:17:25.980 | so once you get out there, and you start, you know,

00:17:29.100 | delivering on the value, so like my oldest,

00:17:31.960 | he started doing some real estate work,

00:17:35.180 | he quickly realized who the big paying clients were,

00:17:37.660 | and who were not, so then the big paying clients,

00:17:41.180 | he noticed they loved it if you handled all the voiceover

00:17:44.020 | for them on their advertisement, so he quickly figured out

00:17:47.100 | how to find voice actors, charge extra for that,

00:17:50.580 | and one thing would lead to another,

00:17:53.860 | and so once you got out into the marketplace,

00:17:57.020 | that kind of helps drive the talent development further.

00:18:02.020 | - Right, when you, one of the things that has inspired me

00:18:07.100 | from the past, and maybe I've projected this onto you,

00:18:10.820 | but we were talking, or I was watching

00:18:12.980 | some of your social media stuff,

00:18:14.420 | and I got the impression that you and your wife

00:18:17.620 | have worked hard to help your children

00:18:19.420 | to integrate their schooling with practical expression,

00:18:22.940 | so the examples that I've given,

00:18:24.580 | which you can correct the record here in a moment,

00:18:26.340 | but the examples that I've given would be

00:18:28.060 | that if your children are going to have

00:18:29.820 | a writing assignment to help with their writing,

00:18:32.420 | that you've encouraged them, well yes, you need to write,

00:18:35.060 | but what you need to write is you need to write

00:18:36.860 | an email newsletter to your email list,

00:18:39.060 | and so your son who did blade making

00:18:41.660 | had a blade making list, and your daughter who does art

00:18:44.380 | has her art list, and so it's not just

00:18:48.060 | an empty, dead writing assignment

00:18:49.940 | that the teacher's gonna read, give you a grade,

00:18:51.620 | and then go away, rather you're creating

00:18:54.500 | a writing assignment for a modern practical purpose

00:18:57.540 | that's infinitely useful, and then in the context of that,

00:19:01.900 | I think of course you're helping your children

00:19:03.740 | to acquire very valuable skills,

00:19:07.060 | to be able to run a newsletter,

00:19:08.540 | you're acquiring resources and assets

00:19:11.540 | and helping them build assets like an email list.

00:19:13.780 | You mentioned that your son had a portfolio,

00:19:16.180 | which obviously can be seen on Instagram

00:19:18.580 | and probably other things as well,

00:19:19.880 | but he's got a portfolio of work,

00:19:21.540 | accumulated over years, and so you've got a resume

00:19:24.540 | that's very expansive, and somebody can look

00:19:26.660 | at his Instagram profile that he built

00:19:30.220 | under his Blades of Black screen name,

00:19:34.860 | but they can see that, and not only will they see

00:19:38.100 | his growth, they'll be able to look back

00:19:40.400 | to his early projects and see he started as an amateur

00:19:44.020 | and he had decent results, and then look,

00:19:45.880 | here's this fine work that he's producing years later,

00:19:48.620 | but they can also see more about him as a person.

00:19:51.080 | They can see that he's able to punctuate sentences properly,

00:19:55.260 | that they can see the breadth of his vocabulary,

00:19:57.940 | and I just have such a tremendous admiration for that idea,

00:20:02.660 | and I think that that's my ambition

00:20:07.660 | as my children start to move out of the basic levels

00:20:11.100 | where we are of learning to read, learning to write,

00:20:14.460 | learning the basics of math, and we get to the point

00:20:16.700 | where they're pursuing those kinds of things.

00:20:20.300 | I very much want their education to be integrated

00:20:23.800 | in skillset like that.

00:20:25.120 | - Yeah, the writing part has been amazing,

00:20:31.320 | and when I first started, I mean, I was willful enough

00:20:35.160 | that I was going to do it, I was gonna try this.

00:20:37.180 | I mean, I tried a lot of things on my kids.

00:20:39.600 | Everything was safe. (laughs)

00:20:41.520 | There's no danger there, but all I have to do is,

00:20:44.480 | and I encourage other people listening to this,

00:20:46.660 | I beg them, just flashback on your days in junior high

00:20:50.500 | and in high school, and get a reality dose

00:20:54.940 | of what it was like back then.

00:20:56.380 | I mean, you can remember some great things,

00:20:59.080 | but there are a lot of things that were, I'm sure,

00:21:00.580 | very frustrating, and I remember,

00:21:03.700 | I wasn't a bad writer in school.

00:21:06.500 | I didn't really have difficulty in that area.

00:21:08.460 | I wouldn't say I shined, but I was probably average,

00:21:12.560 | but I remember the frustration.

00:21:14.260 | You spend so much time, they'll tell you,

00:21:15.940 | okay, go research something, let's say, on George Washington

00:21:18.640 | and so you don't have, okay, you know it's history,

00:21:21.620 | you're gonna write something, but you know,

00:21:23.420 | as you put in that last sentence,

00:21:24.860 | that no one's gonna read it.

00:21:26.040 | Your parents won't even read it.

00:21:27.820 | Seriously, they will not even read it.

00:21:29.460 | When they read it, their eyes are kind of glazed over.

00:21:31.660 | Your teachers, she's getting 30 of them at the same time.

00:21:34.460 | Everybody's written about George Washington's

00:21:36.820 | wooden teeth or whatever.

00:21:38.220 | There's nothing new that can be said,

00:21:39.700 | and you don't know enough about the subject,

00:21:42.620 | and so you get, I think people, teenagers,

00:21:45.620 | start getting that nagging feeling

00:21:47.220 | that a lot of what they're doing doesn't matter,

00:21:50.420 | and it is true that some things you have to do

00:21:55.420 | that don't matter, but there's plenty of things

00:22:00.080 | that you could do to make it matter.

00:22:02.800 | - The question is just why bother wasting your time?

00:22:09.220 | If there's something that you can do

00:22:12.420 | that's gonna accomplish the same thing,

00:22:14.060 | and here's why I like so much what you've done

00:22:16.020 | with your children on Instagram.

00:22:18.300 | I admire the idea, we'll see when we get to it,

00:22:21.580 | but I admire the idea that students should write

00:22:25.780 | just a little bit every day.

00:22:27.260 | There's certainly a big difference between a 30-page paper

00:22:31.420 | and the skill of creating a 30-page paper

00:22:33.700 | or a 300-page book versus something short,

00:22:37.180 | but in order to develop the skill, the muscle of writing,

00:22:41.760 | writing a little bit every day is ideal,

00:22:44.300 | and the thing I noticed,

00:22:45.260 | and I don't know if this is at your direction,

00:22:46.660 | but as I watch your children's social media posts,

00:22:49.300 | I notice that they write a couple of paragraphs.

00:22:53.220 | They'll take an Instagram post

00:22:54.820 | and they'll write a couple of paragraphs,

00:22:56.620 | and as I see it, that's ideal,

00:22:58.540 | and it makes it a more practical way.

00:23:01.660 | I admired some of the results

00:23:04.220 | that Art Robinson got with his children.

00:23:07.700 | I don't know if you're familiar with him,

00:23:08.820 | but his basic requirement for his children

00:23:11.180 | was that they did an hour or two of math a day,

00:23:14.420 | that they wrote a page-long essay per day,

00:23:17.900 | and that they read off of a required reading list

00:23:20.980 | that he curated that would be a comprehensive reading list,

00:23:24.300 | and that was the basic outline of their educational format,

00:23:27.900 | and as I've thought about that writing requirement,

00:23:31.260 | I've thought, "I really wanna do that with my children,"

00:23:34.060 | but I can just see them every day sitting down

00:23:36.620 | and making up some goofy essay that's not actually useful

00:23:39.580 | 'cause you know it's not gonna be used,

00:23:41.820 | but when I observe your children's Instagram posts

00:23:44.520 | and I see how they're writing about what they're learning,

00:23:47.420 | it's a useful piece of writing that actually has value,

00:23:50.820 | and because it's being seen,

00:23:52.180 | it's enhancing the desire and enhancing the impact

00:23:56.020 | as to why they should actually do it,

00:23:57.540 | so I think this is a wonderful technique

00:24:00.220 | that we can integrate to really help our children

00:24:03.740 | not only do their best work,

00:24:05.500 | but even get feedback on their work

00:24:07.380 | through some of the social channels.

00:24:09.220 | - You know, I take our daughter to a local ballet school

00:24:15.900 | that has a very good reputation, very thoughtful school,

00:24:20.380 | and she enjoys it, and this is more of a hobby right now,

00:24:24.960 | but when I see there are some students in there

00:24:28.060 | that are very dedicated, obviously,

00:24:29.980 | and the parents are dedicated, they love it,

00:24:32.620 | they just, they have the energy, the motivation,

00:24:35.820 | and the passion to do it,

00:24:37.480 | and when situations like this,

00:24:41.540 | my thinking and my philosophy head comes on

00:24:45.920 | and I'm like, you know what?

00:24:47.160 | I would love to go into these kids' curriculums

00:24:49.460 | and say, okay, they're writing about George Washington,

00:24:51.940 | you know, they're going,

00:24:52.780 | maybe they're even in a public school

00:24:54.300 | where you may don't have as much leeway to do what you want,

00:24:56.700 | but you could there, too,

00:24:57.540 | so let's say your child is passionate about ballet,

00:25:02.900 | they're doing George Washington, she's 12,

00:25:06.660 | and typically they might, I don't know what they do now,

00:25:09.900 | but back then they would give you

00:25:11.420 | two or three ideas to write about,

00:25:13.140 | or maybe you could go to the library, look up something,

00:25:15.700 | and it's something that's been rehashed before

00:25:17.260 | and you don't have much to say about it as a child.

00:25:20.460 | At least nothing you know that your parents

00:25:21.860 | and your teacher would want to repeat and share,

00:25:24.660 | and you can't use it again as a portfolio

00:25:26.500 | because it's so meaningless to you personally.

00:25:29.840 | You're not gonna post it up anywhere,

00:25:31.280 | you're not gonna share it to your friends.

00:25:33.340 | You get the grade and you're done and move on.

00:25:35.900 | However, if you had a different mindset,

00:25:38.420 | you could say, hey, it's George Washington's time,

00:25:41.280 | I wonder what they did in the dance world during that time.

00:25:45.200 | So just a barely a little effort,

00:25:48.140 | you'll probably quickly discover

00:25:49.860 | that there are particular dances

00:25:51.180 | that the upper classes did and participated in.

00:25:53.580 | Wouldn't it be amazing,

00:25:54.940 | so instead of writing about George Washington's teeth

00:25:57.820 | or him crossing the Delaware,

00:26:00.140 | you write something about how dance was used

00:26:03.220 | during George Washington's time.

00:26:05.700 | And I think there's a lot of information about that.

00:26:07.900 | So you would obviously write something

00:26:10.140 | that you're already passionate about,

00:26:11.760 | you'd understand the terms that are being used,

00:26:14.060 | you'd understand new terms,

00:26:16.100 | and you'd be able to put it in a true historical contest

00:26:18.520 | 'cause that's the thing that you find out

00:26:20.280 | with talent and other things

00:26:21.500 | is that things that you study have meaning.

00:26:24.600 | Dance, even at the time George Washington

00:26:28.180 | was a way for people to socially connect with each other.

00:26:31.820 | And they had particular techniques

00:26:33.760 | and things of doing things from a dancer's perspective

00:26:38.380 | could be absolutely fascinating.

00:26:40.140 | But it would also, and here's the interesting thing,

00:26:42.340 | it would also fascinate your teacher.

00:26:43.820 | For the first time, they're reading something interesting

00:26:46.180 | that they never read about before.

00:26:48.180 | In a language where a 12-year-old is all excited about this,

00:26:54.340 | this is what it means, this is what they did,

00:26:55.900 | this is how it's different than it is now,

00:26:57.460 | this is amazing.

00:26:58.620 | You had all this ritual and courtship going on

00:27:02.060 | and you could talk about this.

00:27:05.820 | And I tell you, at that point in time,

00:27:07.140 | that essay, that little essay by a 12-year-old

00:27:10.260 | about George Washington is going to be read.

00:27:13.240 | It's going to be read by grandma,

00:27:14.580 | it's gonna be read by the dad who's like,

00:27:17.060 | "Oh, wow, this is different.

00:27:18.520 | "My girl's pretty interesting."

00:27:20.740 | The teacher's gonna put this aside and say to her husband,

00:27:23.920 | "Finally, something new."

00:27:25.820 | And you can take that essay,

00:27:27.880 | same amount of time as you would researching something

00:27:31.260 | that they've already written about a million times,

00:27:33.540 | you'd gladly put that up on a little blog post.

00:27:36.020 | You'd take that to your teacher, your ballet teacher,

00:27:39.300 | and they would show that.

00:27:40.140 | So you get this amazing feedback loop

00:27:42.400 | that gets started in kids.

00:27:43.540 | It's like, "Wow, I have something to say

00:27:46.340 | "about this time period

00:27:48.200 | "through the lens of my passion and interest."

00:27:51.640 | And so that's really what I've been trying to do

00:27:53.420 | with my kids.

00:27:54.260 | Like some things you may have to do,

00:27:57.500 | there are things you have to do

00:27:59.820 | that are sometimes difficult to hijack

00:28:02.700 | and take over for your own direct purposes,

00:28:04.540 | but you'd be amazed how much you can do.

00:28:06.460 | Just in that example, you got dance.

00:28:08.860 | How does that fit with George Washington?

00:28:13.860 | And it's amazing the connections you can make.

00:28:18.060 | And so from then on, if the child wanted to keep going down,

00:28:20.880 | she could go in any number of directions,

00:28:22.400 | but she has a deep understanding of history

00:28:24.980 | from the perspective of her talent.

00:28:27.580 | And when she bumps into people

00:28:29.400 | who are much more advanced than her,

00:28:32.340 | she's gonna find that the doors are gonna open up.

