record_id: 296f8b3e-f83d-81c8-961e-e8b4dda00810
created_time: 2025-10-24T00:54:00.000Z
title: 10-23 Strategy Briefing: Configurators, Trilogy Talent Playbook, and AI-Driven K–12 Transformation
source_url: 

[TRANSCRIPTION]
Speaker 1 00:01:35
Hey, do you want to throw it all the way in? Do you have the, uh, .254. 
Speaker 2 00:01:51
Can you just, can we just put the whole pallet in. 
Speaker 3 00:02:27
Beep, beep.
Speaker 2 00:03:59
One, two, three, four.
Speaker 3 00:06:04
Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:09:28
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 00:10:16
Beep, beep, beep.
Speaker 3 00:11:03
Yeah, all good. I've been there.
Speaker 3 00:12:30
Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:13:06
Yeah, if you don't mind, we can grab one of those mallets for you real quick.
Speaker 4 00:15:22
It could be built, just it's not manufacturingable, and they only catch it way late on the manufacturing facility. It would cost millions of dollars to be like fixated or free parts to the customer, or just delays, like go back to the customer and say whatever, so it just doesn't work. I would have mostly had software in trouble there sometimes with something I had, but I guess with real world stuff it's worse. That didn't work. I was working on the manufacturing line in Boeing, and you know, the president's like, that new configuration cost us a million dollars, we have to reconstruct that plane, you know. And so that, so there's tons of business value in what's good, you just build it. And so that's, that's what we built back then, and that's how, so that was Trilogy, and then, you know, back to what we were known for was we were also known for recruiting.
Speaker 4 00:16:35
I was born in Minnesota, Minneapolis, and moved around every couple years. My dad worked for General Electric, Jack Welch's strategic planner, places where they had a factory. I think I lived in those cities. And you were at Stanford after that? I went to Stanford for a few years, but then famously dropped out, and the headline on the article was my dad telling me what a moron I was. And that was a found trilogy, and that was what we were working on. So I would have been class of 90 if I graduated, but I officially dropped out the summer of junior, between summer and junior year. I'm sure my professors would have said he might not have been in class as much as he should have been before then. But what happened was in the background, I got into it. In high school, I literally wrote a paper on AI. And back then, AI was... I did write a paragraph in the paper that was like, neural nets, you know, they're decades away. And so I went to Stanford, and Professor Feigenbaum was the father of network systems,
Speaker 4 00:17:05
and so I was literally in this class, and we talked about, if you build these things called configurators, they're really hard to build, but if you build one, these things are worth millions of dollars a day. And so I ended up dropping out. What's a configurator? Configurators are, if you're building something, manufacturing something, and you have lots of different permutations of it. The easiest ones that are simple ones are to go to a car website and figure out what features and options you want, what kind of computer you want. We were doing ones at scale, so you want a phone switch, you want a Boeing airplane, you want an X-ray scanner, mainframes. You're not just using these, you're automatically figuring it out.
Speaker 4 00:17:43
It's like, that misconfiguration cost us a million dollars, we have to repunch that plane, you know. And so there's tons of business value, and it was, could you just build it? And so that's what we built back then, and that's how, so that was Trilogies, and then, you know, back to what we were known for, was we were also known for recruiting talent. You hired a lot of the best people. I think, you know, Austin, Austin, Texas, here, there's really you and Michael Dell, who brought in tons of people. I'm really glad you did, because I live here now, and I feel like you must have hired at least a couple thousand really top talent. So how we got here is, you know, we couldn't raise venture capital. No one thought our idea was good, it was never worth it. And John Lynch, who was our co-founder, was like, and so we keep it down here like okay we're all in austin and uh so we moved out of austin but the problem was there wasn't huge software talent and so the way we solved it is we brought down two thousand i.d grads or talent and had to move to austin playbook you have hard tasks you can have interesting people right here yeah and we're recruiting um was really effective and.
Speaker 4 00:18:14
this is actually part of it relates to how we do school too and some releases we created a thing called university and you know trill university 90s was the hardest boot camp that any company in the world has a few articles on it you know uh it was the hardest one available which was they came down and worked 100 hours a week you know for months and people were like why are you getting all this talent if that's what you do to them that's crazy i'm like the reason they're coming is because absolutely kids coming out of college want to show they're awesome yeah, companies i'm like you're trying to babysit them and make it nice and they don't want to you know do a gas cap you know you know if they really want to come down here work hard show they can have impact and do big things they want to go to warside to change the world right people go really hard about college exactly so that was our recruiting pitch yeah it worked really effectively that's why we were able to get everybody you guys people here you guys go to the company there's an interesting pivot after 2000 you bought the company and you start also buying eventually.
Speaker 4 00:18:45
hundreds of thousands of other companies yeah so 90s was all organic we were just building stuff sales you know in the sales world uh and then uh after the dot-com meltdown a huge customer kept doing that uh and what we realized in the aftermath was we were actually good operators like we actually knew how to run software as well and there's all these other companies that are really cheap because we bought a couple of them made a ton of money it's not really that it wasn't really more strategic or complicated than that and so, Today, if you choose a product company, which is organic build side and ESW, which is our acquisition side, and they either go and build things or acquire a company. They've gotten really big at acquiring a lot of things. They've reached out to all my guys, you know, and said, we're like, no, we're gonna buy things and they're gonna bring us lots of stuff. Yeah, well, someone has to, you know, venture capital returns, right, are, we're focused on everything going in the sky. You're gonna try, so what do you do with all the rest of them? Right, and if you're a growth CEO, right, you started something to go build, you know, the unicorn, the billionaire, a lot of them don't make it.
Speaker 4 00:19:16
So what do you do with what's left? Yeah, run something that's very different. Well, how am I gonna educate my entire employee base on AI? And so education is everywhere. I have, you know, in sort of three years ago, set foot on K-12, which is sort of my new phase two of my career. So, okay, so let's talk about phase two. So you became one of the most successful guys in tech world by far with a couple of acts with this thing. Before I got right into K-12, so you've been at the event a long time. You sponsored some of the role in Firesports, and I really admire it, Harvard Economist, you guys went into the inner cities. You tried to test whether your visions were working or not. Tell us how you guys learned from that. Sure, so one of the things, back to incentives, right,
Speaker 4 00:19:46
he's an economist, focused on education, he worked, I think he did a lot of it. We sponsored stuff at Houston School District, where it was what would happen if you pay teachers, right? Sort of performance-based pay for teachers. What happens if you pay parents to show up for PTA meetings or check homework? What happens if you pay kids? Right, what would we do? And it was, I mean, he was awesome, and you know, I was completely clueless. Because I remember I was like, why don't we just give everybody, like, Joe, I don't understand, Wimbledon is next week, why don't you just go win Wimbledon and get like $500? You're not like, oh, I guess you've got to do all this work and not just results. No, you're teaching kids daily habits, is actually what you're trying to incent, not just outcomes, because that part of it is... So you're saying daily habits, but you're also sending the results as well. Correct. But you have to teach them what are the daily habits, it's sort of like... You've got to scaffold your way into it, which also affects how we do education today.
Speaker 4 00:20:17
Do you guys figure it out? And that was, I mean, the result, you tried paying the teachers, the result was paying the kids the right way, which is actually by far the most effective, right? The most effective way to do it, and you can get, you know, big effect size on doing this. It really works, and we talk about, you know, we did not have the budget, even for his research back then versus what we use today, and you can sort of think of some of our incentive stuff as like taking his stuff and just jacking it to, you know, so incentives are very important for kids' education, along with whatever stuff you're doing. How many children do you have? So I have about two daughters, so one is a college student and one is a senior in high school, and you helped build this school for them originally, right, as well. Well, actually, how it started, so how we got into education, really, and the big way was a decade ago, I stayed for grad, McKinsey Price was co-founder of Alpha School, and one.
Speaker 4 00:20:51
of my kids moved my kids over, but the other problem with education is education is not scalable. There's all these pockets of education that give really good results, but they don't scale, and I very much viewed Alpha and McKinsey School as that way, which is great for my kids, great for their kids, and also to do it, but it didn't work, it's terrible. How do you do a scale? And that's where sort of I ended up coming in. and sort of was three years ago when Gen AI came out I was like oh neural nets are here finally after decades they're finally you know and with these I was like we can take what you're doing at Kinsey and get this out to a billion kids right and so it was that realization that sort of did phase two and so you know the transition for me was I went to my team and my team have been there for 25 years and 25 years of how great they are and how they're better than me and I'm like we'll see you're just gonna run the company you're gonna stop our company I'm gonna go be a principal I love it um and so I also made a little harder for him because I said I want to take a billion dollars cash out of the company so I can fund and why a billion dollars and it is awesome you're taking money away you have a billion dollars in education um we need a scale you need full.
Speaker 4 00:21:30
people down and so you have to go revisit from the ground up you need you have to go back to first principles and reinvent everything we talked about like how we looked at school to reinvent it it is it's a lot it's a lot you need a lot of investment to do it and just to be clear like my billion is a drop in the bucket of what is required hundreds of billions of dollars it's a seven trillion dollar industry globally hundreds of billions to fix this right and you know capitalism is gonna have to provide capital if we're fixing education we're gonna get to that as well hopefully absolutely so the schools themselves like I like to think I know it's not right but there's a business with acting academy it was made here where the students themselves were kind of given more like more libertarians more authority they learn how to learn they have their own rules and stuff and I think you guys kind of took active which is a new model.
Speaker 4 00:22:01
incentives and accountability and gamification and AI. Is that a good way to describe it? Absolutely. I mean, Accent's a great model on what they've done. And the co-founder, Rick McKinsey, came from Accent. He worked with Santa for there. And that is sort of our roots. It definitely comes from there. But we added definitely more tech today, if you look back. There's definitely more tech involved. There's definitely more rigor involved. We definitely are much more expensive. So we've got a lot of cost structure. Why is it more expensive? So back to where we spend. We have a much lower guide-teacher ratio than what Accent has. So we have more guides. We have more teachers, more adults in the building. Why do you guys want to be in that? Kids, when you start kindergarten, right, they need more structure to get them through. Especially young kids. They get like a 7th, 8th, 9th grade. So actually, we've changed that. So if you look at where money goes in an Alpha school, how much do you pay your guides? We pay our guides more. Number two, at kindergarten, we have many more guides per student.
Speaker 4 00:22:32
When you move up to middle school, the kids are like, dude, I don't need all these guides. I'm an adolescent. But we take the money and we put them into nice little workshops. And part of the thing is, we'll talk about different schools. We started with Alpha, which is sort of our high-end. It's a high-end private school where, in our design goal, we were doing product management around it. We said, what can kids do if money's no object? Academically, it's actually funny because schools bundle. And actually, the easiest and cheapest things to fix is actually the academics, right? Because that's tech-job driven. Versus the rest of the day, it's all very human driven. Tell us about the lifestyle workshops. What are those? Actually, let me spin back and just say, when we reinvented the school, sort of the five categories we looked at. The most important thing that we did, and this is Ryan, McKinsey's co-founder, right?
Speaker 4 00:23:02
He's like, your kids must love school. And I'm like, it's so expensive, right? And he's like, no, they need to love school. And today, when we reinvent that as a core value of every school we start, whether it's now for any other type, and I believe anybody who's going into education, and our seniors actually, they love, kids must love school more than going on vacation. And I think that is the standard that if we're gonna put kids for a decade, right, a dozen years into this stuff, as a parent, right, we should expect that out of the school, because it's totally doable. It's a totally doable thing, we should set that as our standard, at Alpha, we're up to 96% of kids say they love school, 40 to 60% say I'd rather go to school and go on vacation. And we did, so now I guess we're around, at Alpha High, because the kids love it. And the key is, they're working on things that matter, that they care about, right?
