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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the show where it is just me, you and the mic. Today we are continuing along our series of takeaways, lessons that I've had from previous guests here on the show. And today's episode's focused on a guest by the name of Matt Boudreaux. Matt is the founder of Apogee, which is a alternative education program for young people. And the way I understand it, and you would have to go to Apogee to figure out a little bit more specifically exactly what it is, the way I understand it is basically a lot of parents who choose to homeschool their kids, put their kids in Apogee for their, like, additional educational programs, but really strong foundational principles, and then they teach you a lot of things that you don't normally learn in school as well, which I appreciate. And I actually did a couple zoom lessons with a bunch of the kids that were in their particular classes that they wanted me to talk to them. And it was really cool. And I'm a big fan of anybody who's trying to bring any sort of reform into the education space because I think it's one of those areas that needs to be disrupted in a really positive way. And so Matt has done a lot of work with educating future generations in his career, including being a traditional teacher in the system for quite some time and then breaking away and starting his own thing. And so here's a few of my lessons and takeaways from my time with Matt. Number one, if you want to raise a dragon slayer, you have to tell them the dragons exist. Matt's core parenting thesis, it's not about necessarily just protection. It's about preparation. Shielding kids from the reality of the world does not make them safer. It just pushes the collision to a later date when the stakes are much higher. The job of a Parent was to name the enemy clearly and then give your kids the tools to face that enemy. That's how you build capable, resilient young people instead of fragile ones who fall apart the first time that things get hard. And I'll admit this one is a struggle for me because I want to protect my kids, obviously. But I've also seen examples where parents maybe go too far on the protection side, kind of what Matt's referring to here. And not even necessarily in the context of like this particular point, you know, name the enemy, give them tools to defeat it type of thing, but more so from the perspective of even just their playtime or they, they, they put too many barriers around the, the kid and, and, and, and you know, prevent them from adventuring and figuring things out and learning and, and, and having to do stuff on their own. They, they build this protective barrier around them and then what happens is the kid gets out into life and realizes that there's no protective barrier. The barrier's gone. Now all of a sudden they have real problems and they have obstacles and they have difficulties. And then this is where I believe some of the entitlement that it's not necessarily this generation, it's more just kids in general. I mean every generation, I think that's where a lot of the entitlement comes from. Because they think that they deserve a certain level of life that they have not ever done anything to ear and then because they've never had any experience being forced to go through struggles or being forced to sit in boredom and being forced to figure things out for themselves. Now that's how you get the 37 year old who still lives at home or at least is still supported financially by their parents because they never learned to go slay their own dragons. They never learned to go out and adventure. And so your main goal as a parent is not necessarily to protect it is one of the things that you do, especially as, as a, as a dad, in my opinion, is to protect the family. But you also need to prepare the family and prepare your children. You need to allow them to play freely but within boundaries. Like you, you can set up boundaries but still let them do their thing and not be this like helicopter parent all the time. So I really appreciated Matt making this point that it's not, it's not necessari, protect them from everything at all times. It's like yes, protect good, do that. But if you don't prepare, then you will always have to protect. Even when they're 40, you know, so you know, build some Barriers, let them play safely and then allow them to get messy, allow them to struggle a little bit. And I. This, that one sucks. I totally understand that that sucks. I, I hate watching my kids struggle with something when you know you can just step in and help them do it, but allowing them to have that struggle, to feel that struggle and then, and then the, the joy on their face when they stick with it enough and then they figure it out. That stuff is. That stuff's awesome. Anyway, number two, second, second takeaway from my time with Matt, the four Cs of raising young kids. He has a framework for the early years that I found just genuinely useful. Conversations, choices, calm and consistency. So first, give kids more credit. They understand far more than they show. You have conversations with them even when you don't get feedback. Second, present them with choices, but constrain the options to good options. Let them practice decision making on their own just inside of the guardrails. Kind of like what I was mentioning before. It's like you, you let them play in the sandbox, but you set up the barriers of the sandbox. So