00:28:35.340 | - I think that this will help

00:28:36.780 | to remember more about history

00:28:39.380 | because my opinion is that I only remember

00:28:43.960 | the things that I've ever been interested in.

00:28:46.220 | I feel like so much of school was a waste for me

00:28:49.780 | because I absorbed information,

00:28:52.140 | but it was information

00:28:53.260 | that I wasn't particularly interested in,

00:28:55.620 | and thus I didn't retain it.

00:28:57.800 | And I've not been willing to embrace

00:29:01.260 | the mantra of the unschooler

00:29:04.100 | of only study things you're interested in,

00:29:06.700 | but I like these ideas as a way of saying,

00:29:10.180 | how can we make this interesting to you

00:29:13.680 | because of your uniqueness

00:29:15.520 | so that you're more likely to retain

00:29:19.340 | the things that you're studying

00:29:20.380 | and the things that you're learning about?

00:29:22.580 | I love the idea.

00:29:24.140 | If you were to talk about

00:29:25.540 | the focusing on passion or on talent,

00:29:30.500 | if you're focusing on that,

00:29:32.300 | do you feel like you had to give up something?

00:29:36.560 | Well, first, did you feel you had to give up something

00:29:40.740 | in order to focus on talent?

00:29:43.640 | If so, what was it for your children?

00:29:46.660 | And if so, is there anything that you regret?

00:29:50.340 | Is there anything that you feel like your children

00:29:53.660 | don't have that at this point you're doing differently

00:29:56.060 | with your younger children than your older children

00:29:57.700 | because you were so focused on their talent?

00:29:59.900 | - The short answer is no.

00:30:03.500 | I really do not.

00:30:04.460 | In fact, that kind of surprised me

00:30:06.580 | that I tried a lot of things,

00:30:10.160 | and some things just weren't worth it.

00:30:11.780 | I can't even remember them.

00:30:12.700 | I wrote them down somewhere.

00:30:14.100 | But I still had a pretty good instinct,

00:30:17.180 | and honestly, you read a lot

00:30:19.440 | of what other people have tried,

00:30:21.020 | so you know what can and can't be done.

00:30:23.560 | You know what the limits of human experiments can be.

00:30:27.660 | And you also remember your own youth,

00:30:31.220 | so there's some things.

00:30:33.820 | I will have to say, and there is one negative

00:30:36.820 | that popped up more later that I'll address,

00:30:40.100 | but the one feedback I got constantly from other people,

00:30:45.100 | and that even shocked me,

00:30:49.280 | as to how amazing it was to me as an adult,

00:30:53.440 | as I'm doing it with my children,

00:30:55.580 | is how much passion, how much motivation.

00:30:57.980 | I cannot tell you how many times.

00:30:59.360 | Our biggest issue is you gotta turn off the lights

00:31:02.480 | and get to bed, 'cause they'll be so absorbed

00:31:05.020 | in pursuing whatever aspect of this skill set

00:31:08.140 | that they're trying to develop.

00:31:10.260 | They're so engrossed in it, they can't stop.

00:31:13.020 | And we all know that feeling, right?

00:31:15.500 | You're into something so much that you can't stop.

00:31:19.100 | And as a dad, I have to get in there and say,

00:31:20.920 | you know, they have limitations on their sleep schedules,

00:31:23.240 | 'cause they'll pay for it tomorrow,

00:31:24.360 | or mom and dad will pay for it.

00:31:25.520 | So it's like, okay, it's nine o'clock, it's time to stop.

00:31:27.920 | It's time to stop programming.

00:31:29.440 | It's time to stop working on that blade.

00:31:32.080 | Please, it's midnight, I can go one more.

00:31:33.800 | It's like, okay, you know, let's cool it here.

00:31:37.640 | And so that is something that other parents want really bad.

00:31:41.200 | I want that too in my kids, and I will say that I think

00:31:47.580 | when you talk to the average parent,

00:31:49.980 | and that would have included myself,

00:31:51.740 | say, what do you want for your kids?

00:31:52.980 | Say, I want them to be motivated,

00:31:55.260 | and I want them to be happy.

00:31:56.660 | And everybody wants that for their child.

00:32:02.260 | But the key to that being happy and motivated

00:32:05.420 | is not be motivated, just saying the words,

00:32:07.540 | be motivated, be happy, is they don't have a direction.

00:32:10.180 | And your happiness and your motivation comes

00:32:12.860 | basically in falling in love around

00:32:15.860 | creating and doing something

00:32:17.480 | that has meaning and purpose to it.

00:32:20.160 | So in that, we were talking a little bit about

00:32:22.600 | some of the potential dangers of a more whole unschooling.

00:32:26.560 | And of course, it depends what you mean by the definition.

00:32:28.580 | But if by unschooling, you mean you're just going

00:32:30.780 | from thing to thing, one shiny new thing to another,

00:32:34.760 | you can't develop enough of a depth

00:32:38.720 | to start creating and doing something interesting.

00:32:41.760 | So this is the example of someone who practices

00:32:43.920 | five days on the piano, gives up and say,

00:32:45.520 | hey, I'm not really good at this.

00:32:47.120 | Now I'm gonna become a soccer superstar.

00:32:49.160 | They go for two weeks at soccer,

00:32:51.340 | they realize they're not at the top,

00:32:52.680 | so they abandon it and they say,

00:32:54.020 | I'm gonna go into scuba diving next.

00:32:56.120 | That's not what I'm talking about.

00:32:57.640 | I'm talking about latching onto something,

00:33:00.460 | even if it's a small thing,

00:33:02.640 | and gradually cultivating it into something amazing.

00:33:05.880 | And that's where, and the same,

00:33:08.760 | teenagers are just like adults.

00:33:10.680 | If you're doing work, you want to know

00:33:13.380 | that your work has some kind of meaning to the outside world

00:33:16.340 | apart from yourself, and you want to feel productive.

00:33:21.000 | You want to feel competent.

00:33:23.120 | And those are important feelings to have.

00:33:25.400 | I don't think they're wrong feelings,

00:33:28.120 | and you just need to understand

00:33:29.780 | that that's what a young person needs.

00:33:31.400 | They are at that point, they're transitioning from childhood.

00:33:34.340 | It's not enough to give them hugs and say,

00:33:36.380 | you are loved, you're great.

00:33:38.640 | Meanwhile, they're on the couch just playing video games,

00:33:41.500 | feeling bad about themselves,

00:33:44.500 | 'cause they have nothing to give to the world,

00:33:46.260 | and they know it, and they honestly don't.

00:33:48.560 | So they need to find something that they can cultivate.

00:33:51.560 | That's the secret.

00:33:54.740 | - That's a really powerful,

00:33:57.520 | that's a really powerful concept, Jonathan.

00:34:01.980 | If you think about so many of the things

00:34:04.540 | that are affecting young people today,

00:34:10.160 | I see what you just said as having very broad application.

00:34:13.440 | I've never thought about it exactly the way

00:34:15.040 | that you just articulated it,

00:34:16.280 | but to me, that rings so dramatically true.

00:34:19.400 | What we've done, so I think most of us would acknowledge

00:34:23.560 | that we seem to have a significant cultural problem,

00:34:27.640 | at least or especially in US American culture

00:34:31.080 | with our young people.

00:34:34.320 | Our young people are not thriving, broadly speaking.

00:34:37.020 | They are not thriving as they once did.

00:34:39.400 | They're not thriving, broadly speaking.

00:34:41.840 | And so if you trace this back in history,

00:34:45.060 | I don't know, of course, psychological surveys and whatnot,

00:34:48.320 | we don't have all of them throughout history,

00:34:50.280 | but if you trace these back in history,

00:34:52.240 | I don't think it was always this bad.

00:34:54.600 | I think that children at one point in time

00:34:58.000 | had a much stronger sense of anchor,

00:35:00.920 | being of an anchoring place in life than they do now.

00:35:05.920 | And so as I see it from my perspective,

00:35:08.640 | there are a number of things.

00:35:09.560 | Number one is children need to feel like they belong,

00:35:12.440 | like they're in a family,

00:35:13.680 | and that family is a coherent, cohesive unit

00:35:16.840 | that's likely to last, now they feel that they belong.

00:35:19.480 | And so ideally, we gain our primary sense

00:35:23.560 | of belonging and identity from our family.

00:35:28.560 | Ideally, our family should expand outwards to our clan,

00:35:32.080 | that we're part of a larger clan,

00:35:33.920 | and we know this is what it means to be a Harris,

00:35:36.240 | or this is what it means to be a Sheets,

00:35:37.960 | or this is what it means to be a McGillicuddy,

00:35:41.520 | that this is our clan, this is who we stand for.

00:35:44.320 | Then that expands out into the community

00:35:46.040 | in terms of a very clear religious identity,

00:35:51.000 | a very clear geographic identity, right?

00:35:53.560 | We're New Englanders, or this is who we are,

00:35:58.000 | and we know that.

00:35:59.680 | And then it expands outwards.

00:36:00.720 | We're Americans, right?

00:36:01.660 | This is who we are.

00:36:02.560 | We're Bolivians, whatever the identity is.

00:36:05.840 | And so there is a major component to that identity,

00:36:09.280 | and that identity itself has been very heavily fractured,

00:36:12.880 | that if you ask a lot of people,

00:36:14.240 | "What does it mean to be an American?"

00:36:16.560 | We're not really sure about that,

00:36:18.120 | and you see the problems of our lack of sureness.

00:36:21.580 | If you ask, "What does it mean to be a Harris?"

00:36:24.240 | What does it mean to be a Sheets?

00:36:25.880 | Well, some of us are hardcore about this,

00:36:28.180 | but most families don't have a family mission statement.

00:36:30.600 | Most families don't have a list of characteristics

00:36:33.520 | that they put on the wall that says,

00:36:34.680 | "This is who we are, and this is what we stand for.

00:36:36.640 | "This is what we're gonna be known for."

00:36:38.400 | And so a child is very unanchored, untethered.

00:36:43.120 | And so then, what other form of identity do you find?

00:36:47.880 | Well, throughout history,

00:36:49.520 | people have found meaning and identity in their work.

00:36:51.760 | Most of our names come from what we did.

00:36:54.440 | If your last name is Baker,

00:36:56.040 | it's usually because your family were the Bakers,

00:36:58.140 | or there's so many words that are traditional surnames

00:37:02.080 | that come from what you do.

00:37:03.720 | Well, throughout history, teenagers and adolescents

00:37:06.780 | have always been anchored to, "This is what we do."

00:37:09.800 | And so there was the family farm,

00:37:12.080 | and there was work for children to do,

00:37:14.140 | or there was the family business.

00:37:15.520 | I labor in the carpenter shop with my father.

00:37:18.980 | But in our modern world, our work lives have so fractured

00:37:23.760 | that usually our family is not involved

00:37:26.680 | in our modern work lives,

00:37:28.080 | just because it's very, very difficult, right?

00:37:29.800 | Your four-year-old wants to come in and see you,

00:37:31.300 | and it's a little hard for you to have her

00:37:32.600 | on the interview, right?

00:37:34.360 | If mine come in and see me,

00:37:35.880 | it's a little hard to bring them up

00:37:37.040 | and involve them into exactly what we're doing here.

00:37:40.680 | And so we put children into this school environment,

00:37:44.120 | but they're smart enough to know

00:37:46.040 | that the majority of their work doesn't really have meaning.

00:37:49.680 | They're smart enough to know,

00:37:51.640 | "You're telling me I'm gonna use algebra,

00:37:53.280 | "but then I take my algebra homework home,

00:37:55.200 | "and I ask my dad for help,

00:37:56.300 | "and he says, 'I don't know how to do that stuff,

00:37:57.640 | "'and you're telling me it's supposed to matter.'"

00:37:59.480 | And so it's not anchored to it,

00:38:01.160 | and the work doesn't matter.

00:38:02.720 | And so if you can connect teenagers

00:38:06.320 | back to the sense of, "My work matters.

00:38:09.040 | "People notice my work,

00:38:10.340 | "and I have something productive to do,"

00:38:12.460 | it helps to start to facilitate a sense of identity.

00:38:15.960 | And that sense of identity is actually authentic,

00:38:18.640 | because it's related to who you are and what you do.

00:38:22.280 | And so many people try to separate identity

00:38:25.320 | from what they do, and they say,

00:38:26.360 | "Well, this is who I am,"

00:38:28.120 | without having proof of it, without doing it.

00:38:31.360 | I think it just tricks the subconscious.

00:38:32.920 | So I think that what you've said is really powerful,

00:38:37.100 | and a component of the piece to help a young adolescent

00:38:40.700 | to feel anchored to a sense of identity

00:38:43.100 | that can help to quell some of that teenage angst.

00:38:45.960 | I think it's really profound.

00:38:47.400 | - Oh, I think it is.

00:38:49.680 | And I mean, and as adults, we feel the same way.

00:38:51.480 | I mean, can you imagine in the workforce,

00:38:53.520 | your boss comes to you, you say,

00:38:54.360 | "Hey, I'd like to take you these series of certificates."

00:38:58.840 | You're an Excel specialist at the corporation,

00:39:03.040 | you're doing whatever it is, accounting,

00:39:04.880 | and they say, "Hey, you know what?

00:39:06.400 | "I know you're not an IT guy,

00:39:07.680 | "you hate computers and everything,

00:39:08.820 | "but tell me, could you take this certification on routers?

00:39:11.140 | "And when you're done with the certification,

00:39:13.660 | "we promise that you'll never use it again."

00:39:16.140 | How would an adult, they would have a mental breakdown,

00:39:20.460 | right?

00:39:21.300 | And by the way, if you don't pass this course,

00:39:22.780 | then 100% will fire you, but no worry,

00:39:25.060 | once you pass it, you'll never use it again.

00:39:27.440 | That is Kafkaesque.