Speaker 4 00:23:32
And you have to have that, and you can start that really young, kids love it, they're excited about it. And so, that's number one, they have to love school to that level. And the second one, if you're reinventing school, you know, for the next 20 years in our AI world coming, kids need to learn 10 times faster. We cannot have this 20 year old model, where it's six hours a day, you know, teaching from a classroom, plus homework, right? AI and learning science, right, allow you to teach kids 10 times faster. And for 40 years, right, the, you know, Dean Schwartz and Stanford, the school's education, all have written 10,000 papers on how kids can learn two, five, or 10 times faster. Now, they all start with, this doesn't work in a teacher from a classroom model, and no one's been willing to break that model, right? Because that is the most sacred model in education. They don't want to do this better. No one's gonna change it, and they're gonna be scared, because no one wants their kid to be getting paid, right, and all those issues. And so, in our model, right, we have built a learning engine that teaches kids 10 times faster.
Speaker 4 00:24:05
And in that two hours, they learn over twice as much as kids who sit in class for six to one month. And so our academic performance, we're the best performing academic school in the country. We're, you know, all our classes now are, you know, our top one percent. Um, we crush it. And it's for everybody. We have a gifted, talented school, but those kids are off the chart. They're even more ahead. They're even more ahead. I mean, when you see what those kids... We take kids who are years behind. Years behind. And we can take kids from the bottom 25 percent and get them to the top 25 percent in two years. I'm very jealous of this. My friends and I were allowed to go like a grade or two ahead enough, and that was announced yesterday to be like, we're very lucky. My friends are smarter than me. They would have just been done by a fourth grader or something. You totally would have. Well, just to give you some data points. We have third and fourth graders who outscore 50 percent of high school graduates in this country. My daughter, my older daughter, who is, you know, 16 out of 18, matching with a double major at Stanford, who went through the old system, you know, and she was out for 10 years with her teacher. She was looking at our latest version, and she was looking at the kids. And she went down and saw the third and fourth graders, and she was like,
Speaker 4 00:24:35
they're getting what I got in eighth grade and seventh grade, and they're doing it in third grade. So this acceleration of what these kids can do, I mean, it's getting better, and it just keeps accelerating. We've got to get to some more of the U.S. faster and make sure we dominate. Exactly. We absolutely do. We need, you know, if any of your listeners are going to be like, I'm a builder and I'm going to change the world, come open 500, right? We need great entrepreneurs who want to come and be able to open 500 GTs. Or open a GT school just for their kids, maybe two. Open one. Open one. Open 500. Like, let's go do this at scale, because there's nothing more important for society than how it raises its kids. Right? It's the single most important thing. It's for whether society continues. And so let's go work on that. I'm actually curious on this point, because I'm going to look at you, where society is dialectic. We need our best and brightest to get way ahead, because they're going to fix everything for us. You also, from an ethical perspective, want to fish. is probably more about the average and the toppers and also doing things for the bottom. So we're going to get this out, that's my thing, is I took a billion dollars and I'm going to get this out to a billion kids. So I'm going to have a whole range.
Speaker 4 00:25:07
And we do, we have ones where academically, right, the way to solve kids who are behind, right, in a time-based system, once you fall behind, you never get to catch up. And for me, it was back to being doing the job. I went to one of the worst performing, you know, academically performing schools, and I sat down and I watched the 6th grade teacher. And the 6th grade teacher was handing out 6th grade material. But I'd seen the test score, which is if you're bottom 10% in this country, you can't read. You don't know 7th grade. And she's handing out 6th grade material. Like, instead, what they need, what that class needed was 1st grade phonics, right, 2nd grade phonics. And a teacher who's a 6th grade teacher needs to hand out 6th grade material, right, they're teaching 6th grade. And this is where the, why the AI tutors do so much better. They actually figure out the ontology of everything we need to know and don't know and go back and teach. Just go back. And this kid, you know, and each kid gets a lesson that personalizes them. You need 1st grade, right, you need 2nd grade math, whatever.
Speaker 4 00:25:38
And that's, that is why you get these 10x learning. Because you put material, kids need, every educator will tell you the two things you need to educate a kid. You need a motivated student, and we'll talk about motivation. The second is, you have to. This is where you teach them life skills, right? What are the skills that we think make you successful in life? Especially as you look forward, you know, when AI is going to transform the world, pure academics is not enough anymore. And so in ours, we have a life skills curriculum where we teach leadership and teamwork,
Speaker 4 00:26:08
storytelling and public speaking, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, socialization and relationship building, grit and hard work, right? And so they're doing these project-based workshops run by adults, right? That's what we call guides and coaches. And they're doing these super fun afternoon workshops, right? Which drives level school way up and teaches them these life skills. How do you do grit plus loving it? Because isn't grit implied? Yeah, something difficult. Well, I'll give you one other thing that you have to believe to think alpha is going to work. And this is probably the most controversial thing I'll say today, which is the key to your child's happiness is high standards. And many parents are very worried they think low standards is the key to my child's happiness. But for the same reason, people came to Charles University because it was going to be the hardest thing they ever did. They do that. Kids want to do hard things. They want to do awesome things. And it starts in kindergarten. Now, parents naturally are like, I don't want to see my kids struggle and fail. They don't. But every development expert in the world will say the key to your child's development.
Speaker 4 00:26:38
is that they struggle and fail on their road to success, supported by a caring, loving adult, right? That loop is what you just want. That drives self-confidence. It drives resilience. All those good things. I can't make a school that kids love so much they'd rather go on a vacation if I don't have high standards. If kids are scrolling TikTok and playing video games all day, they're not going to say, they're not going to say, don't start a break. They have to be working in a team with other people on awesome, challenging things. And my best analogy outside of school is, and parents just think that's so crazy, yet 50% of America thinks the place I teach those life skills is in after-school sports. And if you take the athletic ethos that almost...
Speaker 4 00:27:18
Well, this is back to the changes in my life, and back to, this might also affect my views of school. You know, after I dropped out of school, at Stanford, my dad had the famous quote of, you're a moron, you're an idiot, and all that. Eighteen months later, we were talking, and he's like, you know, I'm so glad you dropped out. I changed my mind. And, uh, he's like, you know, before you dropped out, I thought you were lazy little shit. Always sure to work. You never really engage. You're always trying to do the minimum to get through. He's like, since you dropped out, I found what you love. I've never seen you work harder. You know, we were gonna sleep on the desk, 100 hours a week, the classic startup stuff. And he's like, oh, thank God, that you're like that, and not just this, what he was worried about. And, um, and I believe back to this whole thing of, like, where you go through that transition. Our job, like, when you look at Alpha, our job is to find what ignites the kid. Right? We started middle school, right? Don't give them the opportunity. Kids don't want to be consumers. They don't want to sort their time with a video consultant. They only do it because the current system basically doesn't give them options.
Speaker 4 00:27:49
Like, your after school stuff had to be, you know, self-driven. Ours is like, let's just make our schools, where we find out the kids find their passion, and make sure the standards are really high. And they will so impress you with what they do, because they want to be awesome. Kids want to be awesome. I love it. Let's talk a little more about, like, incentives and accountability. And the thing about motivation, Jeff, understand, is every kid is motivated in a different way. And, you know, understanding that motivation and sort of the hierarchy and framework and changing them over time is critical to building it. And our guides, when we think of what our guides do all day, so that is their number one job, which is, you know, they're not teaching science because they have tutors doing that. So what do our adults in the building do all day? What they do is motivational and emotional support, right? They are either motivating this kid, they are getting to know this kid so well so that they know what does matter.
Speaker 4 00:28:21
And then second, how do I support them through that struggle we talked about earlier? And so when we talk about motivation, let's forget it. Sat rank of the ones we're reading out. There's an actual Codex article that is out there that talks about that from an alpha parent. And we actually, we'll get into it, but I actually don't think that's true, which is the name of our product is called Time Back. Give kids their time back. And that is by far the most motivation I need back. And so for kids, we waste, most of the kids, the first 12 years in school, we're wasting their day. And so this is how, and this is sort of the product we came out of this was, my first day, three years ago, first week, you know, I'm not a principal because I need to go be a product manager and figure out how to do this. So I'm talking to these new fifth graders who just started, you know, I'm like, do you guys love school? Because I have to deliver, you know, the first minute they go to school. And they're like, no. And I'm like, what would make you love school? And they're like, less school. And I'm like, how much less?
Speaker 4 00:28:52
And they're like, none. And I'm like, okay, that's a little light here. And we literally negotiated two hours. And I was like, look, how about this? If I, if you engage in the apps, right, if I go to the apps, and would you engage them in two hours? If we made the other four hours awesome and fun and stuff you loved. You can build this kid's head with awesome knowledge, and we've got to do it two hours a day, luckily, because we're in science, and AI tutors, and Gen A, and you can build this engine, which is what we did, but that motivation, the kids will tell you, which is, you know, the counter on the money is, if you're back once down in Westlake's honors program, it's six hours a day, four hours homework, and you can't pay those kids enough money, right? And so, once your kids are coming back, and free it up to do all the awesome stuff they want to do, plus what you think is really valuable, and part of the things, all these cool things, then that's the primary motivator. You know, all our guides have these, you know, we can talk forever about all the individualized motivation that each of our guides, you know, our guide, there's, our middle school girls love the Taylor Swift dance-off, so after they finish their lessons, they say, like, 15 seconds, they say, Taylor Swift dance-off, and I go, okay, that's what does it, you know, and just every kid, you know, has different things.
Speaker 4 00:29:29
Let's talk about the controversial ones, let's talk about money, and go back to rolling pride, and stuff, so where do you use money? Parents, natural reaction is, I hate this, I don't want to use it, it's evil, it's bad, and so we arrange all those examples to sort of challenge you on that. A lot of us have parents who, like, you know, yesterday, you used 25 bucks, or something like that, so there was always a little bit of this, but we just, yeah, right, and we sort of took it as a, how would you do this roundup, so let me take examples that parents will agree with, okay, so first of all, in middle school, right, let's say I pay your kid to do great on academics, and then they use that money to fund their passion project account, where they get to go after the workshop, that's their passion project, so I have a high schooler, actually, who, she's an arts theater girl, she's an arts theater girl, 790 math SAT, okay, when she came in, she was not thinking 790, we had to use money and motivation to get her there, right, to break through things, and stuff like that, but she used it to fund, she is launching the all, the all.
Speaker 4 00:30:00
First, all teen produced, acted, shown, probably musical, amazing, right? Sourced everything off TikTok. She needs money to go talk to a producer up in New York City. Every parent's like, okay, that seems okay, too. Or how about middle schoolers after they finish their academics and crush it because we pay every kid in middle school at alpha $1,000 if they get to top 1%. But it funds their Robin Hood for Kids account to teach them how to earn, save, invest, spend, and donate. And your parents are like, okay, that seems pretty good, too. And so those are reasonable places of where money's okay. Other ones, we use money basically for two things because money is a big motivator. It's not number one, but it's still big. If we can inculcate daily habits, daily studying, daily good habits, you're willing, and generally I tell parents, right, just get it started, and then we'll continue. And so it's worth it to whatever motivation you need. Money doesn't do it.
Speaker 4 00:30:30
Some kids, it's better than others. They don't have money for that. Yeah, and some aren't motivated by money. Like my oldest daughter, right, she was naturally just left school. Money never moved the needle at all. My younger daughter's literally the opposite. And we'll tell this one. This one's, you know, because I personally lived through it so much. But I think it encapsulates all the struggle parents have because we have a lot of family discussions. So my daughter, my younger daughter, you know, is the opposite of her older daughter, my older daughter. And when she got to middle school, she got to top 10% at end of school. So, you know, I'm not top 10%. Top 10 is great, you know, and she's happy. And I was like, well, you know, one thing I know about you is you love to shop. And you love that one thing. And so I bet you $1,000 you can't get to top 10%. And so she literally filled her ass with that card and would look at it every day and think she wanted to buy it. And then she'd do her ads. And then she'd get top 10%. Now...