let them practice their own autonomous decision making within the guardrails that you set up for them. So present them with choices. Third, stay calm. Stoicism isn't being emotionless necessarily. It's just being in control of your emotions. It's feeling the emotion and then choosing to do something that your emotion is telling you to do or not to do. It's. It's. You are in control. Your emotions are not in control of you. Stay calm. Reserve your big emotional reactions for when they do something right. The, the, the. The best way I think I heard this put one time was basically like you're the adult in the situation. Like you can't also react crazy and emotional all the time and then, and then all of a sudden get upset with your kid when they throw a fit about something. It's like they're just modeling the framework that you're giving them. Show them how to react to those things. Show them what it looks like to have some control over your emotions. And again, I know it's easier said than done because kids know how to push your freaking buttons, man. And I've definitely lost my temper a time or two, but I feel like I do my best to just try to remain in control of my emot, take a deep breath, remove myself from the situation, whatever I got to do. And if I, and if I do make a mistake and I lose my temper, I do my best to always come back and apologize. To them as well, to let them know, like, hey, I should not have behaved like this. I should have controlled myself more. I apologize to you for losing control of my emotions in this context. So stay calm and then if you're going to have big emotional reactions, do them. When they do something right, you catch them doing something correct. You catch them helping out their sibling when they're usually bullying them, or, you know, you catch them doing a chore or you catch them cleaning up or you, you know, whatever, whatever number of things, make a big deal of it when they do something right and have a big emotional reaction so that they feel that, that joy from, from doing something that they should be doing. So good.
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So good. So good.
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And then fourth, be consistent. The first four or five years of intense consistency make the next 13 easier. And most parents invert that. And I can understand why. And it's almost not fair because, because the first five years you're a brand new parent. You're just trying to learn how to be a freaking parent. You know, they don't come with a user manual. I was, I kept looking around for one at the hospital. They didn't give me one. And I felt like the first couple of years was just like, man, I'm, I'm just doing my best to figure this thing the hell out. And that's why they always say that younger siblings have the advantage because the, the, the parents test out all the parenting strategies on the older kids and it's just kind of the way that, it's the way that it is sometimes. But the sooner you can learn this lesson, the better. If you can be intensely consistent for the first four or five years, the next 13 are going to be much easier. So the four Cs of raising young kids have conversations, give them choices, remain calm, and be consistent. Three, because I do so beats because I said so every single time. And this was probably my favorite part of the Conversation. And it's stuck in my head since then because I do so, not because I said so. If your kids can see you actually living the principles that you're asking them to follow, then you don't have to pull rank. You don't have to be, well, because I said so. Well, because I'm in charge and, you know, assert yourself as the dominant authority figure in the situation. You will not have to do that as often if they just see that that's how you do things. The rules hanging on the wall of your house mean nothing if you're the one violating all the rules. But if they watch you own your own mistakes, apologize when you drift from your values, live the code that you preach every day, then you don't need that, that authoritarian control over your household. The example is through your, your living. It's, it's the, the authority comes from the example that you're setting. The do as I say do thing just does not work. It, it will, I think, shatter the respect and the position that you hold with your kids if you're saying to do something and then doing something, completely the opposite. Now, there obviously are some sort of caveats to this. Like my son the other day when I, after we put him to bed, he came back downstairs and was like, well, why do you guys get to stay up? And it's like, okay, well, that's a little bit different. Like, this is because your child and you need to be in bed at whatever, 8 o' clock or whatever their bedtime was, and I'm an ad and yeah, like, mom's going to be asleep in like a half an hour because she gets up really early to go to the gym. And then I'm going to get up after she goes to the gym and I'm going to go to the gym, but I have the ability to stay up later. Sorry, that's just how it is. You know what I mean? Like, but that's, that's different than saying than, than something like, you know, hey, it's good for you to eat this type of food, or it's bad for you to, you know, drink soda or eat sugar or whatever. And then they see you doing all the things that you're not letting them do. That's a little bit different. There's different contexts for those types of things. So