00:39:29.480 | That is crazy.

00:39:31.000 | And I cannot, I mean, I have met more than one person

00:39:36.000 | as an adult who's still reeling from the fact,

00:39:39.820 | I'll just use a fictional example here,

00:39:42.140 | just in case old friends are listening.

00:39:44.520 | But imagine you had a passion for Russian language,

00:39:49.520 | and you threw yourself into it.

00:39:51.420 | You studied everything, you knew every bad guy

00:39:54.420 | in Russian history, you could speak it,

00:39:56.620 | you could speak it fluently, you wrote your essays,

00:39:59.740 | you knew all the dates, you knew the ins and the outs,

00:40:02.380 | you knew it all.

00:40:03.580 | And then at 18, they tell you,

00:40:04.780 | "By the way, for the rest of your life,

00:40:06.700 | "you're not allowed to speak it, use it,

00:40:08.700 | "discuss it with anybody."

00:40:10.860 | What kind of mind meltdown would you have?

00:40:13.100 | Because you have genuine knowledge that cannot be used.

00:40:17.100 | And I see this people doing with music, for example.

00:40:19.580 | This is a really, not everyone, but a lot.

00:40:23.220 | I've met people, passion for some kind of musical instrument.

00:40:27.460 | Parents pay tons of money to go to a particular school,

00:40:31.260 | even after high school, they got top training.

00:40:33.740 | The day they finished, they stopped using it.

00:40:37.100 | They just drop off, they just cease using it entirely.

00:40:40.540 | And 20 years later, 15 years later,

00:40:44.660 | I'll bump into a person like that,

00:40:46.420 | and it's like, "Do you ever use it for birthday parties?"

00:40:48.180 | "Oh, no, no, no."

00:40:49.460 | "Do you ever use it in your church environment?"

00:40:51.340 | "No, no, no, the music is too low,

00:40:53.500 | "my stuff is too advanced, I can't use it."

00:40:56.020 | "Do you ever use it for friends?"

00:40:57.220 | "Do you ever use it at a coffee club?"

00:40:58.740 | "No, they never use it again."

00:41:01.180 | And it creates a kind of mental anguish in people

00:41:03.660 | because they can't make sense of why they spent six,

00:41:08.180 | eight years, maybe more, pursuing something

00:41:10.580 | that had no way to bring value to other people.

00:41:15.260 | So I'm not saying music is not important.

00:41:16.980 | I'm not saying Russian literature is not important.

00:41:19.580 | What I am saying is people will pursue,

00:41:22.700 | and these are kind of extreme examples,

00:41:24.340 | which I don't think is too far off the truth

00:41:26.580 | for some people, they'll pursue this type of knowledge

00:41:31.020 | and they haven't thought about the consequences

00:41:34.460 | of what happens when they can't use it.

00:41:37.060 | Right, and you're creating some kind of crazy mental anguish.

00:41:41.020 | You can't share your love,

00:41:42.360 | you can't share your understanding.

00:41:45.260 | You can't even make a living with it.

00:41:47.420 | And this is what people do.

00:41:48.260 | They'll pursue, take years pursuing.

00:41:50.380 | Now this is one extreme, right,

00:41:51.540 | where people are pursuing an actual skill set

00:41:54.100 | where it takes a lot of work.

00:41:55.980 | Not everybody's in that category,

00:41:57.300 | but there is a group of people who are super motivated.

00:42:00.220 | They dot all their I's, cross all their T's,

00:42:03.380 | and then they finish, they come with a finished product

00:42:05.460 | that makes no sense to their life.

00:42:07.620 | To me, that's a horror situation.

00:42:10.820 | If I were to write a horror movie,

00:42:12.300 | the Twilight Zone, that's what it would be.

00:42:14.620 | Show a guy, but he can never talk about it again.

00:42:17.180 | That's the kind of mental hell.

00:42:20.420 | And then of course you have a lot of other people

00:42:22.140 | who are not in that particular category.

00:42:23.900 | You have other people who are constantly

00:42:25.420 | changing their minds, one shiny thing after another.

00:42:28.420 | They can't make up, and that's another issue

00:42:31.620 | that I feel like the philosophy I've developed

00:42:34.460 | addresses too at the same time.

00:42:35.820 | So you want to develop something

00:42:37.140 | that is a genuine skill set, you're skillful at it.

00:42:41.780 | In other words, you can bring value.

00:42:43.580 | And then the second component of that is

00:42:45.180 | you need to bring value to people

00:42:47.220 | to find out how you're gonna change the world.

00:42:52.060 | You don't necessarily know that

00:42:53.820 | unless you start trying to apply it.

00:42:56.420 | - Earlier you said that there was one issue.

00:42:58.820 | What was that one issue that you did?

00:43:00.220 | - Well, I found, yeah.

00:43:02.340 | Homeschoolers in particular are well aware

00:43:07.940 | that if you don't fit in the norm,

00:43:09.900 | many times you have to constantly explain

00:43:11.460 | what your kids are doing or not doing.

00:43:13.860 | And I think we kind of got that,

00:43:16.220 | most homeschoolers have that down now.

00:43:17.860 | Plus there's enough homeschoolers out there

00:43:19.460 | that the social difficulty really isn't there as it was,

00:43:24.180 | let's say, even 15 years ago.

00:43:27.020 | But as they got into closer to college age,

00:43:30.500 | I did notice that even though my kids were really skillful

00:43:35.500 | and able to make a living on their own and so forth,

00:43:38.040 | they're in that in-between zone

00:43:39.260 | where a lot of their peers are actually

00:43:40.620 | just starting to go to college.

00:43:42.180 | A lot of them are just frankly goofing off,

00:43:45.060 | floating around, living the good life,

00:43:47.260 | always available to go to the beach.

00:43:49.060 | Maybe I had not prepared my,

00:43:54.900 | I did tell them verbally,

00:43:56.140 | but that apparently wasn't enough.

00:43:58.220 | People are not gonna be able to compute

00:43:59.620 | that you're already successful at what you do,

00:44:01.580 | but you're only 20, 21, and you're not in college.

00:44:04.900 | So their mindset is if you're not in college,

00:44:07.580 | you're a loser, you're not really doing anything

00:44:09.420 | with your life.

00:44:10.820 | If you're doing something with your life,

00:44:12.540 | then you must be in college.

00:44:14.140 | And so that was a difficult one, I think,

00:44:17.180 | for my boys especially to navigate socially,

00:44:21.100 | especially right smack dab

00:44:24.700 | when everybody's starting to go to college.

00:44:26.580 | It's starting to get a little easier for them now.

00:44:28.980 | And this is just anecdotally as it related to me.

00:44:31.540 | I don't know if they would put it in so many words,

00:44:33.060 | but that is what I noticed.

00:44:35.100 | As they're, now that their friends are now starting

00:44:37.220 | to come out of college, it's not so difficult.

00:44:40.740 | - Yeah, I could see that being a major challenge.

00:44:45.420 | I always, I reflect back on why did I go to college?

00:44:47.940 | And the reason I went to college basically was

00:44:51.940 | that only losers didn't go to college,

00:44:54.580 | and I'm not a loser, so I'm gonna go to college.

00:44:57.180 | In hindsight, I do think about what I could have done

00:45:01.700 | if someone had coached me in some of the interesting ways

00:45:04.500 | that some of the radical ideas,

00:45:05.940 | but I didn't have anyone who was kind of plugged in enough

00:45:08.760 | to coach me in that way.

00:45:10.340 | But even so, there is still some social credibility.

00:45:14.660 | There is still something that goes along with college.

00:45:18.800 | And especially in that phase of your life, right?

00:45:21.020 | If you're in college and you spend 2/3 of your year

00:45:26.020 | goofing off, but you say, "I'm in college,

00:45:29.020 | "everybody understands."

00:45:30.540 | But if you're not in college

00:45:31.660 | and you spend 2/3 of your year goofing off,

00:45:33.580 | nobody understands.

00:45:34.660 | Why are you being so irresponsible?

00:45:36.460 | And so if you have that veneer that you can put over things,

00:45:39.860 | oh, I'm in college,

00:45:40.700 | then everything becomes simpler, socially speaking.

00:45:43.140 | - Yeah, it does.

00:45:45.820 | And that's really hard to fight.

00:45:50.500 | And I guess it's the cost of being a pioneer in some areas.

00:45:55.500 | If you wanna be on the cutting edge,

00:45:57.740 | then there are some social costs.

00:45:59.740 | They're not insurmountable.

00:46:01.340 | It's just, I think by the time the second born came along,

00:46:06.340 | I was a little more aware of it,

00:46:12.700 | that it was a bigger problem than I thought it was going to be

00:46:15.380 | as far as to how to navigate socially.

00:46:18.000 | And I actually drilled him.

00:46:20.940 | I said, "What do you do?

00:46:21.780 | "What are you doing?"

00:46:22.600 | Pretending that was somebody, just met him.

00:46:23.660 | "What are you doing?"

00:46:24.580 | And he would say something like,

00:46:25.620 | "Well, I kinda dabble in this."

00:46:27.060 | I'm like, "No, that's not right.

00:46:28.840 | "You don't dabble in it.

00:46:29.860 | "You're like at this level.

00:46:31.660 | "And you need to say, not arrogantly,

00:46:33.060 | "but have a certain sense of purpose.

00:46:34.320 | "You're not sleeping in your car under the bridge.

00:46:37.140 | "You're doing something with your life."

00:46:39.300 | And he'd be intimidated 'cause everybody else would say,

00:46:41.260 | "You know, I'm in third year of college.

00:46:42.500 | "I'm in second year of college."

00:46:44.460 | And he didn't have that.

00:46:47.420 | He couldn't say it in that way.

00:46:49.060 | And so he had to kind of, now he's not, he's okay.

00:46:52.940 | But it did throw them off.

00:46:54.260 | - Right, right.

00:46:56.860 | In hindsight, one question I wanna ask you.

00:47:00.500 | I've had this idea where I think that,

00:47:05.100 | basically, my idea, my ambition,

00:47:08.220 | subject to needing to watch my individual children, right?

00:47:12.140 | 'Cause I don't wanna just impose my frame onto them.

00:47:15.400 | I wanna think and observe them.

00:47:17.900 | But if my children are academically competent,

00:47:20.920 | my basic framework is I think that

00:47:25.420 | an academically bright child can basically substitute

00:47:30.420 | a college degree for high school work.

00:47:34.420 | And so let's say, for example,

00:47:36.380 | you're taking an algebra class, right,

00:47:38.380 | as you're going to for math.

00:47:40.760 | Well, I think that with just a little bit of coaching,

00:47:44.480 | that same student can go ahead and take the CLEP exam

00:47:48.180 | or the DSST exam for algebra one

00:47:50.780 | and thus start to rack up college credit.

00:47:53.300 | If you're gonna take a chemistry class,

00:47:54.860 | well, go ahead and just pass the chemistry CLEP exam.

00:47:56.980 | If you're gonna study history,

00:47:58.400 | then prepare for the AP history exam.

00:48:00.540 | And so I think a student can very easily,

00:48:03.780 | with some coaching, accumulate 60 or 90 hours

00:48:06.700 | of college credit just simply through CLEP exams

00:48:10.020 | and their associated,

00:48:13.980 | and the other competitors to the CLEP exams.

00:48:16.340 | And it can map perfectly to a high school curriculum,

00:48:18.780 | a normal standard high school curriculum,

00:48:20.860 | but it results in college credit

00:48:22.160 | by quizzes at the end of the courses.

00:48:24.760 | And then for, let's say, 30 or 40 credit hours

00:48:27.280 | of capstone courses towards 120 credit hour degree,

00:48:30.900 | I would encourage my children,

00:48:32.220 | I plan to encourage my children to go ahead

00:48:34.540 | and do some classes, might be some local classes

00:48:38.100 | at a local college, might be online classes,

00:48:40.260 | and go ahead and take those capstone courses

00:48:42.100 | so that they go ahead and finish a college degree

00:48:44.380 | by the age of 18 or so, maybe 19, maybe 20,

00:48:47.180 | but 18, something like that.

00:48:49.220 | So I don't think that that college degree

00:48:52.220 | is as valuable as a very highly ranked college degree

00:48:57.220 | might be, it's not gonna open all the same doors,

00:49:00.700 | but I look at it as, it's good insurance, right?

00:49:02.860 | It'll allow that child to always be able to say,

00:49:05.020 | hey, I have a college degree,

00:49:06.660 | and if they want to pursue something at a specialty level,

00:49:09.540 | they wanna become an advanced engineer,

00:49:11.820 | well, then you just pursue that either with the degree

00:49:14.820 | at a certain university or pursue it at a master's degree

00:49:17.740 | and go ahead and get those really high quality credentials

00:49:20.700 | that you may need for some subjects.

00:49:23.260 | My concern is that academics come easily to me,

00:49:28.860 | and my concern is I don't see a lot of the parallels

00:49:32.540 | between the necessity of academics to modern life,

00:49:36.260 | which is what you're talking about.

00:49:37.780 | You encourage your children, develop your skills,

00:49:40.140 | develop your passion, and I see that it's possible

00:49:43.100 | for that academic orientation to hinder a child

00:49:48.100 | from developing their skills.

00:49:49.820 | You know, if somebody is very good at making blades

00:49:52.420 | or making art or making computer code,

00:49:55.420 | are they really served by being able to check the box

00:49:58.460 | over here for a college degree,

00:50:00.620 | especially if having to take all those classes

00:50:03.460 | and do all that studies resulted in them

00:50:05.860 | spending 2,000 fewer hours on their skill?

00:50:09.380 | I'm not sure.

00:50:10.460 | So from your perspective, knowing what you know now,

00:50:13.260 | I gather that you didn't encourage your children

00:50:15.740 | to pursue a college degree, you prepared them,

00:50:17.620 | and they're all doing well.