Speaker 4 00:31:01
You know, and I was like, well, you know, one thing I know about you is you love to shop. And so I bet you $1,000 you could get top 1%. And so she literally filled her head with that card out. And we look at it every day. And then she do wraps. And then she hit top 1%. Now, but in cash, like I promised, we had a lot of family discussions because my wife was not a fan of this. She was like, well, I understand top 1% as a standard for somebody who says that's not what I want. And then second, you're paying for this. And lots of parents don't like either of those. So my parents live exactly what all the parents think. But here's the part that, you know, what's transformative is after my daughter hit, she sat down with my wife and was like, I know you didn't like this, but you need to understand that before this, I never thought I was as smart as my sister. Right? I just, I didn't think I was smart. But after doing this, I realized I can do anything she can do if I just work hard at it.
Speaker 4 00:31:33
And that concept, and that is the second use of where I would tell every parent to use money. A lot of education is your kids have natural blocks where they think they can do these things. I love that about the inner city stuff too. For example, you have these kids that are made for families, no parent, no father in the home, not doing well. They just assume they can't. All of a sudden, you show them they can't. I thought that was really neat. And that is in that part where we should spend $1,000 for, we spend $20,000 for a kid in this country for public school. You know, you just spend $1,000 so every kid wakes up and is like, I can get to whatever I can do in the performance. Exactly. Breaking through that, those internal hard limits of that. For people who don't know very well what's going on with Alpha, one worry is, oh, you're doing this for like affluent kids, you're going to make a family. There's right anyway, for the most part. But what's the other is we can do this more broadly. I think it's a whole other opinion. So, you know, if Alpha is a high-end where you're like, okay, money's no object, now I've got to get this down. I have to be able to do it.
Speaker 4 00:32:07
And then, but yes, if I'm going to be doing, and that is our target goal. We're absolutely going to get there. It's not going to be tomorrow, but I mean this for the next 20 years. America first, then the rest of the world. Here we go, absolutely. But we'll give you examples. But back to motivation, right? The things are different, which is, we absolutely want to think about an AI tutor. It doesn't matter where you start. So you can be in the bottom 25%. And if you have a motivated student, we can get them there. It's how you get them to do that first grade phonics lesson that I was explaining before. It's all motivation. It's 90% motivation. So we've run pilots, you know, we don't have this world out broadly, but we've run pilots, right, in public schools, where you take MTSS level three kids, and MTSS level three is basically bottom 10% kids academically. And we sit down, and we're like, here's what's different about us than normal ed tech. Normal ed tech, you're like, give me the app, and see if it works. And we're like, the app doesn't matter. The computer doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's, what are you going to do to motivate the kids to do the work, right? And so we really, on our pilot, we like, give the kids a course, right? And they don't like to get part of the finish list.
Speaker 4 00:32:39
And all of a sudden, if you talk to the parents who do that at the public school system, they're like, or the teachers are like, we have, you know, our middle school, in fact, half our middle schoolers were like, they read about how these Ukrainian refugees, didn't have schools and teachers, right? And so, this was about two years ago now, we were like, well, we're going to go to Ukraine, right? And teach them how to use our engine, and that's cool, you know, fix it. And they're like, I'm like, well, that seems really hard for you guys to do that. You said we're limitless, we can do anything. We can do the impossible. I'm like, okay, that's true. Although I did find one thing that's impossible, which is convincing parents to allow their kids to go to Ukraine during the war. So the parents said no, so the kids went to Poland and said,
Speaker 4 00:33:12
and, you know, relate. And I was like, you guys are the experts. You're their age. Figure it out. Figure out the motivation. They're going back the next day. They're like, $2.50. If we can't get $2.50 today, nothing. $2.50 today. They will do the lessons. And if, you know, we could really crush it if you double it if they do a five-day streak. And so they changed the program name to Learn and Earn. And so we've had for a couple years, we have over 1,000 Ukrainian refugees, right, on the system. And you're learning as fast as our $40,000 friends. One statistical use of being a billionaire is to be able to help tons of kids and figure out the little time and money. It's a tiny bit of time, but that's why we all use that. And I look at this.
Speaker 4 00:33:45
And obviously, I'm going to spend the next 20 years to make it happen. But, you know, every kid can get this system. Like, you know, our vision, if you said, what do we have to get to? Sometime in the next three to five years, we need a tablet that's less than $1,000. So OnDevice AI, OnDevice AI, that teaches every kid on this planet everything they need to know in two hours. All the things we spend six hours on homework. Daniel Stevenson. Exactly. It really is. And it's just, and make it available. But the key to that whole thing is, how are we going to motivate the kid to engage with the app? That's the thing.
Speaker 4 00:34:20
I was always like, you can read as late as you want. You can't complain when you get up for school. You can read as late as you want. Motivation. Anyway, so you can do it. Give kids video game time. I'll see if there's a lot of states that want to regulate these things. That's a big question. Yeah, well, and it's a huge question. And, you know, it is a big one because I'm also on record that, you know, if you deploy chat GPT to students, 90% of them use it to cheat. It doesn't make that useful. It is a cheat bot, not a chat bot. And so it can do harm, for sure. It can also be awesome. Use it right is great.
Speaker 4 00:34:50
Use it right. We cannot ban using AI, right? Because it transforms kids' childhood. And so we have to fight this to the end, which is the correct use of AI to have every kid have a dramatic, like, AI to a five-year-old. Thank you. you know, yes, is my answer, which is, you know, I'm a product guy, and parents want different things, and trying to have one school where you have to solve all parents' problems, it's an impossible job, and so, I mean, I look at the superintendents of a public school.
Speaker 4 00:35:20
district, or, you know, principals of a public school, it's 10 times harder than that, I don't have to solve it, you know, you want, somebody wants X, and the opposite of X, like, I want academics, I hate academics, right, I care about all these other things, I want values, don't teach my kids your values, I mean, just, it's, it's, I, part of what we do at Alpha is we're very clear of, this is what we do, right, and people like it, don't. have to be, you know, 100,000 entrepreneurs, creating all these choices, so a parent can send their kid to a school, right, that's going to motivate them, when you sit and say, I have to make a kid love school so much that he can go on vacation, man, you have to optimize that school for that, right, and it's, like, you look at our gifted school, right, as an example, you know, in most public schools, there's, you know, one or two kids who are gifted, they're often Sean, Dortner, right, it's not great to be a super smart kid in a lot of schools, man, you go to a gifted school, and these kids are great, they get.
Speaker 4 00:35:50
each other up, it's so amazing, like, they came to me, and they're just like, Mr. Lamont, more academic, right? And you're like, yes, give me a third power hour. That doesn't matter to me. I love it. How do you... One other thing I want to ask a lot of my friends, my white house, and I love it a lot. It feels like in the age of AI, a lot of people are kind of losing a lot of their values and social foundation, right? So I think, you know, I think if you're British and you're Christian, it's really important to be proud to be British and proud to be Christian.
Speaker 4 00:36:21
Otherwise, you see how it happens. Society kind of goes awry. And so in America, where my kids were really proud to be American, and we really believe in the American Constitution and its values and the way that schools usually don't teach kids. You know, every country believes I need to care about my customs, laws, values, and curriculum of what we're gonna have our kids. I believe in the AI world. Every family and every society, every country has to say, what are those values that we want to have kids learn? Because today, if you take America, there's a whole set of values that are getting put.
Speaker 4 00:36:53
into kids via TikTok, right? They're not your values. They're not your values at all. And they are super destructive to tons of kids, right? And we look up there every day. Socialism, it's like, it's like a lot of really good stuff. I always tell my kids the two things that, you know, TikTok, that your generation needs, believes, that a bunch of people don't, is that socialism is better than capitalism, and the rights of the listener are better than free speech. And that is what I'm trying to tell you. Those are two things, and it's brainwashing when you're in it for hours, right? That's why they believe it. That's why you just believe it. And so if you believe the opposite, like we wake up today when we talk about our AI tutor and putting things off in, that, no, we need to out-compete TikTok. And so explicitly and alpha, obviously there's a religion, you still want to have those values, for example, of free speech and the markets. Exactly. They're explicitly in the school. They're explicitly in the school. And who do you just take civics? Right? Who do you just take civics? Right? And, you know, we have 250 coming up next year. You know, what are the core.
Speaker 4 00:37:26
principles and core values matter? And, you know, we don't take a left-right position, right? We believe in both sides. Part of critical thinking, as an example, just to go into it, is we believe, if every kid says one kid should think critically, you don't have critical thinking, how we measure that is, can you argue both sides of the debate? And no matter who you are, if you can't see me on the other side, you don't understand the debate. We need to teach every kid how to do that, right? On every issue. And that's a measure where we're like, ah, that is going to do more, right, to help the civics debate in this country than anything else we can do. I don't really like to teach you how to do that. I have to argue both sides. It's really tough to get your friend around and do it. I don't like to teach you how to do that. I have to argue both sides. It's really tough to get your friend around and do it.
Speaker 4 00:38:08
to be able to work with them. And exactly. So we started this podcast to push back on cynicism and pessimism and the miles in our country. I think what you're doing is obviously very pro-optimism. What's your grand vision for 10, 20 years from now? What can we achieve for our country if this works? Yeah, well, education is the most important thing that we can do, right? There is nothing more important than educating our youth, right? And raising the next generation. And when I look at AI, you know, what's coming in the next 20 years, it's going to be a mixed bag for some adults, right? In that, you know, we're in Boston and there's RoboPacks season, you know, Waymo's and everything. And being a Uber driver is not going to be great five years from now. But when you take AI and say, what's it going to do for kids, right? It is an unmitigated good, right? It is awesome for them because it is going to transform those 12 years. And these kids, AI gives kids superpowers. Use correctly, it gives kids superpowers. There's no longer, right, 12 years, six hours a day wasting most of our kids' childhood. These kids are going to be able to do awesome things, love it, engage in it. And when we look forward 10, 20 years from now, we're going to be like, you know what the number one use of AI was? Was to transform our next generation to be awesome.
Speaker 4 00:38:39
A lot of people are worried about AI and social media and TikTok and all these things. Is there a way that we can take this and do what you're doing to transform it into more principled people who are actually better leaders later? Are you going to stay on that? A hundred percent. I mean, back to the whole principled part, it matters, right, on the values you're going to be able to do it. But when you have, when kids are learning 10 times as much, they love it. You're doing challenging things that they love. These kids, right, the last line we didn't get, we forgot to talk about 45 on our list, but number five is character, community, right? Classmates and culture, right? That's the core part of school. And when you talk at the end of the day, all we can care about as parents is, did I raise a good kid? Right, character, right? And this, I can, you know, meet alpha kids, you're like, God, those are good kids, right? And I believe that's something that we absolutely can do, and AI, is, right, it's a double-edged sword. It can be used for bad, and we can talk very much to everybody, and it'll be really bad. Or, we can use it to transform education, to actually build the kids that we all love and are excited about.
Speaker 4 00:39:09
What are the five things? The five things are, you must love school more than vacation. Your kid can crush academics in two hours a day. Third, light skills, light skills discussion. These are the critical light skills that your kid needs to succeed in an AI world. Fourth is, guides and coaches, right? When you take them out of teaching from the classroom, can provide 10x the value to growing kids, right, and connecting the kids, right? And then fifth, the core, community, right, so character, community, classmates, and culture are the core thing of a school that you, they're hard to measure, right, but they're critical if you're going to build a school in the future. Awesome, we're talking, she makes us all a lot more optimistic. Thank you for your leadership, Joe. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:39:57
Hey, how you doing. 