because I do so beats because I said so every single time. So don't be the do as I say, not as I do. Parent number four. True masculinity isn't aggression. It's aggression. Under voluntary control. Matt references Jordan Peterson and Carl Jung on this. And the point is one I find myself coming back to quite frequently. The point that he made, which is a man who can't be dangerous isn't good. He's just weak. The virtue is not in eliminating the aggression, not in eliminating the propensity to be able to be violent. It's in choosing deliberately and consistently not to deploy that violence when it would harm other people and not protect other people. So it's sort of the. They teach this concept inside of Apogee Strong, which they're young men program about the savage gentleman, which is about holding both of those things at the same time, being capable of intensity and choosing to be kind. The tension is not contradiction. It's the entire thing like that that is masculinity. And he made a, he made an argument in our conversation that toxic masculinity does not exist. And, and I know it's a charged word and I, and I can understand the broader implications that people are meaning when they say a phrase like toxic masculinity. But his argument was basically toxic masculinity doesn't exist because if you are being actually and truly masculine, then there's nothing toxic about it. It's only toxic when it's starts being this other form of masculinity that's been shoved down people's throats recently. That the, the manosphere alpha bro type culture. That's when it's, that's when it stops to be masculinity and that's when it can breach the, the wall into toxicity. But true masculinity is a good thing. And that's, that's, that's like my, my broader sentiment about this is like, yes, I do think that there's a big wave of people who are attacking masculinity. Do I think that it's like we're under attack, like protect your kids at all costs type thing? Like, not necessarily. I, I just think that there's a lot of loud obnoxious people who are basically trying to vilify any sort of personality traits that are attributed to masculinity and that I vehemently disagree with. You should, if that is the person you are, then you should embody those, those traits as much as you can. And this is exactly what, what Matt was talking about about this. It's like the, the you know, aggression that people would associate with, with test in and of itself does not mean that you are being masculine. It is the aggression under the voluntary control that allows you to sit in a. A positive form of masculinity. So do not, do not allow other people to define what this means for you, whether it's the alpha bro, red pill manosphere culture or it's the. The. I would say the. The bad version of feminism. Either way, they. They both have the wrong idea. And there's, there's somewhere in the middle where it's that, gentlemen, it's the concept of being the, I'd rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. And it's sort of that same concept, like you should as a man, try to be those things, to be strong, to be protective, to be a good provider, to embody those characteristics. But it's only virtuous when you're capable of doing the violence that it's like not being capable of doing it. There's no virtue in not doing it. That's just because you're incapable of doing it. You're just weak and incapable. But being capable of doing something and then not doing that thing unless it's to protect somebody else who is weaker then like that. Like that's the goal, right? So true masculinity is not aggression. It's aggression or voluntary control. Number five, collect experiences when you're young. The dots only connect looking backward. Matt turned down a White House Secret Service job based on advice from a senior agent who knew his character. That decision led him to a job at Abercrombie where he met his wife of now 14 years. That led him to 24 Hour Fitness, where he ran gyms for founder for quite some time, which led him to Stanford, where he spent nearly two decades in education. None of it was planned. All of it was connected. His message to young people is always the same. Say yes to experiences. Don't let comfort narrow your world, and trust that the through line reveals itself. When you look back and I see a lot of mentorship sprinkled throughout that story as well. People in his life that obviously he trusted to turn down. I mean, White House Secret Service, I mean, pretty awesome. But get advice from a senior agent who's like, maybe this isn't the right path exactly for what you want to do. And then to Abercrombie and Fitch, where he met his wife, and then to 24 Hour Fitness and then to Stanford and then to starting his own education school. Like, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. So collect the experiences. When you're young, go try some things, Go, you know, taste, touch, feel, smell. You know what I mean? Get out there and say yes to opportunity and do a bunch of things. And in that pursuit, you will find a path that is presented to you along the way. You don't have to have it all figured out at first. It so this was a great conversation. I really enjoyed this one with Matt and I like a lot of the stuff that he puts out there. So go check out my full episode with Matt Boudreau as well as Apogee, Apogee Strong, all the other things that Matt's working on. But that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you guys next time. Peace.