00:50:19.860 | What do you think about, what do you think about

00:50:22.860 | for me as a young parent with that kind of idea?

00:50:25.220 | - Well, no, I don't think what we're talking about

00:50:28.300 | is not mutually exclusive.

00:50:29.500 | What I would say is if you, so in other words,

00:50:33.100 | and I've told my kids, I'm not opposed to my kids

00:50:34.980 | pursuing a college degree.

00:50:36.220 | What I am saying is if you're gonna pursue a college degree,

00:50:39.380 | then you gotta have a plan for it.

00:50:41.460 | So I happened to bump into a fellow here in Oklahoma

00:50:47.460 | in a community several years ago,

00:50:49.660 | and it just, it was a, we have a little lake here,

00:50:51.780 | and so when people are around the lake,

00:50:52.980 | they kind of relax.

00:50:53.820 | And anyways, this fellow turned out to be

00:50:55.780 | a surgeon or a doctor of some kind,

00:51:00.180 | and we just were striking up a conversation,

00:51:03.100 | and we had kids, and so subject of kids came up,

00:51:06.220 | and he happened to mention that he came up

00:51:08.260 | from a line of doctors, and he had,

00:51:12.240 | I think grandchildren, I think maybe it was

00:51:16.020 | grandchildren that were also either in college now

00:51:19.860 | pursuing a medical degree, and some high school students

00:51:23.580 | coming up, and he was extremely proud of this lineage.

00:51:26.660 | So as I am, I like to quiz people

00:51:29.780 | to find out what they're doing.

00:51:30.620 | And he, if I were, if I, I don't know this person,

00:51:33.420 | never met him, but I would love to have interviewed him,

00:51:35.660 | he would have done exactly what kind of you're talking about,

00:51:37.960 | kind of my philosophy, but combined with academics,

00:51:40.300 | since they knew that the medical life was a passion

00:51:45.300 | for their whole family, they loved it.

00:51:46.740 | From the way he talked about it,

00:51:47.780 | it was something his kids were good at,

00:51:49.380 | they were fascinated, they took academic camps,

00:51:52.700 | they did all sorts of crazy medical stuff,

00:51:55.460 | but they understood that that was their passion.

00:51:58.820 | And so once you understand that, let's say,

00:52:01.100 | you know what, we're really good at numbers and math,

00:52:03.540 | we've got an uncle, we've got a Nobel Prize person,

00:52:06.220 | we got it all, and everybody just gets excited about it,

00:52:10.180 | then I would say, well then, you do the exact same thing.

00:52:12.340 | Every time, let's say you do George Washington,

00:52:14.660 | talk about the math developments

00:52:16.100 | during George Washington's time,

00:52:17.540 | because what that's going to do

00:52:19.400 | is create an amazing portfolio for you

00:52:21.260 | to really get into the top, let's say,

00:52:23.460 | learning institutions for a math degree or a medical degree,

00:52:27.220 | or you could do, like, if it was a medical thing,

00:52:29.300 | I would say, well then, find out what the medical practices

00:52:31.320 | were during George Washington's time, right?

00:52:33.820 | That's the kind of stuff that will look really good

00:52:36.260 | in a portfolio when you're trying to get

00:52:37.700 | into a top-tier school.

00:52:39.740 | They're not gonna want it, they're gonna say,

00:52:41.100 | wow, this guy is committed,

00:52:42.300 | he understands the philosophy behind medicine,

00:52:44.300 | he understands the history,

00:52:45.780 | in addition to being able to take the math classes.

00:52:49.240 | So I would say it's that in-between,

00:52:51.900 | that mediocre average is like the killer zone.

00:52:55.180 | So if you're saying, well, I don't know,

00:52:57.480 | maybe college will or will not do anything for me,

00:52:59.340 | so then you run the danger,

00:53:00.540 | well, you could have developed something else

00:53:01.860 | that could have taken you somewhere.

00:53:03.660 | But if you say, okay, academics is my thing,

00:53:07.740 | this particular specialty, which requires

00:53:10.660 | a certain level of math or a certain level

00:53:12.700 | of scientific knowledge, then embrace it fully.

00:53:17.700 | Start seeing things through those lens.

00:53:20.140 | So because it's a long ways away,

00:53:21.660 | I've met medical guys who, and I've,

00:53:26.460 | anyways, I have a friend who told me that,

00:53:28.940 | who had an older brother who went down this line,

00:53:30.820 | and sometimes it become almost suicidal

00:53:32.900 | because the amount of study needed

00:53:35.060 | and personal isolation for years on end

00:53:37.460 | was such a big disconnect between the final rewards

00:53:42.540 | and in the in-between stage,

00:53:43.820 | and not everybody suited for that.

00:53:46.080 | So that'd be an example of somebody pursuing

00:53:47.700 | an academic field that was really not suited

00:53:52.540 | for their personality or for other reasons.

00:53:56.500 | But if it is, if this is something you want to embrace,

00:53:58.980 | then embrace it fully.

00:54:00.760 | And so I would say that's the same thing.

00:54:02.400 | You start, if you're a person, say, you know what,

00:54:04.860 | I'm really interested in the medical field.

00:54:07.220 | I'm not sure exactly how or what,

00:54:09.060 | but I know it's gonna involve,

00:54:10.240 | I'm gonna need to have a certain level of math,

00:54:11.860 | I'm gonna need to have a certain level of biology,

00:54:14.500 | physics, and so forth.

00:54:15.860 | Then I say embrace it, start a blog.

00:54:17.660 | You know, start writing about it.

00:54:21.780 | Every history class you get,

00:54:23.020 | find a way to talk your teacher into letting you write

00:54:25.460 | about something about medical history back in those days.

00:54:30.060 | Start taking your camera.

00:54:32.820 | I don't know if you're allowed to dissect

00:54:34.140 | and put that on Instagram, but throw yourself into it.

00:54:38.020 | So you're basically saying you own it.

00:54:41.780 | And you start doing the same thing.

00:54:43.860 | You start writing about it.

00:54:45.620 | That'd be a good way, right?

00:54:46.540 | Start writing.

00:54:47.380 | Wouldn't you love it if you were a medical person?

00:54:50.540 | Say, hey, I'm going to write about, you know,

00:54:54.020 | George Washington and the teeth.

00:54:55.860 | I could take the George Washington teeth.

00:54:57.460 | I have no idea what they did.

00:54:59.020 | And you could talk about abscess,

00:55:00.500 | the pain people had back then,

00:55:01.860 | the type of drugs that people did or did not take

00:55:04.140 | in order to get over it, how many people died.

00:55:07.420 | And I'll tell you what, your teacher is gonna be floored.

00:55:10.820 | They're gonna love reading this.

00:55:12.940 | And it's gonna look great on your resume,

00:55:15.140 | and you're gonna be able to share it

00:55:15.980 | with all your relatives.

00:55:17.180 | - I'd like to ask you about some of your experience

00:55:21.060 | with your children and encouraging social media use

00:55:25.900 | and some of the modern tools that you've embraced

00:55:29.060 | as a family.

00:55:29.900 | I see the tremendous power and benefits

00:55:36.620 | of many of the modern tools that we have.

00:55:38.620 | You and your wife run a successful product company

00:55:42.740 | using modern digital tools.

00:55:44.580 | Your children have used tools like Instagram

00:55:49.740 | very effectively.

00:55:50.740 | You use Instagram very effectively, right?

00:55:53.780 | Here we are talking, I watch you, I follow your stuff.

00:55:56.380 | Dude, your Instagram profile,

00:55:57.540 | and you just do such a great job with it.

00:55:58.900 | And so I see without question the value

00:56:03.020 | of the modern tools.

00:56:05.660 | Simultaneously, I see the danger of them,

00:56:09.100 | very, very significant dangers,

00:56:10.780 | everything from dangers to a child's mental development,

00:56:13.580 | stunted mental development,

00:56:18.100 | because of the incessant distraction

00:56:20.580 | and perhaps even physical damaging effects

00:56:23.420 | of excessive exposure to digital devices.

00:56:26.460 | I see the turmoil that happens

00:56:30.340 | when people, due to social media addictions,

00:56:33.100 | the turmoil that the average teen lives through

00:56:35.580 | where what was formerly a very difficult

00:56:38.980 | but navigable life of the social environment,

00:56:42.140 | of in-person social pressure,

00:56:43.940 | now has become this extraordinarily difficult

00:56:46.700 | and I think increasingly unnavigable life

00:56:49.380 | of trying to sort this all out

00:56:50.900 | through the other side of a screen.

00:56:53.100 | Even just thinking about the challenges for parents.

00:56:56.420 | My heart has been broken the last few weeks

00:56:58.140 | for George and Kellyanne Conway

00:57:01.460 | with having this intense public spat

00:57:05.940 | where you've got George Conway with the political sphere,

00:57:08.620 | he's very much anti-President Trump,

00:57:10.460 | and you've got Kellyanne Conway

00:57:11.620 | who's President Trump's staff,

00:57:12.940 | and you've got their daughter now posting online

00:57:15.020 | and she posts something online

00:57:16.740 | and of course 50,000 people chime in

00:57:18.660 | and say this, this, this,

00:57:19.580 | and I've just thought what incredible pain

00:57:21.940 | that family must be experiencing right now.

00:57:24.540 | And I don't want that.

00:57:25.740 | I don't want that for my children.

00:57:26.860 | I don't want that for me.

00:57:27.740 | I don't want that for my wife.

00:57:28.700 | And so I'm really, really nervous

00:57:31.540 | and trying to discern what's the proper way

00:57:34.620 | to bring these things in

00:57:35.620 | because my wife and I, we see the value.

00:57:38.460 | There's no question.

00:57:39.900 | But we're concerned about making sure

00:57:41.340 | we do it at the right way and in the right time, et cetera.

00:57:44.300 | And so thus, so far we've taken the tack of no devices.

00:57:48.540 | We don't use any screens, no devices of any kind,

00:57:50.860 | and I'm really happy with the results that I see from that.

00:57:57.020 | My son is, my eldest is almost seven.

00:58:00.540 | He reads fluently in two languages now.

00:58:03.460 | He has a very long attention span.

00:58:05.740 | He's got this tremendous diversity of interest.

00:58:08.220 | And so I know that sometime, probably fairly soon,

00:58:11.820 | I need to start to introduce screens

00:58:14.300 | and possibly some of these things,

00:58:16.180 | but I'm really nervous about it

00:58:17.540 | 'cause I don't wanna give up some of it.

00:58:18.980 | So as an experienced father who's navigating this,

00:58:23.140 | what advice would you give to me

00:58:24.660 | and how would you coach me along this pathway?

00:58:27.380 | - Well, age obviously has a lot to do with that.

00:58:31.580 | So you have a seven-year-old and our seven-year-olds,

00:58:34.660 | I mean, they have access to screen time,

00:58:36.540 | but at that age, anything they sign in,

00:58:39.780 | it's usually actually under my name.

00:58:41.100 | In fact, I was laughing the other day.

00:58:43.780 | I think some of the social media sites

00:58:46.060 | are coming up with solutions for that,

00:58:47.380 | but my daughter really likes, she's nine,

00:58:50.860 | she likes following one of the wildlife guys

00:58:54.900 | who goes on site and they find chameleons

00:58:57.740 | and all sorts of things.

00:58:58.820 | And it's a great wildlife show.

00:59:01.220 | But she's, and it's on YouTube,

00:59:05.180 | and I think there's like a paid version.

00:59:06.820 | She wanted to use her pocket money,

00:59:08.220 | and I looked over and it's like, okay, this is good.

00:59:10.020 | And she blogs about it actually,

00:59:11.300 | 'cause she's very interested in that science part of it.

00:59:14.220 | So I said, if we're gonna watch it,

00:59:15.300 | you're gonna blog about it, you're gonna have to summarize it.

00:59:18.140 | And, but in that case, she signed in under my name.

00:59:23.140 | I mean, the media, so I know what's being watched

00:59:26.060 | and not watched.

00:59:26.940 | So most of the kids are, if they're involved in that,

00:59:29.780 | they're under my name.

00:59:30.620 | Of course, the site, they get comments every once in a while

00:59:32.980 | by kids saying, this is amazing.

00:59:34.900 | And of course, my name's on there.

00:59:36.640 | But I think they figured out,

00:59:38.180 | these are mostly kids watching, it's kind of kid-oriented.

00:59:41.500 | And I think they're introducing profiles for kids.

00:59:43.820 | So basically, it's all under my control.

00:59:46.380 | I can see, I get notified.

00:59:48.180 | There are a lot of tools out there

00:59:51.280 | that are designed that way now.

00:59:52.980 | And even, so this is as a general principle.

00:59:57.980 | So I don't let them have their own account

01:00:04.780 | under a certain age.

01:00:06.040 | And sometimes that will, I will change that rule

01:00:10.640 | depending on the maturity of the child.

01:00:12.980 | The other one is all of the passwords.

01:00:16.520 | And the login IDs, passwords, they're all written down.

01:00:21.520 | So we can at any time go in there,

01:00:25.600 | browse around and check to see what's going on.

01:00:28.640 | The other aspect is that I do have,

01:00:33.520 | and not everyone's in the same situation,

01:00:35.360 | but I do have a lot of kids in the house.

01:00:37.260 | And they do spy on each other a lot.

01:00:39.160 | So if somebody's involved in something they shouldn't be,

01:00:42.840 | it's very hard to keep that a secret.

01:00:45.480 | And of course my wife and I work from home,

01:00:48.320 | so there's a double layer of that.

01:00:50.440 | It doesn't mean that every once in a while,

01:00:52.760 | I think recently one of our kids got into a chat line

01:00:56.640 | that was totally fine.

01:00:57.640 | But teenagers being teenagers,

01:00:59.800 | somebody's gonna cross the line

01:01:01.000 | and start saying inappropriate things.