Speaker 1 00:39:58
I'm doing good, how about you? $50,000. What's that? That's what I need from you. I'm just kidding. That's $50,000 is the tuition of the Lake Forest Alpha School, K-5. Oh, so they have one? K-5, but yeah.
Speaker 1 00:40:30
I didn't even know where they were. No, they're all over the place.
Speaker 2 00:40:33
You know, part of it is, you know, I mean, you know, a dedicated parent can do that themselves.
Speaker 1 00:40:48
Oh, I, yeah. You know, I'm sure you went there also. You know, and I'm not saying homeschool your kids. No, I actually, I called you to say, what's your idea? because I know you went there too yeah well I was thinking you know what I mean you know the two hours a day would be the easy part right right and it's the you know it's the, thinking through.
Speaker 1 00:41:19
how do you motivate the kids but did you know I mean just the way they were incentivizing them oh yeah it was like tongue in cheek honestly I went this is it this is you know Eric you know, because I'm having a hard time getting them to with soccer right, I've gotten them to commit to have I told you about my two mile yet yeah.
Speaker 1 00:41:51
okay yeah you and and you know all that good stuff yeah so I'm down to 934 by the way in a week that's pretty good, 934, 334 a minute. I mean a mile. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. It's a whole lot better than I can do. So, and I'm this, and then this week's been insane. So, um, I don't know that, you know, I've run twice. I ran Sunday and Monday and then, uh, you know, I want to get two more in this week. So now Eric, at first Eric was like, man, he's going to catch you. And now, you know, at the other day I'm like, you think I'm going to stop at Ben?
Speaker 1 00:42:33
And he looks at me like, oh no. But you know, and, uh, and then Maddie comes home yesterday, the day before. Guess what guys? Now, of course, Maddie doesn't have the understanding of the need for sympathy in this, you know, or sensitivity in this scenario, but Maddie comes home. You know, we're always, we're talking about pace, right? Matty comes home.
Speaker 1 00:43:04
Hey guys, guess what? I just ran a mile in six minutes, 48 seconds. And of course they rub his face in and they slapped him, you know, and that was very disappointing to me, you know. But they took it as bragging and he's like, no, I'm like you guys, you know. You know, and there's nothing wrong with, you know,
Speaker 1 00:43:36
being able to celebrate an accomplishment. Right, right. You know, and by the way, he ran one mile. You guys are running two. You can't run top speed for that. And oh, by the way, just so you know, he wasn't even running top speed. You know, I was talking to Ben and I was like, do you want me to put you two next to each other, and run and see which one of you gets sick? can beat him. Isn't it sad that you think you can beat him? You know, but my point is,
Speaker 1 00:44:10
you know, it bends down to a 7 minute 40 second mile, right? From a 10 minute mile. So, I mean, that's a lot of improvement. Yeah. It's just, unfortunately, it's over a month. So it's not, it's nowhere near, you know, what was possible. And so I kind of, you know, I'm hearing this and going, how do I motivate Ben? I can motivate him, but it's not going.
Speaker 1 00:44:44
to be through money. I just, I don't know how to do it though. You know, Eric, how do I motivate Eric? You know, like Eric's trying, but I don't think, you know, I think Eric's different. He and I had a, I think I almost broke him the other day. I took him out, we were practicing during Ben's practice, and he's got difficulty hitting with his left foot. So I'm like, why aren't you hitting with your laces, dude? Like hit with your laces. He's like, I can't dad, you know?
Speaker 1 00:45:19
And I go, I need to, you know, I actually wasn't even mad or anything like that. So just, you know, I said, Eric, I need you to stop saying you can't. And he goes, I can't, I swing. It doesn't hit my laces. I can't figure it out. I can't do it. And I was like, oh, he's, he's hurting, you know, and I said, Garrett.
Speaker 2 00:46:00
See what you did, you get me emotional.
Speaker 1 00:46:11
You don't think you belong on that field, on that team, do you? And he kind of gave me this like, slight shake of his head, no. How many people has your coach cut so far, since you've been on the team for just over a year? A lot, but he hasn't cut you?
Speaker 1 00:46:43
No. Do you know me as somebody who's not blunt, who's not honest, even when it hurts? No. I said, I tend to tell you what I think. I tend to tell you the bad news before it even happened, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:47:14
You belong on the field. I don't believe that. I know that. Your coach knows that. He's seen hundreds of kids like you. You know who doesn't? I said, the only person that doesn't believe you belong on that field is you. You're the only one. I'm out here with you.
Speaker 1 00:47:45
You, if I didn't think you belonged on that field, do you think I'd be out here trying to train you? That'd be a waste of my time, dude. do you believe that well okay so why don't we why don't we stop i said the first issue dude.
Speaker 1 00:48:21
is if you don't believe it in your head your body will never put it into action so let's stop cutting you off at the at the knees and let's start making going through with step one and, let's change this if somebody i can't figure this out i i'm struggling to figure this out, somebody can just show me how to do it differently and once i understand it.
Speaker 1 00:48:55
then i can do it do you believe that well yeah, Okay. So the statement begins with, dad, I can do this. If you help me do whatever you tell your brain, it will repeat back to you in your action. You start with, I can't, you will end up with not being able to, not being able to execute. That's why you're freezing on the field.
Speaker 1 00:49:29
That's why you're having concerns because you don't believe in it. Coach told you that he didn't say, Eric, you suck. He said, Eric, you need more confidence. So I was like, wait, can we, can we work on this? Yeah, dad. So, you know, I get 10 feet away from him, you know, I said, roll me the ball.
Speaker 1 00:50:00
and i just kind of like stabbed it with my laces right you know just uh and uh you know back at him i said can you do that like why i said can you do it you know and so he hits it back to me it's like congratulations we know that you can hit it with your laces that's hensley let's work on this let's get the feel for it and then we'll we'll restart farther you know so we went back and forth back.
Speaker 1 00:50:41
and then they turned the lights off on us right when we were meshing you know and so but you know, i can't figure out how to get those two to dig deep you know and pull something up maybe this is the incentive the incentivization you know it but in a way that i gotta figure out what.
Speaker 1 00:51:18
what they would want to do i mean you know all right but you know you know again go back to like this podcast they're all like that they're all that good you know what i mean it's just you know, what this guy's funding and and uh you know everything yeah i've listened to a few of his i'm just you know i'm so limited on all right i'm actually trying to screen out a lot of.
Speaker 1 00:52:01
just stuff, you know, um, nowadays to, like, I, like, stop listening to Ruthless and listen to a little, very little QA. Ruthless I got rid of, because I just, I decided that they, sit around and bash people all day, and that's just an input that I don't need, um, because I'm going to train myself to bash people all day, as my thought process. Ruthless are the interviews.
Speaker 2 00:52:32
Huh. 
Speaker 1 00:52:35
Ruthless are the interviews. Mm. They're, they're good interviews. You know, that's what I like about them, so.
Speaker 2 00:52:48
Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:52:49
But, I get it, you know, because, you know, like, I've always, you know, like, skipped through their, their, uh, games and stuff. Stuff like that. It was like, yeah, it's still. Yeah, yeah, I've always done the same there. But no, I'm just trying to change, you know. Honestly, one of my favorite things right now, is as I'm working, I listen to songs in song.
Speaker 1 00:53:23
And you know, all throughout the day I've got, you know, now I can't recite them or whatnot, but I've got those songs racing through my head. You know, that's the song that I can't get out of my head. And it's like, I think that's a good idea. You know, and I, you know, commit what I was listening to. Not only did I think it was totally cool, you know,
Speaker 1 00:53:55
when I was listening to the cast, but it was, you know, it was also. You know, what does that look like on raising my children, even if they're not, you know, going to that school? What does it look like to, you know, fill in the gaps. 
Speaker 2 00:54:21
Yeah. No, because if you can. Go ahead, go ahead. No, yeah, just to end up. Because, you know, Howard was a terrible student. He couldn't because he was just like, exactly, exactly. Right.
Speaker 1 00:54:41
And it was like, you know, and that's why I took so well to online studies because it's like, yeah, now, you know, I can challenge myself.
Speaker 2 00:54:53
I can do, you know, but, you know, but, you know, all these kids like going Hillsdale and this, that.
Speaker 1 00:55:00
other how do you prepare the kids involved you know i was just listening to uh you know they were i was just listening to ruthless and they were interviewing the uh um the secretary of the army right and he he had gone through ranger school you know i've read before you know what it takes to go through ranger school you know and these these guys are losing like 25 and 40 pounds and you know it just goes you know it's just at some point in time you break and you know the.
Speaker 1 00:55:32
nice thing about it is that we all don't break together so that there's always somebody else that could you know help help you through when you do break um but how do you develop this that you know or the seals where you don't ring the bell right right um you know what does that look like in our kids you know so that not necessarily, that they become SEALs, but that they have the mental discipline, because it's just, you know,
Speaker 1 00:56:12
I mean, just from what I see, you know, like on a day-to-day basis, that's what's lacking in so many, things, is discipline to be able to achieve what you want to do, and then there's the other aspects of it that says, okay, so if you do have the discipline, you have the rest of the tools, necessary to carry out the discipline, right, right, so anyway, it's just, you know, no, I.
Speaker 1 00:56:44
agree completely, because it was like, if you can really do a lot of this stuff, you know, number one, you can really teach a kid at that level, then it really doesn't matter where my kids are. at right now, you know, academically I can, you know, boost them. Um, and then, you know, how do.
Speaker 1 00:57:14
I, but how do I take that, um, philosophy and drive it in a way? Because ultimately, I mean, you, you, you think about it, our, our entire lives are incentives driven, you know, but, but my, but my kid, but my kid needs to do it just because I told him so. And it's the right thing to do, you know? Um, and so maybe, maybe we need to come at this from a different.
Speaker 1 00:57:50
perspective. I mean, shoot, Maddie. So Rowan, Rowan, uh, went, walked up to, they're at their country club, and Rowan walks up to the manager and says, I need a job, can you, can you give me a job, and the guy's like, yeah, sure, put away the chairs, show up every day, put away the chairs, I'll give you 25 bucks, you know, and so Maddie's like, Rowan's got a job, he's making so much money, I need a job, dad, you know, and I was like, well, what do you want to do, you know, and, and he's like, well, Mr. Mike's got a pool,
Speaker 1 00:58:35
and you know all about pools, you know, I heard he's paying like $130 a month for this pool guy to come and clean his pool, I'll give him like a deal, I'll give him like $75, take a chance on me, you know, and, you know, and then, and then, And, you know, and then we can we can do something with it. And I said, OK, because would you help me with that, dad?
Speaker 1 00:59:08
And I said, well, I think the first thing that, you know, I think the first thing you need to think about, kiddo, is if we convince Mr. Mike to take you on and and he gets rid of his pool guy, who, by the way, he likes right now because he continues to pay him. But, you know, we can't just stop a month from now and go, I thought that was a good idea, but it wasn't right.
Speaker 1 00:59:42
So I think you need to think about, you know, how much time you're willing to commit to this, you know, because you can't just stop a month from now. This is so why don't you come back to me with a number and. You know, and then we can keep on talking. He's like, okay. So he comes back the next day and he's like, yeah, I kind of feel guilty. He's like, what's that? He's like, I haven't told Eric and Ben about my pool idea because, you know, they're going to want to jump in on it.