01:01:03.740 | A lot of them have now filters and blockers.

01:01:08.220 | But sometimes people are just out of control

01:01:10.960 | and will catch on to that.

01:01:12.960 | It's like, you know, you need to watch it there

01:01:17.680 | or we're gonna shut it down.

01:01:19.220 | So my point is that as parents, you have a lot of control.

01:01:21.800 | We're not afraid to go deleting like Instagram.

01:01:26.800 | What do we have on?

01:01:29.040 | Okay, we just added our 14 year old.

01:01:30.720 | Let him have his own account on Instagram.

01:01:32.920 | Everybody else is out of the house.

01:01:34.800 | Some kids can handle it better than others, to be honest.

01:01:37.520 | It's not straightforward.

01:01:39.760 | It's not like everybody behaves the same way.

01:01:42.880 | And there was one child in particular at one time

01:01:45.320 | that just had a hard time handling it.

01:01:47.600 | And I think if they post something that they shouldn't have,

01:01:51.980 | I'm not afraid to go in there, log in and delete it.

01:01:54.540 | So I guess I've gotten better.

01:01:59.440 | I've gotten much better with the kids coming down.

01:02:04.440 | Kind of half joking, but half serious.

01:02:07.300 | I own everything you have.

01:02:08.680 | I own you, I own your accounts, I own your passwords.

01:02:11.660 | I own even the money that you made.

01:02:13.720 | And all of that will go away if you cross the line too far.

01:02:18.760 | I mean, it's not something I say that often,

01:02:21.280 | but they get the message.

01:02:23.760 | So I haven't actually had to say it as much,

01:02:27.580 | but I think at one point, I think I did tell one of my boys,

01:02:30.560 | it's like, I don't wanna be embarrassed

01:02:35.300 | by having to tell you something I saw on your social media.

01:02:38.200 | It's embarrassing and it's awkward for me

01:02:39.960 | and it's awkward for you.

01:02:40.840 | Let's not have that conversation.

01:02:43.020 | So I think that that is helpful.

01:02:45.760 | And usually I'm sure it's gonna involve boys or girls.

01:02:50.360 | And no one wants to have that conversation with their parent

01:02:52.620 | if they can get in there and monitor the conversation.

01:02:55.720 | So I guess I have a pretty high tolerance

01:03:02.800 | and the fact that you can get into their accounts.

01:03:05.800 | And of course, wives are even more

01:03:09.860 | they're not afraid.

01:03:13.360 | I'm a little more embarrassed to go in and check.

01:03:15.040 | My wife is not.

01:03:16.120 | So I think that you just have to have that confidence.

01:03:21.820 | So I think the big, when I hear horror stories,

01:03:24.560 | I'm baffled because like, well,

01:03:28.980 | how can a person get into a situation like this

01:03:30.860 | unless they're completely unmonitored?

01:03:32.340 | That does not make sense to me.

01:03:34.380 | So if a person puts something inappropriate

01:03:36.780 | on their Instagram and they're a child in your home,

01:03:41.180 | why wouldn't you as soon as you find out,

01:03:42.980 | which you will find out immediately,

01:03:45.380 | because people will ping you or let you know,

01:03:48.300 | or you can scroll through it quickly,

01:03:50.820 | you can delete it on the spot and block the account

01:03:53.340 | and or delete the whole account.

01:03:55.220 | And that is a tremendous amount of power.

01:03:57.640 | They don't wanna lose that.

01:03:58.980 | So I think I had one child that was just hashtag crazy

01:04:06.700 | and they were very, very naive.

01:04:08.820 | They would put normal hashtags that were tied

01:04:11.780 | to very inappropriate stuff and this would attract

01:04:13.940 | all sorts of creeps and stuff and I'd have to go in there,

01:04:16.860 | delete all the hashtags and explain to you,

01:04:18.700 | can't use this hashtag.

01:04:20.460 | And then I had to, at one point,

01:04:25.140 | we haven't had that problem in a while,

01:04:26.420 | so we must be doing things really well,

01:04:27.860 | but I had to go through, I'll go randomly through

01:04:30.620 | and look at all the profiles of people following them

01:04:32.980 | and I'll block them or report them.

01:04:35.740 | But honestly, that has not been a great problem

01:04:38.340 | simply because the kids are aware of it,

01:04:40.660 | they tell each other, we're aware of it,

01:04:43.140 | we're social media savvy ourselves.

01:04:46.060 | So I'd say that that would be the,

01:04:50.540 | I didn't follow that particular scandal,

01:04:52.700 | but when you said the daughter posted,

01:04:54.100 | how old was the daughter?

01:04:55.220 | - She's 15, she's 15, it's really sad.

01:04:57.340 | It's a political scandal because, and she's 15.

01:05:02.660 | - 15.

01:05:03.500 | - So I mean, I guess something like that,

01:05:08.300 | you'd probably know within seconds

01:05:09.740 | if you're a high profile person,

01:05:10.860 | if your daughter posted something.

01:05:13.100 | - It's international news.

01:05:14.660 | - I mean, it should have been deleted immediately.

01:05:16.740 | - Right, it's rather evident

01:05:18.580 | that the parents don't have control

01:05:19.980 | and you have a fractured couple

01:05:23.020 | and the parents just simply don't have control.

01:05:25.620 | - Yeah, so that's maybe what I want,

01:05:28.260 | okay, maybe now that we're saying that

01:05:30.060 | a little more clearly here,

01:05:31.460 | I think that that's what happens.

01:05:32.780 | I mean, whether it's social media or not,

01:05:34.460 | I mean, and social media will magnify the problems,

01:05:36.660 | I agree with that.

01:05:38.300 | But if you're taking care of your children,

01:05:41.820 | you're watching them and you care about them,

01:05:43.900 | then I think you will take ownership of it.

01:05:46.100 | And there will be some awkward conversations.

01:05:48.660 | You know, we've had those where,

01:05:50.940 | you know what, you don't need to put that picture of you

01:05:53.820 | in such an undressed state on Instagram.

01:05:57.900 | I know you're getting a lot more likes,

01:05:59.900 | but let's have a conversation

01:06:01.020 | about why you're getting more likes.

01:06:02.820 | And it's not, you're not,

01:06:04.300 | they haven't really crossed the line as such,

01:06:06.060 | but you're getting early on the signals,

01:06:08.060 | you know what, this is something,

01:06:09.820 | you know, you can dress like this,

01:06:10.820 | you're in your home, you know,

01:06:12.260 | or in an appropriate situation,

01:06:13.600 | but when you're putting it on media like this,

01:06:15.900 | as you notice, there's already more people liking it

01:06:19.100 | and they're not here because of your intellect.

01:06:21.380 | So yeah, that's what I mean

01:06:22.940 | by having those awkward conversations.

01:06:24.420 | So I guess you gradually groom and it's like,

01:06:26.500 | oh, okay, I get it.

01:06:28.660 | And rather than this one big, you know,

01:06:32.660 | thing where you didn't know that your daughter

01:06:35.420 | has been posting, you know,

01:06:37.380 | half nudie pictures for the last six months.

01:06:39.380 | I mean, how can you not know that?

01:06:41.140 | And how can, and usually by the time you get to that point,

01:06:43.180 | things are creeping up.

01:06:44.800 | So I want to tell, I guess what I'm trying to say

01:06:46.580 | is that good parents out there, don't be so scared.

01:06:49.380 | 'Cause I think half the time when you hear these stories

01:06:51.220 | is 'cause parents haven't been to the task.

01:06:53.380 | And I mean, to the task,

01:06:55.660 | I don't mean you need to be a wizard.

01:06:56.700 | I mean, just be a normal mom and dad.

01:06:59.500 | It's like, hey, those shorts are too short.

01:07:02.340 | You know, you're around your house, around the family, fine.

01:07:06.140 | But you can't go in public like that, okay?

01:07:08.380 | And you know, well, I don't understand, you know.

01:07:10.500 | Well, it doesn't matter if you understand or not.

01:07:12.180 | Picture's going down, you know.

01:07:14.580 | And you don't wait for things to build up to that point.

01:07:18.460 | So I guess I want to tell people

01:07:19.940 | you don't have to be that scared.

01:07:21.220 | It can be scary, but you don't have to be that scared.

01:07:23.460 | I think it's just like other things in life.

01:07:25.000 | You're monitoring, you know,

01:07:29.300 | I guess you hear horror stories.

01:07:30.700 | We didn't know our kid was on drugs for the last two years.

01:07:32.700 | And I'm like, well.

01:07:33.600 | (laughs)

01:07:35.180 | Everybody else is seeing that he's out of it.

01:07:37.540 | He's missing school.

01:07:39.780 | He can't concentrate.

01:07:41.020 | I mean, did you even take him to the doctor

01:07:42.660 | if you didn't think it was drugs?

01:07:44.100 | You know, and then it comes out, of course,

01:07:45.300 | well, no one was home.

01:07:46.500 | He was a latchkey kid.

01:07:47.820 | Okay, well, then that's the underlying problem

01:07:51.140 | is that there's no one supervising someone

01:07:54.620 | until they get to that level.

01:07:55.580 | So it's not, in other words, it's scary

01:07:58.260 | to think of the end result of someone

01:08:00.260 | who's left to their own devices,

01:08:01.580 | but that's the whole point while you're the parent.

01:08:03.700 | So have courage.

01:08:04.540 | You can make a difference.

01:08:05.820 | - And I would buttress what you're saying

01:08:07.780 | with a simple observation that I think in many cases

01:08:11.980 | it can be more damaging and more harmful

01:08:15.940 | to have a zero tolerance policy

01:08:18.900 | because what happens is your child may not develop

01:08:22.940 | the appropriate skills of learning how to handle something.

01:08:27.460 | You know, if you say, no, you're not gonna have

01:08:29.520 | any social media, and then all of a sudden

01:08:31.480 | your child turns 18, and then they've gotta go out

01:08:33.420 | as an 18-year-old and figure out,

01:08:34.660 | starting from zero, how to handle it,

01:08:36.180 | they can make a lot of mistakes.

01:08:37.260 | This is actually one of the things

01:08:38.340 | that really bothers me about American drinking culture

01:08:43.340 | that in my observation, like in the United States,

01:08:47.380 | we don't have a healthy way of teaching children

01:08:51.620 | about alcohol, and it's especially hard

01:08:56.620 | for those of us who try to be very thoughtful of the laws,

01:09:00.140 | but because children are artificially excluded

01:09:03.500 | from the consumption of alcohol,

01:09:04.980 | I'm convinced that in some way it leads

01:09:07.220 | to excessive consumption of alcohol

01:09:09.100 | once they reach a point where they can do it freely,

01:09:11.180 | whether they're underage and just out of the house

01:09:13.080 | or of age, and it leads to excessive levels

01:09:15.580 | of alcohol abuse.

01:09:16.900 | And so I think that in a lot of things,

01:09:21.180 | I wanna be the one to teach my children about alcohol.

01:09:23.980 | I wanna be the one to teach my children about social media.

01:09:28.700 | Everything that's touchy and difficult,

01:09:31.060 | I wanna be the one to teach them about,

01:09:32.980 | and I wanna do it in an appropriate way

01:09:34.900 | where when they fall, they fall early enough

01:09:38.620 | and they fall soft enough while they're part of my house

01:09:41.460 | that I can lift them up and I can teach them,

01:09:43.900 | okay, that's what it feels like when you fall.

01:09:46.500 | That's not good, let's avoid that in the future.

01:09:48.740 | And so I'm not an advocate of a no social media,

01:09:52.460 | no anything policy.

01:09:54.500 | I think that would be harmful.

01:09:56.020 | But I do think that obviously it's a subject

01:09:58.860 | that needs to be considered really carefully.

01:10:02.540 | So you said you're a 14-year-old now.

01:10:05.660 | And by the way, we didn't clarify,

01:10:07.100 | you have, is it eight children or nine children?

01:10:09.500 | - Nine. - Nine, okay.

01:10:11.960 | So that's what's so beneficial about,

01:10:15.100 | I've learned over the years, when I had one child,

01:10:17.860 | I was the king of giving out parenting advice.

01:10:19.780 | I was like, I got this all figured out.

01:10:21.420 | And since then, having had three more,

01:10:23.660 | I have learned that I don't know much of anything.

01:10:27.180 | And so I've come to the point where it's very hard

01:10:30.500 | for me to listen to parents of one or two children

01:10:32.540 | about anything because they just don't have enough diversity

01:10:35.140 | in their families to understand that children are different.

01:10:37.860 | So I appreciate the fact that you've got the perspective

01:10:40.020 | of nine children to share that perspective.

01:10:42.860 | So with your 14-year-old, you said,

01:10:44.580 | Dodd, now you're 14-year-old to have an Instagram account,

01:10:47.400 | but your younger one's not yet?

01:10:49.740 | - Well, and I should add, in this particular situation,

01:10:53.060 | it's a private account.

01:10:54.500 | - Okay.

01:10:55.540 | - So it's an Instagram private account,

01:10:57.220 | and he's very social, he's very intelligent.

01:11:02.220 | So I'm not worried about the naive part

01:11:08.980 | where predators find him.

01:11:10.340 | But at the same time, in this particular situation,

01:11:13.660 | he has a public blog that's related

01:11:16.540 | to writing about his talent.

01:11:18.560 | And that one's totally public.

01:11:20.320 | And no creeps are coming there,

01:11:21.720 | 'cause really no one wants to know about podcast editing

01:11:24.000 | unless they really want to know about podcast editing.

01:11:26.280 | So that's a whole other strategy, by the way,

01:11:29.700 | in terms of talent, we can discuss that.

01:11:31.940 | But if you get involved deeply into a skill set

01:11:35.720 | of any kind, whether it be hot rods,

01:11:38.320 | or whether it be math, you're going to start gravitating

01:11:41.240 | automatically socially to people in those same circles,

01:11:43.920 | which is gonna give you those social boundaries

01:11:47.280 | automatically.