Speaker 1 01:00:15
And I feel like I got a thing here. And I said, well, you know, maybe you can use them as teammates later once you kind of know what you're doing. But we still have to answer that first question. And he goes, I think I can commit to a year, Dad. I said, if you can commit to a year, then we need to start talking. Now, I need you to go back again. You know, I said, so here's what the job's going to look like.
Speaker 1 01:00:47
I said, but you're not going to get, it's not just $130, you know, and we're not going to charge him $75. We're going to charge him a little bit more than that. But you're not going to get that straight to your pocket. You know, you need, we need to buy some chemicals. We need to buy a brush. We need to buy a vacuum. You know, how are we, are we, are we considering this stuff? You know, you know, he's like, okay, I need to think about that. All right. You know, it's, I'm, I'm kind of waiting to see if, you know, this, this is all, you know, this week. So, I don't know, but I think it's even, you know, I'll have to admit part of it was like, okay, so what are you doing?
Speaker 1 01:01:33
When you go to, you know, not us and Papa's for the summer. And then I was thinking, well, you know what, that would be a great training session for, Hey, you know what, you need to train a replacement. Now find somebody, train them, make sure that they're covered for those days that, you know, and, you know, maybe, you know, maybe, you know, you hire them to become part of the pool and you go and get yourself another pool, you know, because he was already like, I think I could, I could start with Mr. Mike and then I'll bet you Patty would give me her pool too, right? You know, and so he's, but it's the thinking, right? It's the, you know, how do we facilitate the things that they're showing interesting? You know, Ben told me last night he'd be willing to give, give up his iPad completely if I, if I let him have at least 10 minutes a day to play soccer. And I said, well, wait a minute here. You're willing to give it up.
Speaker 1 01:02:36
A soccer video game. No, I was making a point with him. I said, make your choice, soccer or iPad. And Ben's been feeling his opus a little bit lately, you know, and so, you know, he's been in, he's been getting in trouble. quite frequently, so he's had a good amount of time without his iPad, but it's okay, you know,
Speaker 1 01:03:08
it's just, you know, it's, he needs to learn what respect looks like, you know, and so it's just, hey, when I say no more, that doesn't mean go, you know, something like that, to just kind of like, yeah, you know, okay, no problem, dude, no iPad in the morning, but I just got it back, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, apparently you didn't learn the lesson, I'm sorry, dad, me too, kiddo, I hope you.
Speaker 1 01:03:42
make better choices tomorrow, so, but it's just been, and I think it's wearing on him, because he keeps on, like, every day, it's like, it's like, I haven't had my iPad in like four mornings, it's like, yeah, you know, and I just make them small enough to make, him hurt you know and so we can let's try again tomorrow you know so he's shaping up pretty good with me but not with ashley ann and so she called me yesterday but it's so it's we're we're just.
Speaker 1 01:04:13
talking right and and i'm like dude you know you're complaining to me that your mom gave you didn't like how your mom responded to how you disrespected me when i asked you to watch a video and you went uh you know and so you're mad at how you were treated but you have yet to even come and talk to me even though you're that whole conversation with your mom was about why i deserve.
Speaker 1 01:04:47
the respect you know and you haven't even come talk to me about the fact that that you you disrespected me. And, you know, and so I've heard you out. I understand what mom did that you didn't appreciate. Just for your sake, I'll give you two things, right? She got very sarcastic with him.
Speaker 1 01:05:18
And Ashland does this whole sarcasm routine no man loves. And I heard her saying it. It's like, this is going to come back to me because I would have put an end to this, you know. And so it's like, I think that's something you need to talk to your mom about. And you need to say, mom, this really hurt my feelings, you know. And then, you know, your statement about mom keeps on turning these big things, these small things into big things, you know, and makes you sit through a long conversation.
Speaker 1 01:05:54
Dude, if mom thought you understood because you showed her that you understood. She wouldn't turn it into a big thing, but guess what? I'm gonna say three things One if she thought it was a big there if you understood she wouldn't say it to you know Just because of the fact that she's your mom. You get to listen to her.
Speaker 1 01:06:28
And then you know. Actually four things, And I said and then you know, I didn't just marry some pretty little thing Dude, like your mom's amazing you don't understand life better than she does if she's trying to tell you something, You know, Maybe just maybe.
Speaker 1 01:07:00
it's worthwhile right and then fourth what have you done for her because i'll tell you what if you look around and see all the things that she does for you every single day she deserves a lot more than just a couple minutes of your attention it's uh you know but then it's like so why won't.
Speaker 1 01:07:35
you come talk to me dude i point blank told you after your mom told you and after you still you know wouldn't come to me but i could tell in your eyes that you felt bad i came to you and i. Even if you don't know what to say, you're always here.
Speaker 1 01:08:06
And you still think, well, I just couldn't find something that was good enough to tell your dad. Man, that's the beauty about me being dad, you having me as a dad. You know, and that's one of the E's, is how do you keep those lines of communication?
Speaker 1 01:08:39
You know what I mean? Right, well, that's why I was- Because once they shut down, you know what, it's just like, I've had this conversation so many times, it's not even worth having her anymore, you know. 
Speaker 2 01:08:50
Right. You know, at some point in time. 
Speaker 1 01:08:52
you kind of screw it now, you know? But it was cool, because he was just, I mean, So, there's nothing I could say to you that would make it right. And I said, Ben, that's a good start, dude. You know, he said, really? I said, yeah. He said, why didn't you want to watch the video?
Speaker 1 01:09:24
Don't you think that, I mean, I'm not your mom, right? Like, do I send you videos that aren't worthwhile to you? No. How often do I make you watch videos? Not that often. By the way, do you know that I already watched it? I spent my time watching this video to make sure it was worth your time. So, why didn't you want to watch it? Well, you told me I only had 20 minutes of TV time.
Speaker 1 01:09:57
That was a 9-minute video. it's honest you know and you know what's what's interesting about that you know related to you, know the previous conversation and you know and everything else which is they they need to learn how to do what they want to do right that is you know not every conversation can can be you know.
Speaker 1 01:10:33
what's it for me um what if we as parents you know start understanding the dynamics and saying okay here you know here's what i want you to do i know what you want to do how do we create a win-win right you know and that's kind of where i'm going with this too, because i said you know what it did is that once i was able to kind of walk through all, of that with him. You know, I felt the conversation had taken a good turn. I said, Ben, you asked.
Speaker 1 01:11:10
me to coach you. He said, yeah. I said, I'll never give up on you, but I feel like it because, I don't know. You're extremely difficult. And he looks at me like, how could you say that? And I said, well, you really, when I ask you for something, you give me just enough.
Speaker 1 01:11:44
and you're not really trying to use this to get better. You're trying to appease me. So you're listening to your coach. And you're listening to me, you know, your coach lets you lose your starting position and your coach is letting you lose your, your, your coach as much as he likes you.
Speaker 1 01:12:18
His number one priority is the team. It's not you. My number one priority is you, not the team, you know, and then I asked you to beat your time that you did yesterday and you don't, you docked it. I asked you to run till you feel like you have to puke.
Speaker 1 01:12:51
You didn't. I saw the way you walked in. Do I look like that when I finished my run? You don't do what I ask you to do, so you're not going to get the results that you want. So let me ask you something. Soccer or iPad? That's where that question came from.
Speaker 1 01:13:25
Soccer. Let's talk about your decisions. Do you decide to play on your iPad more or play soccer more? Yesterday, you decided nine minutes of soccer was not worth 20 minutes, or it was not worth your time on TV.
Speaker 1 01:13:55
You decided your decisions aren't lining up with what you're telling me, your priorities. and now you're not getting and you're not getting the benefit of it and you're still not willing to make different decisions let's go back to those goals you made three months how are we doing i've got it right here dude let's read them not great what was the point of that.
Speaker 1 01:14:28
we've got them you know and what i need to do also i've decided, is i need to have milestones you know by this date i need to achieve x in order to achieve x i need to achieve y on this okay and you know and you know just throw out that.
Speaker 1 01:15:01
You know, you need to have celebrations of them, you know, when you achieve those milestones also.
Speaker 3 01:15:05
Yeah.
Speaker 1 01:15:09
Um, yeah. So, we're getting there. Um, I don't know. I know your brother is watching you on how to raise his kid. I know. But what makes you say that? Because he tells me.
Speaker 1 01:15:41
He's like, I want to be the kind of father that brings me.
Speaker 3 01:15:58
Nothing like pressure, huh? Sure.
Speaker 1 01:16:00
you see me try to keep myself right yeah well that's the thing is you know what whether you whether you think it or not everybody's looking you know um we all you know i don't know about you what's going through your mind but you know with me it's like you know if they only knew what.
Speaker 1 01:16:34
a failure you know i yeah they wouldn't be they wouldn't be thinking those things you know i think um i i think you and i are in you know in accord on that kind of stuff i i probably use different, But it's not good enough. What I'm doing is not good enough, you know, and I think that that's, that's probably the mentality of all of the sports greats, and that's probably the only thing, like, you have to have that kind of passion in order to be great, but I think that the difference is that I'm not just, I'm not telling myself that.
Speaker 1 01:17:30
I really deal that way, you know, I, you know, Eric gets a bad grade on a test, and, you know, I said, hey, dude, what happened here, you know, and he's like, he's like, yeah, I obviously didn't study enough for that, but I did get, you know, one of the top grades in the class, and I look at him, and he goes, I know, that doesn't matter to you. I said, it matters, dude, but if you're going to compare yourself to the rest of the world. um you know it's one thing to use that to make yourself better but once once you're on top dude.
Speaker 1 01:18:08
you can't just you know it's not helpful anymore so you said it first the pond that you're in too right oh right so i said you said it first when you admitted that you didn't study hard you know you know it make an adjustment you know on that i i don't i don't really care what your grades are here um i do care the reason why i care about this is because i know that you.
Speaker 1 01:18:46
didn't put in the effort you put in the effort you know and by the way eric's never gotten lower than a b you know so, I'm not, but I tell him too, it's like, it's not about the grades, it's about, you know, if, if one of your kids is doing their absolutely best in getting C's, and the other one's cruising to get A's, there's a problem, you know, right, right, no, and I, I use our relationship, you know, as an example for that, you know, a lot of that stuff,
Speaker 1 01:19:24
it was just like, you know, honestly, guys, like, I, I knew that my dad wouldn't say anything, his parents wouldn't say anything about his grades, and so he took it to the next level, and said, you know, A's and B's, you know, and so I knew that I was fine if I got A's and B's, and so I would, you know, slack off for their first half of the quarter, or half of the,
Speaker 1 01:20:00
you know, whatever. Then I get a progress report and I go, that's not acceptable to dad. And so then I put it into an extra gear, you know, but some, but at some point in time, some classes I couldn't make up for, you know, and then I went to go get into the colleges that I wanted to get to. And number one, I wasn't even motivated for that, but I didn't even get into the colleges I applied to, you know, which by the way, didn't get me into the careers that I want, you know, and I didn't know all of that stuff. I thought I was cruising and I was golden until I had the.
Speaker 1 01:20:33
foresight of somebody a little bit older now. And I can tell you, you know, I didn't make the right decision. What career would you want to have gotten on looking back? Um, you know, I, I actually don't mind. Um, I, I think I, If you're asking me this decision, to make that decision right now, I would have, that's tough.
Speaker 1 01:21:16
I think I definitely would have put myself on a route through an MBA program. I do think, especially as I'm trying to find another job right now, interviewing and talking to people and stuff like that, I do think that I am uniquely gifted in operations and leading teams, building teams.
Speaker 1 01:22:00
I don't know at what, you know, I had a recruiter ask me the other day, she's like, okay, well, so what level, what's the size of company that you work, that, you know, that you want to work for? And I said, you know, I think that's a trick question. And she's like, what do you mean by that? And I was like, well, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, you're always going to have, you know, four to 10 direct, you know, reports, whether it's on a high level or low level.
Speaker 1 01:22:38
Whether it's, it's on a low level, right? And so you're, you know, if you're working for a small company, you know, you're going to wear more hats to be more versatile. And you might be working with the frontline guys. And I actually find a lot of success working for the frontline guys, because they're not used to being able to being treated. treated the way that I treat them and so I'm able to empower them and I'm able to allow them growth that they wouldn't see in the, you know, but I honestly, I think I can do.
Speaker 1 01:23:11
that anywhere. So you're really asking me, you know, whether or not I'm capable of it and, you know, I think that it's different. You have to adjust to whoever you want to talk to. So anyways, long, long winded, like I haven't really found, I haven't done anything really big. Right. Um, so I can't totally speak to that, but, um, I do think that leading teams is my, you.
Speaker 1 01:23:41
know, I find, you know, somebody was talking to me about how I, how I must, it's actually grandma. I talked to grandma yesterday and she's like, it must be so nice to create such beautiful things. And I was like, honestly, I don't, I don't really, I mean, it's, it's nice. see the pool afterwards and go man that thing looks good but very little of it do I go that was me that was mine right um but I'm you know I'm not even at on site right now my guys are.
Speaker 1 01:24:17
getting stuff done right now you know and then I'm going to show up they're going to ask me a couple questions and I'm going to go find the table and open up my laptop and start working on you know KPIs and detailing processes and the fact that I'm at this point like I love that meaning I I built that I built this team that's getting ready to blossom you know are you just.
Speaker 1 01:24:49
out of curiosity I don't think you're ranging this but do you like chat GPT to build that or. I mean, I use ChatGPT a lot, but I, honestly, I'm not, okay, so I'm having a hard time, so let me step back and answer your question.
Speaker 1 01:25:19
Number one, I'm using ChatGPT, I use ChatGPT a lot for ideas on, like, tools or whatnot. What's weird is that when I come, some words, I'm now starting, the Spanish word is coming to my brain before the English word is, so, and I mean, that's it, you know, came into my brain before tools did, but, so, but, so right now, I'm trying.
Speaker 1 01:26:00
to build a dashboard for skimmer um so i can look at all of the clients at one time and and see how we're doing um because there's we don't really have skimmer doesn't allow you to value it to evaluate um on that level and so i'm building the dashboard through notion and i'm going to use their export feature to grab all that um but the reason reason why i haven't um.
Speaker 1 01:26:33
done it for i i can't seem to to write out exactly what i need to for triune because i still don't feel like i get it if that makes sense like i get it i can do it but i i feel like um. All right, go ahead. It's just not, it's, here's my biggest problem, is when I, normal people will go like, well, I just start writing stuff down, and it just, you know, and then I adjust to it, and I can't.
Speaker 1 01:27:16
I need to, like, fully, you know, I need to kind of, like, outline it, and just kind of, like, you know, I need to, but I need to feel like I understand it. And, and my, and I think my biggest problem right now is that I already see the next phase, in that I honestly think, and I don't think I'll be here long enough to implement this, but I still, I think that I can design something where, through video, we can, we can take videos of what,
Speaker 1 01:28:00
what our existing, um, surfaces look like, um, have, and kind of have that, create, um, our next, you know, next actions essentially. And so I need to, I need to think through how to, so, you know, because I need to think through how to, to put all of that stuff together because it's gotta, it's gotta assess it.
Speaker 1 01:28:37
It, it's gotta, you know, it's gotta determine, you know, where it is and then it's gotta, and then where it is as far as, uh, procedure, um, and then it's gotta be able to, to document, it in a way that it can give instructions, um, to even the lowest. guy in my opinion so um that's so yes absolutely but not yet but i've built a.
Speaker 1 01:29:13
so i've got a project built so every time i um every time i ask a question about construction it it's within the triune construction project and so all of those threads kind of end up working together um and so now i'm getting answers based on kind of like it kind of understands me now.
Speaker 1 01:29:44
um and i feel like i can leverage that pretty soon to be able to whip something out pretty easily rather than kind of like banging my head up against the wall you know for the right words if that makes sense, By the way, speaking of, you know, if the triune, we need to change the triune, the pull agreements so that annual maintenance does not need approval, but we will send them.
Speaker 1 01:30:20
a courtesy estimate and then go ahead and do it. Okay. Because people aren't approving the annual maintenance, you know? Right. Are they declining it or are they just not getting back to it? They're just like, so like Hopeland is not, you know, so Hopeland's way overdue. Hillcrest is now overdue. She's had the things for almost six weeks, maybe.
Speaker 1 01:30:54
You know, they're not approving them. You know, Blythe. It won't answer any emails regarding it, you know, and it's just kind of a hole in the system.
Speaker 2 01:31:12
And the fact is that, you know, it's kind of my opinion in that because the pool service actually makes a fair amount of money when nobody actually paid attention to it. What happens if we actually paid attention to it? You know, it could, you know, it could easily make a million dollars a year.
Speaker 1 01:31:33
Mm hmm. I agree with that, especially if he was able to, you know, sell it. All right. So, so anyway, just like my two cents, would you be willing to send an email in that regard to Corey, either to Corey or to me, whatever makes you feel more comfortable? Yeah, I can do that.
Speaker 1 01:32:07
But yeah, so by the way, I'm I interviewed with Maersk the day before yesterday. If you like. Yeah. Yeah, so they're looking to rebuild their. their their, You know the HR guy really didn't know much so it was difficult. Yes, but basically they're looking to build.
Speaker 1 01:32:38
to rebuild their their dredge. system from the ground up on some level and what that means, you know, I'm assuming it's, we're not doing it right and we need somebody that's willing to you know revamp it because they got like. Yeah, so, and it was just like, you know, so what's your issue, you know, and he's like, well, and what's funny, so it's like, well, you'd be reporting to the head of da-da, she's in the Carolinas, and, you know, she just feels like, you know, somebody needs to have dredge experience, they can rebuild.
Speaker 1 01:33:29
Is this from the L.A. Long Beach Port? Yeah, both of them. Is that what they're targeting here? Yeah, so, you know, and so we ended up having a decent conversation where I, you know, I said, why are you calling me, because you keep on saying this person has to have dredge experience and understand how to build a dredge, you know, system, you know.
Speaker 1 01:34:01
So why are we talking? Well, I'm just looking at your background and it just seems like, you know, you can do that. I said, Yeah, except for, you know, what you're telling me that your boss is asking for. So I'm betting that your boss is sitting on two or three candidates that she likes, but doesn't feel like it's the right guy. And he's like, you hit the nail on the head. Okay, because if you want to give me a shot here, then you need to be.
Speaker 1 01:34:40
because she's going to look at my resume and she's going to say that I don't have the experience she's looking for. So you're going to have to sell me and I'm going to sell you right now. You know, and he's like, All right, hit me. You know, so we'll see. He's he said, you know, he was gonna, send me on so we'll see and then i've got an interview tomorrow uh somebody called total.
Speaker 1 01:35:12
i should learn this before i have total total storage total warehouse ink so i don't really know what they do except for provide storage solutions so i gotta do a deep dive tonight she reached out to me she's the vp of hr saying hey i think you're you know a good fit for this.
Speaker 1 01:35:48
can i interview you so that's cool yeah so you said that interviews, Tomorrow? Yep.
Speaker 2 01:36:03
Okay. Well, I'll be praying about it.
Speaker 1 01:36:07
Um, Kaylee is interviewed in Greenville. Oh yeah? Yeah. So. But Julie's all excited about that. Yeah, I'm sure she is. But Lee's got a business up there too. Lee works for a guy who, you know, runs a tennis school, so apparently he's okay with.
Speaker 2 01:36:46
moving on. Gotcha.
Speaker 1 01:36:51
Cool. So. Um. anything new with you did you say something so there yeah i said is there anything new with you.
Speaker 2 01:37:19
no no i've never heard anything new with us you know. yeah working around the house trying to you know get ron's house closed um. devon out there now um because ron wants to put in uh things up let's do a shower for grandma.
Speaker 1 01:38:00
Has he seen the house. 
Speaker 2 01:38:07
No. In fact, he got inspected yesterday and he just sent me the inspection. Can you do this for me? No. No, I'm gonna send it to Devon. Hey, you know, take a look at this. See if it's big. He's like, well, there's a couple areas I'd like to go out and look at the house myself, you know, and more.
Speaker 2 01:38:37
And then I called.
Speaker 1 01:38:43
So Kayla is from church, you know, on the praise band, the drummer. It's his wife at church. Okay. So. He's a. i uh he negotiated the rights to uh fix whatever whatever needs to get fixed so your brother-in-law.
Speaker 2 01:39:12
wants to do it just send me an estimate you know he can do it all so nice so just trying to.
Speaker 1 01:39:27
take care of all that kind of stuff yeah then you know mom's you know grandma has been been.
Speaker 2 01:39:36
you know she'll she'll call me up like three other day crying really you know i just need to know what the plan is and it's like well mom you know plan is this that and the other well i wish somebody would tell me it's like well mom actually you know we've had this discussion. So, there's mom you just need to remember.
Speaker 1 01:40:08
that you don't remember, and then you'll be okay. And, uh, because, I mean, we even had that conversation today. Yeah. I wonder if you could get her to remember, to, uh, you know, like, write a note down. So, she...
Speaker 2 01:40:32
You know, I never think about that. So... A good idea? A good idea? Well, let's see if I can remember that. Yeah. So... Painting stain on... the uh rough wood out on the the front entry right now so that was something always something going on.
Speaker 1 01:41:15
yeah yeah just that so i mean that's how you know when you say what's what's done like yeah just aren't yours yeah but i mean you do have i mean you're navigating some some pretty big things now too and but i i i i hear you i'm i'm i take that so devon offered to uh help me move ron and i think i'm gonna pick him up on it because you know i i don't see how i asked you or don to help you know so you know i've thought about different ways to do it i just don't know how.
Speaker 1 01:41:54
i'd be able to do it right now and since we don't really have timelines like the problem is you know.
Speaker 2 01:42:00
know you take a hit right you're not gonna get paid right you know and so i don't want to ask you to make you know would you would you do that sacrifice yes you know you know it just doesn't.
Speaker 1 01:42:13
seem to me like to be the smartest move right you know so yeah no i i hear that so um, so i mean yeah yeah i just you know it's like finally got ronda because every time i talk to you know so what's your plan i keep telling you what my plan you know you'll load up the gas.
Speaker 1 01:42:47
boat and i'm gonna put everything on it and i'm gonna drive over there you know last time i'm gonna talk to you last time i talked to him, Like, have I told you this story already? No, I don't, I don't, I never heard a story about a boat. So the last time I talked to him was like, okay, Ron, you know, like, you know, you can do that. You know, I was like totally sarcastic. Cause it's like, what kind of plan is that? You know, hey Ron, how much can you actually fit.
Speaker 1 01:43:19
in your bathroom. 
Speaker 2 01:43:20
Oh man, it's, it's got all those drawers and everything. 
Speaker 1 01:43:23
you know, and it's like, okay, well I'm available, you know, to, to help you, you know, you, you just let me know if you need something. Yeah, so they call us up about 15 minutes later. I'm really stupid. That's not going to work. What do you think? It's like, you know, it's like, okay, here's what I think. You need to get rid of the bass boat.
Speaker 1 01:43:53
There are bass boats here, you know, sell that one, buy another one here, right. 
Speaker 2 01:44:00
Um, then we're gonna get a U-Haul truck, we're gonna load it up, we're gonna, and we're gonna trailer your truck back here, and we're just gonna make one trip, all right. 