01:11:48.880 | The danger is when people are just sort of randomly roaming.

01:11:51.880 | I like to give the analogy, when your wife goes shopping,

01:11:57.040 | even if it's in a big city, we all know

01:11:58.600 | there are some dangerous parts of the town,

01:12:00.420 | and then there are some completely acceptable parts

01:12:02.880 | of the town.

01:12:03.720 | And if she's gonna go shopping in this particular area,

01:12:07.060 | she can get her latte, she can do this, she can do that,

01:12:09.540 | she's gonna be safe going to her car.

01:12:11.400 | But if she would go to another part of town,

01:12:14.000 | you'd be afraid of her walking on her own,

01:12:15.600 | and people avoid that.

01:12:16.840 | So I liken it to, it's like with teenagers,

01:12:18.900 | like if you say, "Hey, just go into the city,

01:12:21.520 | "but just randomly stop anywhere," you'd be afraid,

01:12:23.960 | and you wouldn't tell your teenage daughter.

01:12:25.480 | It's like, you always ask that question,

01:12:26.880 | "Where are you going?"

01:12:27.720 | A grown adult knows that instinctively,

01:12:30.240 | a teenager doesn't.

01:12:31.160 | You know, "Oh, somebody's calling me over there.

01:12:32.720 | "Oh, they think I'm pretty."

01:12:35.000 | And you're like, "Oh my goodness,

01:12:36.520 | "tell me where you're going.

01:12:37.520 | "I'm going here, there, in the city."

01:12:39.320 | It's like, "I'm fine, I'm relaxed."

01:12:40.700 | When they go there, the social environment

01:12:42.540 | is gonna provide that protection.

01:12:43.940 | People are there usually for a purpose.

01:12:46.260 | So that's the analogy, a little bit I like to think of.

01:12:49.060 | If your child is really into math,

01:12:50.740 | they're gonna join math forums,

01:12:52.140 | they're gonna join math clubs.

01:12:54.480 | All that is going to help give those social boundaries.

01:12:57.700 | It's when kids are just sort of bouncing randomly

01:12:59.680 | over the internet, going from one thing to the next,

01:13:01.860 | that's when they expose themselves to danger.

01:13:04.460 | So that's the way I like,

01:13:05.780 | and we do that instinctively in real life.

01:13:07.680 | There are parts of our nearby city

01:13:10.020 | that I'd be very afraid for my wife to walk around

01:13:14.020 | just casually for just strolling.

01:13:16.260 | But when she goes, I never worry about her going to town

01:13:18.300 | 'cause she's either going shopping, she's seeing a friend,

01:13:20.860 | you're going to a park to meet other moms,

01:13:23.840 | and so already the other moms have determined

01:13:26.180 | that the park is safe.

01:13:27.020 | You know, that's what I mean by the social boundaries

01:13:28.680 | are done for you automatically.

01:13:30.520 | But with our 14-year-old,

01:13:34.400 | it came because he went to a special choir camp.

01:13:37.980 | He wants to develop his voice.

01:13:39.340 | He likes voice acting, and this came up.

01:13:43.220 | He had enough money saved, it was expensive,

01:13:45.540 | and we wanted to develop his voice a little bit more.

01:13:47.140 | He went to a choir, he made some fantastic friends,

01:13:49.940 | friends about his age, they were very motivated.

01:13:52.220 | Parents were very, very motivated,

01:13:57.140 | and then after the camp, everybody wanted to stay in touch,

01:13:59.260 | and he sold me on it.

01:14:00.580 | It's like, I like to have my Instagram account

01:14:02.660 | because all the guys at the choir camp were there,

01:14:05.160 | and we wanted to stay in touch, and I'm like,

01:14:06.640 | no, it's about time for him to start,

01:14:08.760 | but I didn't, I was kind of like,

01:14:11.760 | I was like, oh, okay, but is this really,

01:14:13.560 | you know, gonna get you, and he says,

01:14:14.880 | well, I can make it private, sold.

01:14:16.720 | (laughs)

01:14:17.760 | So, you know, that might change at some point.

01:14:21.560 | He's not really doing his talent on Instagram.

01:14:25.520 | He's got a blog for that.

01:14:27.440 | I'd like to see him do that eventually on Instagram,

01:14:30.640 | and at that point, I might make it public

01:14:32.860 | because then the social field is narrowed

01:14:35.800 | to people who are interested in this specific topic

01:14:40.560 | or subject, and I lost track of what I was trying

01:14:43.920 | to say here, but I guess--

01:14:45.960 | - You were saying that 14 feels like about the right age,

01:14:48.800 | that, okay, this is a reasonable age.

01:14:50.560 | - Yeah, to start experimenting, exactly,

01:14:53.920 | but in that case, he's even on a private status,

01:14:58.880 | which means people can't randomly find him

01:15:01.080 | unless he's invited them specifically.

01:15:03.160 | - I like what you said about going

01:15:04.840 | to a specific part of town, and what that makes me think of

01:15:07.880 | is that it's a good way of staying busy, right?

01:15:11.760 | Idle hands are the devil's playground,

01:15:13.400 | and recently in our family's extended family,

01:15:18.400 | there was a really tragic story of a young teen

01:15:26.120 | who went down some very dark and very, very difficult paths

01:15:31.120 | that have inalterably affected her life

01:15:37.080 | with physical illness at this point in time

01:15:40.080 | due to some of her poor choices,

01:15:42.600 | and when I talked and kind of gathered information

01:15:46.520 | on how did this happen, a lot of it just happened,

01:15:49.480 | I think, with idleness online, and you follow this down,

01:15:53.620 | and then just idleness, and so it just reaffirmed in me

01:15:57.760 | as I was talking about it with my wife,

01:15:58.920 | I said, I want my children to be busy, busy, busy,

01:16:02.720 | never, you know, work, work, work,

01:16:03.920 | because that work gives all those

01:16:06.040 | positive psychological benefits,

01:16:07.720 | and it serves as a good safeguard,

01:16:09.440 | and so if I'm going to the internet,

01:16:11.240 | I know this is where I'm going,

01:16:12.480 | and I'm busy with all of these forums

01:16:14.700 | that are related to my passion, my talent,

01:16:17.200 | and then we'll expand out at some point down the road,

01:16:21.360 | but I think that's a really valuable point that you made,

01:16:24.460 | where it's not just, and I think it's also

01:16:27.180 | a really valuable point of bringing out the talent,

01:16:29.420 | you know, in my mind, back to the academics

01:16:31.780 | that we talked about, in my mind,

01:16:32.860 | I don't see why there has to be a conflict.

01:16:35.260 | If a student has 168 hours in a week,

01:16:37.780 | that's a lot of time.

01:16:40.460 | You take out a good proper sleep schedule,

01:16:42.380 | it still really is a lot of time to go really deep

01:16:46.060 | and develop a talent and a passion

01:16:47.860 | and something that's useful to the world

01:16:49.900 | while simultaneously being a rockstar academic as well.

01:16:53.160 | I see no reason why they have to suffer.

01:16:55.920 | The other things can give way, in my opinion.

01:16:58.940 | To kind of start to wrap up here, Jonathan,

01:17:05.680 | I want to ask you about

01:17:07.560 | your family business.

01:17:19.840 | How you and your wife run a family business,

01:17:22.860 | which I'm blanking on the name of,

01:17:26.000 | even though my wife loves your stuff.

01:17:27.580 | - Oh, it's Madeon.

01:17:28.420 | It's okay, yeah, yeah. - Madeon.

01:17:29.380 | Madeon Lotion, okay.

01:17:30.500 | - Also known as Hard Lotion.

01:17:32.500 | - She loves your stuff.

01:17:34.180 | She uses all your skincare stuff.

01:17:36.780 | It's a line of natural, very super,

01:17:40.380 | uber crunchy, natural beeswax stuff

01:17:43.020 | with good skincare products.

01:17:45.400 | And your wife is very good at running that.

01:17:49.240 | How have you involved your children in the family business

01:17:52.960 | as part of the talent?

01:17:54.220 | Has that been a factor or not really a factor?

01:17:56.940 | - Yes, actually it's been a big factor.

01:17:59.020 | One of the part of my philosophy is that

01:18:03.700 | families have a lot of assets on their hand.

01:18:07.620 | I don't mean just physical assets like a car or a chainsaw.

01:18:11.340 | But you also have social assets, business assets,

01:18:16.140 | a way of thinking, a way of life

01:18:18.740 | that sometimes can be pretty advanced.

01:18:20.780 | So in our case, because we are a home business

01:18:23.020 | and trying to keep the cost down,

01:18:24.860 | and since we switched late in life doing this,

01:18:27.100 | so we didn't do this for too many years

01:18:29.460 | before switching to this,

01:18:30.500 | so we had a lot of things to learn.

01:18:33.060 | We needed our kids.

01:18:34.380 | And a simple example is a lot of the products

01:18:38.660 | need stickers put on them.

01:18:39.780 | It's a simple job.

01:18:41.540 | You need to have clean hands.

01:18:43.100 | You need to get it centered, and you need to move quickly.

01:18:47.180 | And when our orders come in,

01:18:48.980 | a lot of times they will come in in bursts.

01:18:52.220 | We'll have seasons of sales and seasons where it's slow.

01:18:55.220 | So typically in the fall, which will be coming up here,

01:18:58.020 | the sales will come in fast and furious.

01:19:01.400 | And so we may, at the end of the day,

01:19:06.400 | maybe at six, seven, eight o'clock,

01:19:10.660 | we'll say, "Okay, kids, we need to put some stickers

01:19:12.620 | "on all these boxes.

01:19:13.960 | "We'll throw in a few bucks,

01:19:16.280 | "whatever it is we agree."

01:19:17.540 | Usually they want snacks instead of money.

01:19:19.940 | And we'll play a book on audio

01:19:23.000 | that they all like to listen to.

01:19:24.820 | And they just love that.

01:19:26.820 | And so as we have done that kind of stuff,

01:19:30.100 | as they've gotten older,

01:19:31.120 | sometimes they'll get a little more complex.

01:19:32.580 | One of them has gotten into shipping.

01:19:34.220 | They've really, there's all sorts of issues

01:19:35.980 | with shipping packages.

01:19:37.540 | There's a, you get software,

01:19:40.740 | and it weighs it for you automatically.

01:19:42.260 | There's all these little details

01:19:44.660 | that need to be worked out.

01:19:45.660 | And we've had quite a few of our teenagers

01:19:48.420 | work that process,

01:19:52.220 | and they've been very efficient.

01:19:54.100 | And in the process of doing that,

01:19:55.580 | they understand cost and the details of shipping

01:19:59.860 | and the problems of things not being tracked

01:20:02.060 | or customers being upset

01:20:03.380 | because the wrong order was put in the package,

01:20:05.820 | the importance of cleanliness, of speed,

01:20:10.220 | why, for example, we're waiting to buy

01:20:13.740 | this particular tent or toy that we've all wanted,

01:20:18.740 | but I'll typically say something like,

01:20:20.460 | well, not yet.

01:20:21.300 | We've got to wait until the sales campaign is over.

01:20:23.540 | And then from this,

01:20:24.540 | we'll have enough money then to get that.

01:20:26.220 | So they've been conditioned,

01:20:27.420 | gradually over time, to associate work with reward

01:20:31.220 | and not to have rewards unless there is work,

01:20:34.020 | as in a general sense of the word.

01:20:36.900 | And that has really been effective.

01:20:40.960 | I see that as the kids leave.

01:20:43.500 | I see that more as when they leave the household,

01:20:46.140 | all these little things that they do on their own

01:20:48.260 | just blows me away.

01:20:49.300 | I didn't do that at that age.

01:20:51.260 | They're very aware of how to save money,

01:20:54.860 | how not to get into debt,

01:20:56.700 | how to negotiate.

01:20:57.860 | They're just super savvy.

01:20:59.420 | I didn't quite see that when they were under my household

01:21:01.380 | simply because we control everything.

01:21:03.700 | But once they left,

01:21:04.620 | they just completely took those habits with them.

01:21:06.660 | So I would say that that has been a huge benefit to them.

01:21:10.100 | It's just the practical details of running a small business

01:21:14.340 | that they've taken with them.

01:21:16.460 | - Yeah, absolutely.

01:21:17.300 | I definitely think that,

01:21:18.660 | back to that sense of meaning and purpose,

01:21:21.620 | to me, one of the most valuable reasons

01:21:24.360 | to have some kind of small family business,

01:21:27.660 | even if it's not the primary source of family revenue,

01:21:30.980 | is so that children have a chance to understand

01:21:34.760 | how money is made,

01:21:36.100 | how money is managed,

01:21:37.540 | how to, just all those little lessons.

01:21:40.480 | And to me, that's definitely a really crucial part

01:21:44.740 | of what I want to be present in my children's education.

01:21:49.140 | And I like how the talent gives them even their own thing

01:21:54.140 | that they can do and generate real money

01:21:57.060 | from a very early age.

01:21:59.180 | I think that we're living in a time

01:22:01.060 | where for parents with wisdom,

01:22:04.020 | with foresight, with perspective,

01:22:07.100 | there are more opportunities available for children now

01:22:10.100 | than there have ever been

01:22:11.220 | to produce things that are genuinely useful to the world.

01:22:15.800 | If I think about the scope of human history,

01:22:18.060 | there was a time in which children's labor

01:22:21.060 | was helpful to the family farm.

01:22:23.140 | But then we moved out of the farm into an industrial age.

01:22:25.880 | And so society took that idea

01:22:28.300 | that children would work on the farm

01:22:30.460 | and they put it into factory work.

01:22:32.300 | But factory work wasn't a great environment for children.

01:22:36.140 | Lots of dangers, et cetera.

01:22:37.540 | And so you had the imposition

01:22:38.660 | of massive child labor laws, et cetera.