Speaker 1 01:44:12
And you're gonna go on an airplane.
Speaker 2 01:44:16
Um, okay, all right, you know, yeah, we can do that. Okay, cool. Now, you need, now you need to think about, when are we gonna do this? You know, his house is closing on the 7th, all right? So, when are you planning on moving? I don't, I don't have an answer for that one yet. But, uh, you know, so, you know, it's just kind of one day at a time, and see, you know, talk, because I'm, I'm talking in like every day now.
Speaker 1 01:44:57
Wow. So, you know.
Speaker 2 01:45:00
he's you know he's not doing good i mean those wounds on this ledge are still you know not healed. so i keep saying so when are you going to be back you know so apparently he's going to the doctor.
Speaker 1 01:45:16
today so i'm going to call him up because you know it's like dude you really need to get those wounds healed before you move and uh but you know i don't know i don't know i just you know figure there, yeah you know i just figured that you know i'll probably be over at you know their house every day be kind of you know what the new norm will be right how far away are they 15 minutes.
Speaker 2 01:45:52
okay it's not bad you know especially you know 15 minutes here is.
Speaker 1 01:46:01
you know it's it's the same as even any place i think but you know it's just like just cruising down the country road it's not like you have to get on this freeway and just that and the other fly trap you know yeah no you tell me something is 15 minutes away i go ah that's close so cool i'll keep praying for that well i should get i'm supposed to call my wife back and i'm six minutes.
Speaker 1 01:46:41
five minutes away from the job so i gotta get that done before i but uh let's get chatting with you yeah you too and uh we'll talk yeah definitely i'll keep you posted on the interview and all that, Yeah, yeah, please. I'll pray for you. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 01:47:06
All right. See ya. Bye.
Speaker 5 01:47:24
Hello. Hey, what's going on? Just calling you back. Be calm. Really simple and quick. My dad's going to pick up Maddie today. Okay. Because I want him to pick up the cans. I said, Dad, this is a good chance for you to go and take Maddie to the cans because we have so many cans. I need them out. And he said, and Maddie doesn't have soccer today, and the boys don't need to be picked up, so it'd be kind of nice.
Speaker 1 01:47:58
Maddie does have soccer today.
Speaker 5 01:48:01
No, he doesn't. He doesn't at school.
Speaker 1 01:48:05
Oh, I was going to say, I'm looking at a 6.15 practice.
Speaker 5 01:48:10
Two.
Speaker 1 01:48:11
Um, what. 
Speaker 5 01:48:14
Because my dad has, so it works out fine, because my dad will pick him up at two, take him to go drop off the cans and then bring him back. Yeah. So, okay.
Speaker 1 01:48:27
Sounds good. How are you doing. 
Speaker 5 01:48:31
Good, but just kind of rumbling, so, um, yeah, that's all. How about you. 
Speaker 1 01:48:37
I'm tired. Um, I've been, Corey asked me if I could go to Malibu for him on Friday, you know, and he started explaining it, and I'm like, this doesn't make sense, dude. Um, you know, your guy's in Manhattan Beach, I'm going to PV tomorrow, just, yeah. Give me the stuff and I'll drop it off to him in Manhattan Beach tomorrow instead of Malibu on Friday. Oh, that is a good idea,
Speaker 1 01:49:07
but it kind of screwed up my whole morning. So I've been driving all, I think I'm still driving. I'm just getting, I'm gonna get to my stop in the next, but then I gotta do some more driving, so after that.
Speaker 5 01:49:20
I guess it worked out then that you have a little bit more time in the F community, so.
Speaker 1 01:49:26
Yeah, but I don't, you know, so I just, I just need to plan a few more things, get some, I need to, I think I need to spend some, a good amount of time training tonight, practicing tonight on the.
Speaker 3 01:49:44
Yeah.
Speaker 1 01:49:46
My dad's calling me, I can call him back. So, and, you know. So yeah, but I think, I didn't realize Maddie's practice was at 6.15 tonight.
Speaker 5 01:50:08
Yeah, I don't think I realized that either.
Speaker 1 01:50:10
I think what, probably the best thing to do is get, get Daniella to take Eric, Ben to practice, and then we'll pick him up, and I can get, I can take Eric to Orange, come back and then go get Ben after that, and just take care of Maddie. I might even be able to get Maddie on my way back from Eric, so we can play that by ear too.
Speaker 5 01:50:40
Oh, well, I mean, I don't know, I figured you'll handle Eric, and I'll just handle Maddie and, Maddie and Ben, between Daniella helping, you know, it's not a big deal. What do you see that's hard about it? Because, I mean, even if it, even if I didn't get any help from Daniella, I could still get them to their practice.
Speaker 1 01:51:00
and pick them up yeah um well maybe you take them oh i guess it doesn't matter um i'm just there's nothing hard about it i just kind of go like i'm gonna be on the road like honestly i'll be leaving orange at like 7 you know 40 probably right um you know and so yeah we just pick up.
Speaker 5 01:51:27
maddie right so it'll be fine i don't i mean like not fine like it's a nuisance but you know yeah it's a nuisance but it's not like a big deal yeah you know so um you know it's like a nuisance either way because it's like a daniella takes them takes them to practice.
Speaker 5 01:52:02
And I drop off, like, I'll drop off, you know, it's like I have a, I can, it's almost better if I take Ben and Julia to practice, because then I can just pick up Maddie and be done. Or you can pick up Maddie, well, no.
Speaker 1 01:52:16
Yeah, I won't be back in time for Maddie unless I'm ahead of schedule.
Speaker 5 01:52:20
Yeah, unless you got out of eight.
Speaker 1 01:52:24
Um, but, um, that's fine.
Speaker 5 01:52:29
It doesn't matter. Like I said, we can both make it work.
Speaker 1 01:52:32
Do whatever, do whatever works best for you.
Speaker 5 01:52:36
Pretty much what you'll need to do, though, is, is you're going to need to probably just take Eric's soccer stuff with him. You and I are going to go pick up Ben and Eric together, and you'll go directly to Eric's practice.
Speaker 1 01:52:54
Oh, because of, uh.
Speaker 5 01:52:56
Yes.
Speaker 1 01:52:57
Okay.
Speaker 5 01:52:57
So, because they're slated to come in at five. 45 they usually come in early so um but either way if they come in early you're still going to go directly there i'll send you with like a built bar and then you know had her all for eric like and you just need to give both the boys a pep talk and be like dude practices are where it counts yeah practices are the only thing that count i don't care how miserable you are put on a different.
Speaker 5 01:53:33
identity and get it together and have the joy of jesus you know i'm gonna send you a podcast that.
Speaker 1 01:53:40
my dad sent to me and i loved it you're gonna think that i want to send our kids to a different school or i've got a big plan i don't um it was more just what they're being able to achieve with these kids um through proper motivation, And if you're, I found it fascinating. I think you would too. Um, if you can get it into your schedule. Um, the, I got an email that I just forwarded to you through in-mail. It doesn't.
Speaker 1 01:54:22
make any sense at all to me. Um, a guy asking if I'm open to hearing about executive opportunities, who's an inside sales guy with 76 connections for a job that, I mean, it just doesn't make sense at all. So, um, I'll do a little bit of background search on it. Yeah. It just seems, it's almost like the Chinese took over his account. Right. It looks like. I hear.
Speaker 1 01:54:57
you. I hear you. So, um. 
Speaker 5 01:55:00
Our inventory of executive. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I'll look him up I mean we can always reply back and just say, you know, like like I am, you know, Like I don't I'll figure it out. I'll look it up and I'll respond cool, And what was the text that you sent me like a final payment. 
Speaker 1 01:55:24
I was just saying that all of our medical stuff, you know is is, Paid off that we had took all of our all the separate Providence that we had we owed like, you know, Several hundred here several hundred there several and I just basically I put it all into a plan and then Every time they we had a new thing I told them to add it on to the plan and so we've been paying like 60 bucks a month for a year and a.
Speaker 1 01:55:55
Ever so and that was our final payment. Um, just, it's a small win. Thought you'd appreciate it.
Speaker 5 01:56:06
Yeah, no, I saw it and I thought, I didn't really know what it's about, but I'm like, well, that's one less $50 to $60 payment a month we get to pay, you know, which is nice.
Speaker 1 01:56:14
Yeah.
Speaker 5 01:56:15
So.
Speaker 1 01:56:15
So, okay. Um. All right. Yeah, that's all I got.
Speaker 5 01:56:22
Love you. Okay, sounds good. Well, I'll see you in a little bit.
Speaker 1 01:56:27
Yeah, baby.
Speaker 5 01:56:28
All right, love you.
Speaker 1 01:56:29
Love you too.
Speaker 5 01:56:31
Bye.
Speaker 2 01:56:51
Hey. Um, just so you know, I might've created a real problem though. I had asked them the who's them the uh that's i'm just i'm sorry i'm just trying to think here, um i've asked the uh 401k people to put you on the 401k effective.
Speaker 1 01:57:23
january 1st 2025 right and i actually had to fight with them to do it you know and then.
Speaker 2 01:57:29
they just sent me that you're on there as of 2024 um but 2024 is closed so you know i started calling you saying hey dude you know you're on here but you know and by the way it was like 7 200 um but.
Speaker 1 01:58:00
don't know what they're thinking um what thank you by the way um what does that really mean for me.
Speaker 2 01:58:21
well means that you know that you get 7 200 in your uh 401k but it also means that, cory's gonna flip out so he he doesn't know about it no i just got i just sat at my desk for a.
Speaker 1 01:58:45
second and took a look at it and i gotta call him and talk to him about the exciting specifically said beginning 2025. all right so. Well, anyway, I got to figure this out now. Is there anything I can do. 
Speaker 2 01:59:15
You know, no.
Speaker 1 01:59:18
The, I mean, I'm just not going to push for 2025.
Speaker 2 01:59:28
But I don't know. I can't work. Because you can flip. But, okay. Let me think about it. And just the numbers don't make sense to me.
Speaker 1 01:59:59
Yeah, let me know. and um yeah if there's something you need me to do then i'll do it it was kind of weird you know he and i were talking a couple weeks ago and he's like talking to me about you know yeah i got this guy holding money here this guy holding money here so i had to come up with money here and i gotta do this and then i had to fund a 401k and it's like man you really like don't realize that you know no but he had fun cash balance plan you know because the cash he had.
Speaker 1 02:00:33
put like 350 000 that's that's what he told me yeah okay which is not 401k oh no i so what's, what's the difference you know you talking to me yeah it's me yeah but cash balance plan is just.
Speaker 2 02:00:52
for him so you know it's kind of like you know, you're honest your your woes are falling on deaf ears you know yeah yeah i remember um when i was.
Speaker 1 02:01:17
electron and i was younger and uh the new branch manager was telling me you know he was complaining.
Speaker 2 02:01:25
to me how much he had to pay in taxes and i remember thinking you have to pay more in taxes.
Speaker 1 02:01:33
than i make right i'm not sure how much i care about that yeah no and and i you know like i was talking to sean the other day i i we went for breakfast burritos on his birthday and we were talking and he's like how much you pay for private school. And, you know, I said, well, you know, Fairmont's pretty much $20,000 a year per kid.
Speaker 1 02:02:08
And then, you know, Prentice is $30,000. He's like, dude, you pay for private school. What do I take home? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, he's going to take his kids to, you know, a West L.A. school? Dude. No, that's what we need to do.
Speaker 1 02:02:39
We need to figure out how to come up with alpha for him. You know? He takes them to work, right? Remember what the guy was saying is he needs to bring it down to $1,000 for his kids? Yeah, basically, it's got to be on a tablet, right? but yeah so you know but now you got my mind going again so but i gotta use it on another.
Speaker 1 02:03:16
juices so yeah let me know if i need to do anything for the 401k and um yeah no no it's nothing you.
Speaker 2 02:03:22
need to do but i was going to give you some good news and then i i looked at it more and was like, this is not good news gotcha well i appreciate you fighting for me oh yeah i don't know what.
Speaker 1 02:03:39
to do i went back to painting so that'll blame me on that one yeah as i as i'm older.
Speaker 2 02:03:48
i have to ruminate more yeah i don't have the horsepower i used to.
Speaker 1 02:03:53
well you know what i've found in all honesty that it's like unless it's just. You know, makes perfect sense. I actually have been trying not to make decisions the same day. It's just like, it always, you know, opens up different avenues of thought when I let it go. You know, and just kind of, a lot of times, ten minutes after the conversation, I'm like, oh, well, here's the way you need to think about this.
Speaker 1 02:04:25
You know, so, anyways. Alright, well, have a good day. Okay. We'll chat soon. You too. Alright, thanks. See ya. Bye.
Speaker 3 02:05:26
Good morning. 
Speaker 2 02:05:31
I was about to ask what happened because everyone is very quiet.
Speaker 1 02:06:30
I'm good. I'm good. I do have a pallet of 3701 in my truck though. So my thoughts are is I'm going to drop that off here. Then I got to go meet up with somebody in Manhattan Beach and go to Home Depot and get all your guys' stuff.
Speaker 2 02:07:04
No, I'm going with the truck. This is all. You want five more? You can use that.
Speaker 1 02:07:12
The dolly? Yeah, I would. Yeah. Thank you. Either that or the wheelbarrow or boat, whatever's easier. How you doing, Alex? Alex. 
Speaker 6 02:07:28
Well.
Speaker 1 02:07:29
How are you. 
Speaker 6 02:07:29
Good.
Speaker 7 02:07:42
He's jealous. He said that you don't ever ask him how he's doing. You? Como estas. 
Speaker 6 02:07:50
. I thought I did, so 20, no, 25, yeah, 25 and 5, huh, but it's okay, it's better than what we have, so, you know what, I put it there, this one,
Speaker 6 02:09:01
Because René did a lot of this, and he said, oh, I'm going to do pressure washer and put it here. That's fine. Put it all, right? The upper is very epoxy, right? Aqua rock. Oh, you can, yeah, you can start upper rock. Before, you did it all, very high.
Speaker 1 02:09:28
Yes, very.
Speaker 6 02:09:30
You do it high, but we chip it. Because the aqua rock enters the concrete. Oh, yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 6 02:10:03
Okay, I'm going to clean the area. Right now what I want to do is all the pipes. And this one and the M1 there. And the sand. There. 
Speaker 3 02:10:21
Yes.
Speaker 6 02:10:22
M1, sand. And you say that membrane C, up? Only up, right? The measure that is only in a half inch. Over there. Boom. Membrane C, right? No, no, no. More in an inch. More higher and more spincet.
Speaker 6 02:11:00
Because it's 1 1⁄2, right? Yes, 1 1⁄2. So, 1 1⁄2 tile is...
Speaker 1 02:11:11
3 1⁄8. I think it's 1 1⁄2, 1 1⁸. 3 1⁶.
Speaker 6 02:11:24
So 3 1⁶s. 1 1⁶s in the 1⁶s. 1 1⁴s, 3 1⁴s. 3 1⁴s, right? It's perfect. Because flow is important. You have to remember this.
Speaker 2 02:12:07
Let's do this real quick.
Speaker 2 02:12:52
3 16ths, 1 16th, plus 1 16th.
Speaker 1 02:13:14
Here, it's 1-1-8, that's what it is. 5-8, right. 
Speaker 6 02:13:23
Yeah, that's what we said.
Speaker 1 02:13:30
Yeah, so half inch, 5-8, it's 1-1-8, right? 5-8 is for a blaster? It's the height, right? So, it's 1-1-8 here.
Speaker 6 02:13:45
So... But the flow, you know? Hmm? The flow, right? The flow. It's 5-8. Yeah, so...
Speaker 1 02:14:03
So, M1 and membrane. Right? M1, thin set, rapid set, membrane. So, the membrane, here, is my... So, it's me and your marks, right. 
Speaker 6 02:14:40
And tape.
Speaker 2 02:14:45
A... let's say...
Speaker 6 02:15:00
One inch, one inch, and a cable. Mark everything, mark everything, and put tape on it. And that's where the plug goes, right? This one.
Speaker 1 02:15:29
So, today, it's M1, sand, and so on.
Speaker 6 02:15:36
So, today, since it has water, you're going to dry it later. Like a pressure plate, and it has water. If you have time, you want an inch, right? There, right? And there's a membrane over there, right? You just want the membrane on top of the M1, right. 
Speaker 1 02:16:07
Yes, the M1 first.
Speaker 6 02:16:10
Yes, but the membrane on top of the M1? The M1 first.
Speaker 1 02:16:17
And then the membrane on top.
Speaker 6 02:16:20
But not on the M1. 
Speaker 1 02:16:22
Yes.
Speaker 6 02:16:26
Today, I don't know. You want them to do it. Why. 
Speaker 2 02:16:42
When you go with them, when you install here... I think, you know.
Speaker 6 02:17:23
Right. Okay. Do you work with Pancho? Yeah, but he hasn't said anything. Okay.
Speaker 1 02:17:50
But they... They... You mean all of them? Yeah. Okay. All of them. I work with them. No, I need to use this, it's possible to drill a hole, right here, and use this.
Speaker 6 02:18:16
Alright, what is it, what is it? Oh, it looks like I'm close.
Speaker 1 02:18:42
And you can put, you know, wrap it there. Do you need more. 
Speaker 6 02:19:01
It's better because it doesn't dry out too fast, and it dries out faster with a brush. The 3701 is like $29, and this is the same, $26 I think, so it's easier.
Speaker 1 02:20:18
For the plywood, do you want it? Okay. Your plan is... Because the plywood is four feet, right? Four feet? Yes, yes. So you can cut... Two feet, one foot. One foot? So I need four or five...
Speaker 1 02:20:53
Papers. So, see? Because 50... 52, remember? 52 feet, right? So, doble es 100 y 4, 100 y 10, right? Y un papel es 22 cuando tú cortar en, you know, no, en 4, yeah.
Speaker 1 02:21:27
Yeah, so, 32, right? So, 4 papeles y una más para, you know, yeah.
Speaker 6 02:21:46
Okay, pero uno si lo vamos a ocupar más grande, los pedazos, como ahí, ahí es más grande. So, yeah, so... Más grande porque tengo que...
Speaker 1 02:22:02
Yeah, one more, right? Or for, like, for a phone. 
Speaker 6 02:22:13
For this one, I think it's here. I can put all of this quickly. And the oil there? Yeah, I can put it. So this is where we drill, right? Okay, for this one. Yeah, it's possible to put a clamp. This has to be done before.
Speaker 1 02:22:40
Yeah. So maybe when I go to the home depot, not in the grass, can we... i'll wait till uh guys so i didn't really talk to you about it um you can put it down for a second.
Speaker 1 02:23:11
but yeah i mean they they just redid all the grass so we keep on every day this week i've moved that pressure washer so it's off the pathway because what you guys naturally just did right it's human instinct right you said let's go around the obstacle um and every day i find it back there um so let's let's keep that pathway open right because if you look i mean look at the grass.
Speaker 7 02:23:39
you can see right where we're walking right um so let's we're gonna move the canopy.
Speaker 1 02:23:49
well i moved the canopy where it is i don't i don't mind where it is i moved it i actually moved it there um if you want to move it a little bit that's fine but i think just off that side. I think it's just the biggest thing is like we need to be a little bit more aware with our setup and and then you know you can see just we are we're so subconscious in what we do right and.
Speaker 1 02:24:20
so the path that we create you know it's like it doesn't really keep you there but it does you know when you're not thinking you're just going to blindly follow it. and I don't like if you want to put the pressure washer over there that's fine right yeah so.
Speaker 1 02:25:19
i'm thinking about getting another one of these for water for water like we'll put our waters in.
Speaker 7 02:25:25
one of them oh yeah yeah actually yeah yeah so we well i i think i put on the list but we need one for sure so i could put yes i have somewhere to put this so i have somewhere to well this will.
Speaker 1 02:25:35
should those don't need it yeah i put that in there and it doesn't we don't need to save the box i mean if it works for you right right yeah yeah that's fine i mean yeah i thought i got rid of it now put it back in there um somehow the filters got onto a different order i was just going to walk into doing it but i'm seeing four filters here do we do we need more um well i know.
Speaker 7 02:26:00
two of these should have holes so we have two of them which um i just haven't had time to clean them off and like close them down and let them dry and everything but yeah when i get to that we have two of them pretty much and i know two of them uh there's two of them that are ripped yeah and then um yeah so i need somewhere to put these which we have will be in the box and then oh and then this couple of years so i want to be able to put into a box, the stakes um you guys use the stakes for floating right you know some other stuff.
Speaker 1 02:26:37
and you pick it for a second and i know you've been gone for you know a bit so it's not all we, like these ones we don't like these but even so we've got two boxes we go into our inventory box. so those guys want to make sure like these guys cost me yeah we had that conversation.
Speaker 7 02:27:12
that's why that's what i was looking at right now i was like yeah i don't think that should be right there what about those uh i don't know why those are there but this is bad now right yeah and then.
Speaker 1 02:27:21
we have a bunch of the boxes you know and to me this is one of those things like a water bucket, um we don't need so much i'd say we probably need two three and one things you know and the rest can.
Speaker 7 02:27:38
go probably have a box well yeah one of them one of the boxes i'll go pick the toilet paper did you get pull everything out of my truck oh no we're still we're at the very last oh yeah.
Speaker 1 02:27:56
that's right i stopped and distracted you yeah um so the acetone was for you as well, i had three cans of it at storage so i just grabbed two of them okay good yeah okay and let's use the older one first um and then i think there's some sand so everything in there comes out.
Speaker 1 02:29:02
Brandon, do you have Allen wrenches? Large ones? Well, I'm wondering if we just change the oil of this thing so I can just so I don't have to take it away It looks like less than yeah, maybe three eighths. That might be it. Do you want you mine?
Speaker 1 02:29:32
And then that'll tell me whether or not I need to buy one at Home Depot when I go there. So. So once I leave here, I'll probably I probably need to know 30 minutes later.
Speaker 6 02:29:46
Oh, but well manana no pizza. No, okay. You're not.
Speaker 1 02:30:03
so maybe monday you're good with that monday brandon i know i just i booked something i was like oh wait how do i do that and so i was like oh i gotta i gotta push the guys i just don't want it to be rushed or i'm making you guys eat pizza at like 10 30.
Speaker 1 02:31:25
Hey, what do you think? For the blades. For the blades? But it's small? So it's for the size. Right? So it's one for forty and a half four and a half one for five, one for maybe.
Speaker 6 02:31:51
Or just something? Because it's going to be different. I don't know. Just a box with a lid, and we put everything in it. I think, if you want it like this...
Speaker 1 02:32:08
No, I just... Because there are going to be a lot of things. Yeah, so maybe one of... Because the oil is the same, right? So maybe one of seven? Of seven. All of them, okay.

[AI_SUMMARY]
This strategy briefing covers various topics including the integration of AI in K–12 education, the importance of configurators in manufacturing, and Trilogy's recruiting philosophy. It emphasizes the need for personalized learning experiences, the significance of motivation and emotional support in education, and the establishment of high standards for student engagement. The document also discusses the operational logistics of a project, family dynamics, and personal growth strategies, highlighting the importance of discipline, communication, and the development of life skills in children.