01:22:41.700 | Well, what those laws had the result of doing

01:22:44.140 | was taking children out of the workforce

01:22:46.240 | and putting them into the school environment.

01:22:49.260 | I'm not sure that was much healthier for them,

01:22:51.160 | but at least they probably lost fewer arms and legs,

01:22:53.840 | generally speaking.

01:22:55.020 | So then what happened?

01:22:57.940 | Well, then work for children became stupid work.

01:23:02.340 | You couldn't really well take your child

01:23:03.780 | into the office with you.

01:23:04.820 | And so your child did something that was relatively modest.

01:23:08.660 | And I shouldn't have used the word stupid.

01:23:09.980 | That was wrong.

01:23:10.820 | 'Cause it's not stupid to learn

01:23:12.260 | how to provide good customer service

01:23:14.180 | working at an ice cream shop.

01:23:15.340 | It's not stupid to learn how to be an effective lifeguard.

01:23:18.740 | I wish I hadn't said that word.

01:23:20.340 | But it just largely became very limiting,

01:23:22.580 | especially very intellectually limiting.

01:23:24.500 | And we created these massive hurdles

01:23:29.500 | for somebody to access the labor force.

01:23:31.940 | And if they can access the labor force,

01:23:33.060 | they need a college degree from this institution.

01:23:35.020 | And they need this number of years of experience.

01:23:36.980 | And so the marketplace of ideas,

01:23:40.300 | sorry, the marketplace of work became an adult only zone

01:23:43.780 | where maybe there was one day a year

01:23:45.400 | when you could take your child to school, but that was it.

01:23:47.940 | But what's happening,

01:23:48.860 | especially now that we're all sitting in our houses,

01:23:50.780 | working in our houses, all of us,

01:23:53.020 | that now I think that there's something more

01:23:54.660 | coming back to that.

01:23:55.500 | And it's exciting.

01:23:56.660 | I think one of the good things

01:23:57.660 | that I'm hoping comes out of this environment

01:23:59.980 | is fewer latchkey kids

01:24:02.220 | and more of an ability for children

01:24:03.940 | to be involved in the work of their parents,

01:24:05.780 | for them to see what their parents do,

01:24:07.420 | for them to listen when dad's on a conference call,

01:24:10.580 | for them to say, "Mom, I can help you

01:24:12.540 | "with that thing that you're working on.

01:24:13.680 | "I can do that."

01:24:14.740 | And to start to develop useful skills again

01:24:17.280 | that can be useful.

01:24:19.420 | And then as work is more dispersed,

01:24:22.940 | it opens up the opportunity for young people

01:24:26.600 | to access the labor market.

01:24:28.300 | Your daughter can sell her art projects on Etsy

01:24:32.300 | just as well at the age of 17 as at the age of 37,

01:24:35.940 | in some cases better at 17,

01:24:37.660 | because there's a market that a 37-year-old

01:24:39.720 | might not be tuned into.

01:24:41.100 | Your son, when he was selling knives on Instagram,

01:24:43.260 | he can access a global marketplace

01:24:45.180 | just the same as anybody else.

01:24:46.940 | And so one of the things I'm happy about

01:24:48.900 | is that there's this crumbling of these walls

01:24:51.620 | that have been erected

01:24:52.740 | so that now children can see the fruit of their labor

01:24:56.140 | and actually be able to access it.

01:24:57.780 | And I think this is really a good thing for our children

01:24:59.940 | because, like with my children,

01:25:01.380 | when I encourage business things,

01:25:02.620 | especially since they're not online yet,

01:25:04.900 | it's very limited in terms of what they can do

01:25:06.860 | because you're very limited to the markets

01:25:08.520 | that you can access.

01:25:09.380 | I've encouraged my son

01:25:10.500 | and helped him with a little bread business.

01:25:12.060 | Well, he can do that,

01:25:13.300 | but he's not gonna be a baker necessarily,

01:25:15.880 | I don't think, at this point in time.

01:25:17.460 | So you've got a little bit of local access.

01:25:20.980 | But after a time, maybe your neighbors

01:25:22.620 | don't really care to buy your bread anymore.

01:25:24.660 | But when you can cross over and move to the digital platform

01:25:27.660 | even if you're selling physical products

01:25:29.260 | in the digital world,

01:25:30.360 | it opens up the world to that individual entrepreneur,

01:25:33.820 | which means that now your 15-year-old,

01:25:35.660 | your 17-year-old, your 20-year-old

01:25:37.740 | has the ability to access the world's marketplace,

01:25:40.800 | which is really exciting with regard to their ability

01:25:43.300 | to actually generate good money for themselves.

01:25:46.260 | And then that means that when they're 18

01:25:48.260 | and they finish up and perhaps move out of your house,

01:25:51.100 | at that point in time,

01:25:52.520 | they're not going into the world as an unskilled laborer

01:25:55.420 | making $7.50 an hour,

01:25:58.060 | dipping ice cream at the local ice cream shop.

01:26:00.240 | They're going into the world as a skilled craftsman,

01:26:02.940 | as a skilled professional,

01:26:04.980 | and they're able to generate massive levels of income

01:26:08.180 | or at least significant levels of income

01:26:10.700 | with the potential to lead

01:26:11.660 | to massive levels of income quickly.

01:26:13.860 | And now when you take even that head start,

01:26:16.980 | and I've run the calculations on this,

01:26:18.620 | and you say, let's say that my 18-year-old

01:26:20.580 | can save $15,000 a year

01:26:23.020 | because they're earning a good amount of money.

01:26:24.660 | Maybe they could save $20,000 a year.

01:26:26.820 | That 18-year-old by the age of 30

01:26:28.560 | can knock the socks off the guy

01:26:30.420 | who's sitting in college now for four years,

01:26:32.460 | earning nothing, extending adolescence unnecessarily

01:26:36.180 | just to come out and get that entry-level job.

01:26:38.620 | So it's exciting that we can use these platforms

01:26:41.800 | to help our children access a global marketplace

01:26:44.500 | and build real, genuine businesses at a young age.

01:26:48.960 | So, Jonathan, I've covered most of what I wanted to cover.

01:26:52.580 | As you think about giving advice to me,

01:26:55.220 | to a young father, to my listeners,

01:26:56.780 | who, again, many of whom are homeschooling their children

01:26:59.100 | for the first time,

01:27:00.540 | take a few minutes and just walk over

01:27:02.460 | an overview of your philosophy

01:27:04.180 | and what you would say a parent needs to consider

01:27:07.940 | if they really wanna help their child

01:27:09.780 | to develop their talents, to pursue their passions,

01:27:13.380 | so that they can bring something useful to the world.

01:27:15.540 | Walk us through just your general overview

01:27:17.940 | of advice that you would give to me,

01:27:19.840 | a young parent, as we go.

01:27:22.300 | - Yeah, I would say,

01:27:23.300 | from until about the age of 12,

01:27:27.900 | I think you are best concentrating

01:27:31.540 | on the old traditional basics,

01:27:33.540 | and which is a lot more nurture-oriented.

01:27:36.580 | A lot of the stuff that you're learning

01:27:39.180 | in your school program is gonna be very basic.

01:27:41.620 | You're gonna learn your alphabet,

01:27:42.860 | obviously you're gonna learn how to read basic books,

01:27:45.500 | your basic math, and so forth.

01:27:47.460 | And about the age of 12,

01:27:49.500 | give or take, depending on the homegrown maturity,

01:27:52.900 | the parents' approval and disapproval

01:27:57.820 | is really what's going to motivate them

01:27:59.900 | to go forward and make all the difference in the world.

01:28:03.060 | What the rest of the world thinks about

01:28:04.940 | really does not affect them.

01:28:06.940 | And I think that's, in our household,

01:28:10.100 | that's typically where mom has a bigger role.

01:28:12.300 | It's gonna be a lot more of the hugging and encouragement

01:28:15.500 | and the typical things that we think about

01:28:17.620 | where we have to be pretty gentle with them.

01:28:20.700 | But starting around age 12,

01:28:22.700 | you know, between 12 and 14,

01:28:24.580 | all of a sudden you see this awakening.

01:28:26.820 | Some people see this awakening,

01:28:28.100 | it almost seems like a rebellion.

01:28:29.460 | It could be, it could turn into a rebellion,

01:28:31.660 | where they start becoming headstrong.

01:28:33.100 | They don't want just a hug.

01:28:35.660 | They don't wanna just say, "Because mom said,"

01:28:37.740 | or, "Because you like it."

01:28:39.220 | They wanna know, "Do other people

01:28:40.820 | "care about what I am doing?"

01:28:42.700 | And they'll start thinking big thoughts.

01:28:44.940 | You know, "Do I care about what I'm doing?"

01:28:47.140 | Big thoughts.

01:28:47.980 | You know, "One day I wanna become this."

01:28:49.260 | And they mean that seriously.

01:28:50.740 | Excuse me.

01:28:53.780 | And that's a sign there that they have a need

01:28:56.900 | for something bigger than themselves.

01:28:59.540 | And you need to tap into that.

01:29:01.580 | So what I would do, especially 'cause they're still young,

01:29:03.620 | even though they have big thoughts,

01:29:04.900 | they still need their family's encouragement.

01:29:06.980 | It's hard to break into the world without being crushed.

01:29:09.780 | And what I would recommend is you look for something

01:29:13.860 | in your environment, your family environment.

01:29:15.820 | Maybe you live in an unusual part of the world

01:29:19.460 | that has, you know, you have access to something unusual

01:29:21.780 | that no one else, very few people do.

01:29:23.940 | Or maybe your grandpa lives next door

01:29:26.540 | and he's got this amazing workshop.

01:29:28.660 | Or maybe your dad, like Joshua Sheets,

01:29:31.900 | he's got a podcast studio.

01:29:34.260 | Maybe you could start by using some of those tools

01:29:36.780 | and explore an interest that you have.

01:29:39.460 | And then as a family, as parents,

01:29:41.700 | you start giving them a chance to

01:29:45.660 | showcase that interest, right?

01:29:48.460 | So just to use an analogy, if I were you, Joshua,

01:29:51.260 | and you had a child who's starting to become 12, 13,

01:29:54.060 | maybe you have a precocious daughter who likes to chat a lot.

01:29:57.820 | She likes to chat people up.

01:30:00.020 | You say, "Hey, have you thought of interviewing

01:30:01.380 | "Grandma so-and-so or Uncle so-and-so

01:30:03.140 | "who was, you know, in World War II,

01:30:05.180 | "he's getting really old.

01:30:06.020 | "Maybe you could interview him and ask him how it was."

01:30:09.260 | And she's like, "Oh yeah, I'd love to do that."

01:30:10.660 | So in one shot, she's connecting with a relative.

01:30:14.100 | She gets to use your tool.

01:30:15.780 | She doesn't really have a long-term plan.

01:30:17.580 | She does it, and then you listen to it,

01:30:19.340 | and you know, it's a little disjointed here and there,

01:30:22.020 | but there's some interesting moments in there,

01:30:23.860 | some tenderness, and you could take that, for example,

01:30:26.880 | and say, "Hey, let's just edit this a little bit.

01:30:29.380 | "Let me show you how to edit it here.

01:30:30.600 | "There's this part, the big coughing spell here

01:30:32.340 | "with Grandpa, let's edit that out a little bit.

01:30:34.580 | "I'll show you how to do it," you know, simple stuff.

01:30:36.540 | "And then let's load that up to Dropbox

01:30:38.520 | "and send it to all our relatives."

01:30:40.320 | And that would be fairly easy to do.

01:30:43.940 | It goes out, and sure enough, we did something like that

01:30:47.900 | for friends of ours, and this friend came back,

01:30:51.140 | and he says, "Oh, I had ants that were crying of joy

01:30:55.700 | "because they had heard this thing."

01:30:58.740 | I was a little taken aback that they were moved by that,

01:31:01.000 | but the point was, this was something important

01:31:03.860 | to their family, and it was easy to do,

01:31:06.580 | and all of us have something like that in our lives

01:31:09.100 | that seems so, you do it every day.

01:31:12.240 | And as you do podcasting every day,

01:31:14.520 | you can almost think, "Ah, it's no big deal."

01:31:15.940 | It is a big deal, but if you could tie it into your child's,

01:31:19.060 | a little bit of your child's strength,

01:31:22.020 | like she's a chatter, let's say,

01:31:23.780 | then have her chat with all these great relatives.

01:31:26.180 | Ask them about their stories, put it on a little website.

01:31:29.660 | All the relatives will go bonkers over it,

01:31:32.100 | and she'll get massive feedback.

01:31:35.040 | You know, maybe everybody, and then she finds out,

01:31:37.620 | oh, everybody wants to hear about war stories.

01:31:39.420 | So, you know, at first it was about swimming in Wisconsin,

01:31:43.280 | and she gets okay feedback, but the war story,

01:31:45.560 | all the relatives light up,

01:31:46.560 | ask them what happened about this.

01:31:47.800 | So she says, "Wow, people like war stories."

01:31:49.560 | So then she starts graduating

01:31:51.200 | until she finds out neighbors have war stories.

01:31:53.720 | So I'm just fantasizing here a bit,

01:31:55.520 | but the point is, you want to find something,

01:31:58.240 | 'cause you're young, right?

01:31:59.320 | They're young, you want them protected.

01:32:00.680 | You don't want them just randomly going on the street,

01:32:02.640 | interviewing homeless people who are former veterans.

01:32:05.760 | You don't want to do that.

01:32:06.640 | You want to find something in your environment,

01:32:09.280 | trusted friends, circle of friends, tools,

01:32:12.180 | and that, you start building that little fire up,

01:32:14.980 | and that little inner motivation's gonna come up.

01:32:17.060 | And in the process of acting that out,

01:32:19.860 | you're gonna find, your daughter, for example,

01:32:22.020 | would find out where her weaknesses are,

01:32:24.020 | and she can decide, you know what, I want to strengthen,

01:32:25.780 | I want to get rid of those weaknesses.

01:32:27.180 | Or she could say, you know what,

01:32:28.500 | I don't want to work on those weaknesses,

01:32:29.900 | I want to work on these strengths.

01:32:31.500 | And so you can go in different directions,

01:32:33.040 | and you as a parent can kind of guide them,

01:32:35.140 | kind of open up the doors.

01:32:36.260 | You know what, I have a really good friend at work.

01:32:38.980 | Yeah, you know, he's a safe guy,

01:32:40.720 | I know he'd be gentle with kids.

01:32:42.280 | If I talked to him, he'd probably let you interview him.

01:32:44.360 | So you can start opening doors for your child

01:32:46.360 | to step out just a little bit further.

01:32:49.060 | And then you just build and build on that,

01:32:51.440 | and maybe you as a parent, you start realizing,

01:32:53.200 | okay, she's having a great time, but you know what,

01:32:55.760 | I'd like her to develop her writing skills

01:32:58.340 | a little bit more.

01:32:59.520 | So now you start saying, hey,

01:33:00.760 | maybe you should write a little blog summary

01:33:02.780 | of the interview, you know,

01:33:04.120 | and the first ones are a little awkward,

01:33:06.400 | some key points are missing,

01:33:08.120 | maybe you just start, maybe just do a key list first.

01:33:10.640 | And you get her to write about that.

01:33:13.440 | So little by little, you start developing

01:33:15.480 | this stackable skillset, and you pivot a little bit,

01:33:19.800 | you find a little bit where her strengths

01:33:21.160 | are and interests are, she starts getting feedback.

01:33:23.160 | Pretty soon she starts having ideas of her own,

01:33:25.360 | and you're thinking, well, I don't know if that would work.

01:33:28.780 | But you know, let's try it, let's give it a try.

01:33:30.480 | It's not too risky if it fails.

01:33:32.440 | And what you do is you start encouraging them

01:33:35.880 | to buy their own tools of this skillset

01:33:37.960 | that they have, so I'll do this with my kids a lot.

01:33:40.800 | They'll earn money from working in our home business.

01:33:44.440 | And like my 14-year-old, he's been podcast editing

01:33:49.000 | for several years now, and he's done voice acting gigs

01:33:52.720 | on his own, he's very confident about how to answer

01:33:54.600 | people back and how to explain to them

01:33:56.360 | it's gonna cost more for extra words.

01:33:58.700 | But he loves spending all his money on microphones,

01:34:01.680 | and in fact, the one we were working on

01:34:03.480 | just before we started, I realized it's so sensitive,

01:34:05.600 | I'm like, oh my goodness, I normally don't use with this.

01:34:08.040 | It picks up everything, it was great for him

01:34:09.640 | as a voice actor, he's starting, that's the tools he want.

01:34:14.640 | He spends tons of money on it.

01:34:16.560 | In fact, I have to calm him down, it's like,

01:34:17.920 | don't spend so much money on these tools, you know?

01:34:20.320 | It's the ones you have.

01:34:21.740 | But that's what I think you're gonna see this sort of fire

01:34:23.960 | build up in your kid, and I love, this is my personal

01:34:28.080 | satisfaction, I love when a kid comes to me,

01:34:31.040 | or teenagers maybe, they're starting to get older,

01:34:33.280 | and they have some crazy idea about where they want

01:34:35.580 | to take their talent or tool they want to buy,

01:34:37.360 | and I'm like, I don't know if that's gonna work, honestly.

01:34:40.400 | That's a lot of money, or I don't know,

01:34:42.320 | this might fail, what you're gonna try to do,

01:34:44.280 | and you might be socially embarrassed.

01:34:45.640 | I'll say something to that effect, and he's like,

01:34:47.400 | no, no, I think it can be done, you know?

01:34:48.960 | And it's like, okay, you know, I think, give it a try.

01:34:53.720 | I really, honestly, I honestly don't know,

01:34:55.660 | I don't have a crystal ball, go out and try it.

01:34:58.760 | And they'll go and try it, and sometimes it won't work,

01:35:01.320 | and they'll learn something from there, or it'll work,

01:35:05.160 | and then next time around, they know how to do it better.

01:35:07.560 | So I would say it's a discovery process.

01:35:10.520 | You embrace who you are as a family,

01:35:13.680 | embrace your family culture as a platform for your child

01:35:18.680 | to start finding their own unique identity.

01:35:21.280 | So you're not cloning them, but you're giving them

01:35:26.240 | a leverage, a chance, your family is a chance for them

01:35:29.080 | to come on stage and start doing their thing.

01:35:33.540 | And if you try going, if you try to bypass that,

01:35:37.740 | a lot of times they'll just freeze up.

01:35:39.340 | They won't, they're too scared.

01:35:40.300 | They can't put themselves on a platform out there,

01:35:42.820 | figuratively speaking, without being shut down too quickly,

01:35:45.700 | because honestly, they're not that good,

01:35:47.260 | and they will get shut down, so people get scared.

01:35:49.680 | They might eventually get good enough and strong enough,

01:35:51.940 | but by then they're 17, 18, and they've let four good years

01:35:54.980 | go by, too much time has gone by.

01:35:57.520 | So you as a parent, you use your family,

01:35:59.920 | you use your assets, and then eventually,

01:36:02.100 | they're gonna start breaking off into their own little

01:36:05.820 | orbit, they're gonna start doing little paid jobs

01:36:08.500 | for friends, or maybe on the internet,

01:36:11.300 | they're gonna start going bigger, and then at some point,

01:36:13.220 | they say, wow, they start having a real big vision

01:36:16.140 | for themselves, and then that's where the conversation

01:36:18.940 | starts, you know, maybe I should take these extra courses.

01:36:21.820 | Like my daughter said, I wanna pay for this paid

01:36:25.900 | subscription of this top artist that I want,

01:36:28.100 | and that made a huge difference for her.

01:36:30.060 | But she wasn't ready in the beginning,

01:36:31.580 | but she got all this feedback from relatives,

01:36:33.180 | wow, this is good, you've got something here.

01:36:35.260 | And then at some point, she got so frustrated,

01:36:37.060 | but my, the children I draw, they always look like

01:36:41.700 | old adults, old men, and so there was this one artist,

01:36:46.700 | the lesson was how to make your babies look like babies

01:36:52.020 | and not like old people, right?

01:36:55.100 | And so there's a whole thing, but you had to buy

01:36:56.920 | his paid course, she had enough money saved up.

01:36:59.380 | She got it, once she got into that, all of a sudden,

01:37:01.740 | a whole new world opened up, here's somebody super

01:37:03.820 | professional, super kind, could explain themselves,

01:37:08.820 | they explain how it worked, and as they were drawing

01:37:12.180 | and teaching, they would also explain how it worked

01:37:15.700 | to sell your art, and things like that,

01:37:17.180 | you got socialized into it.

01:37:18.980 | So you have this momentum that just takes you forward.

01:37:23.980 | But in the beginning, you start with your family,

01:37:26.900 | start looking around what you got, start looking

01:37:28.980 | at relatives who can help you, or who have an asset,

01:37:32.380 | or a dad who has a microphone like Joshua Sheets,

01:37:36.260 | and say, is there something I can use here, right?

01:37:39.140 | And then you start discovering that, and you morph,

01:37:41.620 | and you morph, and you morph, you have to make money

01:37:44.460 | off of it, if at all possible, and then you have them

01:37:47.340 | use their money to build more of their talent.

01:37:50.340 | And then you have the conversation as they get closer

01:37:52.100 | to 18, you know what, if going to college you think

01:37:53.800 | is really going to make you go forward,

01:37:55.460 | and that's the direction you want to go, then go for it.

01:37:57.980 | But if you think going in a different direction,

01:37:59.700 | now they have an idea of what they want to do,

01:38:01.820 | and become, and that helps guide and makes the decisions

01:38:04.540 | for them, and gets you completely out of the anxiety zone.

01:38:07.740 | So that's my speech.

01:38:10.020 | - I'm excited, I'm looking forward to, you know,

01:38:13.540 | especially now with an almost seven year old, it's so fun.

01:38:18.180 | I never had a vision for what to do with babies,

01:38:23.180 | and so now that my children are reaching an age, though,

01:38:26.460 | I'm just so filled with, where they're more than babies,

01:38:30.260 | we can talk about adult level things, I'm just so filled

01:38:32.660 | with enthusiasm and passion about all the neat things

01:38:36.460 | we can do together, it's so exciting.

01:38:38.260 | And I love these ideas even that you're saying.

01:38:42.220 | I'm looking forward to the day when I can help guide

01:38:46.700 | one of my children down some of these paths,

01:38:50.280 | and help them get some failures under their belt,

01:38:52.820 | help them get some wins under their belt,

01:38:54.460 | and I'm excited.

01:38:57.180 | Okay, so Jonathan, you and your family, you have,

01:39:01.180 | or you're starting a new program, parenttheirpassion.com,

01:39:04.780 | right, and I know you're just starting that as a list,

01:39:06.940 | so I've got it here on the screen, but you want people to,

01:39:09.660 | if anybody's interested in that, that's the best place

01:39:11.620 | to do it, to check out more, right?

01:39:13.420 | - Yeah, there's a, if you go there right now,

01:39:16.140 | it's, you can sign up, just put your email in there,

01:39:18.420 | and I'll send you tips.

01:39:19.260 | You can also email me directly if you like,

01:39:21.300 | jonathan@parenttheirpassion.com.

01:39:25.420 | There's two Ts in there between parent and their,

01:39:27.420 | so parenttheirpassion.com, so you can email me,

01:39:30.340 | ask me a question I love to answer back,

01:39:33.180 | tell me the ages of your children helps me

01:39:35.820 | figure out what it is you're asking,

01:39:38.140 | and I got tons and tons of tips,

01:39:40.560 | and some tips work really well for certain type of children,

01:39:44.460 | some for others, so I love getting questions.

01:39:47.780 | - Awesome, and then you've also got your older site,

01:39:51.220 | 10K to Talent, that I know you're moving on

01:39:53.020 | from that particular brand, but there's a bunch

01:39:54.660 | of resources and information.

01:39:55.660 | - Yeah, I'm leaving it up.

01:39:56.600 | It's still available.

01:39:57.780 | It's available, you can go there, 10ktotalent.com.

01:40:01.580 | You can browse many, many blog posts

01:40:06.580 | that I've written over time, and it's all in there,

01:40:09.500 | and what I'm trying to do now is to make it a little more,

01:40:12.300 | when I talk about these methods, I try to pivot

01:40:16.460 | a little bit so that it's expressed more

01:40:17.900 | in what the parents want, so, you know,

01:40:19.780 | like we were talking about is, you know,

01:40:22.220 | the way a lot of times to find that inner motivation

01:40:25.260 | and happiness for children is to find a passion

01:40:28.220 | or a skill set, but of course, what the parents want

01:40:31.120 | is more than anything else for them to be happy,

01:40:33.020 | so I'm trying to match up the method

01:40:35.900 | to the result that you're gonna get

01:40:37.780 | by doing this with your child.

01:40:39.620 | - Awesome, awesome.

01:40:40.940 | Well, thank you so much for coming on today, Jonathan.

01:40:42.500 | I really appreciate your time.

01:40:43.980 | - It was my pleasure, thank you.

01:40:47.460 | - So in closing, what I would encourage you

01:40:48.780 | is definitely check out Jonathan's resources,

01:40:50.940 | but most importantly, I think,

01:40:53.620 | think carefully about your own child,

01:40:56.780 | and recognize that if you're a parent,

01:41:00.340 | it is your responsibility as a parent

01:41:03.620 | to help your child to develop the skills

01:41:05.960 | that they need to succeed in the modern age,

01:41:09.660 | and maybe, maybe there was a day and time

01:41:13.420 | at which you could take your children,

01:41:15.060 | drop 'em off at the local school,

01:41:16.580 | and come back and pick 'em up,

01:41:17.940 | and magically 12 years later,

01:41:19.340 | they would be prepared for life, maybe.

01:41:22.780 | I'm skeptical, but maybe.

01:41:25.540 | If there ever was such a time, it ain't today,

01:41:29.340 | and so what that means is that

01:41:30.700 | if you're going to help your child to be more effective,

01:41:34.260 | you're gonna help your child to do

01:41:35.680 | what your child is going to need to do

01:41:37.900 | to be able to succeed in the modern world,

01:41:41.180 | then it's going to require more thought and more input,

01:41:44.580 | and if you reflect back on even what Jonathan said

01:41:47.460 | at the beginning of what do we want for our children,

01:41:49.180 | we want them to be happy, and want them to feel fulfilled,

01:41:52.500 | and to motivation, to be motivated,

01:41:57.140 | those are his two things, be happy and motivated.

01:41:59.900 | I think that would be satisfying,

01:42:01.420 | but there's very little in the mainstream education system

01:42:04.900 | that's gonna result in happiness and motivation.

01:42:07.900 | Very rarely do we give our high school children

01:42:11.200 | a course on happiness,

01:42:12.420 | very rarely do we give them a course on motivation,

01:42:14.940 | and so these are the areas that we as parents

01:42:17.660 | are responsible to fill in.

01:42:19.220 | So look at your children, engage with your children,

01:42:21.860 | and help your children to discover some things

01:42:24.020 | that they're interested in,

01:42:25.340 | discover, start to develop some skill in those areas,

01:42:28.340 | and you'll put them light years ahead

01:42:30.740 | of where many of their peers are.

01:42:33.580 | Thank you so much for listening to Radical Personal Finance.

01:42:35.860 | Make sure to subscribe,

01:42:36.900 | and I'll be back with you very soon.

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01:43:13.060 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

2020-08-27_Jonathan_Harris_interview